Local Political Participation Research Articles

Indigenous environmental justice through coproduction of mining restoration supply chains in Australia

Mining activities often cause displacement and disruption of Indigenous socio‐cultural relations to land, water, biodiversity, and sacred entities. Due to the high disturbance and degradation that occurs as a result of mining on Indigenous lands, mine restoration and closure (MR&C) must mobilize the political agency of Indigenous Australians and provide enduring benefits beyond the life‐of‐mine. Here, we demonstrate that Indigenous engagements with mining restoration supply chains in Australia can only succeed if institutionalized socio‐environmental inequalities are recognized and dismantled. Through environmental justice lenses, we examine critical mine restoration injustices and how Indigenous Australian participation can energize environmental self‐determination. We analyze emerging restoration supply chains through the native seed collection and production activities as opportunities for nurturing transformative local collaborations, Indigenous entrepreneurship, and political participation. Our analysis shows the potential for community practices to coproduce MR&C through enduring partnerships, Indigenous‐led organizations, and plural knowledge systems. Indigenous Australian leadership in coordinating investments, collaborations, techniques, and business operations is critical to transforming MR&C into democratic and equitable plans and actions on Indigenous lands where mining operates. When aligned with progressive institutional changes, restoration interventions can potentially strengthen environmental self‐determination for Indigenous Australian political control over the customary use and stewardship of their lands.

A Situational Analysis of Women’s Leadership in South African Politics

Abstract Women are under-represented in South African’s political decision-making structures and processes. The literature review explores various factors responsible for suppressing women’s participation in the political context, such as social (stereotypical mindset) and economical (financial dependence), which are deemed the most dominant ones. However, the lack of political will is a factor that cannot be ignored. This shows in election manifestos of various political parties where the gender mainstreaming aspect is missing. Drawing from the empowerment approach of the feminist theory, the findings revealed that women's participation in local government politics is still to be achieved due to limited opportunities for women, and negative attitudes toward politics, including the politics of patronage. The conclusions derived from the desktop study indicated the need for gender diversity and inclusivity in government departments that include courts, executive and parliament. Allowing women to define their destiny in the political sphere helps ensure women's representation and gender equality. Recommendations are offered to the government of South Africa to raise awareness of gender equality and empowerment, which is crucial for creating women's participation in local government politics and vital for attaining inclusive communities.

Chain of Gold: Greek Rhetoric in the Roman Empire by Susan Jarratt

Reviewed by: Chain of Gold: Greek Rhetoric in the Roman Empire by Susan Jarratt Anna Peterson Susan Jarratt, Chain of Gold: Greek Rhetoric in the Roman Empire. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2019. 200 pp. Coined by Philostratus in the early third century CE, the label “Second Sophistic” (c. 50-250 CE) is increasingly recognized as an imperfect periodic designation. Does it refer exclusively to the tradition of epideictic rhetoric as described by Philostratus? Or can it be expanded to include the full range of Greek literary production during the first three centuries CE? At its core the term reflects feelings of belatedness and nostalgia, such that the common narrative of the period has become one in which an elite Hellenic identity was defined above all by paideia (“education” or “culture”). While this rooting of an elite Greek identity in the classical past is well recognized as a response to Roman hegemony,1 recent scholarship has begun to expand on this conventional view, pointing to elements of continuity both with earlier Hellenistic literature and the literature of the fourth century CE.2 Jarratt’s monograph Chain of Gold consequently sets a tall task for itself in once again addressing the cultural politics of the Second Sophistic. It is an ambitious and thought-provoking work, even if in the end it does not completely succeed in what it sets out to do. At its core, it argues for a reappraisal of the “second sophistic habit of dwelling in the past” as something that was not “monologic and static” but “varied and dynamic” and that offered the writers and performers of the period “a politically protected way of ‘talking back’ to empire.” (17) For Jarratt, the obsession with the past that has come to define this period of Greek literature is not a simple matter of nostalgia but rather of critical memory, one that allowed the authors of this period to reimagine and keep alive a deliberative civic space. Jarratt’s aim in this book is not at its core an entirely new idea. That said, what makes her work so thought provoking is her desire to locate “a colonial counterdiscourse” in a broad range of works (38). Moreover, she is certainly correct that too often classicists have been overly hesitant about reading the literature of the period through the lens of postcolonial theory (3). In addition to an introductory chapter outlining the monograph’s methodology, Chain of Gold develops this argument across six case studies, covering respectively Dio Chyrsostom’s Euboean Discourse (Chapter 2), Aelius Aristides’ Roman Oration (Chapter 3), Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana [End Page 103] (Chapter 4) and Imagines (Chapter 5), Heliodorus’ Aithiopika (Chapter 6), and Libanius’ To Those Who Call Him Tiresome (Chapter 7). Generally speaking, this is a nice mixture of well-trod and often overlooked texts. Her strongest chapters are those which connect what she calls rhetorical vision to the post-colonial concerns outlined in the monograph’s first chapter. For example, her discussion in Chapter 3 of Aristides’ Roman Oration explores how “the ‘ sophist . . . draws on the resources of [Homeric] epic to enhance his powers of visualization,” providing his audience not only “a phantasm of [Rome’s] imperium but also a techne of viewing” (47). Likewise, Chapter 5 reads Philostratus’ Imagines—an intriguing collection of descriptions of works of art—as an exploration in rhetorical vision that pushes the limits of ekphrasis. Treating the text as a museum of sorts, Jarratt acts as curator, bringing out how the text handles reoccurring images of youth, women, and different ethnicities, among others. This is Jarratt’s most successful chapter, in part thanks to the inclusion of an appendix, which maps out the paintings in relation to one another. In a few instances, however, Jarratt does not make full use of the ancient evidence. The clearest example of this comes in her discussion of Dio Chrysostom’s Euboean Discourse (Or. 7). In this speech, Dio professes that he will narrate a personal experience, relating how, after being shipwrecked in Euboea, he was taken in by a huntsman, who recounted his own troubled participation in local politics. The huntsman’s tale then prompts Dio to expound on...

Recovering Voice: Is Out-of-District Giving a Substitute for Local Political Participation?

Recovering Voice: Is Out-of-District Giving a Substitute for Local Political Participation?

The Welfare Consequences of Centralization: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in Switzerland

Abstract Many countries are reallocating tasks and powers to more central levels of government. To identify centralization's welfare effects, I use a difference-in-differences design that relies on time and cross-cantonal variation in the implementation of centralization reforms in Switzerland. I find that centralization provokes significant decreases in residents' life satisfaction. I identify one mechanism driving the effect: the procedural disutility that individuals experience from having less influence over the formulation of political decisions. This effect is largest among individuals with higher expected benefits from being involved in the political decision process, with detrimental effects on local political participation.

RETRACTED: Democracy and local political participation in Sumedang, Indonesia

Indonesia is a country that implements a democratic political system. As such, the involvement of society in the political process becomes very important. The purpose of this article is to research the democracy and local political participation in Sumedang. The study uses qualitative methods with primary data obtained from field observations and direct interviews of several informants. Additionally, the researchers use secondary data as a complement to the analysis. The results of this study indicate that the community at the local level truly understands the importance of political participation. However, due to disappointment in government performance, a part of the community has become discouraged from participating in the political process conducted by local governments. Several factors hinder efforts to encourage political participation. These include limited access to political aspirations that are still rare and the process of political education that is still low.

“We need to make our voices heard”: Claiming space for young people’s everyday environmental politics in northern Finland

Recent years have seen a critical shift in young people’s political participation, as young people around the world have mobilized to demand greater climate actions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork that consist of participant observation and 47 qualitative interviews with 15–16-year-olds residing in rural and urban areas in northern Finland, the paper contributes rural, regional and mundane perspectives on the topic of young people’s environmental politics. The paper sheds light on the myriad of ways in which young people practice environmental politics and construct their environmental citizenship and also discusses young people’s political action in relation to the friction and resistance their participation stirs up in the local communities. Although promoting active citizenship is a stated goal of the Finnish education system, young people’s active participation in mundane and local environmental politics is not always embraced in local communities. The paper argues for better recognition of and support for young people’s everyday environmental politics and for youth participation as a way to spark wider social, cultural, and political change.

Peasants, Lords, and State: Comparing Peasant Conditions in Scandinavia and the Eastern Alpine Region, 1000‐1750, ed. Tore Iversen, John Ragnar Myking, and Stefan Sonderegger. The Northern World, 89. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020, xii, 375 pp.

Following two previous volumes on peasants’ relationship to land control, governmental structures, and self-determination resulting from an international project funded by the Norwegian Research Council (2004‐2007), this collection of essays poses a challenge to once prevalent historiographical interpretations of a supposed Scandinavian – and particularly Norwegian – condition, in which agricultural laborers in the northern periphery purportedly enjoyed greater degrees of land ownership, control of resources, and political capital within the local milieu than their contemporaries to the South. To that end, the editors have developed a geographical, more narrowly a topographical and environmental, framework for a comparison between Norway and the West Norse areas of settlement (with a smaller role played by Denmark and Sweden when possible), on the one hand, and the Eastern Alpine region (primarily Tyrol and Switzerland with additional counterexamples in Lower Austria, southern Germany, and elsewhere in Central Europe), on the other. After an introductory chapter outlining the historiographical background and scope of the project, the first part spans three chapters on comparative local examinations of slavery and degrees of freedom, types of land ownership and control, and forms of local political participation, followed by a conclusion; the second offers four chapters on the national historiographical traditions challenged by the comparative studies in the first part and subsequently revised on a local basis here, namely in Norway, Tyrol, various regions of Germany, and Switzerland. (On an organizational note, the table of contents lists four ‘parts,’ the first of which contains only the introduction, while the fourth comprises what are strangely labelled appendices.)

“PLANTÃO DA CIDADE”: a study of local political participation and the constitution of subjectivities through Facebook

The purpose of this article is to discuss the act of political participation by citizens mediated by communication technologies. It is an effort to understand the potential scenarios and paths for the promotion of citizen participation in the sphere of public power. The investigation took place through the observation of a specific space on Facebook: the Plantão da Cidade group, conceived in the municipality of Ouro Preto to enable political discussions. The proposed exam highlights the possibilities offered by the online environment to ensure the political participation of ordinary people in municipal management decisions and the mobilization of local community actions.

Does Property Ownership Lead to Participation in Local Politics? Evidence from Property Records and Meeting Minutes

Homeowners and renters have participated in politics at different rates throughout American history, but does becoming a property owner motivate an individual to participate in local politics? I combine deed-level property records in California and Texas with an original dataset on individual comments in local city council meetings to study the role of property ownership in shaping costly forms of political behavior, and I document large inequalities in who participates at city council meetings. I also link property records to individual-level contribution records and administrative voter files and find that becoming a property owner increases an individual’s political activity. Over and above voting in local elections, property ownership motivates individuals to participate in local city council meetings and donate to candidates. These findings illustrate how the experience of homeownership leads property owners to become much more active in local politics.

Entrepreneur Foreign Study Experience and Firm Innovation: Institutions and Resources

Research in the international business and social psychology literature has explicitly or implicitly adopted the intellectual capital or developmental perspective and demonstrated a positive relationship between entrepreneur foreign study experience and creativity and innovation. In a departure, we argue that entrepreneur foreign study experience does not necessarily benefit firm innovation. Adopting institutional and resource substitution perspectives, we examine conditions under which the positive relationship found in prior research may or may not hold. We argue that institutional forces condition the extent to which intellectual capital associated with foreign study experience benefits innovation, while resources via local connections and political participation substitute such intellectual capital. Using a unique large dataset of private firm entrepreneurs in China, we found that returnee entrepreneur participation in political system, membership in communist party, and firm Guanxi orientation weakened the positive effect of foreign study experience on firm innovation. Contrary to our prediction, local government support for private business attenuated rather than strengthened the relationship.

Políticas públicas y etnicidad

El presente escrito explora la articulación existente entre la etnicidad y el Estado a partir del análisis de dos organizaciones indígenas urbanas: el “Consejo Indígena de Almirante Brown” -de Bueno Aires- y el “Consejo de Lonkos” -de La Pampa- . Indagaremos acerca de las estrategias que ambos consejos llevaron a cabo tanto para incrementar la visibilización local como su participación política al interior de la estructura municipal para repensar los procesos de negociación alcance y resistencia de la práctica política indígena.

“Grandma is the Mayor”: Women’s Participation in Local Politics in Alberta

Based on a survey of 198 women serving in local government in the Canadian province of Alberta, our study investigates the motivations of women to serve in local government. This paper explores the relationship between community, Alberta’s conservative political culture, family roles, and the idea of giving back. In doing so, we argue that although family remains an important consideration for women considering local office, this is balanced by the strong desire of the women to serve and better their communities.

Local Political Participation in Japan: A Case Study of Oita by Dani Daigle Kida

Reviewed by: Local Political Participation in Japan: A Case Study of Oita by Dani Daigle Kida Yusaku Horiuchi (bio) Local Political Participation in Japan: A Case Study of Oita. By Dani Daigle Kida. Routledge, London, 2019. x, 148 pages. $155.00, cloth; $47.95, paper; $57.95, E-book. Political participation is perhaps one of the most widely studied topics among political scientists. When it comes to political participation in Japan, however, we still have a range of questions that require further investigation. Dani Daigle Kida makes a new contribution to this literature by shedding light on various underinvestigated forms of political participation at the local level, in particular, contacting a politician directly, attending a public meeting, and campaigning for a candidate. She also examines how the recent policy revision to lower the voting age has changed the civic education curriculum and discusses the extent to which this change may, or may not, affect young citizens' political attitudes. Kida's research is primarily based on her five-year field research in the City of Oita in Kyushu. As she notes, Gerald Curtis's Election Campaigning Japanese Style, one of the most influential studies in the literature of Japanese politics, is also based on field research in the prefecture of Oita.1 In addition to administering interviews and undertaking participant observation, Kida fielded a survey with 158 respondents to examine a range of questions about citizens' political attitudes and behavior. The main question Kida intends to answer is: "why do Japanese participate politically?" (p. 4). More specifically, she examines the following three questions (p. 6; also p. 124): "In what ways do citizens acting individually or in groups attempt to exact change and/or influence public policy? How does the government/bureaucracy engage citizens in political participation? What is the relationship between political participation and attitudes toward government?" By examining these questions, she presents a rather bleak picture of Japanese citizens' local political participation. Namely, Japanese citizens do not—and often cannot—actively participate in local policy processes, do not have a sense of efficacy, and do not trust the government. Following the introductory chapter, in chapter 2, Kida examines various political actors and their interactions with citizens and reaches the following conclusion. [T]here is little incentive on the part of the individual city council members and bureaucracy to engage citizens in citizen participation in the decision-making [End Page 434] process via town meetings, citizen panels and forums as it would undermine the bond that politicians spend considerable time cultivating among themselves, citizens, and industries. Due to the lack of institutionalized space for citizens to participate locally in policy decisions, citizens, when trying to effect change or influence policy, are forced into default client-patron relationships with individual politicians in the absence of ability to directly affect policy, which in turn leads to a low sense of efficacy. (pp. 33–34) Chapter 3 further examines institutional constraints that discourage or prohibit citizens from participating in policy processes. Kida's in-depth description of town meetings and her examination of various websites are helpful for us to understand a range of constraints. Kida repeatedly claims that the government does, indeed, solicit citizens' opinions via various channels but there is no transparent way for citizens to know how the government considers these opinions and whether these opinions lead to decisions to introduce or change policies. She argues that these barriers discourage local political participation and reduce a sense of efficacy. Chapter 4 focuses on citizens' support for a political candidate by belonging to a support group for that candidate, known as kōenkai. For this chapter's research, Kida undertook one-on-one interviews with young kōenkai members. She points out the importance of a kōenkai's role in building personal and business networks, but questions whether networking is relevant to the aggregation of interests in particular policy issues. If kōenkai activities are not related to policymaking, she argues, such a type of participation could be defined as "unacknowledged participation" (p. 72). The main argument here is similar to the arguments in previous chapters. She writes, "Although the highly organized (koenkai) group is filled with 'bodies' to participate...

Towards Normality: Planning-related Protests and Reactions by Planning

The paper argues for a stronger distinction within planning protests, which is today an everyday part of planning practice. Furthermore, it is argued that the diversity of planning protest can also be used for differentiated reactions of planning practitioners. It is possible and sensible to adopt theories from protest and social movements research to better understand protest in planning, yet specifications for planning-related protest are needed. Planning protests are understood as collective action and form of local political participation, which takes place independently participation offers and has a relation to local spatial planning. Based on an empirical survey and statistical analysis of more than four hundred planning-related citizen protests in Berlin between 2005 and 2015, supported by two qualitative case studies, a typology of nine protest types will be developed, that is specific in time and place. The causes and claims articulated in the framing of protesters are understood as alternative approaches to solving planning problems. In particular, a distinction is made between situational and planning-dependent as well as initiative and reactive types of protest. Differences in content appear to be of special importance for the current protests, but also underline its political character. Yet, they are only part of the phenomenological diversity of planning protest and reactions therefore are to be differentiated for every individual case. This will be highlighted with regard to protests that are organised either by affected or unaffected citizens.

Women’s Participation in Local Politics in Agona East Constituency of Ghana

Women’s Participation in Local Politics in Agona East Constituency of Ghana

Urban Slums in a Datafying Milieu: Challenges for Data-Driven Research Practice

With the ongoing trend of urban datafication and growing use of data/evidence to shape developmental initiatives by state as well as non-state actors, this exploratory case study engages with the complex and often contested domains of data use. This study uses on-the-ground experience of working with informal settlements in Indian cities to examine how information value chains work in practice and the contours of their power to intervene in building an agenda of social justice into governance regimes. Using illustrative examples from ongoing action-oriented projects of Mahila Housing Trust in India such as the Energy Audit Project, Slum Mapping Exercise and women-led climate resilience building under the Global Resilience Partnership, it raises questions about challenges of making effective linkages between data, knowledge and action in and for slum communities in the global South by focussing on two issues. First, it reveals dilemmas of achieving data accuracy when working with slum communities in developing cities where populations are dynamically changing, and where digitisation and use of ICT has limited operational currency. The second issue focuses on data ownership. It foregrounds the need for complementary inputs and the heavy requirement for support systems in informal settlements in order to translate data-driven knowledge into actionable forms. Absence of these will blunt the edge of data-driven community participation in local politics. Through these intersecting streams, the study attempts to address how entanglements between southern urbanism, datafication, governance and social justice diversify the discourse on data justice. It highlights existing hurdles and structural hierarchies within a data-heavy developmental register emergent across multiple cities in the global South where data-driven governmental regimes interact with convoluted urban forms and realities.

Local public administration as facilitator of political youth participation – good intentions and institutional shortcomings

ABSTRACTThis article examines a model for facilitating youth participation in local politics in Sweden. The Swedish youth councils are the responsibility of local authorities and they are designed to encourage political and civic interests among young people. These councils administrated by local bureaucracies are analyzed using institutional logics theory to determine the intentions, organization and outcomes of youth participation. The conclusions show that the institutional logic of the local public administration tends to dominate over the democratic logic of political participation for the young. The findings are based on mainly qualitative data from a two-year research project in Sweden.

Attitudes Towards Women’s Participation in Local Politics in South Asia

Despite men’s traditional dominance in politics, survey data from selected geographical areas in India, Nepal and Bhutan show that attitudes towards women’s participation in local politics are overwhelmingly positive. Attitudes cluster along three major dimensions: perceptions of women’s capacities to join politics, the consequences of political engagement for the family’s reputation, and consequences of women’s political participation for their domestic responsibilities. Households with high economic status and political leaders are more positive whilst education, organisational membership, and living in urban areas do not show a consistent effect across the three dimensions, so we do not find a ‘modernity effect’. Despite variations in where and how women participate and in socio-economic and cultural contexts, attitudes are consistently positive, indicating that explanations for attitudinal changes are varied and complex. Nepal’s high score may be due to the political, social and military mobilisation in the last generation, while it is likely that reservation in India and women’s relative equality in Bhutan have contributed towards positive attitudes. Data are drawn from a survey of 6647 local level politicians, civil society leaders and ordinary citizens, and from interviews.

Influential Factors towards Political Participation of Thai Local Senior Citizens

The purposes of this study were to investigate the levels of knowledge and political participation of local senior citizens and discriminant factors inhibiting the participation in local politics of senior citizens. The population of this quantitative research was senior citizens aged over 60 years old in Nakhon Pathom province. The sample size of 420 senior citizens was drawn by a multi-stage random sampling technique. A questionnaire was used as a research instrument. The findings revealed that a majority of senior citizens participated in a local politics at a low-to-moderate level (60.95%), followed by a high level (39.05%). Regarding their knowledge about political participation, the findings revealed that both groups of participants were most aware about rights in political participation. For political participation, both groups showed that they had low engagement in political auditing and local politics activities. Discriminant analysis of two groups revealed influencing predictors of local political participation among senior citizens in the following order: were (1) knowledge of duties, (2) knowledge of freedoms, (3) being informed about political participation, (4) knowledge of rights, and (5) income. The discriminant analysis of influential factors on local political participation of senior citizens had its discriminant power at a high level of 80.70%. The study revealed that the government must promote and prioritize political participation by providing knowledge of political rights, duties, and freedoms.