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Political Conflict (political + conflict)
Selected AbstractsCan Administrative Measures Resolve a Political Conflict?PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 1 2008Albert H. Teich The current controversy over the politicization of science by the Bush administration is, by definition, a political controversy. As such, it must be addressed by political measures as well as the administrative strategies that Dr. Lambright suggests. The administration's actions go beyond the bounds of "business as usual" and reflect the interests of its powerful constituencies, as well as the unease of many citizens with some scientific and technological advances. Scientists need to engage these citizens and take their concerns into account in order to build trust between the scientific community and the public, as well as to impede unscrupulous politicians from distorting scientific information to suit their purposes. [source] State Wildlife Policy and Management: The Scope and Bias of Political ConflictPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 2 2004Martin Nie State wildlife policy and management are often characterized by divisive political conflict among competing stakeholders. This conflict is increasingly being resolved through the ballot-initiative process. One important reason the process is being used so often is the way state wildlife policy and management decisions are often made by state wildlife commissions, boards, or councils (the dominant way these decisions are made in the United States). These bodies are often perceived by important stakeholders as biased, exclusive, or unrepresentative of nonconsumptive stakeholder values. As a result, unsatisfied interest groups often try to take decision-making authority away from these institutions and give it to the public through the ballot initiative. Cases and examples from Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, and Idaho are examined in this context. The article finishes by outlining four broad alternatives that may be debated in the future: the no change alternative, the authoritative expert alternative, the structural change alternative, and the stakeholder-based collaborative conservation alternative(s). [source] Using the ,protective environment' framework to analyse children's protection needs in DarfurDISASTERS, Issue 4 2009Alastair Ager A major humanitarian concern during the continuing crisis in Darfur, Sudan, has been the protection of children, although there has been little in the way of comprehensive analysis to guide intervention. Founded on a situational analysis conducted between October 2005 and March 2006, this paper documents the significant threats to children's well-being directly linked to the political conflict. It demonstrates the role of non-conflict factors in exacerbating these dangers and in promoting additional protection violations, and it uses the ,protective environment' framework (UNICEF Sudan, 2006a) to identify systematic features of the current environment that put children at risk. This framework is shown to provide a coherent basis for assessment and planning, prompting broad, multidisciplinary analysis, concentrating on preventive and protective action, and fostering a systemic approach (rather than placing an undue focus on the discrete needs of ,vulnerable groups'). Constraints on its present utility in emergency settings are also noted. [source] The Interdependence of U.S. Troop Deployments and Trade in the Developing WorldFOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 3 2009Glen Biglaiser The relationship between political conflict and trade has contributed to a riveting discussion in international relations about whether trade produces conflict, or whether conflict itself reduces trade. Most studies proxy "the flag" using militarized interstate disputes (MIDs). However, extensions of "the flag" might well obtain in environments short of MIDs. A more general way to proxy the flag is troop deployments. The deployment of military troops is an essential element of foreign policy. Using panel data for 126 developing countries from 1965 to 2002 and a two-stage least square approach, this essay investigates the relationship between trade and United States troop deployments. We find that trade and troops have a nonrecursive relationship: trade follows the flag and troops follow trade. Given the increased insecurity in the world today, the results are timely and reinforce previous research about the reciprocal relationship between the flag and trade. [source] ,I Saw a Nightmare . . .': Violence and the Construction of Memory (Soweto, June 16, 1976)HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 4 2000Helena Pohlandt-McCormick The protests on June 16, 1976 of black schoolchildren in Soweto against the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in their schools precipitated one of the most pro-found challenges to the South African apartheid state. These events were experienced in a context of violent social and political conflict. They were almost immediately drawn into a discourse that discredited and silenced them, manipulating meaning for ideological and political reasons with little regard for how language and its absence,silences,further violated those who had experienced the events. Violence, in its physical and discursive shape, forged individual memories that remain torn with pain, anger, distrust, and open questions; collective memories that left few spaces for ambiguity; and official or public histories tarnished by their political agendas or the very structures,and sources,that produced them. Based on oral histories and historical documents, this article discusses the collusion of violence and silence and its consequences. It argues that,while the collusion between violence and silence might appear to disrupt or, worse, destroy the ability of individuals to think historically,the individual historical actor can and does have the will to contest and engage with collective memory and official history. [source] Transforming aggressive conflict in political and personal contextsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES, Issue 4 2009Andrew Samuels Abstract The author begins by trying to imagine different models of politics applicable to Western societies. He reflects on the "state we are in" and asks if our present condition of political rupture could ever become political rapture. He asks whether it is possible for citizens to remove themselves from the abusive relationships with heroic, macho leaders. Instead, he states, we might ask where we will find new kinds of leaders who will be "good-enough". We will need such leaders if we are to manage the staggeringly high levels of conflict and aggression afflicting the political world today. The author suggests that we urgently explore innovative ways to manage conflict in political contexts using new psychological ideas about men, fathers and violence. Finally, he communicates what he has learned from Islam about some hidden aspects of political conflict. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Agricultural Biotechnology and Regime Formation: A Constructivist Assessment of the ProspectsINTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2002William D. Coleman Controversies surrounding the appropriate use and diffusion of agricultural biotechnologies are giving rise to questions about governance at the international level. This article investigates the likelihood that a single, international regime or multiple regimes governing this technology will form by way of negotiation. We show that four normative,institutional arrangements, organized around distinct general principles, have a potential governance role: world food security and safety, liberalized trade, protection of intellectual property, and conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. We argue that an adequate amount of compatibility between the principles and norms of these arrangements is required to support the type of communicative action or truth,seeking needed to develop the intersubjective understanding for a regime. Using a framework for assessing normative compatibility, we find not one, but two nascent understandings rooted in the trade and biodiversity areas competing to form the foundation for governance. Further analysis of levels of institutional density between the two developing regimes reveals they are presently too low to support a negotiated resolution of normative conflict. Finally, we demonstrate that recent framing attempts at the international level to decrease areas of tension and incompatibility in principles/norms between the regimes have neglected to create the crucial normative background conditions needed to avert a scenario of increased political conflict in the near future. [source] Consuming Projects in Uncertain Times: Making Selves in the Galilee1JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2003TANIA FORTE This article proposes a different approach. It explores how ordinary people, through projects of their own which exhibit particular forms of intentional cultural production and consumption, manifest historically situated notions of selves. I use the idea of "projects" to understand the interconnections between global consumer culture, identity, and nationalism as they are manifested in the everyday lives of Palestinian citizens of Israel. To exemplify these interconnections, I focus on two significant, creative projects through which Palestinian inhabitants of the Western Galilee shape and manifest selves in history. Though these projects appear very different on the surface, they are used to address the same central question , that is, to understand how senses of self in history and attending identities are materially and discursively constituted by members of a national minority in the ever-present context of political conflict. They show that people are not passive consumers of homogenizing rituals and discourse and reveal how, through a bricolage of objects and ideas, people inscribe intentions, meanings, ways of thinking, and self-narration in places and histories. [source] Competitive Institution Building: The PT and Participatory Budgeting in Rio Grande do SulLATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 3 2006Benjamin Goldfrank ABSTRACT In the late 1990s, the Workers' Party (PT) government of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul introduced participatory budgeting, a process in which citizens establish annual investment priorities in public assemblies. This innovation was one of several attempts by incumbent parties to structure political conflict using budget institutions. The character of participatory budgeting is most evident in its policymaking processes and policy outcomes. The process circumvented legislative arenas where opponents held a majority, privileged participation by the PT's voter base, and reached into opposition strongholds. The outcomes favored the interests of potential supporters among poor and middle-class voters. The political project proved vulnerable to its own raised expectations: it failed to sustain the image of clean government; brought tax increases along with fiscal insecurity; and left unfulfilled the participants' expectations for targeted investments. This article highlights the role of participatory budgeting, indeed all budgeting, in partisan actors' institutional choices. [source] Soldiers, Martyrs, Traitors, and Exiles: political conflict in Eritrea and the Diaspora by Tricia Redeker HepnerNATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 2 2010RICHARD REID No abstract is available for this article. [source] In No One's Shadow: British Politics in the Age of Anne and the Writing of the History of the House of CommonsPARLIAMENTARY HISTORY, Issue 1 2009D.W. HAYTON The publication in 1967 of Geoffrey Holmes's masterpiece, British Politics in the Age of Anne, effectively demolished the interpretation of the ,political structure' of early 18th-century England that had been advanced by the American historian R.R. Walcott as a conscious imitation of Sir Lewis Namier. But to understand the significance of Holmes's work solely in an anti-Namierite context is misleading. For one thing, his book only completed a process of reaction against Walcott's work that was already under way in unpublished theses and scholarly articles (some by Holmes himself). Second, Holmes's approach was not simplistically anti-Namierist, as some (though not all) of Namier's followers recognized. Indeed, he was strongly sympathetic to the biographical approach, while acknowledging its limitations. The significance of Holmes's book to the study of the house of commons 1702,14 (and of the unpublished study of ,the Great Ministry' of 1710,14 to which it had originally been intended as a long introduction), was in fact much broader than the restoration of party divisions as central to political conflict. It was the re-creation of a political world, not merely the delineations of political allegiances, that made British Politics in the Age of Anne such a landmark in writing on this period. [source] Detooling The Language of the Master's House: The Case of Those "Nuclear Things"PEACE & CHANGE, Issue 2 2003Brien Hallett The tool of language helps to shape the argument and outcome of a political conflict in much the same way as the availability and selection of tools and materials affect the kind of house a builder will erect. The advocates of abolishing nuclear stockpiles down to absolute zero unwittingly have embraced the same terms or language tools as their opponents. "Banning the bomb" on the basis of its incredibly devastating consequences has failed in part because the antinuclearists have not disavowed the language that authenticates the alternative perspective of the bomb's incredible power. Along with their opponents, they have conjoined the word "nuclear" with the words "weapon" and "war" to create two formidable oxymora that have impaired greatly their ability to escape the lexical trap of the pronuclear mindset of power politics. In this article an argument is advanced for exposing and avoiding these oxymora and for suggesting some alternative terms in order that the abolitionists might reframe the debate in such a way that conventional political and military assumptions about nuclear power can be challenged radically. [source] State Wildlife Policy and Management: The Scope and Bias of Political ConflictPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 2 2004Martin Nie State wildlife policy and management are often characterized by divisive political conflict among competing stakeholders. This conflict is increasingly being resolved through the ballot-initiative process. One important reason the process is being used so often is the way state wildlife policy and management decisions are often made by state wildlife commissions, boards, or councils (the dominant way these decisions are made in the United States). These bodies are often perceived by important stakeholders as biased, exclusive, or unrepresentative of nonconsumptive stakeholder values. As a result, unsatisfied interest groups often try to take decision-making authority away from these institutions and give it to the public through the ballot initiative. Cases and examples from Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, and Idaho are examined in this context. The article finishes by outlining four broad alternatives that may be debated in the future: the no change alternative, the authoritative expert alternative, the structural change alternative, and the stakeholder-based collaborative conservation alternative(s). [source] Review, Revenge and RetreatTHE MODERN LAW REVIEW, Issue 3 2005Richard Rawlings The article deals with a wide-ranging legal and political conflict of considerable constitutional significance, the attempt by UK ministers to restrict formal challenge of asylum decisions using a variety of devices and the fierce and partly successful opposition that this engendered. The article examines the legal and administrative roots of the controversy; the anatomy of the government's generalised counter-attack or ,revenge package'; the main juridical elements in the resulting public furore; and the character of the government's eventual retreat. In so doing, it raises, and elaborates on, a series of linked themes: the powerful dynamics of judicial review in this policy domain; the historical sense of a gathering storm in relations between ministers and judges; the practical interplay of rule of law arguments with developments in common law constitutionalism; and an expanded role for legal elements in the political process. [source] Writing the "Show,Me" Standards: Teacher Professionalism and Political Control in U.S. State Curriculum PolicyCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 3 2002Margaret Placier This qualitative case study analyzes the process of writing academic standards in one U.S. state, Missouri. The researchers took a critical pragmatic approach, which entailed close examination of the intentions and interactions of various participants in the writing process (teachers, politicians, business leaders, the public), in order to understand the text that was finally produced. School reform legislation delegated responsibility for writing the standards to a teacher work group, but the teachers found that their "professional" status and their intention to write standards that reflected a "constructivist" view of knowledge would meet with opposition. Politicians, who held different assumptions about the audience, organization, and content of the standards, exercised their greater power to control the outcome of the process. As the researchers analyzed public records and documents generated during the writing process, they constructed a chronological narrative detailing points of tension among political actors. From the narrative, they identified four conflicts that significantly influenced the final wording of the standards. They argue that as a consequence of these conflicts, Missouri's standards are characterized by a dichotomous view of content and process; bland, seemingly value,neutral language; and lack of specificity. Such conflicts and outcomes are not limited to this context. A comparative, international perspective shows that they seem to occur when groups in societies marked by political conflicts over education attempt to codify what "all students should know." [source] Intelligence bound: the South African constitution and intelligence servicesINTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2010LAURIE NATHAN This article explores the functions and impact of the South African constitution in relation to the country's intelligence services. The constitution has proved to be a powerful instrument for transforming, controlling and constraining the services, safeguarding human rights and contributing to the management of political conflicts and crises. Yet the constitution's relevance for the intelligence community is also contested and contradictory. Paradoxically, the executive, parliament and the intelligence services believe that it is legitimate for the services to deviate from constitutional provisions because their mandate to identify and counter threats to national security is intended to protect the constitution. The article contributes to filling a gap in the literature on security sector reform, which is concerned with democratic governance but ignores the role of a constitution in regulating the security organizations and determining the nature of their governance arrangements. Intelligence agencies around the world have special powers that permit them to operate with a high level of secrecy and acquire confidential information through the use of intrusive measures. Politicians and intelligence officers can abuse these powers to manipulate the political process, infringe the rights of citizens and subvert democracy. While a constitution cannot eliminate these risks, it can establish an overarching vision, a set of principles and rules and a range of mechanisms for promoting intelligence transformation and adherence to democratic norms. [source] Democratic demand for a social Europe?INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WELFARE, Issue 2 2005Preferences of the European citizenry Within the literature on European integration there is a widespread assumption that Europe is in need of intensified and more effective supranational social policy cooperation. However, on the political level it is doubtful whether such measures are welcomed by the national electorates. This article addresses this issue empirically by asking whether there is public demand for promoting greater European welfare policy cooperation and what are the determinants of such a demand. The data source used is the Eurobarometer survey 2000. A number of hypotheses dealing with socio-structural differences, the effects of welfare regime types, the subjective evaluation of the integration process and the role of identity will be scrutinised. Overall, the results indicate that at the attitudinal ,grass root' level there is no unequivocal support for a European welfare responsibility and that some fundamental cleavages are present. It is the regional and cultural aspects, especially, which turn out to be having an effect and to be influencing future political conflicts. A common European welfare arrangement, therefore, cannot be regarded as a solution to the problems the European Union is facing; rather it will raise new and severe problems of finding social and political support. [source] The Migration of Professionals: Theories and TypologiesINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 5 2001Robyn Iredale In an historical context, highly skilled migration typically involved the forced movement of professionals as a result of political conflicts, followed by the emergence of the "brain drain" in the 1960s. In the current situation, highly skilled migration represents an increasingly large component of global migration streams. The current state of theory in relation to highly skilled migration is far from adequate in terms of explaining what is occurring at the high skill end of the migration spectrum. Continuing growth of temporary skilled migration is heralding changes in the operation of professions. Formal procedures for recognizing the skills of permanent immigrant professionals are breaking down as "fast-track" processes for assessing the skills of temporary professional migrants are put in place. The increasing globalization of firms and the internationalization of higher education are encouraging professions to internationalize. In this article, four professions are cited as case studies to show that professional inclusion/exclusion is no longer defined by national professional bodies alone. The operation of professions has become a transnational matter although the extent of internationalization varies with professions. Typologies for analysing professional migration flows are discussed and a sixth means of categorization, by profession or industry, is introduced to allow for the nature of interactions between the market, the state and the profession/industry. The question whether states should continue to be concerned about self-sufficiency in national professional labour markets in an increasingly globalized environment is also addressed. [source] The Political Economy of Low InflationJOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SURVEYS, Issue 1 2001Jonathan Kirshner What are the politics of inflation? This question is usually raised solely when inflation rates are high. All levels of inflation, however, high and low, are the outcome of political conflicts. But no current approach to the study of inflation , sociological, neoclassical, modern political economy , adequately captures the full range of political issues at stake, and this leads to problems for both theory and policy. This paper critiques the existing perspectives on inflation and then focuses on three theoretical issues raised by those critiques: the economic costs of inflation; the concept of monetary neutrality from economic and political perspectives; and the importance of disaggregating economic growth statistics. Finally, the paper introduces and explores a contending approach to the analysis of the political economy of inflation: a ,micro-politics' perspective. This approach is the only one to address the politics of low inflation, which is of great significance for contemporary political economy. [source] Discourse rights and the Drumcree marches: a reply to O'NeillBRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 1 2002Glen Newey In a recent BJPIR article Shane O'Neill uses Habermas' discourse theory of rights to argue that the conflicts over marches in Drumcree can be resolved rationally in the nationalist residents' favour. I question this conclusion via a critique of Habermas' theory. Habermas' apparently unexceptionable requirement that political outcomes win universal acceptability is bought at the cost of vagueness: it fails to specify how acceptability is secured, or how the requirement itself is derived. So it cannot justify the exceptions to equal civil rights which O'Neill wants, such as exceptions to rights of freedom of expression or movement. Unionists can claim that their position respects Habermas' universal acceptability requirement. This exposes the limitations of attempts to impose abstract principles such as Habermas' on real political conflicts. A possible alternative to this is a form of Schmittian decisionism, in which rules either prove indeterminate, or are confronted with exceptional cases that call for executive intervention outside the framework of rules. Sensitivity to political context requires not derogations from rights, but respect for the autonomy of political processes. [source] Everyday forms of state decomposition: Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, 1954,BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 3 2000Greg Grandin Abstract This essay explores how Guatemala's 1952 agrarian reform played out among Quetzalteco K'iche's. Much of the academic writing on the revolution is concerned with the way the agrarian reform affected indigenous communities. These studies either view the reform as creating bitter political conflicts within the community, thereby weakening or destroying local institutions of communal politics and identification, or else they understand the reform as deepening incipient class divisions. In all of these studies,,conflict'is understood to be something antithetical to,community'. Yet conflict is as essential to communal formation as are more visible identity markers, suggesting an intriguing correlation: the greater the degree of communal conflict, the greater the level of communal identification. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||