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Political Process (political + process)
Selected AbstractsAfghanistan's Security: Political Process, State -Building and NarcoticsMIDDLE EAST POLICY, Issue 2 2008Bulent Aras [source] Friction and Party Manifesto Change in 25 Countries, 1945,98AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2009Stefaan Walgrave Political processes are affected by "friction." Due to cognitive limitations and institutional delays, political agendas do not adapt smoothly to real-world impulses; political agendas either ignore them or overreact. The first question this article tackles is whether the same punctuated change process can be observed in party manifestos. Secondly, it examines whether there are differences across political systems and across party lines. Thirdly, the study tries to account for differences in the degree of "punctuatedness" of party manifestos. Drawing on the vast dataset of the Manifesto Research Group, the article shows that party manifestos are indeed characterized by friction and resistance to change; it also establishes that there are considerable differences in frictional patterns between parties and political systems; and it finds that electoral fragmentation, government participation, and electoral volatility are key to understanding these differences. [source] A Strategic Approach to Rights: Lessons from Clientelism in Rural PeruDEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 5 2005Aaron Schneider International norms of social, economic and political rights are presented as a means of transforming social relations in developing countries. Yet, when rights norms are introduced into domestic practice, they do not always produce liberal, democratic results. Instead, rights and local practices of clientelism mix. This article examines this political process in rural Peru. Alternatives to clientelism emerge when NGOs and international development agencies forge strategic and selective coalitions between urban middle-class sectors and the rural poor. This calls for an explicit politics of advancing rights by any means necessary: accepting hybrid forms when inevitable, incorporating excluded groups when possible, and striking alliances that displace traditional elites. [source] FURTHER LESSONS FROM PRIVATISATIONECONOMIC AFFAIRS, Issue 3 2004Martin Ricketts Privatisation transfers assets from state to private ownership. However, this is not a sufficient action for competitive liberal markets to develop. Indeed, attempts by regulators to impose a structure on industries to promote competition actually inhibit the competitive process from determining the most efficient industrial structure. Privatised industries can still have their objectives determined through the political process. Thus, privatisation, to be fully effective, needs to be supported by other policies that will ensure that competition prevails and that the assets of the industries are used to meet the ends of consumers rather than those of politicians. [source] Crossing Cultures, Learning to Export: Making Houses in British Columbia for Consumption in Japan,ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2002Tim Reiffenstein Abstract: In this article, trade is conceptualized as a cultural as well as an economic and political process. In this view, exporting connects market intelligence with production intelligence on either side of national, typically cultural, borders. These connections frequently imply alternative, mutually influencing, forms of communication and learning that have various implications for local development. A model of relational market intelligence is outlined as a way of understanding this dimension of exporting. The model integrates production and market intelligence while emphasizing alternative pathways of learning and communication. It is applied to the newly emergent trade that features the export of houses from British Columbia to Japan. Within an extended case-study research design framework, information is based on interviews with manufacturing firms and related organizations in British Columbia. Implications for local development in British Columbia are noted. [source] Politics, Locality, and Economic Restructuring: California's Central Coast Strawberry Industry in the Post,World War II Period,ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 1 2000Miriam J. Wells Abstract: This article challenges overly economistic, static, and homogenizing representations of contemporary economic restructuring through an in-depth ethnographic case study of the central coast California strawberry industry in the post,World War II period. It demonstrates that restructuring is much more uneven in its incidence and complex in its motivation than usually portrayed, and that politics and human agency are at its core. Because of the place-based nature of certain economic activity and the grounded experience of political process, its explication requires a sensitivity to space and place. [source] A NEW THEORY OF THE BUDGETARY PROCESSECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 1 2006SOUMAYA M. TOHAMY This paper offers an alternative to the view that budgetary decisions are incremental because they are complex, extensive, and conflicted. Our model interprets incrementalism as the result of a legislative political strategy in response to interest group politics and economic conditions. Accordingly, a legislator chooses between single-period budgeting or multiperiod budgeting, where single-period budgeting is associated with a greater chance of non-incremental budgeting outcomes. We use a statistical procedure developed by Dezhbakhsh et al. (2003) for identifying non-incremental outcomes to test the implications of the model. Results support the model's predictions: a higher discount rate and a persistently large deficit appear to cause departures from incremental budgeting; Democrats' control over the political process have a similar effect, while a higher inflation rate has an opposite effect. [source] Some Lessons from Transaction-Cost Politics for Less-Developed CountriesECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 2 2003Avinash Dixit Transaction-cost politics views economic policy-making as a political process constrained by asymmetric information and limited commitment possibilities. This paper examines some implications of this perspective for less-developed countries (LDCs) considering policy reform. It emphasizes that success requires reform of the rules and institutions which govern the strategic interaction of the participants in the political game, and that reforms must cope with the special interests and asymmetric information which already exist. In this light, it examines some broad issues of the design of constitutions and institutions (definition and enforcement of property rights, control of inflation, and of government expenditures, federalism, and redistribution), as well as some specific issue of the design of organizations and incentives (problems posed by the interaction of multiple tasks and multiple interests, and their interaction with the limitations on auditing and administration that exists in many LDCs). [source] Courts, the new constitutionalism and immigrant rights: The case of the French Conseil ConstitutionnelEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 6 2004Christian Joppke Immigrant rights are located within a broader ,new constitutionalism' (especially in postwar Europe), in which courts have abandoned their traditional passiveness toward the political process and taken on the role of de facto legislator. Analyzing the immigration jurisprudence of the French Conseil Constitutionnel, we argue that courts are torn between two opposite imperatives: to protect an especially vulnerable category of people from the enormous police powers of the modern administrative state; and to respect an elementary exigency of sovereign stateness , that is, the capacity to draw a distinction between ,citizens' and ,aliens' as differently situated persons without a right of entry and permanence. [source] Form and Substance in European Constitutional Law: The ,Social' Character of Indirect EffectEUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 4 2010Leone Niglia This article proposes to understand the constitutional discourse about individuals, rights and enforcement, as developed in the courtrooms, in relation to historic and contextual circumstances. It focuses on the interface between indirect effect and social policy, and argues that the creation of indirect effect has been integral to a judicial strategy centred on the key concern for sustaining the balance between market freedom and interventionism as achieved in the political process. [source] Gender Mainstreaming: The Answer to the Gender Pay Gap?GENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 5 2009Joan Eveline This article examines the argument that gender mainstreaming offers the way forward for closing the gender pay gap. It juxtaposes research on the process of gender mainstreaming with our account of the processes involved in Australian state government Inquiries into the gender pay gap since the late 1990s. We indicate that the continuous process of analysis and response that gender mainstreaming can offer demands political will, intensive links between research and action, and adequate resources , which means that gender mainstreaming is seldom delivered in practice. We use our account of the Australian Inquiries to argue that, provided adequate political and financial resources are in place, the gender pay gap can be narrowed through the institutional mechanisms of an industrial relations system but that the regulatory approach is limited by its vulnerability to changes in industrial relations policy. The article concludes that, whatever strategy is used to narrow the gender pay gap, it must be able to show those who use and observe it that gender itself is a continuous, effortful and political process. [source] Cross-National Transfer of Policy Ideas: Agencification in Britain and JapanGOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2004Koichi Nakano This study seeks to contribute to the policy transfer literature through a comparison of the British "Next Steps" initiative of agencification (i.e., organizational separation of policy implementation from policy formulation in central departments) and the Japanese reform that officially proclaimed to be inspired by the British example. In addition to confirming the crucial role played by domestic structural constraints in producing variant outputs in different countries, this article also shows that the transfer of policy ideas can be a highly proactive political process in which political actors in the learning country interpret and define both problems and solution as they "borrow" from another country. [source] Non-Governmental Organizations as Motors of ChangeGOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 4 2007Cornelia Beyer On one hand, NGOs are seen as experts because of their proximity to the problems they address. They provide knowledge relevant to the solution of these problems and can bring this into the political process. They are able to increase the efficiency of global governance by participating in the policy-formation processes of international organizations. In this paper I will explain the role and functions of NGOs as described in the debate about their legitimacy and theorize , while applying Ernst Haas's theory of organizational learning , on the mechanisms likely to lead to their increasing integration into international institutions as well as the implications of this integration. [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] Darfur and the failure of the responsibility to protectINTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 6 2007ALEX DE WAAL When official representatives of more than 170 countries adopted the principle of the ,responsibility to protect' (R2P) at the September 2005 World Summit, Darfur was quickly identified as the test case for this new doctrine. The general verdict is that the international community has failed the test due to lack of political will. This article argues that the failure is real but that it is more fundamentally located within the doctrine of R2P itself. Fulfilling the aspiration of R2P demands an international protection capability that does not exist now and cannot be realistically expected. The critical weakness in R2P is that the ,responsibility to react' has been framed as coercive protection, which attempts to be a middle way between classic peacekeeping and outright military intervention that can be undertaken without the consent of the host government. Thus far, theoretical and practical attempts to create this intermediate space for coercive protection have failed to resolve basic strategic and operational issues. In addition, the very act of raising the prospect of external military intervention for human protection purposes changes and distorts the political process and can in fact make a resolution more difficult. Following an introductory section that provides background to the war in Darfur and international engagement, this article examines the debates over the R2P that swirled around the Darfur crisis and operational concepts developed for the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) and its hybrid successor, the UN,African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), especially during the Abuja peace negotiations. Three operational concepts are examined: ceasefire, disarmament and civilian protection. Unfortunately, the international policy priority o bringing UN troops to Darfur had an adverse impact on the Darfur peace talks without grappling with the central question of what international forces would do to resolve the crisis. Advocacy for the R2P set an unrealistic ideal which became the enemy of achievable goals. [source] Political parties' use of web based marketing: some preliminary findings relating to first-time voters in the 2005 general electionINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NONPROFIT & VOLUNTARY SECTOR MARKETING, Issue 3 2006Graeme Drummond This paper examines the marketing of political parties, via websites, in the 2005 UK general election with specific reference to first-time voters (age 18,24). Common perception views young voters as predominantly politically apathetic and less likely to vote than older generations. However, research literature suggests given the right message and medium, the group will engage in the political process. Could the Internet provide a path to engaging younger voters and will websites become a key marketing vehicle for political parties? Young voters were asked to review political party websites using an extended web assessment method (EWAM), which is an evaluation tool created to determine both the importance and presence of website evaluation criteria. Preliminary research suggests that respondents felt the Internet had a significant role to play in the election process and marketing of campaign messages. However, while political parties scored well in relation to the technical/software aspects of website design, participants felt website material had little appeal and were ineffective in influencing voter intent. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Conflict, Collaboration and Climate Change: Participatory Democracy and Urban Environmental Struggles in Durban, South AfricaINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2010ALEX AYLETTArticle first published online: 28 JUN 2010 The South Durban Basin on the eastern coast of South Africa is home to both a large-scale petrochemical industry and a highly mobilized residential community. In a conflict cemented by apartheid-era planning, the community's campaigns to improve local air quality provide a test case for the value of conflict for participatory democratic structures. In the context of the work of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the South Durban Basin also provides an opportunity to push the boundaries of the established links between participation and the design and implementation of responses to a changing climate. Contributing to one of the main themes of the symposium, this article argues that the focus on collaboration and compromise within studies of governance and participation overlooks both the reality of conflict and its potentially positive effects. Addressing this requires particular attention to how power relationships influence processes of governance, and the role of civil society in balancing the influence of the private sector on the state. It also calls for a better understanding of conflict and collaboration as mutually re-enforcing elements of an ongoing and dynamic political process. Together, the elements of this critique help to build a more nuanced view of participatory urban governance: one that both better describes and may better facilitate the ability of urban populations to collectively, effectively and rapidly respond to the challenges of a changing climate. Résumé Le bassin Sud de Durban, situé sur la côte Est de l'Afrique du Sud, abrite à la fois un vaste secteur pétrochimique et une communauté résidentielle particulièrement mobilisée. Dans une lutte cimentée par un urbanisme datant de l'apartheid, les campagnes communautaires pour améliorer la qualité de l'air local testent la valeur de la lutte en faveur de structures démocratiques participatives. De plus, dans le cadre des travaux du Groupe d'experts intergouvernemental sur l'évolution du climat (GIEC), le bassin Sud de Durban offre une occasion de repousser les limites des liens établis entre la participation, d'une part, et l'élaboration et la mise en ,uvre de réponses au changement climatique, d'autre part. Contribuant à l'un des principaux thèmes du symposium, cet article montre que, compte tenu de leur focalisation sur la collaboration et le compromis, les études sur la gouvernance et la participation négligent la réalité de la lutte autant que ses effets positifs potentiels. Pour ce faire, il examine comment les relations de pouvoir modulent les processus de gouvernance ainsi que le rôle de la société civile visant àéquilibrer l'influence du secteur privé sur l'État. Il convient également de mieux appréhender lutte et collaboration comme des composantes qui se nourrissent mutuellement dans un processus politique permanent et dynamique. Les éléments de cette analyse critique, une fois réunis, aident àélaborer une vision plus nuancée de la gouvernance urbaine participative. Cette vision offre une meilleure description et peut faciliter l'aptitude des populations urbaines à réagir de façon collective, efficace et rapide aux défis du changement climatique. [source] The Electoral Impact of Direct-Democratic PracticesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 2 2008EVA ANDUIZA Abstract In recent years there has been a growing interest in the integration of mechanisms of direct citizen participation in the institutional structure of representative democracy, particularly at the local level. This essay examines the electoral impact of mechanisms of direct citizen participation. Although it is often considered that participatory schemes can be a means to achieve electoral success in the hands of politicians seeking re-election, quantitative analyses of 65 Spanish municipalities demonstrate that electoral success is far from being an immediate consequence of direct democratic practices (DDPs). The qualitative analysis of four cases shows that electoral consequences directly attributable to participatory devices depend on their design and on how they fit into the whole political process. Participatory processes that are too rigid and those, especially, that generate expectations that cannot be translated into real policies may end up having a negative effect. On the other hand, DDPs may account for network-building and improved information among citizens that, in turn, may have electoral consequences. DDPs are thus neither a blessing nor a cure per se in their electoral effects. Instead, as with representative democracy, their consequences and success will ultimately depend upon their procedural dimension. Résumé Ces dernières années ont connu un intérêt croissant pour l'intégration de mécanismes de participation directe des citoyens dans le cadre institutionnel de la démocratie participative, notamment au niveau local. Cet article examine l'impact électoral des mécanismes de participation directe. Même si on estime souvent que les systèmes participatifs peuvent permettre la victoire d'hommes politiques en quête de réélection, des analyses quantitatives sur 65 municipalités espagnoles montrent que le succès électoral est loin de résulter automatiquement des pratiques de démocratie directe (PDD). L'analyse qualitative de quatre cas révèle que les incidences électorales imputables directement aux dispositifs participatifs dépendent du concept utilisé et de la manière dont ceux-ci s'intègrent dans le processus politique global. Si les démarches participatives sont trop rigides, et notamment si elles suscitent des attentes qui ne peuvent se traduire dans des politiques publiques concrètes, elles sont susceptibles d'avoir, en fin de compte, un effet négatif. En revanche, les PDD peuvent expliquer la construction de réseaux et l'amélioration de l'information entre les citoyens, ce qui peut influer sur des élections. Les PDD ne sont donc ni une bénédiction ni une malédiction en termes d'incidences électorales. A l'instar de celles de la démocratie représentative, leurs conséquences et leur réussite vont finalement dépendre de leur dimension procédurale. [source] State Building and Transitional Politics in Iraq: The Perils of a Top-down TransitionINTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 3 2007Katia Papagianni This article examines Iraq's transitional politics from June 2003 to the Constitutional Referendum of October 2005. It argues that the top-down political transition led by the United States and a narrow group of Iraqi elites was inappropriate for the task of reforming the Iraqi state and building democratic institutions. The article argues that, in countries going through regime change while also radically reforming the state, inclusive transitional institutions and consultative processes contribute to agreements being reached about the future of the state. Such transitions allow actors to guarantee the continued participation of opponents in the political process and to gradually develop agreements on constitutional questions. This did not occur in Iraq. An inclusive political process and a national debate on the country's future did not occur. Rather, a narrow group of political elites led the transitional process in the absence of wide consultations. The article argues that the management of Iraq's transition had an independent impact on the outcome of the transition, namely the failure to reach agreement on the sharing of political and economic power within one state by October 2005. [source] The European Union and the Securitization of MigrationJCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 5 2000Jef Huysmans This article deals with the question of how migration has developed into a security issue in western Europe and how the European integration process is implicated in it. Since the 1980s, the political construction of migration increasingly referred to the destabilizing effects of migration on domestic integration and to the dangers for public order it implied. The spillover of the internal market into a European internal security question mirrors these domestic developments at the European level. The Third Pillar on Justice and Home Affairs, the Schengen Agreements, and the Dublin Convention most visibly indicate that the European integration process is implicated in the development of a restrictive migration policy and the social construction of migration into a security question. However, the political process of connecting migration to criminal and terrorist abuses of the internal market does not take place in isolation. It is related to a wider politicization in which immigrants and asylum-seekers are portrayed as a challenge to the protection of national identity and welfare provisions. Moreover, supporting the political construction of migration as a security issue impinges on and is embedded in the politics of belonging in western Europe. It is an integral part of the wider technocratic and political process in which professional agencies , such as the police and customs , and political agents , such as social movements and political parties , debate and decide the criteria for legitimate membership of west European societies. [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] Class and the Politics of Participatory Rural Transformation in West Bengal: An Alternative to World Bank OrthodoxyJOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 3 2007SUDIPTA BHATTACHARYYAArticle first published online: 3 JUN 200 Based on a primary field survey and secondary sources of information, this study analyzes the West Bengal experience of participatory rural transformation in relation to the changing class structure in a differentiated rural economy, the rise in class-consciousness among the rural poor and the participation of different classes in the political process of decision-making. Utsa Patnaik's (1987) labour exploitation criterion is used in order to rank rural households in class terms, alongside the standard acreage groupings. This study strongly refutes the neo-liberal (World Bank) idea of social capital and civil society as sources of ,people's participation'. It is argued that ,people's participation' is a meaningless concept, since the ,people' as a category includes different classes with conflicting interests. Though subordinate classes in West Bengal have achieved a higher level of class consciousness than in the past, and have resisted extra economic coercion, and while their political participation has risen, their involvement at the grass roots level of administrative decision-making is very weak. Panchayat Raj has so far failed to initiate a second phase of institutional reform in West Bengal, encompassing education, gender justice and above all the co-operative movement. This partial failure is the outcome of short-term electoral benefit being given priority over and so undermining class struggle. [source] Does Libertè = Egalité?JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SURVEYS, Issue 4 2004A Survey of the Empirical Links between Democracy, Inequality with Some Evidence on the Transition Economies Abstract., The effect of the distribution of political rights on income inequality has been studied both theoretically and empirically. This paper reviews the existing literature and, in particular, the available empirical evidence. Our reading of the literature suggests that formal exclusion from the political process through restrictions on the voting franchise appears to have caused a high degree of economic inequality, and democratization in the form of franchise expansion especially for women, has more often than not led to an expansion in redistribution, at least in the small sample of episodes studied. In a less pronounced way, albeit more emphatically compared to the ambiguous results of the earlier research, the recent evidence indicates an inverse relationship between other measures of democracy, based on civil liberties and political rights, and inequality. The transition experience of the East European countries, however, seems to some extent to go against these conclusions. This, in turn, opens possible new vistas for research, namely the need to incorporate the length of democratic experience and the role played by ideology and social values. [source] Decision process support for participatory democracyJOURNAL OF MULTI CRITERIA DECISION ANALYSIS, Issue 1-2 2008Mats Danielson Abstract This paper presents a project and case study integrating decision methods into democratic processes. The case discussed is a set of three complicated decisions in a municipality in Sweden. The decisions had been postponed on several occasions prior to bringing in the method described in the paper. The method employed consists of two main parts. The interaction part contains the communication channels directed to the stakeholders. The decision-process part consists of a three-layered working process model. As a part of the method, the project was highly visible on the web. Citizens were encouraged to submit material to the project. All intermediate results of the process were continuously published, enhancing transparency. For each decision, the analysis consisted of comparing all alternatives, taking the respective criteria into account as weighted or ranked by the participants. A method for recording compromises analytically was also used. The purpose was not to replace the political process but to support it in a structured way. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Labour Party: saved by the modernisers or modernised to be saved?JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Issue 2 2003Christos Rantavellas Abstract The paper treats politics as a complex process that embraces actual or potential interactions among constructed meanings of different social actors through various symbolic forms drawing on the specific socio-historical, political context. These symbolic forms can take the form of various kinds from everyday linguistic utterances to complex images and texts. It is suggested that there is a strong interrelationship between ,image' and political discourse and their symbolic value grows as long as they come from consistent communication among all the social actors participating in the political process inside and outside of the political organisation. Two historical examples from the British political landscape,the Labour election defeat in 1987 and the Labour leadership election in 1994,are examined so as to draw some useful remarks concerning the limitations in drawing the line between ,image' and political discourse and among processes considered either internal or external of the party. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications [source] The Political Power of the Retirees in a Two-Dimensional Voting ModelJOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMIC THEORY, Issue 4 2003Georges Casamatta We show that the retirees are able to obtain favorable pension policies whereas they belong to a minority in the population. The argument relies on the multidimensional nature of the political process. We consider a two-dimensional collective choice problem. The first of these choices is the level of the contribution rate to the Pay-As-You-Go pension system. The second is a noneconomic decision, unrelated to the pension system. Using a political agency model, we show that, as soon as the retirees are sufficiently numerous, the equilibrium tax rate may be higher than the tax rate preferred by the young, who yet constitute a majority over the pension issue. [source] Joseph P. Bradley's Journey: The Meaning of Privileges and ImmunitiesJOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY, Issue 2 2009CHRISTOPHER WALDREP Justice Joseph P. Bradley of New Jersey will forever be remembered as the judge who in 1883 cruelly scorned black rights in the Civil Rights Cases.1 Yet Bradley's position that year marked the end of a journey that had started in a quite different place. Thirteen years before, when he first joined the Court, Bradley had read Fourteenth Amendment protections of citizens' rights expansively, believing that "it is possible that those who framed the [Fourteenth Amendment] were not themselves aware of the far reaching character of its terms." In 1870 and 1871, Bradley wrote that the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges and Immunities Clause reached "social evils , never before prohibited" and represented a commitment to "fundamental" or "sacred" rights of citizenship that stood outside the political process and "cannot be abridged by any state."2 By 1883, however, Bradley had turned away from such views. In the Civil Rights Cases, he wrote that nothing in the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Amendments countenanced a law against segregation. Blacks, he said, must take "the rank of mere citizen" and cease "to be the special favorite of the laws."3 [source] Reciprocity and Realpolitik: Image, Career, and Factional Genealogies in Provincial BoliviaAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 1 2001Robert Albro In this article, I analyze the persuasiveness of ritual libations in provincial Bolivia as populist spectacles. During an era of extensive national reform, these libations are prototypical definitional performances within a changing regional political arena. I argue for an approach to the contextualization of factional politics that resituates both performance based theories of rhetoric and ethnographic treatments of life histories in a more comprehensively synthetic public interpretive frame. I treat libations as part of a local political process attuned to the perceived truthfulness of personal indexical references in performative frames. The plausibility of sponsors' self-images turns on the potentially conflictual shadings of their public careers, shades often unintentionally generated by such spectacles, [political ritual, popular identity, life histories, indexicals, Bolivia] [source] Prudence and Constitutional RightsAMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2004Edward F. McClennen ABSTRACT. In The Calculus of Consent, Buchanan and Tullock argue for institutional safeguards to ensure maximal benefit for all members of a community against the potential tyranny of the majority. I extend this idea by introducing prudential concerns and argue that they ought to be factored into the decision making that constructs such safeguards. Specifically, I see the safeguarding of prudential concerns for all members of society as a matter that should be secured from the random fate of the political process by constitutional provisions. [source] Comments on McClennen's "Prudence and Constitutional Rights"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2004Or How Do You Turn Words Into Action? ABSTRACT. In The Calculus of Consent, Buchanan and Tullock argue, among other things, that institutional safeguards are required to ensure maximal benefit for all members of a community against the potential tyranny of the majority. McClennen extends this idea by introducing prudential concerns and argues that they ought to be factored into the decision making that constructs such safeguards. Specifically, McClennen sees the safeguarding of prudential concerns for all members of society as a matter of distribution that should be secured from the random fate of the political process through constitutional means. His method for ensuring the constitutional mandate is to place the responsibility for achieving this result in the hands of the judiciary. I argue that there are two problems with his solution: (1) it is ahistorical; and (2) it assumes the judiciary is without politics. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||