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Political Dynamics (political + dynamics)
Selected AbstractsThink Locally, Act Globally: Toward a Transnational Comparative Politics,INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2010Terrence Lyons Political dynamics and outcomes around the globe have been transformed by globalization, new patterns of human mobility, and the development of innovative transnational social networks. These new political processes are rooted in communities and networks that are not restricted by geographic location. Although politics has been delinked from territory in this way with regard to processes and actors, this does not mean that transnational politics focuses exclusively on universal issues or global approaches to social justice. Rather much of the new transnational politics is intensely focused on specific locations, identities, and issues (for example, "globalized" neighborhood associations, ethnicities, patrimonialism). Transnational politics also includes new conceptions and practices of citizenship and accountability (for example, legislative seats reserved for expatriate labor migrants) as the body politic becomes increasing mobile, political affinities delinked from geographic proximity, and critical constituencies reside outside of the territory of the state. This article outlines a new approach to investigating the actors and processes at the heart of contemporary transnational politics, with a particular focus on the ways in which diasporas are strategically constructed and mobilized to advance political goals through the use of salient symbols, identity frames, and social networks. [source] Post-Conditionality Politics and Administrative Reform: Reflections on the Cases of Uganda and TanzaniaDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2001Graham Harrison This article contributes to the discussion of the nature of external intervention in the reform processes of indebted states. Looking at administrative reform in Uganda and Tanzania, it is argued that external involvement in sub-Saharan Africa is becoming increasingly differentiated. For some states , including the two cases dealt with here , a key set of continuities and changes allows us to conceptualize a regime of post-conditionality. Post-conditionality regimes exist where extreme external dependence and economic growth produce a set of political dynamics in which external,national distinctions become less useful, in which there emerge a set of unequal mutual dependencies, and in which donor/creditor involvement in reform becomes qualitatively more intimate, pervading the form and processes of the state. Details of this dispensation are provided in an analysis of key ministries and key interventions by donors/creditors. The article finishes by considering the contradictions of the post-conditionality regime, and its prospects. [source] What Happens to the State in Conflict?: Political Analysis as a Tool for Planning Humanitarian AssistanceDISASTERS, Issue 4 2000Lionel Cliffe It is now part of received wisdom that humanitarian assistance in conflict and post-conflict situations may be ineffective or even counterproductive in the absence of an informed understanding of the broader political context in which so-called ,complex political emergencies' (CPEs) occur. Though recognising that specific cases have to be understood in their own terms, this article offers a framework for incorporating political analysis in policy design. It is based on a programme of research on a number of countries in Africa and Asia over the last four years. It argues that the starting-point should be an analysis of crises of authority within contemporary nation-states which convert conflict (a feature of all political systems) into violent conflict; of how such conflict may in turn generate more problems for, or even destroy, the state; of the deep-rooted political, institutional and developmental legacies of political violence; and of the difficulties that complicate the restoration of legitimate and effective systems of governance after the ,termination' of conflict. It then lists a series of questions which such an analysis would need to ask , less in order to provide a comprehensive check-list than to uncover underlying political processes and links. It is hoped these may be used not only to understand the political dynamics of emergencies, but also to identify what kinds of policy action should and should not be given priority by practitioners. [source] Beyond corporatism: A configurational theory of policy concertationEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 6 2003Hugh Compston Policy concertation (defined as making policy by means of agreements struck between government officials and representatives of employer associations and trade unions) is a major policy style in Western Europe. This article seeks to explain the political dynamics of policy concertation in terms of the varying configurations of three variables: perceived problems, the degree of shared economic understanding among the participants and the perceived implementation capacity of the participants. It is found that the incidence of broad policy concertation over the twentieth century in nine West European countries can be explained almost completely in terms of this configurational theory. [source] Coordination as a Political Problem in Coordinated Market EconomiesGOVERNANCE, Issue 1 2006KATHLEEN THELEN The purpose of this article is to explore the political dynamics of employer coordination in three well-known "coordinated market economies." We examine differences in how employer coordination has been organized in Sweden, Germany, and Japan in the area of industrial relations, and we examine the extent to which such coordination represents a self-sustaining equilibrium, as some of the most influential treatments suggest. To preview the findings, we argue that precisely the intensification of cooperation between labor and management in some firms and industries (that the "varieties of capitalism" literature correctly emphasizes) has paradoxically had deeply destabilizing collateral effects that have undermined or are undermining these systems as they were traditionally constituted. All three cases are characterized not so much by a full-blown breakdown of coordination so much as a very significant reconfiguration of the terms and scope of such coordination. Specifically, all three countries feature the emergence of new or intensified forms of dualism,different in each case based on different starting points,in which continued coordination within a smaller core has in some ways been underwritten through the breaking off of other, more peripheral, firms and workers. [source] Trade Politics Ain't What It Used to Be: The European Union in the Doha Round,JCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 4 2007ALASDAIR R. YOUNG The European Union is a key player in the Doha Development Round of multilateral trade negotiations. This article argues that its negotiating position reflects distinctive patterns of politics underlying three aspects of trade policy , traditional trade policy, commercial policy and social trade policy , characterized by different sets of actors and political dynamics. Although there is significant variation in the substance of the EU's position within each aspect of trade policy, their distinctive patterns of politics help to explain why the EU's negotiating position is most liberal in traditional trade policy and least in social trade policy. [source] Action research from the inside: issues and challenges in doing action research in your own hospitalJOURNAL OF ADVANCED NURSING, Issue 5 2001David Coghlan MSc PhD SM Action research from the inside: issues and challenges in doing action research in your own hospital Background and rationale.,Nurses are increasingly engaging in action research projects to improve aspects of nursing practice, education and management and contribute to the development of the profession. Action research involves opportunistic planned interventions in real time situations and a study of those interventions as they occur, which in turn informs further interventions. Insider action research has its own dynamics which distinguish it from an external action researcher approach. The nurse-researchers are normally already immersed in the organization and have a pre-understanding from being an actor in the processes being studied. There is a paucity of literature on the challenges that face nurse action researchers on doing action research in their own hospital. Aim.,The aim of this article is to address this paucity by exploring the nature of the challenges which face nurse action researchers. Challenges facing such nurse-researchers are that they frequently need to combine their action research role with their regular organizational roles and this role duality can create the potential for role ambiguity and conflict. They need to manage the political dynamics which involve balancing the hospital's formal justification of what it wants in the project with their own tactical personal justification for the project. Main issues.,Nurse-researchers' pre-understanding, organizational role and ability to manage hospital politics play an important role in the political process of framing and selecting their action research project. In order that the action research project contribute to the organization's learning, nurse action researchers engages in interlevel processes engaging individuals, teams, the interdepartmental group and the organization in processes of learning and change. Conclusions.,Consideration of these challenges enables nurse-action researchers to grasp the opportunities such research projects afford for personal learning, organizational learning and contribution to knowledge. [source] The role of power in wellness, oppression, and liberation: the promise of psychopolitical validity,JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2008Isaac Prilleltensky The power to promote wellness, resist oppression, and foster liberation is grounded in psychological and political dynamics. Hitherto, these two sources of power have been treated in isolation, both for descriptive and prescriptive purposes. As a result, we lack an integrative theory that explains the role of power in promoting human welfare and preventing suffering, and we lack a framework for combining psychological and political power for the purpose of social change. In this article, the author puts forth a psychopolitical conceptualization of power, wellness, oppression, and liberation. Furthermore, he introduces the concept of psychopolitical validity, which is designed to help community psychologists to put power issues at the forefront of research and action. Two types of psychopolitical validity are introduced: type I,epistemic, and type II,transformative. Whereas the former demands that psychological and political power be incorporated into community psychology studies; the latter requires that interventions move beyond ameliorative efforts and towards structural change. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] What's politics got to do with it?: Why donors find it so hard to come to terms with politics, and why this mattersJOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 6 2009Sue Unsworth Abstract Donors are paying more attention to politics, and some are applying political analysis to specific aspects of development practice. But this is having little influence on mainstream debates about aid, and donors are not questioning their implicit assumptions about how development happens. There are powerful intellectual and institutional barriers to recognising that politics is central to the whole development process. This matters because, without a change in their mental models, donors will not invest in understanding local political dynamics, or give priority to strategically important but difficult issues. If they did so they would discover some very practical opportunities for progress. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The Praxis of Indigenism and Alaska Native Timber PoliticsAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 4 2002Kirk Dombrowski This article addresses the most recent discourse on indigenism in Southeast Alaska that has emerged around the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 and its subsequent revisions. It argues that one must consider the "politics of recognition" in Southeast Alaska in terms of the larger political dynamics that shape state and industry access to resources, especially commercially valuable stands of timber. In Southeast Alaska, recognition of Native claims has allowed industrial timber and pulp producers to, in effect, circumvent environmental laws aimed at curbing production, thus allowing them to continue devastating the living conditions of many Natives. Among the local responses to the manipulation of Native claims and identity, the all,Native, radical Christian churches that have taken a strong stance against the recent, corporate,sponsored, cultural revitalization are unique in their resistance to indigenist politics. [Keywords: indigenism, Alaska Natives, development, Pentecostalism] [source] War, Factionalism, and the State in AfghanistanAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 3 2002Nazif M. Shahrani Since September 11, 2001, the explanations offered to account for the rise of a foreign-led terrorist network on Afghan soil have variously focused on the political vacuum opened up by the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, interference by foreign powers in Afghanistan's internal affairs, the failure of Afghanistan to produce a "strong state" because of ethnic factionalism, and an internal moral incoherence inherent to Afghan culture. I argue that none of these explanations is entirely satisfactory in itself. To understand the situation in Afghanistan, we must recognize that its political and military chaos is not an isolated or unique phenomenon, and at the same time acknowledge the particular social and political dynamics of Afghanistan's history that have set the parameters for current events. I show that communal conflicts in Afghanistan are part of a much wider affliction common to many postcolonial states and multinational societies, and that Afghanistan's current situation can only be understood by focusing on its failed attempts at nation-state building within the broader geopolitical circumstance of foreign manipulation and proxy wars that have given rise to particular forms of ethnic division. [Keywords: Afghanistan, nation-building, ethnic factionalism, warfare, the State] [source] Managing memories in post-war Sarajevo: individuals, bad memories, and new warsTHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 1 2006Cornelia Sorabji In the wake of the 1992-5 war in Bosnia a number of anthropologists have written about the role of memory in creating and sustaining hostility in the region. One trend focuses on the authenticity and power of personal memories of Second World War violence and on the possibility of transmitting such memories down the generations to the 1990s. Another focuses less on memory as a phenomenon which determines human action than on the ,politics of memory': the political dynamics which play on and channel individuals' memories. In this article I use the example of three Sarajevo Bosniacs whom I have known since the pre-war 1980s in order to propose the merit of a third, additional, focus on the individual as an active manager of his or her own memories. I briefly consider whether work by Maurice Bloch on the nature of semantic and of autobiographic memory supports a strong version of the first interpretative trend, or whether, as I suggest, the conclusions of this work instead leave room for individual memory management and for change down the generations. [source] The Privatization of Health Care Cleaning Services in Southwestern British Columbia, Canada: Union Responses to Unprecedented Government ActionsANTIPODE, Issue 3 2006Marcy Cohen This paper analyzes the political dynamics between a newly elected, right-leaning provincial government and a left-leaning public sector union that resulted in the privatization of 4000 health support housekeeping jobs in southwestern British Columbia in less than a year. The article documents how government set the stage for privatization, the struggle that ensued when the union resisted concessionary bargaining, and the new challenges that emerged for both union and management once housekeeping and other support services were taken over by multi-national service corporations. This case is significant because the size and scope of this privatization and the legislation that facilitated it are unprecedented in Canadian history. [source] Victoria's Unique Approach to Road Safety: A History of Government Regulation,AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 2 2009Glenn Jessop The Australian state of Victoria has a record of proactive and determined legislative action addressing road safety. Its processes and deliberations concerning the introduction of road safety laws serve as a noteworthy case study of political rationality and public policy development. Victoria has taken a unique and pioneering approach to traffic regulation. Using the seatbelt and handheld phone laws as examples, this article examines the political dynamics involved in, and the forms of political reasoning underpinning, the road safety policy decisions taken by Victorian governments. I argue that the different approaches taken by governments are partly due to the interaction of the political imperatives of state institutions imposing regulations for the public good and the protection of individual liberties. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||