Formal Political Process Research Articles

Political Reform in Jordan (2011- 2022) Positioning Youth Political Participation in Large Power Distance National Culture

The engagement of youth in the formal political process is essential not only in building stable and peaceful societies but also in developing policies that respond to the specific needs of younger generations. This study aims to model the impact of the large power distance dimension of culture in developing youth political participation in Jordan. The study will also compare the efforts of Jordan in promoting political participation among youth in 2011 and 2021 as part of political reform strategies. It also provides potential solutions that will lead the way to a more inclusive national culture. The study utilized the power distance index of Hofstede's cultural dimension. The result of the study revealed that the Jordanian culture is dynamic, and as such may witness a level of transformation, while keeping the power vertical, through the active involvement and engagement of youth in the political process and decision-making through unconventional participation. Thus, creating both committees clarifies the placement of youth in political participation in large power distance natural culture, where the gap is wider than expected. It was recommended that youth should take bold steps in establishing promising networks in their field of expertise, social circle, and beyond. They should eliminate barriers to engagement in political participation including the creation of parties that are based on ideologies and aspirations.

Practicing urban citizenship: housing justice activism from Jakarta’s margins

Notwithstanding the claims to equality associated with (neo)liberal democratic citizenship, capitalist cities are characterized by stark inequalities in access to land and living space. In response, grassroots movements and marginalized residents are struggling for a more socially and ecologically just urbanism. We conceptualize these movements as democratizing cities by practicing urban citizenship, following the tradition of scholarship that loosens citizenship from its confines as a bundle of rights and responsibilities conferred by nation-states on individuals. Such practices seek to realize existing rights rarely extended to marginalized urban residents and advocate for novel rights, e.g. to shelter, place, the city, and a voice in governance decisions affecting residents’ lives. We analyze the strategies and tactics pursued by Jakarta’s housing justice movement from Indonesia's democratization (reformasi) in 1998 to the present, seeking to assert and expand urban citizenship rights. Creatively moving between existing invited political spaces of citizenship and newly invented spaces, depending on political opportunity structures, movement leadership styles and local circumstances, the movement has experimented with strategies and tactics ranging from confrontation to negotiation, signing political contracts with governors, to now seeking to participate in the formal political process. We critically reflect especially on using a political contract to facilitate rights to place and security of tenure in ‘illegal’ kampungs. We conclude by reflecting on the insights our case study brings to how urban poor social movements’ citizenship practices contribute to democratizing cities and advancing socio-spatial justice.

Publics, Polls, Protest: Public Representation as Sociopolitical Practice

This article seeks to illuminate connections across studies of publics, media, formal political processes, and protests. An examination of representation as sociopolitical practice allows us to consider the practices that occur around the edges of what has been considered the public sphere and to interrogate the work of its boundaries, which reify national publics, separate civil society from formal political work, and separate representational work from collective action. Thinking about environments for expression and practices of representation invites a consideration of the multiple interrelated geographies of expressive spaces—ranging from publics that legitimize a state to those corresponding to or creating communities, political movements, immigrant groups, or diasporic networks. A focus on representational practices trains attention on the body, place, and social relations and encourages attention to the multiplicity of ways in which violence shapes environments for expression, as well as how social and political actors respond to violence.

Right to the city in the age of neoliberal development: A case study of two slum communities in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Due to rapid urbanization and the influence of neoliberal development policies, slum dwellers frequently encounter marginalization, inadequate living conditions, limited access to urban resources and spaces, and limited political representation throughout the world. Bangladesh is not an exception. This study investigates the right to appropriate and political participation of the urban poor in Bangladesh within the context of neoliberal development. In addition, the study critically evaluates the role of the state and various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society organizations in mobilizing the urban poor in Bangladesh. The study, therefore, implements a mixed-methods approach, including surveys, interviews, and community consultations, to obtain answers to these questions from two slums in Dhaka, Bangladesh, named Sattola and Pallabi. The findings show that the urban poor in these informal settlements confront significant challenges in claiming urban spaces due to local legislation, regulations, and development plans. As a result, they must negotiate with various formal and informal stakeholders to exercise their rights over urban spaces. The study also emphasizes that the urban poor face social and institutional barriers that limit their ability to participate effectively in decision-making, such as exclusion from formal political processes, limited access to information, and a lack of awareness of their rights. These difficulties exacerbate their marginalization from conventional urban development planning. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that due to the authoritarian state’s control over them, NGOs and other civil society organizations cannot assist the urban poor in mobilizing their right to the city. As a result, this study underlines the importance of a democratic government in Bangladesh for recognizing and defending the rights of the urban poor. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of policy reforms and partnerships among government institutions, civil society organizations, and international actors to achieve inclusive and sustainable urban development that prioritizes the rights and well-being of the urban poor.

Can Black Lives Matter within U.S. Democracy?

This article examines the impact of anti-Black state violence on U.S. democracy, tracing the history of that violence and how it has changed from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. I underscore the persistence of state violence against Black Americans, how it undercuts democratization, and how those dynamics provide a useful context for ongoing discussions about the imperfect development of democracy in the United States. I also explore the Black Lives Matter Movement’s (BLMM) emphasis on dismantling the criminal punishment system and the movement’s amplification of the voices of citizens who have often been excluded from the formal political process. I argue that by centering the issue of anti-Black violence, the BLMM is offering a transformative pathway to a more fully functional democracy.

The Peaceful Road to Europe: Migration and the Setting of the Regular Long-Distance Coach Lines in the South-Western European Corridor (1960s-1990s)

The establishment of the regular long-distance coach lines across Europe, boosted by migration flows, is the object of this historical study focused on the Portuguese experience. The article considers four dimensions: the establishment of the regular long-distance international coach lines through the coordination of the transport modes; the legal setting and the multi-national administration; the migrants coach travel experience and, finally, the evolutionary trends of this service. The narrative was mostly based on the Portuguese transport administration archives and specialized technical literature. From rural to urban contexts, from advanced to less advanced societies in Europe, we describe the process of common societal changes induced by the European experience. This explores the construction of Europe as a collective, historical and everyday experience, and analyses the ways common institutions, personal trust, and even friendship across governments, officials, and individuals were built anticipating the formal political process of creation of the European Community.

Youth representations of environmental protest

A necessary condition for a functioning democracy is the participation of its citizens, including its youth. This is particularly true for political participation in environmental decisions, because these decisions can have intergenerational consequences. In this article we examine young people’s beliefs about one form of political participation—protest—in the context of communities affected by fracking and associated anti‐fracking protest, and discuss the implications of these representations for education. Drawing on focus groups with 121 young people (aged 15–19) in five schools and colleges near sites which have experienced anti‐fracking protest in England and Northern Ireland, we find young people well‐informed about avenues for formal and non‐formal political participation against a background of disillusionment with formal political processes and varying levels of support for protest. We find representations of protest as disruptive, divisive, extreme, less desirable than other forms of participation and ineffective in bringing about change but effective in awareness‐raising. These representations are challenging, not least because the way protest is interpreted is critical to the way people think and act in the world. These representations of environmental protest must be challenged through formal education in order to safeguard the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and ensure that the spirit of Article 11 of the UK Human Rights Act is protected.

From Pariah Image to Partner and Back Again: The EU’s Complicated Relationship with Myanmar

To make sense of the EU’s rocky relationship with Myanmar, we need to consider how Myanmar’s political leadership is imagined in Europe. For decades, this image was bifurcated: on the one hand a military junta with its disdain for democracy and human rights. On the other hand, Aung San Suu Kyi (ASSK), ‘our’ saint-like Burmese ‘Nelson Mandela’, detained but still fighting for democracy and human rights. As a result, Brussels implemented a tough sanction regime and essentially assigned Myanmar pariah status. When Suu Kyi re-joined the formal political process in 2012 and won the 2015 elections, Myanmar rapidly transitioned from pariah to partner. Fast forward to 2017 and relations between the EU and Myanmar had soured again because of the Rohingya crisis and Suu Kyi’s ‘deafening silence’ on the issue. The article argues that to understand this rollercoaster ride of EU–Myanmar relations one must turn to the imagery of Suu Kyi in Europe. The strong cognitive dissonances, created by the widening gap between the imagined ‘saint’ ASSK and the realpolitik ‘sinner’, have impacted on the EU’s relations with Myanmar and can help us make sense of the recent turbulences in the relationship.

Community alliances and participatory action research as a mechanism for re-politicising social action for students in higher education

ABSTRACT Evidence from the UN World Youth Report (2015) suggests that young people, while increasingly disengaged with formal political processes, are motivated by cause-related social action. Higher Education (HE), through research and partnership, provides ideal learning spaces to explore cause-related social action. However, as HE partnership opportunities continue to be reframed under a narrative of employability and one-off participation, there is a risk that these experiences miss an opportunity to critically engage young people with issues at a socio-political level. This research paper considers the potential of participatory action research (PAR) as a pedagogical mechanism for re-politicising social action for students in a UK HE context. The project explores the experiences of 160 undergraduate students, working in partnership with 400 young children, aged 2–10 years, to investigate and co-construct their views and action concerning causes represented by local community organisations. Findings suggest that using participatory, youth-action approaches students shifted their self-identified positions from a non-social-orientated approach to establishing them as advocates for causes and children’s voices. We argue that PAR, as a learning experience, and service-learning pedagogy open up an alternative experience of social action through an educational context with engagement and consideration of social issues. In conclusion, we call for new alliances between HE, young people, and community organisations, to produce, through enquiry, critical knowledge aimed at social transformation, which can open-up authentic democratic spaces within the learning communities in HE and its networks.

Nonelectoral Participation in Deeply Divided Societies: Transforming Consociations from the Ground Up?

AbstractPremised on elite accommodation, consociations provide little consideration for citizens’ input on institutional change. Likewise, valuable analyses of cross-community political participation in divided societies have emerged in recent years, yet whether the relationship between the grassroot and formal political process has broader consequences remains to be fully explored. The article examines the conditions in which nonelectoral participation takes place and the ways in which actors involved therein negotiate constraints for continuous cross-community mobilization. The structure of political systems and the nature of deep divisions in Northern Ireland and Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina invite a comparison of the consequences of nonelectoral political participation in these two illustrative case studies. The article concludes that while the formal political context shapes the likelihood of engagement on a cross-community basis, whether nonelectoral participation changes the structure of political decision-making depends on the willingness and ability of those involved to cooperate with formal institutional politics.

Political participation of businesses: A framework to understand contributions of SMEs to urban sustainability politics

Private sector actors both enable and inhibit sustainability-oriented policies at multiple scales. Yet, research on business sustainability predominantly emphasizes large corporations, while contributions of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are downplayed. Consequently, there is a dearth of conceptual tools to explain how SMEs construct and advance collective sustainability goals. The aim of this paper is to identify how SMEs participate in urban sustainability politics. To do so, we analyse empirical data collected through interviews with 76 businesses operating in Toronto, Vancouver, and London. Our results demonstrate that SMEs shape sustainability dynamics by participating in formal political processes and social movements, and by constructing and contesting discourses. Contrary to past research, our study highlights the ability of these firms to navigate urban decision-making processes and align business operations with political beliefs and identities. In light of these findings, we point to the need to recognise SMEs as actors with political agency.

Remittances, criminal violence and voter turnout

ABSTRACT How do financial remittances influence electoral participation in violent democracies? Previous work has focused on the ‘substitution effect’; if recipients depend on remittances for welfare rather than the state, they become disengaged from formal political processes and less likely to vote in elections. However, while remittances can be used to substitute for state provision of welfare goods, they cannot fully substitute for public security. In this paper, we posit that the ability of governments to contain crime and violence conditions the effect of remittances on electoral participation. Specifically, we argue that high levels of crime can negate the substitution effect and make remittance recipients more likely to vote. Using municipality-level data from Mexico and individual-level data from Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, we find that both the receipt of remittances and crime exposure significantly reduce individuals’ propensity to vote and that aggregate remittances and crime rates are correlated with lower turnout. Remittances can, however, negate the turnout-suppressing effects of crime, and crime can negate the turnout-suppressing effects of remittances. Our results suggest a need to account for government provision of both substitutable and non-substitutable goods when investigating the effects of remittances on political participation.

Articulations of feminine voices in Ghana’s parliament: a study of the Hansard from 2010-2011

Women have both a right and an obligation to active participation in political deliberation. Yet, their participation in formal political processes, where decisions regarding the use of societal resources generated by both men and women are made, remains insignificant. Now researchers are looking beyond the number of women in parliament to focus on what they can do in terms of their contributions. This study, therefore investigates female parliamentarians’ contributions during parliamentary proceedings, evaluates how gendered these issues were. To accomplish this task, a textual analysis of the Hansard was done using critical discourse analysis and theory of gender and power. The analysis revealed that although female MPs contribute to a range of issues, they are ardent promoters of pro-women legislations such as issues on women, children and youth, health and education. Again, the study found out that a greater percentage of issues women contribute to are gendered and so reinforces the stereotypical roles given to women by society. Keywords: hansard, Ghana, linguistic, parliament, text, women

Poor-Led Social Movements and Global Justice

Political philosophers’ prescriptions for poverty alleviation have overlooked the importance of social movements led by, and for, the poor in the global South. I argue that these movements are normatively and politically significant for poverty reduction strategies and global justice generally. While often excluded from formal political processes, organized poor communities nonetheless lay the groundwork for more radical, pro-poor forms of change through their grassroots resistance and organizing. Poor-led social movements politicize poverty by insisting that, fundamentally, it is caused by social relations of power that exploit and subordinate poor populations. These movements and their organizations also develop the collective capabilities of poor communities in ways that help them to contest the structures and processes that perpetuate their needs deprivation. I illustrate these contributions through a discussion of the Landless Rural Worker’s Movement in Brazil (the MST), a poor mobilization organization in Bangladesh (Nijera Kori), and the slum and pavement dweller movement in India. Global justice theorizing about poverty cannot just “add on” the contributions of such struggles to existing analyses of, and remedies for, poverty, however; rather, we will need to shift to a relational approach to poverty in order to see the vital importance of organized poor communities to transformative, poor-centered poverty reduction.

‘Though he is a landlord, that Sarpanch is my servant!’ Caste and democracy in a village of south India

Much of the research exploring democratisation of rural society has focused on changes occurring in the formal political process of elections. In contrast, this article examines the extent of democratisation and the decline of caste in rural society by investigating morality and interactions in diverse political spaces of a village in south India. Our findings suggest that although caste hierarchy and the ideology of patronage have lost their legitimacy in regulating interactions in the course of formal political processes such as elections and institutions of local administration, they continue to command the moral allegiance of village society in the domain of everyday social and political interactions. The study concludes that although there are significant discontinuities in the use of caste power in rural India, caste dominance continues to persist.

The Illusion and the Reality of Chinese Budget Reforms: Does Budgeting Influence Corruption Perception?

Anti-corruption campaigns have been part of Chinese governance for decades. In the late 1990s, the government began to transform its anti-corruption efforts into a permanent institution, and the effect on corruption control caused by budget reforms started to emerge. Some studies have discussed and explained how the transformation of government's financial structure and performance would reduce rent-seeking motives and control corruption at the provincial and central level. Whether those financial changes could also affect corruption perception at the individual level still needs to be verified. This study uses Chinese data (2010–2012) from the third wave of the Asian Barometer Survey (ABS) to explore how objective performance achieved by budget reforms affects subjective corruption perception. It also examines the citizen empowerment effect and its interaction effect with financial variables on corruption perception. The conclusion suggests that budgeting has a larger influence on the corruption perception of local government than on the corruption perception of central government. As budget transparency and audit have improved, local government should be perceived as less corrupt. Furthermore, budget transparency will gradually develop a new and different means for the public to supervise local government activities rather than through a formal political process like an election. Those citizens with low citizen empowerment will get more information from budgeting disclosures and may not think the government is corrupt. In addition, the budget deficit has non-linear effects on the corruption perceptions of both the local and the central governments.

Wielding Influence, Building Inequality: Capture of Tax Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean

Tax systems in Latin America and the Caribbean reflect the inequality and privilege culture that characterize the region. To understand the process leading to such high inequality, this article emphasizes the role of elites as power forces, able to alter the formal political process to shape unequal development patterns, for instance by blocking progressive tax policies.

Telecom Responsibilization: Internet Governance, Surveillance, and New Roles for Intermediaries

This article foregrounds internet intermediaries as a class of actors central to many governance and surveillance strategies, and provides an overview of their emerging roles and responsibilities. While the growth of the internet has created challenges for state actors, state priorities have been unfolded onto the private institutions that provide many of the internet’s services. This article elaborates responsibilization strategies implicating internet intermediaries, and the goals that these actors can be aligned toward. These include enrolling telecom service providers in law enforcement and national security-oriented surveillance programs, as well as strategies to responsibilize service providers as copyright enforcers. But state interests are also responsive to pressures from civil society, so that “internet values” are increasingly channelled through the formal political processes shaping internet governance.

Making politics educational: the experience of the Scottish referendum on independence

<p class="Body1">In 2014 the issue of constitutional change in the UK brought about by an agreement between the UK and Scottish Government, for a referendum on Scottish independence, created the motivation for widespread political engagement with the formal political process. Scottish citizens – including newly enfranchised 16 and 17 year olds – were debating, discussing and disagreeing about opting out of one of the world’s richest countries. This was an unusual situation and one that nearly happened despite a hostile corporate, political and mainstream media response to the demand for independence. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that this movement for change was the result of narrow-minded nationalism. Although the Referendum result was that Scotland should remain in the UK the process also produced widespread politicization of ordinary people. The cultural politics of communities had engaged with the political culture of the state and the dialectic between the two generated educational experiences and opened up new political possibilities.</p><div><p class="Body1"> </p></div>

“We Want to Set the World on Fire”: Black Nationalist Women and Diasporic Politics in theNew Negro World, 1940–1944

“We Want to Set the World on Fire”: Black Nationalist Women and Diasporic Politics in the<i>New Negro World</i>, 1940–1944