Active Political Role Research Articles

Economic liberalization, political pluralism and business associations in developing countries

Trends toward economic liberalization and political pluralism in developing countries would seem to presage a more active political and economic role for business associations. The evidence suggests, however, that business associations are unlikely to be such malleable instruments for the promotion of the private sector and of political pluralism as one might initially expect. They often act more in the interests of their own staff than in those of members. The potential for “unproductive” rivalry and conflict between competing associations is high. The more effective associations are those not financially dependent primarily on membership fees.

Health psychology in international perspective: A summary and some thoughts for the future

Abstract This article reviews the progress made by the field in its short history and attempts to look at developments which seem likely to occur as the field matures. Recommendations are made for training of health psychologists in the future and a plea is made for international standardisation of health psychology training programmes at the Ph.D. level which incorporate research and clinical training. Health psychologists are further encouraged to take a more active public and political role in order to provide needed visibility for their work.

National Newspaper Analysis of the Press Coverage of Jesse Jackson's 1984 Presidential Campaign: The Confirmation of the Candidate

Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns have motivated thousands of citizens throughout America to take a more active role in politics. The 1984 campaign witnessed many previously unregistered Americans actively participating in Jackson's call to join the “Rainbow Coalition.” Four years later, Jackson once again hit a responsive chord within the American electorate, broadening his support base in his second run for the White House. His vibrant campaigns presented challenges not only to the American system of government, but also to accepted journalistic traditions in campaign reporting. Specifically, the dilemma has been a difficult one for journalists responsible for campaign coverage. How much coverage should a reporter give to Jesse Jackson's campaign? Should he be treated like an Alan Cranston or Gary Hart in 1984, or a Paul Simon or Albert Gore in 1988? Or does the historical impact of his being the first black candidate to make a serious bid for the presidency warrant a different approach to press coverage? Highlighting this dilemma in the 1984 campaign, Dates and Gandy note:

Guatemala: A Nation in Turmoil.

Guatemala has long been a field for struggle between other powers, and today, racked by civil war, it avoids the full glare of international attention only because most of the Central American region is beset by similar problems. Despite a continued belief in the reconstitution of a unified Central American state arid a long-running claim to Belize, Guatemala has played a passive rather than an active role in international politics. The influence of international economic interests explains to a large degree why Guatemala has not been more active in the international arena. In this book, Professor Calvert examines Guatemala's history and the principal aspects of the country's faction-tom society and seeks to explain the problems—and their consistently violent manifestations—that have attended the course of the country's social, economic, and political development.

The Impact of the German Federal Constitutional Court on Politics and Policy Output

THE HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE OF THE SURRENDER OF LEGAL positivism to the prevalence of injustice under the nazi regime and the concern to create a real federation led the founding fathers of the Federal Republic of Germany to create the most powerful Constitutional Court in the world for the control of the formal and material constitutionality of laws.This Court, a supreme constitutional organ like the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, is organized in two chambers, called Senates. The First Senate has jurisdiction over basic rights, the Second Senate decides all questions of political disputes. Though the Court only acts on request, it does nevertheless play an active role in shaping politics and policy output. The jurisdiction of this Court is the ‘authentic interpretation of the Constitution’ and it cannot be qualified as normal jurisdiction, because many provisions of the Basic Law are open to different interpretations and call for a reference to sources and premises beyond the document itself.

The Paradoxes of Belonging: The White West Indian Woman in Fiction

The Paradoxes of Belonging:The White West Indian Woman in Fiction Elizabeth Nunez-Harrell (bio) In Trinidad the street name for the white Trinidadian woman is "whitey cockroach," an allusion both to her skin color and to her status in society. Not strangely, the term crops up in other English-speaking Caribbean islands. Jean Rhys uses it in Wide Sargasso Sea. In that novel, set both in Jamaica and in an island that most likely is Dominica, the maid Amélie sings derisively to her white creole mistress: The white cockroach she marryThe white cockroach she marryThe white cockroach she buy young manThe white cockroach she marry. (101) A people in love with metaphors, the peasant class in the West Indies is quick to understand that the white creole woman shares its status of the underclass and the underprivileged. However, these people also know that, worse than they, the white creole woman is an outcast, a sort of freak rejected by both Europe and England, whose blood she shares, and by the black West Indian people, whose culture and home have been [End Page 281] hers for two generations or more.1 In the English-speaking Caribbean these women must bear the guilt of the horrors of slavery inflicted by their own white ancestors upon the people whose country they now call their own. And they must do so in solitude, for England and Europe, wishing to obliterate from their memories the part they played in the brutal history of the Caribbean, have set them adrift with this guilt. In Wide Sargasso Sea the Englishman Rochester, told that the name of the village that he is visiting is Massacre, asks his white creole wife with impersonal detachment: "And who was massacred here? Slaves?" Shocked, Jean Rhys writes, not indignant, the woman answers, "Oh no. . . . Not slaves: Something must have happened a long time ago . . ." (65). The choice for the-white creole woman then is exile in a foreign land whose people dump the burden of their cruel past on her, or a quest for belonging and identity, a struggle to explain herself in islands where she can hope perhaps for forgiveness and purposefulness. Two white West Indian women novelists, Jean Rhys and Phyllis Shand Allfrey, pursue these themes bf the alienation and rejection endured by the white creole woman in the, West Indies in their novels Wide Sargasso Sea and The Orchid House, respectively. Their novels are set at turning points in the political history of the English-speaking Caribbean when, more than any other time, the white creole could have been rendered homeless. For Shand Allfrey, that time is the 1950s when the Caribbean was on the brink of independence from British colonial rule, for Jean Rhys, it is the period following the Emancipation Act of 1834, when the freed slaves in British colonies of the Caribbean could have unleashed the force of their vengeance on the children of their white exmasters. For both these novelists, the white creole woman can find a sense of belonging, her identity, only in her Caribbean homeland But the price for such a choice is high A fellow Dominican and a friend of Jean Rhys, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, though younger than Rhys, was nevertheless the first to take the step in 1954 to write boldly about the plight of white creoles. Yet it was perhaps more urgent and immediate for Shand Allfrey to write her novel when she did than it was for Rhys. In the first place Shand Allfrey was politically active in England. In London she had joined the Fabian Society, the British Labour Party, and the Parliamentary Committee for, West Indian Affairs. Returning to the West Indies in the 1950s, she found her homeland embroiled, as were others in the British-controlled islands of the Caribbean, in a struggle for independence and for a federation of the newly enfranchised islands. It was in this period that [End Page 282] she wrote The Orchid House, and upon its completion she reassumed an active political role. By 1955, she had founded the Labour Party of Dominica, and by 1958, she was named Minister of Labour and Social Affairs in...

The Muslim Judge and Municipal Politics in Colonial Algeria and Senegal

Theqadi, or Muslim judge, strikes one as an anomalous figure in the contexts of colonial Algeria and Senegal, areas better known for theirmahdi-like resistance leaders, quietist Sufishaikhs, and strongly assimilationist colonial regimes. In both cases, there were in fact attempts to eliminate the Muslim courts–in Algeria in the 1880s, and in the communes of Senegal in the early 1900s.While the two court systems were rather different, it is striking that the eventual crises had similar dynamics and that both occurred just as indigenous urban elites were beginning to seek an active role in politics. A comparative study of the two cases should not only help to put the problem of Islamic law in colonial settings into wider perspective, but also shed light on the antecedents of some well-known twentieth-century political developments.

Women as Political Animals? A Test of Some Explanations for Male-Female Political Participation Differences

While many suggestions have been offered to explain why American women tend to participate in political activities slightly less than men, seldom have these explanations been subjected to a rigorous examination. Here, three plausible explanations drawn from prior research are discussed: first, the political socialization process that discourages women from playing an active political role; second, the family responsibilities that keep some women at home and out of the work force (the explanation), and third, the overrepresentation of women in demographic groups that have low participation levels (the explanation). The latter two explanations are tested directly using data from the SRC election studies of 1952, 1964, and 1972. Once situational and structural variables are controlled, there are no systematic differences in levels of male-female participation. In light of these findings, the validity of the political socialization explanation is discussed.

Militarism and the Development of Fascist Ideology: The Political Ideas of Colonel Max Bauer, 1916–18

Of all the officers in the German High Command (OHL) during the First World War none played a more active political role than Colonel Max Bauer. Colonel Bauer's papers, which are preserved in the federal archives in Koblenz, contain numerous memoranda on a wide range of topics, which make it possible to present a coherent picture of his views. This paper will analyze Bauer's political thinking during the First World War, but it will not deal with the more complex questions of his political role and influence.

Angel de Saavedra's Dealings with the French Government, 1830-1833

In the early hours of 1 October 1823, the day on which Fernando VII regained his full royal powers, Angel de Saavedra set sail from Cadiz for Gibraltar and a period of exile which was to prove immensely important for his development as a writer. Much is known about his earlier life, about the Liberal sympathies and the active political role which brought about his banishment, and his movements in Gibraltar, London and Italy, but biographers have not yet consulted a number of documents which throw light on a little studied but interesting stage in his career—the years which he spent in Paris and Tours.