Involvement In Political Activities Research Articles

Translation, transcultural adaptation and validation of a scale of exposure to humanities among medical students

Abstract: Introduction: The humanities are associated with the improvement of medical students’ personal qualities. To date, there are no research instruments that quantify the exposure of medical students have to the humanities. Hence, the availability of a questionnaire with such characteristics in Brazilian Portuguese sets a precedent for the planning and implementation of educational strategies and policies addressing this topic. Objective: to translate and transculturally adapt the “HUMANITIES SCORE (LIFE EXPERIENCES + ATTITUDES) questionnaire, determine its validity and reliability, as well as identify the type of exposure to the humanities of the assessed population. Method: The original version of the questionnaire, written in English, was translated according to what is recommended by the specialized literature, with the addition of some activities in the humanities field, as per the original authors’ suggestion. The translated instrument underwent a pre-test with 31 medical students for semantic validation, followed by the application of its final version to 258 students. The exploratory and the confirmatory factorial analyses were applied to assess the instrument with its internal consistency was checked with Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient. Result: The final questionnaire was administered to the students to verify their type of exposure to the humanities. After the statistical tests were carried out, the final version of the instrument, named “Escala de Exposição às Humanidades” (EEH), included 17 items with Likert-scale responses with five options each, and obtained a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.689. The mean score of the students’ exposure was 1.72 ± 0.37, being influenced by the period at medical school, the number of volunteer social activity experiences, the participation in religious groups, the practice of meditation, and the involvement in political activities. Variables such as female gender, engagement in previous actions related to the humanities before starting medical school and in religious ceremonies positively influenced the students’ opinion about the importance of the humanities for the medical curriculum. Conclusion: The EEH demonstrated reliability in its structure and content, allowing correlations between the students’ exposure to humanities and their opinion about the importance of human sciences in the medical curriculum. It constitutes the first instrument that aims at measuring the humanities exposure rate in Brazil; however, further studies must be carried out, to better validate the instrument.

Translation, transcultural adaptation and validation of a scale of exposure to humanities among medical students

Abstract: Introduction: The humanities are associated with the improvement of medical students’ personal qualities. To date, there are no research instruments that quantify the exposure of medical students have to the humanities. Hence, the availability of a questionnaire with such characteristics in Brazilian Portuguese sets a precedent for the planning and implementation of educational strategies and policies addressing this topic. Objective: to translate and transculturally adapt the “HUMANITIES SCORE (LIFE EXPERIENCES + ATTITUDES) questionnaire, determine its validity and reliability, as well as identify the type of exposure to the humanities of the assessed population. Method: The original version of the questionnaire, written in English, was translated according to what is recommended by the specialized literature, with the addition of some activities in the humanities field, as per the original authors’ suggestion. The translated instrument underwent a pre-test with 31 medical students for semantic validation, followed by the application of its final version to 258 students. The exploratory and the confirmatory factorial analyses were applied to assess the instrument with its internal consistency was checked with Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient. Result: The final questionnaire was administered to the students to verify their type of exposure to the humanities. After the statistical tests were carried out, the final version of the instrument, named “Escala de Exposição às Humanidades” (EEH), included 17 items with Likert-scale responses with five options each, and obtained a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.689. The mean score of the students’ exposure was 1.72 ± 0.37, being influenced by the period at medical school, the number of volunteer social activity experiences, the participation in religious groups, the practice of meditation, and the involvement in political activities. Variables such as female gender, engagement in previous actions related to the humanities before starting medical school and in religious ceremonies positively influenced the students’ opinion about the importance of the humanities for the medical curriculum. Conclusion: The EEH demonstrated reliability in its structure and content, allowing correlations between the students’ exposure to humanities and their opinion about the importance of human sciences in the medical curriculum. It constitutes the first instrument that aims at measuring the humanities exposure rate in Brazil; however, further studies must be carried out, to better validate the instrument.

Campaigning for the Prize: The Quests by Sweden and the Kingdom of the Netherlands for Security Council Membership, 2017–2018

Summary Competition for a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council is getting tougher, not the least between candidates within the Western European and Others Group. This empirical study compares the campaigns carried out by Sweden and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, in order to explain the Swedish victory in the first round of the elections in 2016. A theoretical framework identifies three logics of campaigning: contributions, commitment and competence. The study maps out the features of the campaigns, including organisation, key participants, activities and message. It includes interviews with diplomats and public officials involved in the campaigns, as well as available campaign documentation and concluding reports. A main difference detected between the candidatures is the more active political involvement in the Swedish campaign, which shows the Swedish commitment and competence to serve on the Council. Further use of this theoretical framework on additional cases of international campaigning is encouraged.

The nexus of journalism and political activism in post-2000 Zimbabwe: A field theory critique

The post-2000 political-economic crisis in Zimbabwe saw the migration of journalists as political and economic refugees. Many, if not all, of these claimed persecution at home and some amongst them established online publications with an interest on Zimbabwe. But some of the journalists that remained in Zimbabwe became activists in support of either the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) regime or the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Another group joined civil society whilst others joined either the ruling ZANU-PF party or the opposition political parties, mainly MDC. In the same context, some activists joined newsrooms. In this context, the distinction between journalism and political activism became increasingly blurred. The article, deploying Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, explores how and why this morphing of journalists into activists and vice versa unfolded and its impact on the journalistic field. The findings demonstrate that on one hand journalists morphed into activists through: switching into civil society; active involvement in party politics either as members or election candidates; openly campaigning for or against certain political parties and candidates; and writing political campaign material disguised as news. On the other hand, activists entered the journalistic field as columnists, correspondents or stringers, editors and, in one high profile case, a Ministry of Information official. The metamorphosis happened openly and underground, and it was caused by poverty, greed, the desire to migrate, disenchantment with economic challenges, state-sponsored repression of the media and the desire to secure one’s privileged position in the journalistic social field.

Survey data on gender in relation to youth political discussion and involvement at a Public University in Ghana.

This article presents extensive description of survey data on the political participation of 913 male and female undergraduate students at the University of Ghana. Multi-stage and other sampling procedures were employed to collect the data that took place between 2016 and 2017. Data were analysed using frequencies, percentages and cross-tabulations for each gender separately. The findings revealed that females reported discussing politics more frequently with others than their male counterparts, in addition, ethnicity significantly associated with political discussion and religion significantly associated with political involvement for females. However, males expressed interest and involvement in political activities at both national and student levels more frequently than their female counterparts. The findings support much of the observations in the political behavior literature. Despite the gender imbalance, respondents were partial to engagement in student politics than national politics. It is, therefore, advisable that political parties focus their recruitment efforts on university campuses.

Los Ijwān al-ṣafā’ contra el estado abasí. Acción política en relación con los diversos estados de su época

En este artículo se investiga la identidad ideológica de los autores de las Rasā’il Ijwān al-ṣafā’ y cuestiona la posible autoría de las otras obras atribuidas a los Hermanos de la pureza (al-Risāla al-ŷāmi‘a, y la Ŷāmi‘at al-ŷāmi‘a). En base al texto de estas obras de carácter teosófico, se aportan nuevos datos que esclarecen la postura política de los autores en contra del estado abasí, y se precisa su tendencia chií en contra de los califas abasíes de su época. Estos nuevos datos señalan la implicación de los Ijwān al-ṣafā’ en la acción política a través de la predicación del fin del “estado del mal” (dawlat ahl al-šarr) y el comienzo del “estado del bien” (dawlat ahl al-jayr). Se analiza el debate surgido acerca la relación de los Ijwān al-ṣafā’ con diferentes corrientes políticas opositoras al régimen abasí, y su vínculo con estados chiíes (cármatas, buyíes y fatimíes).

Die in Polen ausgeblendete Zone. Hinweise auf die ostdeutsche Wende-Literatur

German literature has been present in Polish cultural reality for a long time − although with variable popularity − due to the translations that produced Polish versions available for wider audience, including readers unfamiliar with German language. Yet, the article discusses a branch of German literature still absent in Poland – the so-called Post-GDR Literature, written after the fall of the German Democratic Republic and the German reunification. The Post-GDR Literature addresses a variety of issues related to the GDR, idealizes or critically describesits reality often perceived by writers as the reality of their childhood or youth. The author of the article takes into consideration the fact that on Polish book market after 1989 this literature is almost unavailable despite numerous efforts of translators and publishers and their initiatives aimed at popularization of German literature in Poland. Thus, the article subsequently discusses texts (Was bleibt by Christa Wolf, Der Abspannby Hermann Kant and Heldenwiewir by Thomas Brussig) significant enough to deserve unabridged Polish versions. The three writers represent different genres, aesthetics, generations and level of involvement in political activity. Nonetheless, their works all inspired crucial discussions, attitudes or events and are therefore of vital importance for Polish readers willing to fully understand the reality of Eastern Germany and the impact of its legacy on current times.

Politically Active Youth: Strategies of Political Participation in the Context of the Social Future Image

The research focuses on a certain aspect of political activity of young people – the image of the social future. The target sector is young people who actively manifest themselves in the social and political sphere: pro-government and opposition-minded groups of young people. The image of the social future is considered as one of the key components of the social well-being of young people reflecting their ideals and expectations. At the same time, the choice of the strategy of active political involvement of young people is analyzed through the prism of subjective states – mood, well-being, expectations. Two groups of respondents took part in the survey: activists of pro-government organizations, as well as regional youth parliaments, governments, youth public chambers (n = 300); representatives of modern youth protest, primarily volunteers of the "Progress party" and "Libertarian party" (n = 300). Ccomparing the images of the desired and expected future of politically active youth, a mismatch between their social ideals and the expected direction of events in the future was revealed. It mainly concerns the prospects for economic development and is much more pronounced among opposition activists. For opposition youth, the contradiction between the desired and expected future, in addition to the dissonance in economic development, affects the sphere of legal relations: an important landmark is a humanistic society tolerant of minorities, and the most likely expected event is the restriction of the rights and freedoms of citizens. The imbalance between social ideals and social expectations causes pessimistic attitudes among young people and dissatisfaction with the current situation in various spheres of life. Such circumstances of the choice of the strategy of political participation as orientation to the social ideal, ideological and political identification, readiness for conflict behavior are revealed. All of them simultaneously act as watershed lines between groups of pro-government and opposition activists. The image of the social future determines the choice of the strategy of political participation implemented by young people. "Active adaptation", more typical for a group of pro-government youth, involves the use of the mechanisms proposed by the authorities to engage them in politics. The "activist-protest" strategy is implemented by opposition-minded youth, its important indicator is the willingness to go to conflict in various life situations. As a forecast, the authors put forward the following thesis: with the declining level of social well-being, among politically active youth, the number of transitions from state-approved forms of political participation to protest ones will increase.

An INS special forum: US intelligence officers’ involvement in political activities in the Trump era

On 5 August 2016, former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Michael Morell, in an op-ed in the New York Times, endorsed Hillary Clinton for president of the United States over...

Social Workers as Elected Officials: Advocacy at the Doorstep

ABSTRACT This article highlights the importance of social work participation in the political arena through the seeking of elected office. Social workers have a rich history of involvement in political activities, yet little is known about social workers holding elected office. Through a review of the literature, this article has found that social workers are often hesitant to run for elected office due to many barriers. This article focuses on the recurring perceived barrier that social work skills do not prepare professionals for political positions. Using the author’s personal experience as an elected official, this article highlights how core social work values and skills can, in fact, uniquely prepare social workers to become involved in the ultimate advocacy role as an elected official. Areas for enhancing social work education regarding political action and preparation are discussed.

Women’s Political Participation in Bangladesh in 2008-2018: Status Quo, Obstacles and Future Prospects

In the contemporary world, the involvement of women in parliament is necessary. However, not all nations uphold the idea of gender equality. Many countries are still trapped by their values and norms such as the patriarchy system. Bangladesh is an example of a country where the patriarchy system has become an obstacle for women to participate in political activities. The current fact has shown its progressivity to involve women in political activities. Therefore, the question arises as of how the future prospect for women in Bangladesh to be able to participate and involve in the political and parliament activities. This study uses the theory of feminism to examine women’s demand that will affect Bangladesh’s future policies on women’s involvement in political activities. This paper will discuss the current condition and the obstacles faced by the women in Bangladesh regarding political activities. Some obstacles such as women dual role, prohibition of women leadership in Islam, absent of women friendly electoral system as well as present negative women psychology of political culture. The method used in this study is a qualitative based research method. This paper concludes demands appears from the women in Bangladesh to increase their involvement in political activities.

The Wilsonian moment: Japan 1912–1952

AbstractThe aim of this special issue is to give a new spin to the study of the impact of the liberal Wilsonian moment on Japan, with a focus on the interwar period in a broader historical span. The Wilsonian liberal international order encompasses its fledgling (1914–1945), formative (1945–1952), competitive (1952–1989), and maturity (1989–2018) periods. In this special issue, the four articles deal with the first and second periods. Yutaka Harada and Frederick Dickinson adopt this longer perspective – not just President Wilson's moment of Fourteen Points – each focusing on (1) the vigor of Japan's industrialization and open economic policy in 1914–1931 and (2) the basic continuity between the prewar and postwar periods in terms of normative and institutional commitments with the fledgling, if volatile, liberal international order such as those with the Versailles and Washington treaties after World War I, the war prohibition treaty of 1928, and the naval disarmament treaty of 1930. Ryoko Nakano and Takashi Inoguchi take up the re-examination of two tiny minorities of liberal academics, Yanaihara Tadao and Nambara Shigeru, who at most kept their integrity. Nakano recasts Yanaihara's academic life with its intellectual agony of believing in a national self-determination policy for Japanese colonies. Inoguchi underlines Nambara's stoic self-discipline under wartime dictatorship and active political involvement under US occupation regarding the newly drafted Japanese Constitution. An emphasis is placed on the considerable positive influence of Wilsonian ideas on Japan, an influence that faded in the late 1930s, but re-emerged with considerable vigor after 1945.

Political (self-)education and the neo-republican perspective

In recent years, political theory has benefited from a neo-republican perspective that brought to the fore the conception of a ‘republican democracy’ which assumes a robust public sphere, civic involvement, and vigilance, as well as a neo-Roman conception of liberty understood as the absence of arbitrary power. Neo-republicanism, however, has not engaged much in a wider consideration of the importance of political education in democratic societies. This article presents an approach to political education that can be inspiring for both substantive and instrumental neo-republican political theories as well as democratic theory and practice. It considers political education as primarily self-education, a process of learning that aims at greater political awareness, empowerment, and better judgment on political issues. As such, political (self-)education can be seen as liberating and as a necessary condition of active political involvement, community service, citizenship, civic intelligence and political liberty.

Amerykański i brytyjski ruch studencki i jego wizerunek w filmie

Teza: Niniejszy artykuł przedstawia genezę i krótki zarys historii rozwoju ruchu studenckiego w Ameryce i Wielkiej Brytanii oraz jego wizerunek w filmach z gatunku college movies, które pojawiły się w XX wieku, głównie w Ameryce.
 Omówione koncepcje: Zagadnienia dotyczące przynależności do korporacji studenckich, klubów sportowych i uczestnictwa w innych zajęciach nadobowiązkowych znalazły odzwierciedlenie w filmach z wyżej wymienionego gatunku.
 Wyniki i wnioski: W filmach studenckich odzwierciedlane są głównie bractwa i działalność sportowa. Natomist uczestnictwo w wydawaniu gazet i czasopism w kampusach, od lat 30-tych i 50-tych XX wieku, w klubach muzycznych i teatralnych, samorządzie studenckim oraz zaangażowanie w działalność polityczną są zazwyczaj wątkami pobocznymi w stosunku do głównej fabuły. Przedstwiony wizerunek jest więc niepełny i streotypowy, co ma znaczący wpływ na postrzeganie anglosaskiej rzeczywistości akademickiej przez społeczności na całym świecie.
 Oryginalność/wartość poznawcza podejścia: Przegląd dostępnej literatury związanej z tematem pozwala wyciągnąć wniosek, że dotychczasowe badania nie analizowały zbiorczo przykładów z kina amerykańskiego i brytyjskiego i nie porównywały ich z rzeczywistym wizerunkiem. Zagadnienia te są przedmiotem szerszych badań na temat wizerunku środowiska akademickiego i uniwersytetu jako instytucji na podstawie wybranych brytyjskich i amerykańskich utworów literackich z gatunku powieści akademickiej/kampusowej jak i filmów typu „college movies”, w większości należących do kina amerykańskiego, oraz poszukiwań śladów powieści akademickiej w literaturze polskiej i kinie polskim.

Variations in Volunteer Use among Human Service Organizations in the USA

Knowledge of volunteering and volunteer management requires understanding from both individual and organizational perspectives. However, most existing research focuses on individual volunteers and the supply side of volunteering, leaving the demand side substantially understudied. The present study examines the organizational perspective of volunteering, focusing on the differences in volunteer use among nonprofit organizations. In particular, this study tests how various organizational characteristics predict the size of the volunteer program in human service organizations in the USA. The results show that, controlling for revenue and employment size, the size of volunteer program is negatively associated with the proportion of business income, while it is not significantly associated with the proportion of charitable contributions and grants. This finding provides supports for the concerns that increasing commercialization of nonprofit organizations will weaken the role of volunteers in human service delivery. The results also reveal that the extent of volunteer use is positively associated with the culture of good governance within the organization as well as organizational involvement in political activities.

Impartiality of the Chair: Politics versus Convention in New Brunswick's 55th Legislature

This paper will examine the nature of Speaker impartiality within the British Parliamentary system by examining the political involvement and the casting vote of Speakers. This will attempt to historically contextualize the role of the Speaker in the province of New Brunswick and explain the institutional circumstances of the unusual conduct of Speakers Bev Harrison and Michael ‘Tanker’ Malley during the third session of the 55th Legislative Assembly. This paper argues that the source of this irregularity was the close seat count between opposition and government members. This issue illustrates the difficulties of smaller Legislative Assemblies reaching the convention established by the British Parliament respecting the impartiality of a Speaker where a Speaker is apolitical, thereby divorced from partisan politics. In the British convention, which serves as the fount of parliamentary practice, the Speaker refrains from any active political involvement, and in return the Speaker is uncontested in upcoming parliamentary elections.

Quotas and Gender Gaps in Political Participation among Established Industrial European Democracies: Distinguishing Within- and Across-Country Effects

This paper proposes to investigate the influence of legislative quotas on gender differences in political participation by analyzing the within- and across-country effects of quotas. Gender quotas can signal to women that their presence in politics is welcome, leading to a subsequent increase in their involvement in political activities. This change in political behavior should not be reproduced in men; thus, when gender quotas are present, the gap between men’s and women’s participation narrows. Using the European Values Survey and data from eighteen European democracies, this paper demonstrates that this indeed occurs for some political activities when gender gaps are compared before and after the introduction of quotas within countries. This result, however, is not replicated for across-country analyses. European countries without legislative gender quotas tend to have smaller gender gaps than countries with them. This result is explained by referring to the context of the adoption of gender quotas.

Still men’s parties? Gender and the radical right in comparative perspective

This framing paper introduces the symposium on gender and the radical right. With the exception of a few recent studies, gender issues have received little attention in research on the European radical right. The purpose of this symposium is to address that and examine (1) whether radical right parties are still ‘men’s parties’ – parties led and supported primarily by men and (2) to what extent and how women and women’s concerns have been included by these parties. It argues that radical right parties have changed their appeal since their origins in the 1980s. There is now evidence of the fact that radical right parties, at least in some countries, exhibit an active political involvement of women and engage in some representation of women’s concerns. This puts them in a more ‘standardised’ political position vis-à-vis other parties. Given the current lack of focus on this topic, and given the recent gendered changes in radical right parties, this symposium stresses the academic and political importance of studying gender relations in radical right politics.

The role of U.S. and her multinational private companies in the Nigeria-Biafra war: beyond the threshold of neutrality

This work is an attempt to show how the U.S covertly meddled into the Nigeria-Biafra War despite her much taunted ‘neutrality’ in the conflict. No doubt, the U.S did not grant any official arms sales to either Nigeria or the secessionist Biafra, and regarded the war as ‘internal conflict’ that should be resolved internally. Many a literature on the Nigeria-Biafra conflict had taken this to absolve U.S of any form of active political involvement in the thirty months war. However, a critical survey of policy actions and activities of the U.S State Department via its Embassy in Lagos and U.S multinational private companies in Nigeria during the war respectively, casts serious doubts on the propriety and correctness of the U.S neutrality in the conflict. Using the ‘linkage politics’ understanding of foreign policy as the most relevant conceptual framework of analysis, and hugely relying on secondary sources of information with available declassified document, the paper argues that the U.S was partisan, and indirectly supported Nigeria as against Biafra. Therefore, it belies, and refuses the contention that ‘U.S did not get politically involved and maintained neutrality throughout the conflict’. Keywords: Neutrality, War, Internal conflict, Involvement, and Foreign policy

Participation in the Wake of Adversity: Blame Attribution and Policy-Oriented Evaluations

In this paper we investigate to what extent perceptions of economic conditions, policy-oriented evaluations, and blame attribution affected Californians’ involvement in political activities in 2010. We use a statistical methodology that allows us to study not only the behavior of the average citizen, but also the behavior of “types” of citizens with latent predispositions that incline them toward participation or abstention. The 2010 election is an excellent case study, because it was a period when citizens were still suffering the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis and many were concerned about the state’s budgetary crisis. We find that individuals who blamed one of the parties for the problems with the budget process, and who held a position on the 2010 Affordable Care Act, were often considerably more likely to participate. We also find, however, that the impact of economic evaluations, positions on the health care reform, and blame attributions was contingent on citizens’ latent participation propensities and depended on the class of political activity.