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Political Space (political + space)
Selected AbstractsContending the Limits of Political SpaceINTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 3 2008Heather M. Turcotte No abstract is available for this article. [source] Participatory Governance in Urban Management and the Shifting Geometry of Power in MumbaiDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 5 2009Marie-Hélène Zérah ABSTRACT This article questions the participatory dimension of urban governance in Mumbai. Based on surveys of a number of participatory projects for urban services, it compares the differentiated impacts of participation in middle-class colonies with those in slums. Results demonstrate that changing citizen,government relationships have led to the empowerment of the middle and upper middle class who harness the potential of new ,invited space' to expand their claims on the city and political space. In contrast, the poor end up on the losing side as NGOs function more as contracted agents of the State than as representatives of the poor. Direct community participation empowers influential community members, small private entrepreneurs and middlemen, and contributes to labour informalization. Ultimately, these processes consolidate a form of ,governing beyond the State' that promotes a managerial vision of participation and leads to double standards of citizenship. [source] Women's Movements and Challenges to Neopatrimonial Rule: Preliminary Observations from AfricaDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2001Aili Tripp Women's movements in Africa represent one of the key societal forces challenging state clientelistic practices, the politicization of communal differences, and personalized rule. In the 1980s and 1990s we have witnessed not only the demise of patronage-based women's wings that were tied to ruling parties, but also the concurrent growth of independent women's organizations with more far-reaching agendas. The emergence of such autonomous organizations has been a consequence of the loss of state legitimacy, the opening-up of political space, economic crisis, and the shrinking of state resources. Drawing on examples from Africa, this article shows why independent women's organizations and movements have often been well situated to challenge clientelistic practices tied to the state. Gendered divisions of labour, gendered organizational modes and the general exclusion of women from both formal and informal political arenas have defined women's relationship to the state, to power, and to patronage. These characteristics have, on occasion, put women's movements in a position to challenge various state-linked patronage practices. The article explores some of the implications of these challenges. [source] Evidence-based policy or policy-based evidence gathering?ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND GOVERNANCE, Issue 5 2010Biofuels, the 10% target, the EU Abstract The 2009 Renewable Energy Directive mandates EU member-states' road transport fuel to comprise a minimum of 10% renewable content by 2020. This target is expected to be met predominantly from biofuels. However, scientific evidence is increasingly questioning the ability of biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when factors such as indirect land-use change are taken into consideration. This paper interrogates the 10% target, critically assessing its political motivations, use of scientific evidence and the actions of an individual policy entrepreneur who played a central role in its adoption. We find that the commitment of EU decision-making bodies to internal guidelines on the use of expertise and the precautionary principle was questionable, despite the scientific uncertainty inherent in the biofuels debate. Imperatives located in the political space dominated scientific evidence and led to a process of ,policy-based evidence gathering' to justify the policy choice of a 10% renewable energy/biofuels target. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] Globalization and the transformation of the national political space: Six European countries comparedEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 6 2006HANSPETER KRIESI The structural opposition between globalization ,winners' and ,losers' is expected to constitute potentials for political mobilization within national political contexts, the mobilization of which is expected to give rise to two intimately related dynamics: the transformation of the basic structure of the national political space and the strategic repositioning of the political parties within the transforming space. The article presents several hypotheses with regard to these two dynamics and tests them empirically on the basis of new data concerning the supply side of electoral politics from six Western European countries (Austria, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland). The results indicate that in all the countries, the new cleavage has become embedded into existing two-dimensional national political spaces, that the meaning of the original dimensions has been transformed, and that the configuration of the main parties has become triangular even in a country like France. [source] Contested decisions: Empirical analysis of voting in the European Union Council of MinistersEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2004Mikko Mattila This article analyses voting records of the European Union's (EU) Council of Ministers. Governments' voting patterns are assumed to be partly affected by national-level factors and partly by EU-level factors. The results support the view that the political space of the EU is defined by two dimensions: the traditional left-right dimension, and the independence versus integration dimension. In general, left-wing governments tend to vote less against the Council majority than their right-wing counterparts. However, if the government is a strong supporter of increased integration, its position on the left-right dimension does not matter much. All other things being equal, pro-integration governments are least likely to raise their voice against the Council majority. However, considerable differences are found among eurosceptic parties. Of these, right-wing governments are the most active ,no' voters. In addition, large countries are more likely to vote ,no' than small countries. When they hold the presidency, governments take the role of arbitrator and vote less against the majority in the Council than otherwise. [source] What Is the Polity?INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 1 2000Yale H. Ferguson The sovereign state became the dominant political form in a relatively brief period that began in Westphalian Europe and continued with European colonization. Contemporary states face increased challenges from inside and outside, and a global crisis of authority looms. Although the state as a form is highly variable and not about to disappear, a growing number and variety of other polities are moving toward center stage. The initiators of this roundtable asked several distinguished social scientists interested in historical perspective how they might redraw the map of global political space to reflect better current polities, boundaries, and identities and what future changes in that map they might foresee. Each contributor approached the questions in distinctive ways. Robert A. Denemark argues for more attention to world system history. Hendrik Spruyt looks for historical sociological insights into international systems change. Barry Buzan and Richard Little predict a rapidly shifting world of postmodern states and a different zone of conflict. Janice Gross Stein focuses on the privatization of security. Michael Mann finds that states as "polymorphous' entities still have a future. Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach close with a discussion of their "polities" model. [source] Constitution-making in Africa: assessing both the process and the contentPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 2 2001M. Ndulo This article examines the relationship between governance and development, and concludes that underlying the litany of Africa's development problems is a crisis of governance. Good governance would result in institutions that are more likely to adopt economic policies that would resolve the constraints that hinder economic development. In addition, it would make a major contribution to the reduction of war and conflict. It would do this by creating an environment for sustainable development to take place and thereby reduce poverty, the root cause of war and conflict. This calls for a critical examination of the question of governance in Africa with a view to identifying the obstacles to its establishment and the possible approaches to the development of systems of governance that give political space to all groups. Since the most important legal instrument in the scheme of good governance is the national constitution, the article seeks to identify some of the key issues that must be considered in the process of developing a national constitution if it is to be durable. It also addresses the conditions under which such constitutions should be developed if they are to be acceptable to the people of the country they are intended to govern. Running through the article is the theme that the establishment of good governance in Africa depends on the development of political systems that give people a sense of ownership of the political process. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Secret Law and the Value of Publicity*RATIO JURIS, Issue 2 2009CHRISTOPHER KUTZ The dangers of secret law from the perspective of democratic accountability are clear, and need no elaboration. But distaste for secret law goes beyond questions of democracy. Since Plato, and continuing through such non-democratic thinkers as Bodin and Hobbes, secret law has been seen as a mark of tyranny, inconsistent with the notion of law itself. This raises both theoretical and practical questions. The theoretical questions involve the consistency of secret law with positivist legal theory. In principle, while a legal system as a whole could not be secret, publicity need not be part of the validity criteria for particular laws. The practical questions arise from the fact that secret laws, and secret governmental operations, are a common and often well-accepted aspect of governmental power. This paper argues that the flaw of secret law goes beyond accountability and beyond efficiency to the role that law plays, and can only play, in situating subjects' understanding of themselves in relation to the state. Secret law, as such, is inconsistent with this fundamental claim of the law to orient us in moral and political space, and undermines the claim to legitimacy of the state's rulers. [source] The Politics of Asian Engagement: Ideas, Institutions, and AcademicsAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 3 2009Mark Beeson The study of Australia's Asian engagement , just as much as the history of the process itself , has been shaped by structural shifts in the international system and the global political economy as they reverberate through domestic political debates. As a consequence, ideas about Asian engagement tell us as much about the character of national political debates as they do about Australian policy-makers'perceptions of the region. Understandings of Asia as a transnational political space are shaped by national conflicts and struggles over issues such as communism or national identity. Ideas and disputes over Australia's relationship with Asia become closely aligned with conflict between conservative and radical academic approaches to Asia. With the end of the Cold War in the 1980s and 1990s, the triumph of neoliberalism and the waning of ideological politics of the 1960s were mirrored in academic approaches that adopted a policy or cultural approach to Asia. [source] Globalization and the transformation of the national political space: Six European countries comparedEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 6 2006HANSPETER KRIESI The structural opposition between globalization ,winners' and ,losers' is expected to constitute potentials for political mobilization within national political contexts, the mobilization of which is expected to give rise to two intimately related dynamics: the transformation of the basic structure of the national political space and the strategic repositioning of the political parties within the transforming space. The article presents several hypotheses with regard to these two dynamics and tests them empirically on the basis of new data concerning the supply side of electoral politics from six Western European countries (Austria, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland). The results indicate that in all the countries, the new cleavage has become embedded into existing two-dimensional national political spaces, that the meaning of the original dimensions has been transformed, and that the configuration of the main parties has become triangular even in a country like France. [source] Space, Boundaries, and the Problem of Order: A View from Systems TheoryINTERNATIONAL POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2007Jan Helmig The idea our global polity is chiefly divided by territorially organized nation-states captures contemporary constellations of power and authority only insufficiently. Through a decoupling of power and the state, political spaces no longer match geographical spaces. Instead of simply acknowledging a challenge to the state, there is the need to rethink the changing meaning of space for political processes. The paper identifies three aspects, a reconceptualization of the spatial assumptions that IR needs to address: the production of space, the constitutive role of boundaries, and the problem of order. With this contribution, we argue that one avenue in understanding the production of space and the following questions of order is by converging systems theory and critical geopolitics. While the latter has already developed a conceptual apparatus to analyze the production of space, the former comes with an encompassing theoretical background, which takes "world society" as the starting point of analysis. In this respect, nation states are understood as a form of internal differentiation of a wider system, namely world society. [source] Affect of Regime Changes on Nonstate Actors in Taiwan,Hong Kong Relations (1997,2010): Publicly and Privately Affiliated Think Tanks As Case StudiesASIAN POLITICS AND POLICY, Issue 4 2010Simon Xuhui Shen The article reviews the roles of nonstate actors (NSAs) in general in Taiwan,Hong Kong relations during the administration of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region's first Chief Executive, Tung Chee-hwa (1997,2003), in order to explore the contributions and limitations of these agencies in constructing political spaces between Hong Kong and Taiwan. The first part of the article explains the reasons behind the short appearance of NSAs in Taiwan,Hong Kong relations after 1997. The second part, the case studies, looks at two selected NSAs: the Hong Kong Policy Research Institute in Hong Kong and the Friends of Hong Kong and Macau Association based in Taipei. The reasons for the setbacks they faced after 2003 and their possible roles following leadership changes in Hong Kong and Taiwan in the run-up to 2010 will be analyzed in the last section. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||