National Political Context Research Articles

In search of a living wage in Southeast Asia

PurposeDebates over the definition, processes and outcomes of minimum and “living” wages are heated and often politically contentious in garment-producing countries. Internationally, there have been various initiatives to promote and support the implementation of a living wage for workers in labour-intensive manufacturing, ranging from corporate-driven social responsibility and multi-stakeholder initiatives to the long-standing living wage campaign of the global unions. One prominent regional initiative is the Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA). The purpose of this paper is to assess its reach and effect in Southeast Asia.Design/methodology/approachA living wage campaign is assessed with reference to Indonesia and Cambodia, two important garment manufacturing countries in Southeast Asia. The paper draws on data collected in interviews with garment manufacturers, brand representatives, trade unionists and labour NGO activists, including members of the AFWA Steering Committee in Indonesia and Cambodia, complemented by a systematic review of documents and reports produced by the AFWA.FindingsAs the paper shows, despite a series of initiatives, the Asia Floor Wage has failed to gain traction in Cambodia or Indonesia. This is so, the paper argues, because national economic, political and institutional contexts are the primary drivers of the strategies and priorities of constituent organisations, governments and industry stakeholders. In the absence of robust local and regional coalitions of trade unions, efforts towards a common and coordinated regional approach to living wages are thus unlikely to gain traction.Originality/valueTo a large extent, the literature on the concepts and practices associated with the living wage has focussed on developed rather than developing countries. This paper extends the literature by providing a systematic examination of a transnational wage campaign in developing Asian countries.

Parque do Flamengo: projetar a cidade, desenhando patrimônio

RESUMO Trata-se de uma narrativa sobre o processo de patrimonialização do Parque do Flamengo, no Rio de Janeiro, tombado em 1965 pelo Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional - Iphan. O Parque foi projetado pelo arquiteto Affonso Eduardo Reidy e o paisagista Roberto Burle Marx, ligados à “escola carioca” de arquitetura moderna. O artigo estabelece conexões entre esse processo e a constituição do campo arquitetônico no Brasil, abordando as políticas de proteção de bens arquitetônicos e paisagísticos modernos promovidas pelo Iphan. Essas análises estão situadas no bojo do intenso processo de reformas urbanas implementadas na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, no governo de Carlos Lacerda, primeiro governador do estado da Guanabara, no conturbado contexto político nacional de golpe militar e instalação do regime autoritário no Brasil. O artigo explora ainda os valores de patrimônio acionados na preservação do Parque do Flamengo no contexto em que o Rio de Janeiro torna-se palco de grandes eventos esportivos e recebe o título da Unesco de Patrimônio Mundial na categoria de Paisagem Cultural, ao passo que a agenda contemporânea do campo do patrimônio coloca na ordem do dia o debate sobre a sua função social. Espera-se contribuir com reflexões sobre patrimônio na chave do direito à cidade, problematizando o tradicional confronto entre preservação cultural e especulação imobiliária. O material empírico privilegiado foi o processo de tombamento do Parque do Flamengo e as atas do Conselho Consultivo do Iphan relacionadas ao assunto.

Nationalism and Populism in Radical Right Discourses in Italy and Germany

Populism is, besides nationalism, one of the common components of today’s radical right politics. In fact, populism and nationalism are often conflated when assessing radical right identity formation, ideology and discourses. This article sheds light on the relationship between nationalism and populism by empirically investigating the presence and forms of populist (people vs. elites) and nationalist (ethno-national people vs. others) frames in the discourse of radical right parties and movements in Italy and Germany. By applying a frame analysis to written documents (election flyers, party programmes, newspapers) produced between 2013 and 2016, as well as current website material (press releases, newsletters, blogs) of selected radical right organisations, this article examines how nationalism and populism interact, overlap and potentially clash. We look at how populist and nationalist frames structure the radical right’s definition of “us” and “them” and its diagnoses, prognoses and motivations for action. We find that radical right-wing forces increasingly combine populist with nationalist frames, but the forms of populism on the radical right depend on the national political context and on the type of organisation—for parties, populism has become a central feature of their discourse; social movements exhibit only a peripheral conceptualisation of populism.

Encuentros Con El Yanqui: Norteamericanización Y Cambio Cultural En Chile, 1898–1990

Encuentros Con El Yanqui: Norteamericanización Y Cambio Cultural En Chile, 1898–1990

THE DIALOGUE OF THE DEAF: EXPLORING TEXTUAL SILENCE IN STEPHEN CHIFUNYISE'S PLAY, INTIMATE AFFAIRS

This article examines Stephen Chifunyise’s calculated focus on the domestic spaces – the family, personal relationships and the psycho-sexual dilemmas at the expense of the wider national socio-economic and political context during a period in Zimbabwe that has come to be known as the “decade of crisis”. Ignoring a plethora of social, economic and political challenges such as the collapse of a welfarist state, unprecedented inflation, political violence,sycophancy and corruption among others, the dramatist chooses to focus solely on the contradictions within the home and the family. The central question with which the article grapples is the ideological motivation behind this deliberate focus by the dramatist. Using Wall’s (1989) theory of the dialogue of the deaf in conjunction with Macherey’s (1978) theory of the “unsaid” in a text, the article argues that despite the author’s calculated omission or silence on the socio-economic and political realities, the average intelligent reader is not only able to read into the dramatist’s ideological position and motive but also the ugly reality that he is trying to cover up or hide from the reader.

War Within and Without: Irish women in the First World War era

The period 1914–1918 was tumultuous in Ireland when conflict wrought by international tensions was exacerbated by a fractious domestic political scene that ultimately resulted in partition of the island into two jurisdictions: Northern Ireland, comprised of six of the nine Ulster counties, and the Free State, encompassing the remaining twenty-six counties. Both were dominions within the British Commonwealth with domestic parliaments controlling internal affairs. Neither were the desired political outcome of the various factions who had protested, taken up arms, and eventually negotiated. Women were pivotal on both sides of the political divide. For those who wished to stay in the union with Great Britain, the First World War was a chance to demonstrate loyalty and to showcase the particular contributions of women, from hosting Belgian refugees to the encouragement of enlistment of husbands, sons and friends. For those who wished to see the enactment of independence for Ireland, as promised in the 1912 Home Rule Bill and the suspended Act of 1914, the First World War provided an opportunity to enact long-held ambitions for a violent revolution, with women participating in active combat and non-combatant roles. Thus while the First World War was a pivotal moment for women globally, in Ireland it had an additional layer of complexity given the national political context. This article seeks to explore these intersections and tensions, providing an introduction to this special issue in which many facets of the war period in Ireland are explored.

‘Kakube has come to stay’: the making of a cultural festival in Northern Ghana, 1989–2015

AbstractIn Ghana, cultural festivals, usually initiated and organized by the chiefs, provide public arenas where local and regional political elites voice demands vis-à-vis central government, and where national politicians canvass for support. Festivals offer commercial opportunities, forums to promote ‘development’, and occasions for entertainment. Yet advocating for ‘our own culture’ stands out as their very raison d’être, offering a frame for cultural entrepreneurs to organize performances that express and reconfigure local styles of music and dance to fit national formats. In this article, we examine such processes of cultural creation for the Kakube Festival in Nandom, a paramount chiefdom in north-western Ghana. We analyse the cultural building blocks and their evolution during the festival's history as well as the context of changing national politics of cultural heritage in which the festival developed. We discuss the invention of a cultural festival to create local alliances and stake claims at the regional and national political level, and how the desire to assert a presence in the national political and cultural arena has transformed the ways in which local culture is defined and presented. We examine the tensions at the heart of such an event, where traditions of chiefly patronage and allegiance meet the requirements of modern political and bureaucratic systems of funding, and the criteria of excellence in cultural performance. Music and dance are essential components and we analyse the evolution and adaptation of these elements alongside the critical path management of the event that has led to its local and national profile.

Bridging language barriers, bonding against immigrants: A visual case study of transnational network publics created by far-right activists in Europe

With the growing importance of digital and social media, visual images represent an increasingly attractive medium for far-right political entrepreneurs to mobilize supporters and mainstream voters in the context of increasing polarization and widespread fears of immigrants and refugees. This article investigates how far-right activists use cartoon images poking fun at immigrants to construct a shared ethno-nationalist bond of solidarity across multilingual and transnational networks and publics. Focusing on right-wing activists as political entrepreneurs, I will explore the visual and discursive translation of nationalist symbols and cartoons within different national political contexts and across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Combining the discourse historical approach (DHA) with multimodal analysis, I will trace the cross-cultural translation and sharing of an anti-immigrant poster created by the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), a right-wing political party in Switzerland, in its controversial ‘black sheep’ campaign. Second, I will show how far-right sympathizers in Italy and Germany, inspired by the SVP, created their own ‘black sheep’ cartoons in which they imagine a racist bond of transnational solidarity through the use of images depicting immigrants as Europe’s other. This article contributes to the study of transnational network publics by showing the relevance of non-verbal and visual translation strategies used by radical right-wing political entrepreneurs to forge stronger alliances cross-nationally and cross-linguistically.

Equality adds quality: On upgrading higher education and research in the field of law

Much has been attempted, and many projects are still underway aimed at achieving equality in higher education and research. Today, the key argument to demand and support the integration of gender in academia is that equality is indeed about the quality on which academic work is supposed to be based. Although more or less national political, social and cultural contexts matter as much as academic environments, regarding higher education and research, the integration of gender into the field of law seems particularly interesting. Faculties of law enjoy a certain standing and status, are closely connected to power and politics, and are likely to feature resistance to equality efforts, both in the law itself and in the curriculum and research agenda. However, a multidimensional, intersectional gender analysis helps to reframe cases and doctrines, rulings and regulations far beyond the law that evidently affects women, which the headscarf controversies illustrate. In addition to gender competence, team diversity is a procedural device for success, and non-discrimination is a key requirement when diversity is meant to work. After all, such efforts - to expose bias and educate about gender in an academic field, to insist and integrate it continuously, and to not only demand but also do it - produce quality. Thus, gender equality is crucial for the achievement of the best possible results in higher education and research.

Registro civil y secularización. Comparación entre Ecuador y Francia

El estudio de la creación del Registro Civil y de sus relaciones con los sacramentos de la Iglesia nos conduce al corazón de varias problemáticas jurídicas y político/religiosas de gran importancia. La comparación entre las historias recientes respectivas de Francia y Ecuador, dos países de tradición católica de distintos continentes, ofrece un interesante ángulo de análisis de estos problemas. Las numerosas observaciones de Mons. Juan Larrea Holguín sobre el tema de las relaciones entre el sacramento de matrimonio (y el bautismo) y las obligaciones civiles (registro civil) pueden aplicarse en gran parte para Francia. La precisa comprensión de las instituciones necesita siempre aludir a su historia. La génesis del registro civil demuestra cuál era el fin perseguido por los estados laicos, según una lógica de secularización, un tanto beligerante contra la Iglesia. A continuación, se revisa cómo se mantuvieron las reglas del registro civil en los siglos posteriores, tomando en cuenta los nuevos contextos políticos nacionales e internacionales, donde se modificó la postura diplomática de la Iglesia. Finalmente se observa cómo los derroteros entre ambos países se han separado muy recientemente. Este estudio nos muestra lo que se juega de libertad religiosa en los tiempos contemporáneos y abre interrogantes sobre los lazos que la Iglesia debe guardar con las legislaciones civiles.

“Who Was Park Chung-hee?” The Memorial Landscape and National Identity Politics in South Korea

President Park Chung-hee played a predominant role in shaping South Korean history, yet he remains a controversial figure. This paper explores the way this controversy has manifested itself in the memorial landscape and its significance within the context of national identity politics. It is argued that the debate between conservatives and progressives over the memory of Park has complicated the discourse beyond the prevalent focus on ethnic nationalism. The increasing place allocated for Park in the memorial landscape since 2008 is a tangible manifestation of a memory boom that appeared a decade earlier. Thus, the creation of an encouraging atmosphere in this regard can explain the correlation between the establishment of consecutive conservative governments and said trend. The way the memorial landscape has changed has offered an opportunity to think about a form of national identity which is more intricate. However, with the socio-political camps entrenched in their respective positions, the high-profile controversy has reflected the competing agendas and the degree to which the two sides differ on the fundamental components of national identity. The controversy over the memory of Park has thus both reinforced the divide between the political camps and demonstrated the extent to which it is deep.

Critiquing the Bank: 60 Years of BNDES in the Academy

AbstractThis article offers a critical analysis of scholarship produced about Brazil's Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES) since its founding, in 1952, to 2013. BNDES has performed an important, if changing and sometimes controversial, role in Brazil's economic development over the past 60 years, especially as provider of long-term finance. This analysis of almost 1,000 texts highlights discussions about its initial organisation and mission and how the role and activities of the bank changed over time, guided by turbulent national political and economic contexts. In spite of the bank's institutional importance, however, the literature is more narrative than analytical and of limited scholarly impact, dominated as it is by the bank's authorship. We argue for independent, evidence-driven, critical analyses of the effectiveness of this important institution in promoting Brazil's economic and social development.

Indigenous Religion, Christianity and the State: Mobility and Nomadic Metaphysics in Siberut, Western Indonesia

Recent studies in the anthropology of mobility tend to privilege the cultural imaginaries in which human movements are embedded rather than the actual, physical movements of people through space. This article offers an ethnographic case study in which ‘imagined mobility’ is limited to people who are not mobile, who are immobile or sedentary and thus reflects a ‘sedentarist metaphysics’. The case comes from the island of Siberut, the largest of the Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, where government modernisation programs in the second half of the twentieth century focused on relocating clans from their ancestral lands to model, multi-clan villages and on converting people from the indigenous religion to Christianity. Recent changes in the national, regional and local political contexts have led many of the Christians in the villages to reclaim the indigenous religion by invoking the figure of the shaman, whose special skill is the mobility that village dwellers do not have—a mobility that produces and reproduces a spatial, social and cosmological continuity between home and forest. Many people who live on their ancestral land and practice only the indigenous religion argue that the Christians’ hybrid religious practice is not culturally ‘authentic’ because the indigenous religion requires a mobility that is not possible in the government villages. In this view, the shaman is a surrogate, and his ‘substitute mobility’ arises from a sedentarist metaphysics.

A Deheroization of a Hero of National Freedom. A Case Study of Competing Regimes of Memory

This case study concerns the analysis of a symbolic national grievance: the interpretation of a one-sided, unempathetic deheroization of a champion of national liberty, its historiographical and memory political contexts, and its outcome, strengthening the dichotomous conflicting systems of memory.

Out with the old, in with the new? Perceptions of social (and other) media by local and regional Norwegian politicians

The role of social media has been studied extensively within a series of national political contexts. However, only few studies have focused on the uses of social media by local or regional politicians. This exploratory study presents results from a survey regarding the professional communication habits of Norwegian local and regional politicians. The main results indicate that while services like Facebook and Twitter have gained considerable popularity among politicians, the bulk of respondents find traditional channels of communication more important. Moreover, while the respondents largely acknowledge the interactive potential of novel services, considerable differences concerning use and adoption can be found among the politicians.

REDD+, transformational change and the promise of performance-based payments: a qualitative comparative analysis

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) has emerged as a promising climate change mitigation mechanism in developing countries. This article examines the national political context in 13 REDD+ countries in order to identify the enabling conditions for achieving progress with the implementation of countries’ REDD+ policies and measures. The analysis builds on a qualitative comparative analysis of various countries’ progress with REDD+ conducted in 12 REDD+ countries in 2012, which highlighted the importance of factors such as already initiated policy change, and the presence of coalitions calling for broader policy change. A follow-up survey in 2014 was considered timely because the REDD+ policy arena, at the international and country levels, is highly dynamic and undergoes constant evolution, which affects progress with REDD+ policy-making and implementation. Furthermore, we will now examine whether the ‘promise’ of performance-based funds has played a role in enabling the establishment of REDD+. The results show a set of enabling conditions and characteristics of the policy process under which REDD+ policies can be established. The study finds that the existence of broader policy change, and availability of performance-based funding in combination with strong national ownership of the REDD+ policy process, may help guide other countries seeking to formulate REDD+ policies that are likely to deliver efficient, effective and equitable outcomes.Policy relevanceTropical forest countries struggle with the design and implementation of coherent policies and measures to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Evidence on which factors and configurations are crucial to make progress towards these challenging policy objectives will be helpful for decision makers and practitioners at all levels involved in REDD+. Key findings highlight the importance of already initiated policy change, and the availability of performance-based funding in combination with strong national ownership of the REDD+ process. These findings provide guidance to REDD+ countries as to which enabling conditions need to be strengthened to facilitate effective, efficient and equitable REDD+ policy formulation and implementation.

Boundary work in climate policy making in Brazil: Reflections from the frontlines of the science-policy interface

Despite challenges to the authority and legitimacy of science as a neutral representation of the world, expert advisors are playing an increasingly central role in environmental policy-making in both the Global North and South. This article explores the science-policy interface, based on the experience of the main author as a scientist and policy-maker at FEAM, a state-level environmental agency in Brazil. Contributing to the literature on boundary objects and organizations, the article details the practices necessary to manage the relationship between political and scientific norms in the development of the regional Climate and Energy Plan (CEP) for the state of Minas Gerais. To sustain the role of FEAM as a boundary organization mediating between political and scientific demands, a team of scientists and policy-makers had to perform different types of boundary work in a closely connected manner. It was necessary to actively frame climate change as an economic problem, and structure its solution in terms of mitigation mechanisms. Responding to changes in the national and international political context, FEAM reframed climate change from mitigation into largely an adaptation issue that could lead to win-win solutions as to attain saliency and avoid insurmountable political obstacles for its approval. Based on this experience, the article argues that the performance of boundary objects and organizations in the science-policy interface not only requires an ability to bring ‘truth to power’ but to also the capacity to sense, anticipate and avoid political obstacles. For this reason even though boundary organizations provide a breeding ground for institutional learning it is an unsuitable location for scientific or political revolutions.

Le renouveau de la politique dans l'émigration russe en France (2011-2013)

The renewal of the politics in the Russian emigration in France (2011­2013). In 2011­2013, Russian migrants in Paris supported the protest mobilization against the electoral fraud in Russia. Initially , this movement was characterized by the strong heterogeneity of its members from a political standpoint. As soon as 2012 however, the studied milieu experienced, first, an ongoing professionalization and institutionalization of certain groups stemming from the initial movement, second, an attempt to legitimize its «betweenness », the fact of being located at the crossroad of two national political contexts (Russian and French). This betweenness resulted in specific mode of action, hybridizing French and Russian activist traditions, and integrating such an experience in the long history of political activism in the Russian emigration.

Institutionalization of Foreign Policy Think Tanks in Italy and in the UK: An Explanatory Framework

Abstract This article explores the phenomenon of foreign policy think tanks in Europe in a comparative perspective and offers a framework of analysis for this topic. Assuming that think tanks were largely imported from the US after World Wars I and II, the article argues that European think tanks have been influenced by the different national political contexts in which they have undergone a process of institutionalization. First, the article hypothesizes that such contexts have contributed to determining different incentives for cooperation between think tanks and national policymakers. Such cooperation is based on the willingness of policymakers to turn to think tanks for expertise, advice or validation of policy decisions. Secondly, different political contexts are expected to influence the strategies of action that think tanks have developed towards policymakers and their audience. In this respect, the article identifies three strategies: the generalist, the advocate and the lobbyist. Empirically, the article is based on a survey of eleven organizations conducted in two countries, Italy and the United Kingdom, in 2013-14. Given that very few data are available on this type of organization, their activities, funding, policy audience and goals are investigated. These indicators are used to investigate the main commonalities and differences between the two cases and to compare them with the hypotheses. The results first show that there is comparatively more funding available for think tanks in the UK system than in the Italian one. Secondly, there is apparently more willingness from policymakers to turn to think tanks for expertise in the former case, considering that the UK think tanks hold a higher number of closed-door events and parliamentary hearings. On the contrary, where policymakers tend, instead, to more scarcely rely on external expertise - as it seems more evident in the Italian case - the core audience of think tanks tends to shift to other, more accessible targets (the public opinion, the academia or even businesses). The case study makes it more evident how advocacy becomes a far less important activity for an Italian think tank than a UK one.

Party representation across multiple issue dimensions

Issue congruence between citizens and policy makers should be one of the central aspects of a democratic process. This study uses the 2009 European Election Study to compare the views of citizens and party elites on a diverse set of domestic policy issues and overall Left-Right identities. We find very high levels of congruence for Left-Right positions and socio-economic issues. Parties are less representative of their supporters on the newer cultural issues of immigration and authority, as well as gender issues. National political contexts have limited influence on congruence levels, although some party characteristics such as political extremism or party family are linked to citizen-voter agreement. On the whole, citizens and like-minded parties do connect through the electoral process to a high degree. However, the results also argue for a multidimensional approach to assessing representation to recognize where parties agree and deviate from their supporters.