Involvement In Local Politics Research Articles

“We Closed Down Mpape on the Judgement Day”: Resistance and Place-Making in Urban Informal Settlements in Abuja, Nigeria

Informal settlements in major urban areas are often derided through discourses as pockets of poverty, disorder, and marginalisation. Consequently, city planning officials often seek to eliminate or reduce such settlements for more ordered planned settlements. Yet, informal urban settlements continue to remain a part of urban life and have, in many places, increased in size and density. This paper provides an ethnographic account of the place-making activities deployed by informal settlement dwellers in Abuja, Nigeria, who face constant threats of displacement and eviction. We use place-making as an analytic lens with which to explore the discursive, political, and material strategies used by individuals and communities to resist the threats of displacement. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Mabushi and Mpape, we identify, on the one hand, the key material strategies of place-making to include incremental improvement to dwellings, planting of economic trees, and physical confrontations. On the other hand, the formation of settlement associations and active involvement in local politics with its attendant alliance-making have contributed to place-making strategies through the development of meanings, senses of togetherness, and belonging to the settlements. Our findings show the agency of informal settlement dwellers and how they use both material processes and discursive narratives to generate new meanings of place, tenure security, and the right to the city. This enables them to resist displacement from the urban environment. We conclude that a place-making approach to exploring informal settlements is fruitful for understanding the complexity of urban change processes in the Nigerian context.

Радикальний іслам та державна влада в Криму до 2014 року: кейс Хізб ут-Тахрір

The looming danger of radical Islamism and religious struggles for hegemony effectively converged in the local Ukrainian context in the case of Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (HTI), or the Islamic Party of Liberation. For want of a more notorious Islamist group in Ukraine, this organization became treated in various media as the main local embodiment of extremist and terrorist threat. Likewise, despite the fact that the actual number of HTI’s followers or sympathizers in Crimea remained uncertain, due to its high public visibility, in the pre-2014 period the movement often stepped into the spotlight as the number-one rival for the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Crimea and the Mejlis, the chief representative bodies of Crimean Tatars. Thus, although the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in March 2014 completely derailed the dynamic of HTI’s development in the region, an analysis of its previous activities there can still become an important contribution to an in-depth understanding of the movement’s dichotomous nature as a global phenomenon, as well as its relations with the state and its strategies of social accommodation in European settings. Hence, this article offers a more nuanced and comprehensive look at this HTI’s development in the peninsula prior to the beginning of the Euromaidan protests (November 2013), focusing on its involvement in local politics and interactions with law enforcement agencies and the government authorities. Special attention is paid to the public discourses of HTI in the Ukrainian milieu and the key elements of its self-representation for the general public as posing no existential threat to Ukraine’s socio-political and cultural order.

Women's Involvement in Local Politics? Realizing Reinforcement of Gender Equality in Sinjai Regency, Indonesia

The purpose of this research is related to the strategy of the local government to build gender equality in the political field in Sinjai Regency to determine the Strengthening of the Existence of Women in the Political Sector to Achieve Gender Equality in Sinjai Regency.. The type of this research is qualitative research. This research uses descriptive research. The results of this study are to strengthen the existence of the women in political view to achieve gender equality in Sinjai, the implementation of these policies through Government Regulation number 12 of 2013 concerning Gender Mainstreaming which becomes the foundation and encouragement to be more gender-responsive, and the capability in political already increasing, because there is no more gender discrimination in leadership because already depending on women's capacity and performance, and then the accessibility of the women to access politics has been given a lot of form from government and the legislative. However, patriarchal values become the dominant cultural barrier limiting women's participation in politics.

Participatory Democracy in Local Government

In 2015, the local government of the city of Madrid (Spain) introduced an electronic participation system. This initiative stemmed mainly from the social movements that had occupied the squares of many Spanish cities since 2011. As a result of the local elections in 2015, many of those same activists gained institutional power, took citizens’ participation very seriously, and decided to use the possibilities offered by the internet for political and administrative participation. In this article, we seek to assess the impacts of the Madrid city government with the e-democracy experiment – based mainly on establishing an online platform to facilitate citizen participation in political and administrative decision processes. Drawing on qualitative and documental data, our research indicates that whereas the overall aim of the project was to give citizens a say in local policy and decision making, our case study shows that participation was very low since most of the population does not feel concerned by these processes. Indeed, one of our findings showed that citizens’ involvement offline surpassed in some cases their online participation. To identify who is politically active online and offline is a great challenge, to which the promoters of the project did not pay much attention. Although e-participation was meagre in relation to the electoral turnout, the case study also shows that many proposals from the public were incorporated into the local policies, indicating that from a qualitative point of view, e-participation influences decision-making processes. Perhaps local governments should use a more strategic and integrated approach towards the use of electronic technologies to foster and motivate citizens’ involvement in local politics and administration. This more integrated approach should be less dependent on ideological incentives, more institutionalized, and must incorporate citizens’ perceptions and inputs before the introduction of new technologies.

Stories of Women in the Middle Ages by Maria Teresa Brolis

Reviewed by: Stories of Women in the Middle Ages by Maria Teresa Brolis Jessica L. Minieri Maria Teresa Brolis, Stories of Women in the Middle Ages ( Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 2018) xviii + 187 pp. Maria Teresa Brolis argues in her monograph Stories of Women in the Middle Ages that late medieval ideas on gender, sexuality, and religion shaped the ways in which women could participate in both elite and non-elite spaces from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries in Europe. To illustrate this point, Brolis divides her monograph into two sections, "Famous Women" and "Ordinary Women," each highlighting the lives and afterlives of sixteen individuals. The first eight will be familiar to scholars of the European Middle Ages, as they include Hildegard of Bingen, Raingarde of Montboissier, Heloise of Argenteuil, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Clare of Assisi, Birgitta of Sweden, Christine de Pizan, and Joan of Arc. By beginning with these figures, Brolis brings her readers' attention to the lives of women in different social positions and geographic locations than those in the second section on "Ordinary Women." This second section, with chapters on Flora, Agnesina, Ottebona, Grazia, Gigliola, Bettina, Margherita, and Belfiore, focuses on economic activity, marital practices, religious life, fashion, medicine, and travel in the Lombard town of Bergamo during the fourteenth century. With this division, Brolis provides her readers with a necessary and fascinating look at life for medieval women across regions, centuries, and social strata in order to "investigate the female condition at the centre and on the periphery of the medieval word" (3). [End Page 247] Brolis thus juxtaposes the eight queens, saints, and writers featured in the first half with the seamstresses, businesswomen, and abbesses in the second section as their lives overlapped in terms of geographic location, participation in social and economic life, and relationship to the Church. The success of this monograph therefore lies not in its individual narratives but in the ways in which these stories raise new questions about the role of gender in European life in the late medieval period. Specifically, these stories ask how geographic location and social position affected the place of women within their communities across the continent. One of the main points of connection between these "famous" and "ordinary" women derives from their shared experiences in the Italian Peninsula. This geographic focus complicates the role of women in classical Renaissance republics and kingdoms throughout the peninsula, as many of these case studies, particularly those north of Rome, lived differently than their counterparts in Angevin Naples and Aragonese Sicily. These comparisons are most apparent in the chapters on Clare of Assisi, Birgitta of Sweden, Grazia d'Arzago, and Agnesina of Bergamo, as their different experiences demonstrate that for women across Italy, the variants in governmental structure (i.e., republicanism vs. monarchy) and corresponding beliefs about gender affected the ways in which women could be active participants in their communities. The complicated relationship between Birgitta and Johanna I of Naples illustrates that women, particularly in elite and royal circles, participated in political spaces within Angevin Naples in ways that their counterparts in Bergamo, Milan, and other northern Italian cities did not. Birgitta's connection to Johanna allowed her to speak publicly about several social ills that she observed while in the city, most significantly the enslavement of Muslim women, which she described as a "scandal to witness the slave trade in a Christian country" (61). While her words did not lead to a cessation of the practice, her arguments, particularly those recorded in her Revelations, brought wider attention to the enslavement of and sexual violence perpetrated against Muslim women in the region. While Naples was not the only city she visited on her pilgrimage to Jerusalem, it was among the most significant cities she traveled through due to her involvement in local politics, the abolition of slavery, and her connection to the House of Anjou. In conjunction with the chapters on Clare of Assisi and Grazia d'Arzago, the histories of these figures as advocates for women inside of religious spaces (e.g., in the Bridgettine Order, Poor Clares, and the Santa Grata abbey in Bergamo) raise significant questions about ecclesiastical structures, both inside and outside...

Business in the Power Structure of Small Russian Towns

This article is based on the outcomes of a research project conducted in five small Russian towns. In all the communities, big business had significant power potential, but its direct involvement in local politics was limited since the ‘power vertical’ instituted under Putin meant that decisions on the most important local issues were made at regional and federal levels. Small and medium-sized businesses were also not actively involved in local politics. Unlike big business, however, they were more vulnerable to and dependent on local administrations. Relations between local authorities and business actors seemed close and cooperative; however, their interactions often had no civic component and were based almost exclusively on mutual interest.

Analisis Faktor-Faktor Yang Menyumbang Kepada Penglibatan Politik Dalam Kalangan Penduduk Pulau Pinang

Political participation is one of the fundamental principles of democracy, without which any nation with such system will cease to exist. There are many factors influencing political participation of an individual in a country. Hence this research aims to understand the influence of the level of media usage (i.e. television, radio, newspaper and internet), interest, attitude, general knowledge towards politics and age on political participation through the mediating role of interpersonal discussion, utilizing the Differential Gains Model. A survey involving 386 registered voters in Penang, Malaysia was conducted. The survey discovered that interest in and general knowledge on politics significantly influenced the level of the respondents’ political participation. None of any media factors, attitudes toward politics and age was found to affect political participation. Consistent with the Model of Differential Gains, interpersonal discussion on politics significantly mediated the relationships between level of media usage (namely radio and newspaper) and general knowledge on politics; and political participation. The study summarised that interpersonal discussion on political issues with friends and family members is more vital to increase people’s involvement in local politics as compared to mass media.

Opportunities and Challenges to Gender Quotas in Local Politics: The Case of Municipal Council Elections in South Korea

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the under-researched topic of women’s representation in local politics in Asia. Specifically, we investigate the kinds of opportunities and challenges regarding the issue of quotas, using the case of municipal council elections in Korea. Strongly enforced quotas in the proportional representation tier of the mixed electoral system have indeed worked favorably for women’s representation in local elections since the adoption of the quota law. Yet, we also note two distinct factors that challenge quotas at the local level in the country. First, party leaders initially agree to the idea of quotas to gain public recognition, but may lack commitment and show resistance when it comes to their actual implementation. Further, the general public consensus that favors reforms in order to bar party involvement in local politics as a way to achieve grassroots democracy, may place quotas at risk, as current laws require mandatory quota implementation in the parties’ candidate lists. We end our paper by highlighting the importance of grassroots democracy and that the key to achieve this goal is not only to guarantee transparency in the candidate nomination process, but also to ensure that parties commit to quota implementation.

Digging the Dugway?: Understanding Involvement in Local Politics

This research examines what motivates residents to become involved in a community-based issue, focusing on how living in close proximity, trust in local officials, and perceptions of decision-making processes influence involvement in a Utah community. Delving into a particular issue provides an opportunity to explore relationships shaping how local politics play out. This study finds that living in close proximity and trust matter in motivating involvement in local politics, while process-based arguments tied to the issue regarding resident expectations do not influence involvement in this case. The results thus suggest that neither lack of trust nor dissatisfaction appears to have a detrimental influence on local democratic processes. Indeed, it appears that in this community a healthy dose of skepticism can promote active engagement with local politics.

Mumbai's Development Mafias: Globalization, Organized Crime and Land Development

AbstractFor over a decade, researchers have analyzed the effects of liberalization and globalization on urban development, considering the local political implications of shifts at the national and global scales. Taking the case of Mumbai, this article examines how the past 15 years of political reforms in India have reshaped property markets and the politics of land development. Among the newly empowered actors, local criminal syndicates, often with global connections, have seized political opportunities created by these shifts to gain influence over land development. The rise of Mumbai's organized criminal activity in the 1950s was closely linked to India's macroeconomic policies, with strict regulation of imports fuelling the growth of black market smuggling. Liberalization and deregulation since the early 1990s have diminished demand for smuggled consumer goods and criminal syndicates have since diversified their operations. With skyrocketing real estate prices in the 1990s, bolstered by global land speculation, the mafia began investing in property development. Supported by an illicit nexus of politicians, bureaucrats and the police, the mafia has emerged as a central figure in Mumbai's land development politics. The article examines the structural shifts that facilitated the criminalization of land development and the implications of mafia involvement in local politics.Résumé Depuis plus d'une décennie, les chercheurs ont analysé les effets de la libéralisation et de la mondialisation sur l'aménagement urbain en étudiant les implications politiques locales de transformations effectuées à l'échelle nationale et planétaire. Prenant le cas de Mumbai, cet article examine comment les réformes politiques des quinze dernières années en Inde ont reconfiguré les marchés immobiliers et les politiques d'aménagement foncier. Parmi les nouveaux acteurs, les syndicats du crime locaux, opérant souvent dans des réseaux internationaux, ont saisi les occasions politiques créées par ces changements pour gagner en influence sur l'aménagement foncier. A Mumbai, l'activité accrue du crime organisé dans les années 1950 était étroitement liée aux politiques macroéconomiques de l'Inde, une réglementation stricte des importations alimentant l'essor de la contrebande sur le marché noir. Depuis le début des années 1990, libéralisation et déréglementation ont réduit la demande pour les biens de consommation de contrebande, poussant les syndicats du crime à diversifier leurs opérations. Face à la montée en flèche des prix de l'immobilier dans les années 1990, aidée par la spéculation foncière mondiale, la mafia a investi dans la promotion immobilière. Soutenue par un réseau illégal de politiciens, bureaucrates et policiers, elle est donc devenue un personnage central des politiques d'urbanisme à Mumbai. L'article étudie les transformations structurelles qui ont facilité la criminalisation du secteur foncier, et les implications de la présence de la mafia dans la politique locale.

Local level political and institutional changes in Japan: An end to political alienation?

Background In Japan, a steady increase of non-voters is evident on the national and local levels over the past few decades. However, since the mid-1990s, a new wave of political participation at the local level has attracted politicians as well as social scientists. Citizen participation is increasing in terms of the number of non-profit organizations, participatory procedures, and engagement in new political networks. Citizens growing involvement in local politics coincides with institutional changes that offer new autonomy in respect of local policy-making.

Choice, diversity and ‘false consciousness’ in women's careers

The central theme of this paper is that contemporary literature concerning women's careers is based on assumptions held by researchers and not actually on views held by women themselves. Many feminist researchers are guilty of assuming ‘false consciousness’ on the part of their subjects by explaining these women as being victims of gender or patriarchal systems instead of making a mindful decision founded on choice. The empirical work draws on in‐depth interviews with 39 women architects. Of the 39 women interviewed, 20 had adopted alternative ways of working in the sense that they had rejected the conventional career within an organization. Their reasons for this were diverse and ranged from wanting to combine child or elder care with work; involvement in local politics; wanting time for further study or sporting activities; as well as just not wanting to work full‐time. In short, this research demonstrates that work is not always a central interest in the lives of individuals and supports Hakim's view of heterogeneity among women.

The Pragmatics of Peremptory Assertion: An Ideological Analysis of the Use of the Word ‘Just’ in Local Politicians’ Denials of Politics

New Labour’s Third Way philosophy, with its fervent critique of ideological politics, claims to be able to revitalize interest and participation in politics amongst the lay public. This article critically considers such claims by means of a detailed ideological analysis of interviews with English local politicians. Focusing on speakers’ tendency to deny or downgrade the political nature of their involvement in local politics, the recurrent occurrence of an assertion prefaced by the word ‘just’ is examined. On the one hand, this move performs local interpersonal work, implying that the preferred version is a reflection of the facts about self and, as such, has a rational/empirical basis. On the other hand, the operation of broader ideological constraints can at times be visualized, as if there is some underlying basis for the account which is beyond argument and consciousness. It is concluded that anti-ideological advocates of the Third Way are helping to constitute an era in which even official political representatives are unthinkingly negating their role.

Property, politics and the neo-liberal revolution in urban Scotland

This paper is written in the context of current debates about the extent to which business coalitions are shaping the political agendas of the contemporary city. With a growing critique of the use of North American frameworks as a basis for the interpretation of business politics in the British city, we make a contribution towards the development of a more theoretically informed account of capital's involvement in local politics in Britain. Our research design takes analysis beyond the confines of what we term a ‘state-centred perspective’ insofar as we focus on the political behaviour of one key fraction of capital, property, in a range of urban areas in one political system, Scotland. Through the first survey to be conducted in Scotland of the political activities of property agents, the paper draws out conclusions about the extent to which new forms of neo-liberal urban governance are serving to construct an environment within which contemporary property politics are being played out. Our results point to a politically engaged fraction of capital but one which is largely oblivious to the changes in governance taking place around them. In an effort to further understanding property politics, we conclude that more attention needs to be given to capital and its trajectories. In calling for an epistemological shift towards a capital-centred perspective, we conclude that an understanding of property politics might profitably draw upon both a rehabilitated version of neo-Marxist frameworks and more recent institutional perspectives.

Agrarian feminism: the politics of Ontario farm women

In Agrarian Feminism Louise Carbert's objective is to examine the politics of women on farms in two Canadian federal ridings, Bruce-Grey and Huron-Bruce, in the Huron peninsula of Ontario. Recognizing that household based production, by the unity of property and (p.x), is organized on the basis of kinship and with members differentiated by gender and generation, Carbert sets out to trace the relationship between women's responsibility for agricultural production and expression. The last is conceived in terms of both in what is conventionally defined as politics and in terms of An introductory chapter situates the current study within the context of the farm women's movement in English Canada, making clear Carbert's focus on Women's Institutes in Ontario rather than on the new farm women's movement. She justifies the choice of the WI on the grounds of the institution's long history in the area and its extensive membership when compared, for example, with the Ontario Farm Women's Network. In the second chapter, the author carefully outlines the research methodology employed, specifically the administration of extensive two-part questionnaire, details of which are provided in appendix. Open-ended questions were used, focussing on the two key themes of feminism and community service. 117 women were interviewed in 1989, of whom 67 were members of the WI. With the exception of three women involved in capitalist production, only women living on farms concerned with commodity production as family operation were selected. The first part of the questionnaire explored women's responsibility for agricultural production, including issues of farm ownership, the capital value of the enterprise, the division of labour within the and responsibility for decision making. The second part drew on questions from other surveys -- the Euro-Barometer and Election Study Surveys -- to address more directly questions of politics, and included questions not previously included in such surveys on the meaning of feminism for farm women. The remainder of the book, Chapters 3 to 7, discusses the findings of the survey with respect to work, political behaviour, conservatism, feminism, and marriage, and happiness. In the concluding chapter, Carbert returns to the theme of feminism. The book is, in many respects, significant contribution to the study of farm women and politics in Canada. There has been distinct lack of such research and it is particularly important to expand, as the author does, the notion of politics beyond that of involvement in party politics, to include women's involvement in community organization. In this respect, Carbert's analysis of the WI is thoughtful one. She refuses to judge the WI as simply conservative, recognizing something of the complexity of rural women's politics. This is evident, for example, in her observation in the conclusion that women's commitment to community service is an individual and collective strategy that is simultaneously agrarian and ( p. 157). Community service is, she insists, a relatively accessible, non-elite avenue of participation (p. 160). The story of one woman's encounter with the WI and subsequent involvement in local politics as elected councillor and reeve enlivens this discussion. In the conclusion, Carbert also manages to go beyond the either/or of whether the WI is feminist or not by examining the different initiatives in which the Institute has been involved, including support through donation of home-made quilts for shelter for battered women in Collingwood or fundraising for scholarships for women in higher education. …

Citrus and the state: factions and class formation in rural Belize

This article examines local‐level politics and their effect on class formation in two neighboring Belizean villages. Charlestown and More Hope exhibit differing degrees of patronage‐based factionalism, which is related to the state's differential involvement in local politics. This involvement is in turn governed by the perceived political value of individual rural constituencies. The effects of factionalism on class structure in Charlestown—a community heavily contested by the governing party and its rivals—are illustrated in the context of an expanding export‐oriented citrus economy.

Understanding women's involvement in local politics: How useful is a formal/informal dichotomy?

Feminist critiques of the public-private (male-female) dichotomy and feminist redefinitions of what is considered ‘political’ both have major implications for considering women's political activity. Arising from this a new dichotomy has emerged which distinguishes ‘formal’ politics from ‘informal’ politics. Taking examples which supposedly lie on either side of this division—local government women's committees and women's community action in London's docklands—our paper explores the usefulness of the formal-informal dichotomy. We outline the similarities which exist between women's political activity in both spheres, the empirical and theoretical interconnections between the spheres, and suggest that the division is invalid at all but a most superficial level. This paper argues that it is vital to move beyond looking at categories to look at the political processes which underlie them.

Religious Participation and Involvement in Local Politics Throughout the Life Cycle

Abstract Recent research has suggested that religious participation is related to perceptions of political efficacy and to voting behavior but not to direct political action. The present analyses extend this line of research to participation in local politics using survey data (N = 1423) from Northwestern Wisconsin collected in 1974. The results of this work suggest that church attendance is related to voting in primary and local elections but not to talking to local officials. These results remain when controls for organizational involvement, socioeconomic status, sex, and selected social psychological measures are included in the analyses. Variation in the strength of the relationship between church attendance and voting depending on the age of the respondent is also reported Implications of the findings for democratic politics at the local level of government are discussed.

The Corporation and the Local Community

The corporation and the local community repre sent sometimes conflicting ends for members of the corporate hierarchy. There is a citizenship of the corporation and a citizenship of the local territorial community that may and do conflict. The corporation offices constitute many of the top status positions in the local community; the behavior of cor porate managers influences that of many others. Where cor porate managers are more loyal to the corporation than to the local community, the natives, the local citizens, are as likely to resent this as exploitation as are the people of a banana re public to resent the alien rule of the fruit company. Yet cor porate managers are supposed to be primarily businessmen run ning a business on a competitive basis. If they forget this and run a welfare organization, the business and the economy suffer. The conflict between immobile territorial loyalities and the need for the mobile recombination of the factors of produc tion is built into the situation. Corporate managers cannot escape involvement in local politics, for they have power. They must, in a sense, be alien if they are true to the interests of the corporation and, indeed, to the larger economy. But, if they are visibly alien as irresponsible holders of power over local lives, they must be hateful to the natives. The dilemma is real, and no public-relations wand will wave it away.