Informal Power Relations Research Articles

Sexual harassment among employees and students at a large Swedish university: who are exposed, to what, by whom and where – a cross-sectional prevalence study

BackgroundSexual harassment (SH) in the workplace is prevalent and associated with poor health. Universities are large workplaces with complex formal and informal power relations, which may influence the prevalence of SH. Although employees and students share the university context, few studies on SH have included both groups. The overall aim of the study was to investigate SH among employees and students at a large Swedish public university regarding types of harassment, prevalence in different groups, characteristics of the perpetrators, and the circumstances in which it occurs.MethodsA cross-sectional analysis was performed, based on a web-based survey with 120 items that was sent out to all staff, including PhD students (N = 8,238) and students (N = 30,244) in November 2019. The response rate was 33% for staff and 32% for students. Exposure to SH was defined as having experienced at least one of ten defined SH behaviors during their work or studies.ResultsAmong women, 24.5% of staff and 26.8% of students reported having been exposed to SH. The corresponding figures were 7.0% and 11.3% for male staff and students and 33.3% and 29.4% for non-binary individuals among staff and students. Unwelcome comments, suggestive looks or gestures, and ‘inadvertent’ brushing or touching were the three most common forms of reported harassment, both among staff and students. Attempted or completed rape had been experienced by 2.1% of female and 0.6% of male students. Male and female perpetrators were reported by about 80% and 15%, respectively, of exposed participants. Among staff most reported events occurred during the everyday operation of the university, while among students the majority of the events took place during social events linked to student life. When exposed to a perpetrator from the same group (staff or students), women reported more often being in a subordinate power position in relation to the perpetrator.ConclusionsThe results indicate that sexual harassment is common in the university context, and interventions and case management routines of events should consider power relations between victim and perpetrator, as well as the various contexts within which sexual harassment takes place.

Strengthening the Roles of Political Parties in Public Accountability - A Case Study of a New Approach in Political Party Assistance

Donors in development cooperation increasingly emphasize the importance of public accountability in developing countries for the good functioning of democratic institutions, governance and the effectiveness of their aid. Political parties are prime actors in a democratic society that have essential roles to fulfil in public accountability. However, only few donors work with them. As a result, there is relatively little knowledge and experience available. This paper aims to contribute to this body of knowledge by assessing how and to what extent a new approach of so called 'Centre's for Multiparty Democracy', national platforms for and by political parties, assist parties in their key roles between citizen and state to enhance public accountability. This is done in a case study on Kenya. The paper also explores the main constraints to public accountability and to what extent cooperation between parties and civil society has been enhanced. A new conceptual framework that differentiates political party's roles in public accountability in four domains and three phases of the accountability process is used to assess CMD-Kenya's contribution. The paper concludes that CMDs' approach explores interesting new ways to strengthen the roles of parties in public accountability. Its main contribution lies in enhancing mutual trust and strengthening politicians' awareness of the value that parties have to add to a democratic society in providing them with a platform that helped them to establish their identities as parties. At the same time societal trust in parties was strengthened by organizing joint projects between parties and civil society actors. Considering its recent set up in 2004, CMD-K has been relatively successful in initiating modest changes in some of the formal practices and policies of parties and to some extent in the behaviour of individual politicians. On the other hand deeper changes in the underlying 'rules of the game', in parties' stability and their added value to society, have hardly been realized as strong traditional informal power relations, donor dependency, institutional governance problems and managing multiple accountabilities on multiple levels pose serious threats to CMD-Kenya's functioning and therefore to its clout and relevance in the future.

A successful slum upgrade in Durban: A case of formal change and informal continuity

In situ slum upgrades implemented through community participation are widely considered global best practice in efforts to significantly improve the lives of at least 100 million shack dwellers. This paper scrutinises the process and impact of community participation in a slum upgrade in Durban. Based on data from an ethnographic study of Zwelisha, a newly upgraded settlement north of Durban, South Africa, this paper presents a nuanced analysis of the upgrade process and the role of community participation in achieving successful outcomes in terms of significant improvement to tenure security and wellbeing (as defined by Zwelisha's residents). The analysis shows that successful outcomes are intrinsically tied to the manner in which the upgrade process is implemented. The paper argues the formal changes that result in successful outcomes are possible only because of informal continuities; specifically, the continued and consolidated power and influence of the local community development committee following upgrade. While the paper frames the continuity of informal power relations as important to successful outcomes for wellbeing, the findings can also be read as a tale of caution of how the state's approach to community participation in slum upgrades may consolidate and legitimise informal power relations that may not be necessarily benevolent.

Unemployment, Informal Work, Precarious Employment, Child Labor, Slavery, and Health Inequalities: Pathways and Mechanisms

The study explores the pathways and mechanisms of the relation between employment conditions and health inequalities. A significant amount of published research has proved that workers in several risky types of labor--precarious employment, unemployment, informal labor, child and bonded labor--are exposed to behavioral, psychosocial, and physio-pathological pathways leading to physical and mental health problems. Other pathways, linking employment to health inequalities, are closely connected to hazardous working conditions (material and social deprivation, lack of social protection, and job insecurity), excessive demands, and unattainable work effort, with little power and few rewards (in salaries, fringe benefits, or job stability). Differences across countries in the social contexts and types of jobs result in varying pathways, but the general conceptual model suggests that formal and informal power relations between employees and employers can determine health conditions. In addition, welfare state regimes (unionization and employment protection) can increase or decrease the risk of mortality, morbidity, and occupational injury. In a multilevel context, however, these micro- and macro-level pathways have yet to be fully studied, especially in middle- and low-income countries. The authors recommend some future areas of study on the pathways leading to employment-related health inequalities, using worldwide standard definitions of the different forms of labor, authentic data, and a theoretical framework.

Bending the Rules: Institutional Analysis, Political Change, and Labor Market Reform in Advanced Industrial Societies

Since late 1970s, study of institutions has become central to scholarship on com parative politics and political economy. At that time, emergence of so-called new institutionalism marked a watershed in literature, establishing now-accepted insight that institutional configurations structure politics and policy trajectories in na tionally distinctive ways.1 This new agenda represented two important advances relative to existing approaches to study of politics. First, it provided correctives to be havioralist tradition, dominant during 1950s and 1960s, which viewed political phe nomena as the aggregate consequences of behavior comprehensible at individual or group level and tended to divorce politics from historical context.2 Second, it repre sented a significant advance over so-called old institutionalism, which generally viewed political life as governed by formal, constitutionally based distributions of authority. Beginning in 1970s, a number of innovative scholars began to depart from this static, approach, placing greater emphasis upon informal power rela tions and actors' responses to a distinct pattern of constraints and incentives repre sented by institutional universe in which they operate.3 By treating institutions as endogenous to political order, as complex components of a dynamic political universe, new institutionalists allowed greater analytical space for informal bargaining dynamics within institutional constellations. They saw in stitutions as formal rules, compliance procedures, and standard operating practices that structure relationship between individuals and various units of polity and economy, rather than as fixed manifestations of social and economic structures with mechanistic effects on politics.4 For scholars such as Stephen Skowronek, James March, Johan Olsen, and Kathleen Thelen, institutions were not mere manifestations of underlying social relationships or fossils of an original, remote social contract.5 Instead, they were complex, multilayered organizational frameworks that governed dy namics of politics and actors' responses to an enduring set of constraints and incentives. New institutionalists thus had effectively replaced sticks and strings of old in stitutionalist universe with a set of magnets, an array of forces that guided but did not control dynamics of political order.

Women Pioneers in Canadian Sociology: The Effects of a Politics of Gender and a Politics of Knowledge

Abstract: This article examines the life histories of ten anglophone Canadian pioneer women sociologists: Helen Abell, Grace Anderson, Jean Burnet, Eleanor Cebotarev, Kathleen Herman, Helen McGill Hughes, Thelma McCormack, Helen Ralston, Aileen Ross and Dorothy Smith. All were born before 1930, encountered significant sexism, and found jobs very easily. This pattern is placed into the context of a of gender and a of knowledge. Politics of gender in the institutional context and in family roles resulted in disadvantages, while the effect of the women's movement led to solidarity among women sociologists and eventual improvements in their situation. The simultaneous emergence of the women's movement and the Canadianization movement led to a of knowledge which proved advantageous for both. Nevertheless, the sociological canon so far has not included women pioneers -- the author needed to conduct interviews since almost no published information existed about most of these important soci ologists prior to this paper. Resume: Le present article se penche surl'histoire vecue de dix pionnieres canadiennes anglophones dans le domaine de la sociologie: Helen Abell, Grace Anderson, Jean Burnet Eleanor Cebotarev, Kathleen Herman, Helen McGill Hughes, Thelma McCormack, Helen Ralston, Aileen Ross et Dorothy Smith. Nees avant 1930, elles se sont toutes heurtees un sexisme marque ce qui ne les a pas empechees de trouver tres facilement du travail. Le phenomene est mis en perspective au vu d'une politique du genre et d'une politique de la connaissance. La politique du genre dans le cadre des institutions et des responsabilites familiales s'est traduite par des handicaps, tandis que le mouvement feministe a engendre une solidarite des femmes sociologues et, finalement, une amelioration de leur situation. L'emergence simultanee du mouvement feministe et de celui de canadianisation a engendre une politique de la connaissance quis'est revelee avantageuse pour les Canadiennes. Neanmoins, jusqu'a present, les pionnieres brillent par leur e xclusion du pantheon sociologique. L'absence quasi totale de donnees prealablement publiees sur ces importantes sociologues a d'ailleurs amene l'auteure du present article devoir effectuer des entrevues. Introduction [1] In reviewing the status of the women founders of sociology and social theory, Lengerman and Niebrugge-Brantley argue that the women have been of our history, rather than having been invisible. Being written out suggests that they were once seen as a presence in the community and that they were subsequently erased from its record (1998:2-3). This politics of erasure is premised on two interrelated processes: a of gender and a of knowledge. While their account deals with the issue at a time before sociology was established as a professional discipline in Canada, their questions are relevant to understanding the position of women pioneers within Canadian sociology. This paper asks how a of gender and knowledge affected some of the early anglophone women sociologists in Canada. When approaching histories of Canadian sociology we find little about women. I therefore decided to use a life history approach. Goetting (1995:9-12) identifies several advantages of this approach: it fills knowledge gaps (sorely needed in this instance); it provides a window on organizational structures by making informal power relations visible; it is a tool for interpreting the intersection of micro- and macro-levels of social order; and, when dealing with women's biography, it can contribute to the correction of the social production of obscurity. Life history is thus a critically helpful way of understanding our gendered world. I wanted to focus on the earliest group of anglophone women sociologists and thus chose birthdate and position as my selection criteria. The subjects of my study had to have been born prior to 1930 and formally trained in sociology. …