Bottom-up Pressures Research Articles

Development, Mobilization and War: The Iranian Construction Jehad, Construction Mobilization and Trench Builders Association (1979–2013)

Based on ethnographic and archival research in Iran, this article examines the intersection of war making, rural development and popular mobilization in the state formation of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). To this end, the article profiles three organizations that were instrumental to this process: The Construction Jehad, the Construction Mobilization and the Trench Builders Association. During the last three decades, these organizations have helped the IRI and its factionalized elites in their attempts to promote rural development, mobilize and socialize constituents, gain popular support and electoral votes, and demobilize and marginalize domestic and foreign opponents. These organizations also produced and addressed the unintended consequences of cognitive dissonance, deep-seated disillusionment and ideological detachment among activists, veterans, students and youth. By organizing a critical mass of constituents and aggregating popular claims from below, these organizations exerted bottom-up pressures and demands on the very state and the very elites that they had assisted and supported.

Ratification as accommodation? Domestic dissent and human rights treaties

Repression is the expected response to anti-government protest; however, leaders can also accommodate demonstrators. Committing to human rights treaties is considered in this environment, where treaty commitments are conceptualized as a policy concession that leaders can grant dissenters. Past research has shown that top-down domestic pressures, such as new democratic regimes, can influence treaty commitments. This article extends this line of research by considering the influence of bottom-up domestic pressure, arguing that nonviolent, pro-democracy movements can pressure leaders into concessions, as these movements are risky to repress but threatening to ignore. Leaders are expected to seek ‘cheap’ accommodations, and commitments to human rights treaties provide a relatively low-cost concession that also addresses demonstrators’ pro-democracy demands. Using commitments to the nine core UN human rights treaties, results are generally supportive. Governments experiencing a nonviolent, pro-democracy movement are consistently likely to sign human rights treaties. Ratification is also likely but in more limited contexts, and is more closely related to movement success. This suggests that bottom-up pressures can influence commitment to human rights treaties, but there may be little substance behind those concessions. The status quo and cost-averse preferences of leaders lead them to grant accommodations that result in minimal change and cost.

Potential future fisheries yields in shelf waters: a model study of the effects of climate change and ocean acidification

Abstract. We applied a coupled marine water column model to three sites in the North Sea. The three sites represent different hydrodynamic regimes and are thus representative of a wider area. The model consists of a hydro-biogeochemical model (GOTM-ERSEM-BFM) coupled one way upwards to a size-structured model representing pelagic predators and detritivores (Blanchard et al., 2009). Thus, bottom-up pressures like changing abiotic environment (climate change, chemical cycling) will have an impact on fish biomass across the size spectrum. Here, we studied three different impacts of future conditions on fish yield: climatic impacts (medium emission scenario), abiotic ocean acidification impacts (reduced pelagic nitrification), and biotic ocean acidification impacts (reduced detritivore growth rate). The three impacts were studied separately and combined, and results showed that sites within different hydrodynamic regimes can respond very differently. The seasonally stratified site showed an increase in fish yields (occurring in winter and spring), with acidification effects of the same order of magnitude as climatic effects. The permanently mixed site also showed an increase in fish yield (increase in summer, decrease in winter), due to climatic effects moderated by acidification impacts. The third site, which is characterised by large inter-annual variability in thermal stratification duration, showed a decline in fish yields (occurring in winter) due to decline in the benthic system which forms an important carbon pathway at this site. All sites displayed a shift towards a more pelagic-oriented system.

Language choice in multilingual encounters in transnational workplaces

This paper is based on research conducted in banks in the international banking centre of Luxembourg. Operating in the globalised context of international banking and multilingual Luxembourg, financial institutions are an ideal focal point for investigating policy and practices in complex multilingual and transnational work spaces. Two theoretical models are the primary frameworks used to explore top-down management (explicit official language policy) and employees' practices and beliefs (implicit policy). The database for the study includes a first phase of interviews with management in 10 banks, followed by a second phase of questionnaires and focus groups with employees in three case study international banks. Taking an exclusively bottom-up perspective, this paper explores employees' complex practices through genres of communication. An analysis of employees' broad frequency patterns indicates that English is the language most frequently used alongside others. A number of languages are flexibly used in meetings, informal communication and more hybrid genres (emails and presentations). The ethnolinguistic composition of employees and transactional/relational functions of language are the two most important bottom-up pressures on language choices. However, above all, English emerges as an essential lingua franca for involving and including all employees in these contexts.

Microhabitat Associations of Late Juvenile Nassau Grouper (<I>Epinephelus Striatus</I>) Off Little Cayman, BWI

Populations of the economically and ecologically important Nassau grouper, Epinephelus striatus Bloch, 1792, have declined to the point of being declared endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Beyond existing efforts to reduce top-down pressure from overfishing, especially on spawning aggregations, recovery of Nassau grouper could be enhanced by preventing bottom-up pressures created by degradation of essential habitats. The design of suitable protection would benefit from knowledge of ontogenetic patterns in habitat use at multiple spatial scales, and this study documented microhabitat associations for late juvenile Nassau grouper in shallow, nearshore lagoons off Little Cayman Island. In total, 82% of juvenile grouper that were 12-26 cm in total length and approximately 1 yr old associated with hardbottom rather than other equally or more widespread microhabitats, i.e., sand, seagrass, and algae. Hardbottom provided crevices, holes, ledges, and other shelters. Approximately 96% of shelters contained a single juvenile grouper, and 10%-66% of these shelters also contained one or more cleaning organisms. These results suggest that protection of hardbottom in Little Cayman Island's lagoons would maintain the >1200 patches of microhabitat suitable for late juvenile Nassau grouper.

Swift Foxes and Ideal Free Distribution: Relative Influence of Vegetation and Rodent Prey Base on Swift Fox Survival, Density, and Home Range Size

Swift foxes (Vulpes velox) are an endemic mesocarnivore of North America subject to resource and predation-based pressures. While swift fox demographics have been documented, there is little information on the importance of top-down versus bottom-up pressures or the effect of landscape heterogeneity. Using a consumable resource-based ideal free distribution model as a conceptual framework, we isolated the effects of resource-based habitat selection on fox population ecology. We hypothesized if swift fox ecology is predominantly resource dependant, distribution, survival, and space use would match predictions made under ideal free distribution theory. We monitored survival and home range use of 47 swift foxes in southeastern Colorado from 2001 to 2004. Annual home range size was 15.4 km2, and seasonal home range size was 10.1 km2. At the individual level, annual home range size was unrelated to survival. Estimates of fox density ranged from 0.03 to 0.18 foxes/km2. Seasonal survival rates were 0.73 and 1.0 and did not differ seasonally. Foxes conformed to the predictions of the ideal free distribution model during winter, indicating foxes are food stressed and their behavior governed by resource acquisition. During the rest of the year, behavior was not resource driven and was governed by security from intraguild predation.

Can Urban Growth Management Work in an Era of Political and Economic Change?

Problem: Urban growth management policy employs a range of tools to restrain urban sprawl, promote efficient land use, and preserve open space. Yet the efficacy of such policy is widely debated and challenged, necessitating reliable empirical evidence from case studies assessing the historical success (or failure) of such policy. Purpose: We review Israeli national growth management policy over a 36-year period, recording long-term land development trends in order to assess the efficacy of policy. Methods: We integrate a historical analysis of qualitative policy data and quantitative performance indicators of urban spatial development for a selected region of the country. We use a suite of spatial variables indicating amount, distribution, and configuration of built space along with other sprawl-relevant statistical data. Results and conclusions: In the 1970s and 1980s, open space was preserved largely due to agricultural preservation policy, despite demographic and economic growth. During the 1990s, the initiation of growth management policy coincided with a profound proliferation of development and population movement to low-density suburbs. While statistical indicators from the past several years are equivocal, they suggest that policy is encouraging higher-density development and slowing the loss of open space. Takeaway for practice: Urban growth management policy and its impact must be considered within the historical context in which it was implemented. Changes in land use policy in Israel reflect socioeconomic and political changes; when policy did not adapt to changes in society, the results were undesirable. Today, planning tools (e.g., minimum density limits, population size thresholds, urban growth boundaries, and land use fabrics) strike a balance between top-down planning objectives and bottom-up development pressures. The use of these tools within a statutory, national-level plan helps ensure consistency of implementation across regions.

Bottom-up Policy Diffusion: National Emulation of a Conditional Cash Transfer Program in Brazil

Policy diffusion studies often invoke explanations that draw on the directional pressures for emulation, whether top-down, horizontal, or bottom-up. This article develops a theoretical framework that accounts for the multidirectional features of diffusion, including sub-national, cross-national, and international mechanisms, through the illustrative case of Brazil’s federal adoption of Bolsa Escola (School Grant Program), a conditional cash transfer program that preceded the internationally acclaimed poverty alleviation program called Bolsa Família (Family Grant Program). Using process tracing, I argue that bottom-up pressures, including professional norms and intergovernmental competition, were key for policy emulation. Cross-national competition had little effect on decision-making. Finally, top-down processes, including norms and financing, reinforced adoption decisions and ensured these programs would endure.

Success or failure of primary second/foreign language programmes in Asia: what do the data tell us?

Primary school second/foreign language (SL/FL) programmes in Asia, as well as in other parts of the world, are becoming more common, with many targeting English as the SL or FL. The pressures for such English language programmes come from top-down notions that in a globalised world English is required for societies to be competitive, especially with Asian neighbours, and bottom-up pressures from parents who see English as the key to educational success for their children. In many polities, these forces have resulted in support for policies that introduce early primary school English teaching curricula for all students and have led to parents spending large sums of money on private tutoring or out-of-school tuition. This study reviews the results of nine language planning studies from the Asian region that set out to examine questions such as ‘Is this trend towards early primary SL or FL education (mainly English) realistic or is it unattainable and a waste of resources? Do children really benefit from these programmes? What needs to be done to foster learners' success?’ These issues are viewed from a language planning and policy perspective through an examination of the language-in-education policy types required for the development of successful programmes. The policies of a number of Asian countries are used as case studies to illustrate this issue.

New Labour's Spaces of Competitiveness

New Labour's engagement with sub-national economic governance was a stuttering and uneven story marked by both significant achievements and jolting failures. While devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the introduction of Regional Development Agencies in England represented early successes, the bold rhetoric of New Labour's programme was not in reality matched by solid ideological foundations and a coherent policy approach. Rather, the decentralisation project was constructed around a distinctive ‘rationality’ based around the role of place in driving competitiveness in the face of a global, knowledge-based economy. This had significant implications for the level and clarity of political commitments in this sphere, and the durability of new forms. After the comprehensive ‘no’ vote in the referendum for the North East Elected Regional Assembly in 2004 and the subsequent collapse of the English regional agenda, a period of hiatus gave way to an emerging sub-regional agenda, where developments were influenced at least in part by bottom-up pressures and allowed for some degree of local autonomy and flexibility in the construction of new governance forms. Yet the continuing absence of a clear ideological drive emphasized the ad-hoc nature of these changes and accentuated the lack of an over-arching political resolution. In this context Labour's proposals for sub-national economic governance were muddied, raising questions over the sustainability of new arrangements. The paper concludes with a brief commentary on the experience of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government following the general election on 6 May 2010.

State Housing Finance Agencies Forty Years Later

The gradual withdrawal of federal leadership in affordable housing has required states to step into an ever-widening gap in housing policy and finance. Much of this responsibility falls upon state housing finance agencies (HFAs). This article compares historical HFA roles with contemporary national trends and case study data and identifies five major roles played by HFAs today: financer, administrator/ monitor, planner, convener/coordinator, and policy innovator. HFA roles have been expanded through top-down political mandates, bottom-up interest group pressures, and complex institutional structures. The article also identifies several challenges to further change, including financial risk, interagency coordination, and agency transparency and accountability. HFAs have become major players in state affordable housing policy and suggests that planners, policy makers and advocates make better use of these agencies in implementing state affordable housing solutions.

Explicit and implicit dimensions of language policy in multilingual banks in Luxembourg

For decades the primary focus of language policy research has been activities by states and their agencies, while policy activities in workplaces have attracted little attention. Addressing this gap, this paper investigates language management policies in financial institutions in the multilingual context of Luxembourg. Shohamy’s (2006) theoretical framework, largely based on the context of the state, is adopted and extended to financial institutions. Financial institutions operate in the globalised context of international banking and represent an interesting focal point for examining language policy in the globalising world. Explicit and implicit dimensions of policy are investigated by exploring the discrepancy between explicit language management policies on the working language of financial institutions and reported language use practices. Two international banks are discussed in this paper to provide insight into the complex nature of language policy and the importance of both top-down and bottom-up pressures on language practices.

Archetype for an archipelago? Batam as anti-model and model of industrialization in reformasi Indonesia

Today’s world economy has been likened to a mosaic of interconnected regions or islands of economic development. Be they successful ‘industrial districts’ or less successful, less sustainable and equitable enclaves of multinational enterprise-led development, such islands of industrialization are looked to as sites for the generation and diffusion of potentially transferable practices and knowledge. I examine current debate over the extent to which Batam is regarded a model and anti-model of industrialization both in reformasi Indonesia and beyond. Batam was developed under the auspices of a highly centralized and authoritarian Indonesian government - at a time when the state had the means, though not the appetite, to replicate or transplant elements elsewhere. As such, Batam represents a unique, unrepeatable experiment and one which central government has viewed more as an anti-model, given new demands on territorial management in reformasi Indonesia. Nevertheless, Batam’s uniqueness and the growing exposure of its institutions to international business, trade and investment promotion and skill development practices, mean that there are inescapable top-down and bottom-up pressures for elements of Batam’s industrialization to serve as models elsewhere in newly democratized and decentralizing reformasi Indonesia. In conclusion, the paper highlights the, as yet, weak and asymmetrical institutional developments on Batam that are currently thought of as potential models.

SMALL BUSINESS IN KOREA, JAPAN, AND TAIWAN

Why did Korea, Japan, and Taiwan follow distinct modernization trajectories, despite their similar histories, cultures, and positions in the international system? All three had credit-based, price-administered financial systems; yet these similarly structured systems were wielded differently to help produce widely divergent industrial structures. While small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in both Japan and Taiwan flourished as the major employers and exporters, the underdevelopment of SMEs in Korea remained unmistakable. Despite the strong growth of Korean SMEs in the 1980s, the nation still had far fewer such establishments than either Japan or Taiwan (see Table 1). This article has two aims: (1) to explain differences in financial policy toward small business among the three countries and (2) to account for similarities in the process of policy change over time. The evidence suggests that economic policymaking in East Asia is best explained not by the technocratic preferences of an elite bureaucracy, nor by the bottom-up pressures of organized interests, but by political exigencies and the choices of the regime coalition. Each ruling group had to win a competition for power with other elite policy factions and then had to build paternalistic, or patrimonial, authority in the eyes of society. These political tasks were central in shaping financial policy.

Reduction, elimination, and levels: The case of the LTP-learning link

We argue in this paper that so-called new wave reductionism fails to capture the nature of the interlevel relations between psychology and neuroscience. Bickle (1995, Psychoneural reduction of the genuinely cognitive: some accomplished facts, Philosophical Psychology, 8, 265-285; 1998, Psychoneural reduction: the new wave, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) has claimed that a (bottom-up) reduction of the psychological concepts of learning and memory to the concepts of neuroscience has in fact already been accomplished. An investigation of current research on the phenomenon of long-term potentiation reveals that this claim overstates the facts. Both the psychological and the neural concepts involved have not yet stabilized and face further correction under the influence of both bottom-up and top-down selection pressures. In addition, psychological concepts often refer to functions, and functions are indispensable and irreducible. Function ascriptions pick out objective patterns involving historical factors and distal goals. This view of functions implies that psychological facts cannot be simply read off from the neurophysiological facts. Although psychological theorizing is constrained by neurophysiology (and vice versa), psychology remains distinct at least to some degree.

Numerical variation in three coexisting macrodetritivore species (Proasellus coxalis, Planorbarius corneus and Bithynia tentaculata) under different levels of vertical forces in aquatic microcosms

Laboratory experiments were conducted to assess the impact of both top-down and bottom-up forces on simplified macrodetritivore guilds. Three macrodetritivore species of Lake Albano (central Italy) were used: Proasellus coxalis, an isopod, and Planorbarius corneus and Bithynia tentaculata, two snails. They were stocked at the ratio of 32:160:164 individuals in each of 24 aquaria. The simplified guilds were governed by different vertical pressures. Three types of top-down (predation) pressures, viz. (i) absence of predators, (ii) high density of the predator Erpobdella octoculata, a leech, (iii) high density of Erpobdella and Gambusia affinis, a fish, and two types of bottom-up pressures, viz. high and low leaf-detritus availability, were employed. The effects of vertical forces were determined by the numerical variation in the survivors of each species and the ratio between the survivors of the three species of macrodetritivores. A quantitative index of the daily top-down force (TDF) was computed. The results showed that the three coexisting macrodetritivore species were sensitive to vertical pressures. When increasing the top-down pressure in aquaria with high detritus availability, the guild response was non-linear: (i) in absence of predators, the percentage of the survivors of the three macrodetritivore species was the highest; (ii) the presence of Erpobdella reduced the macrodetritivore abundance and (iii) the set of aquaria with coexisting Erpodella and Gambusia significantly increased the number of survivors of the three macrodetritivore species when compared top aquaria with Erpobdella. On the contrary, in aquaria with low detritus availability, the increase of the top-down pressure caused no significant variation in the number of surviving species.