Political Ramifications (political + ramification)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Trade Liberalization and the Fiscal Squeeze: Implications for Public Investment

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 3 2003
Barsha Khattry
This article examines the impact of trade liberalization on the level and structure of government expenditures across countries, with particular emphasis on low income countries. It develops the argument that the policies employed during trade liberalization have resulted in a fiscal squeeze as a result of declining tax revenues and rising interest expenditures. To surmount this fiscal hurdle, expenditures on physical capital, which have negligible political ramifications, have been reduced. Other more politically sensitive expenditures, such as spending on social capital, have been financed by incurring additional debt. However, additional debt has exerted upward pressure on interest payments, further exacerbating the fiscal situation. The statistical analysis carried out to examine the evidence uses panel data for eighty developing and industrialized countries over the period 1970,98 and employs a fixed,effects regression framework to account for country,specific characteristics. The results indicate that trade liberalization has indeed resulted in declining revenues and higher interest expenditures and that these factors have contributed to the observed decline in infrastructure spending. [source]


The Ethics and Practice of Islamic Medieval Charity

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 2 2007
Yaacov Lev
Charity is deeply embedded in the religious thought and teachings of the three monotheistic religions. This article, while focusing on medieval Islam, is set in a wider framework with references to both Jewish and Christian parallels. Three main topics are examined: the religious meaning of charity, the social and political ramifications of almsgiving, and the impact of the institutional form of charity (the pious endowment system, waqf pl. awqaf) on Muslim medieval society. In the course of this examination, the article deals with the motives and attitudes of the donors (mainly people of the ruling class and the wealthy) and with the recipients of charity (the poor as well as the learned class). The article equally provides an overview of the charitable institutions and functions that existed in Muslim medieval societies. [source]


The interpreter as institutional gatekeeper: The social-linguistic role of interpreters in Spanish-English medical discourse

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS, Issue 3 2000
Brad Davidson
Increases in immigration have led to an enormous growth in the number of cross-linguistic medical encounters taking place throughout the United States. In this article the role of hospital-based interpreters in cross-linguistic, internal medicine ,medical interviews' is examined. The interpreter's actions are analyzed against the historical and institutional context within which she is working, and also with an eye to the institutional goals that frame the patient-physician discourse. Interpreters are found not to be acting as ,neutral' machines of semantic conversion, but are rather shown to be active participants in the process of diagnosis. Since this process hinges on the evaluation of social and medical relevance of patient contributions to the discourse, the interpreter can be seen as an additional institutional gatekeeper for the recent immigrants for whom she is interpreting. Cross-linguistic medical interviews may also be viewed as a form of cross-cultural interaction; in this light, the larger political ramifications of the interpreters' actions are explored. ,Interpreters are the most powerful people in a medical conversation.' Head of Interpreting Services at a major private U.S. hospital, May 1999. [source]


Mediterraneanism: the politics of architectural production in Algiers during the 1930s

CITY & SOCIETY, Issue 1 2000
Sherry McKay
MEDITERRANEANISM WAS A RALLYING CRY of architects in Algeria during the highly contested period of French colonization in the 1930s; it was then largely the discursive production of westem'educated architects, scholars and writers. Its definition was, and remains, semanticaUy unstable and politically volatile. During this period, Mediterranean architecture was characterized as a more inclusive form of regionalism, a more particularized practice of modernism than an earlier Algerian practice claimed by local, European architects. After setting out the historical and theoretical parameters of Mediterraneanism, the paper traces three mappings of this "Mediterranean" architecture. The contours of these "maps" highlight not only the disputed geography of Mediterranean architecture but also the political ramifications of the borders drawn in each instance. [Algeria, Algiers, architecture, Mediterraneanism, colonialism] [source]