Political Inequality Research Articles

The 2019 Elections: Electoral Quality, Political Inequality and the Flames of Frustration in Honiara

The 2019 general elections in Solomon Islands were the country’s tenth since it became an independent country. The elections were relatively well-run, and free of violence. However, shortly after the elections, when the prime minister was announced, rioting erupted in Honiara, the country’s capital. In this paper, I describe the elections themselves before looking at election results. I then explain how comparatively peaceful elections led to riots. My central arguments are that the assistance provided by foreign aid, combined with fluid political dynamics and checks and balances within the electoral system itself, contributed to reasonably well-run elections. At the same time, political inequality is rising in Solomon Islands. And the nature of electoral politics in Solomon Islands leads to poor political governance. Poor governance, in turn, contributed to the frustrations that spilled over into riots after the prime minister was announced in 2019.

Cause Lawyering and Compassionate Lawyering in Clinical Legal Education: The Case of Chile

Cause Lawyering and Compassionate Lawyering in Clinical Legal Education: The Case of Chile Fernando Muñoz L. (bio) Introduction: Cause Lawyering and Compassionate Lawyering as Ideologies of Clinical Legal Education In many parts of the world, there is a historically constructed social expectation that, in the face of poverty and the unequal access to justice that follows from it, the legal profession will provide legal aid for free to individuals and groups in need. This paper explores the ideological paradigms that can guide law school clinics in their efforts to satisfy this expectation. Taking clinical legal education in Chile as a case study, I will distinguish between two different ideological paradigms: compassionate lawyering and cause lawyering. Each of these paradigms offer a distinct ideological understanding of the public or social roles of a law clinic and, arguably, of the legal profession itself. As a result, each paradigm presents its own unique set of challenges and opportunities. Some people might object to this kind of open discussion of the ideologies that vie for control of our imagination, due to a fear that ideological discussion could encourage a deviation from the pedagogic objectives of legal education. To satisfy their concerns, however, we must do the opposite of what they suggest. To avoid illicit ideological operations that distort our cognition, and to repair the effects of these operations, we must explicitly theorize and discuss the ideologies that inhabit the legal world at large, and law schools in particular. Ideologies about power, its distribution in society, and its legitimate uses always [End Page 231] inform and shape educational theories and practices, even when these ideologies remain unexamined and uncontested. Nonetheless, concerned individuals are right about the fact that any discussion of the ideologies that guide clinical legal education must begin by recognizing that the primary objective of any educational initiative is to enrich the learning experience of students. Since legal clinics form part of an institutional program of studies, these individuals argue, the primary raison d’être of any law school clinic cannot lie outside the walls of its law school. However, in the case of law students, the practical orientation of their future professional work makes it crucial that their education equips them with an understanding of the legal reality that lies beyond those same walls through preparatory training (moot courts), and direct experience (law clinics). Throughout the centuries, many people have argued that the best methodology for understanding legal practice is to be exposed to it. In the words of Valentín Letelier, a Chilean positivist sociolegal theorist and progressive reformer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, knowledge of the practices of the legal profession “cannot be acquired but through direct interaction with lawyers and courts; for in one single day visiting the courts, one learns more than in a whole month of academic exercises.”1 In order to understand legal reality, one must understand its social context; poverty, after all, often translates into unequal access to justice. This disparity is prevalent in Latin America, which is characterized by a significant gap between the high prose of constitutional clauses and the hard facts of social life. Here, to understand the market inequalities that shape and distort access to justice, one must understand the many inequalities that form social reality. Eduardo Novoa, a critical legal scholar who served as legal advisor to Chilean President Salvador Allende, raised this point, arguing that legal education “ought to present not only the theoretical and normative aspects of the law, but must also teach the student the way that its rules and principles are put into practice in our society, taking pains in explaining all the points where that practical application departs from those norms.”2 Novoa believed that legal education must go beyond the study of law in action in order to pay attention to the specific legal inequalities that emerge through the gap between law in books and law in action.3 In recent decades, many Latin American legal thinkers have called attention to the significance of material, social, and political inequality [End Page 232] in the (dis)organization and (dis)function of the...

The Precarity of Preexisting Conditions

Feminist Studies 46, no. 3. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 615 Elora Halim Chowdhury The Precarity of Preexisting Conditions The World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, which, in the opinion of many health and policy professionals, was late in the game. Both the virus’s path and the preventive measures taken in response illuminate far-reaching relations of social and political inequity. The rate at which it has traveled across borders—national, urban/suburban, industrial and agricultural, race/gender/class, citizen, migrant and refugee, professional and daily wage worker—brings into sharp relief its stunning spread and expanse as well as the tremendous asymmetries of our lives. One could argue that the differential border crossings of the virus have been the consequence of unfettered capitalist development and accumulation. Indeed, feminist scholars in particular have identified capitalism as the virus, humans as its agents, and the ensuing pandemic and its fault lines as being caused by relentless, Anthropocentric greed, plunder, individualism , and “progress.” From the outset, I have been following the responses and coverage in my two contrasting “homes”—the United States, with its long imperial history of spectacular military aggression, presumably the world’s most powerful nation—and Bangladesh, one of the world’s most resilient countries because of its history of travail and also its triumphs. At present, a series of unfathomable blunders by the highest office in this country has resulted in the United States having the highest number of 616 Elora Halim Chowdhury COVID-19 cases as well as the most deaths in the world. Journalists have talked about the “missing six weeks” that could have slowed down the virus’s progression and allowed for a more concerted strategy to fight the disease. New York City, the epicenter in the United States, has been ravaged by the highest number of deaths—as well as job losses—occurring especially among African American and Latino communities.1 Similar patterns are emerging in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and New Orleans, especially in communities ostensibly unemployed, and underemployed, living in substandard housing, with lower life expectancies, without adequate access to “healthy diets,” and suffering from “preexisting” socioeconomic and health precarities. Many of them, not surprisingly, also make up the category of “essential workers”—at once disposable and at the same time on the frontlines fighting COVID-19 without suitable protection. Anthony Fauci, the wise director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, has advised six US presidents. He responded to the bleak racial inequity and higher numbers of death and disease among African Americans by saying, “There is nothing we can do about it right now except to give them the best possible care and to avoid complications.” In a similar vein, during a webinar on the South Asian response to COVID-19, Srinath Reddy, president of Public Health Foundation of India, when questioned about the sensibility of the stern lockdown and its murderous consequences for migrant laborers, responded that the time for a post-mortem of such policies was later; current efforts needed to prioritize healthcare. In response to the glib “not now, later” response by authorities, American studies scholar Lynnell Thomas poignantly asks, “That begs the question, when can we do something about 1. The latest available COVID-19 mortality rate for Black Americans is 2.5 times higher than the rate for Latinos, 2.6 times higher than the rate for Asians, and 2.7 times higher than the rate for Whites. See “The Color of Coronavirus : COVID-19 Deaths by Race and Ethnicity in the U.S.,” APM Research Lab, September 16, 2020, https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-byrace . For a picture of job losses by ethnicity, see Jens Manuel Krogstad, Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, and Luis Noe-Bustamante, “U.S. Latinos among Hardest Hit by Pay Cuts, Job Losses Due to Coronavirus,” Pew Research Center, April 3, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/03/u-s-latinosamong -hardest-hit-by-pay-cuts-job-losses-due-to-coronavirus. Elora Halim Chowdhury 617 it? When can we stop replaying the same press conferences, rewriting the same sobering reports, reissuing the same dire warnings?”2...

THE IMPACT OF GENDER INEQUALITIES IN EDUCATION ON INCOME

Gender inequality in education, health, politics and employment is considered as a global problem. The development of human capital thanks to education is expected to increase efficient individuals in quantity and quality. It is stated that as the education rate of women and participation rate of the educated women in the labor force increase, the quality of the labor force and the rate of healthier and well-fed children will increase as well and consequently the human capital of the countries will have a positive effect on the economic development in the long term. In this study, the effect of gender inequality in primary and secondary education on income was investigated by panel data analysis for high and upper-middle-income countries in the period of 1998-2017. According to the results, the effect of capital accumulation and fertility on income was positive and the effect of gender inequality in education on income was negative. It is seen that gender inequality, especially in primary education, has significantly negative effect on income, and that inequality in primary education is transferred to the next education levels and it is important to eliminate inequality of opportunity in terms of income inequality and growth potential in the long term. Therefore, it is necessary to take into account the importance of long-term and stable policies, in particular in primary education, and to create the necessary arrangements and awareness to increase the education and job opportunities of women in order to eliminate inequality of opportunity in education.

Does Political Dominance Impact Economic Inequality?

Does Political Dominance Impact Economic Inequality?

Political education against inequalities and citizenship for democracy: international scientific literature review after twenty years of neoliberalism (1999-2019)

This paper discusses the role of citizenship and political education in the contemporary society. It analyses the consequences of neoliberalism regarding its assault on the social sphere and its production of mass inequality around the world. We initiate the conversation by making education central to politics, culture as the key tool that helps us to analyze the meanings of citizenship. The privatization of citizenship narrows the debate around the role of the citizen, the public sphere and undermines democratic values. The goal of this research is to try and understand whether political education can reduce social inequality or not, and how the presence of an informed and politically engaged culture helps create the agents necessary for a substantive democracy. The chosen method enables the production of an international literature review with a systematic bibliographic search, exploring the meanings and scientific uses of the categories Political Education, Social Inequality, Citizenship and Democracy after many years under the neoliberalism hegemony around the globe. This research was conducted via the following databases: Google Scholar; Networked Digital Libraries of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD); Education Research and Information Center (ERIC) and Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO). It includes papers written in English, Spanish and Portuguese which publishing dates range from 1999 to 2019. A total of 51 articles were selected to compose the analytic corpus (n=51). After reading all of the texts and making a content analysis, the results were presented in 3 categories: i - Citizenship education and political education: theories and practices (Conceptual approaches on citizenship and Students’ capacity for political or moral reasoning fostered by political education); ii - Politics, human rights & democratic values in education (Critical approaches of human rights or democratic values on higher education; Popular education or citizen participation on political education and Politics as a teaching or learning tool for formal education); iii - Relationships among State, citizens and civil society (Positive relationships in contemporary societies and Conflicts in adult education). Under neoliberalism, civic culture, democratic values and informed dialogue atrophied. Clearly, this is partly due to the dominant neoliberal view that social agency is dangerous and needs to be shaped by neoliberal forms of education. Under the reign of neoliberalism, there has emerged a pedagogical machinery of power engaged in producing a culture of manufactured ignorance that works to produce a form of political repression. However, as an alternative, many pieces of research are arguing that education must empower citizens to engage in their communities as a method to learn, engage in individual and collective action, and how to participate in political struggles and public affairs. Political education can be an important social movement against the inequalities. That seems to be crucial for building a direct and participative citizenship in our contemporary democracy.

Amerindian genetic ancestry as a risk factor for tuberculosis? Critical perspectives and implications for public policies in indigenous peoples's health.

Currently, the concept of vulnerability occupies a central space in debates on the health of indigenous peoples on a global scale, being widely referred to in discussions about the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. This concept is present in the National Healthcare Policy for Indigenous Peoples in Brazil, which is aligned with the perspective of social determinants of health. In this interpretive scheme, which is central to public policies in many countries of the world, including Brazil, any disease that affects human populations involves, to some extent, biological aspects; however, the main determinants of disease and death of populations are considered to be primarily linked to ethnic, political and socioeconomic inequalities.

Who Governs? Colonial Education and Regional Political Inequality in Africa

Political elites tend to favor their home region when distributing resources. But what explains how political power is distributed across a country’s regions to begin with? Explanations of cabinet formation focus on short-term strategic bargaining and some emphasize that ministries are allocated equitably to minimize conflict. Using new data on the cabinet members (1960-2010) of 16 former British and French African colonies, I find that some regions have been systematically much more represented than others. Combining novel historical and geospatial records, I show that this regional political inequality derives not from colonial-era development in general but from colonial-era education in particular. I argue that post-colonial ministers are partly a byproduct of civil service recruitment practices among European administrators that focused on levels of literacy. Regional political inequality is an understudied pathway through which colonial legacies impact distributive politics and unequal development in Africa today.

On certain aspects of counteracting corruption in electoral process

The subject of this research is the separate provisions of legislation on elections, as well as the law enforcement practice in light of their correspondence with legislation on countering corruption – the new vector of research in electoral law. The object of this research is the social relations in the area of elections. The author examines the instance of consolidating the powers of the territorial electoral commission and electoral commission of a municipal formation, as well as the practice of information support of elections by mass media, established by the candidates and political parties. Special attention is paid to the corruption risks. Methodology is based on the sociological approach to corruption reflected in the works of Pierre Bourdieu, particularly the practice of delegation of powers. The following conclusions were made: 1) since electoral commissions are not under supervision of the prosecutor’s office, there is a gap in delegation of the functions of control over the decisions, actions or inactions of electoral commissions; 2) delegation of the function of information support of elections by mass media established by the political parties and candidates contains corruption risks. The author’s special contribution consists in recommendations aimed at overcoming political inequality in electoral process with reference to the indicated problems. The novelty consists in application of sociological approach towards examining the practice of holding elections.

The Impacts of Inclusive Representation in Nepal

Nepal is a nation with a diverse population. This diversity spans various aspects such as race, ethnicity, religion, caste, and region. Historically, Nepal faced significant issues of social exclusion, resulting in numerous social, economic, and political inequalities. The interim constitution of Nepal (2063) aimed to address this by including provisions for the social inclusion of minorities and marginalized groups in national policies. This paper explores the inclusive representation of different groups and its impact on social, economic, and political spheres. The study relies on both primary and secondary information sources, focusing primarily on the effects of inclusive representation in Nepal. The government decided to reallocate quotas in civil service, reducing reservations for certain ethnic groups to maintain a quota cap of 45%. Specifically, it reduced the Madhesi quota from 22% to 20%, the Adiwasi/Janajati quota from 27% to 24%, and the quota for differently-abled individuals from 5% to 3%. Despite criticisms, the reservation system has positively impacted the participation of underprivileged and minority groups across various sectors.

DIALOGUE AS AN ELEMENT OF URBAN CULTURE OF POSTCLEISTHENIC ATHENS

The research shows the way to liberate the word from the imperative hierarchical social system to the equality, to the cooperative search for truth. It’s the way from Logos to Dialogos. The article analyzes the development of the social structure of Athens from the Mycenaean Age to the end of the 6th century BC. The author highlights the main stages and principles of this development: dysnomia, eunomia, isonomia. Special attention was paid to the definitions and explication the relationship between these principles. Dysnomia is characterized as wrong order, lawlessness. It was a principle of total political inequality, where the class of urban aristocracy is endowed with full rights, and ordinary people do not have them at all. Eunomia is the conception of good order, the right social system. It was a principle of geometrical equality that left power in the hands of the aristocracy, but expanded the rights of the people. The author shows that Eunomia“s role in the development of the political equality in Athens as a transitional stage to the notion of Isonomia was fundamental. He claims that the emergence of dialogue as a social phenomenon, and partly as a genre, in Athens becomes possible after Cleisthenes“ reforms on the ground of principle of Isonomia (an equal distribution of political power or full arithmetical equality).

Gendered local politics: the barriers to women’s representation in Turkey

ABSTRACT Starting out from the argument that the political experience of women diverges at different levels of politics, this article aims to provide an understanding of the challenges faced by female mayors in local politics in Turkey. Nation-wide empirical data was gathered through in-depth interviews with 34 female mayors who were elected to office for the 2004–2009 and 2009–2014 terms. The framework analysis of the data reveals that the challenges in question stem from the cultural factors that reinforce the gendered local politics in Turkey. These barriers are embodied in the male-dominance of political seats, the hegemony of masculine discourse over political language, and the burden of traditional gendered roles on female mayors. The presence and authority of female mayors has come to be seen as a threat to existing political interests, with political language serving to devalue women, and to subordinate their demands to the agendas set by the male-dominated elite. The gendered responsibilities in the home have come to be associated with the political achievements of female mayors in Turkey, bolstering the gender bias in local politics, and thus preventing the elimination of distributive injustice and political inequality in democratic practice in Turkey regarding women’s identity and interests.

Infrastructural instabilities of urban river restoration: Towards a metropolitan political ecology in the Tel Aviv region

This article draws on the case of the Yarqon Restoration Project (YRP) in the Tel Aviv metropolitan region (TAMR) to highlight the infrastructural instabilities of urban river restoration and their theoretical implications. It analyzes the YRP as an outcome of multiple material interdependencies between “gray” and “green” infrastructures that are embedded in metropolitan-scale flows and politics. Methodologically, the article focuses on the main infrastructural projects constructed as part of the YRP and on subsequent polluting events that have since undermined the project. It uses data collected from policy documents, protocols, media coverage, and interviews conducted with stakeholders and professionals. The analysis shows that infrastructural instabilities are directly marked by the recurrence of “old” polluting uses within “new” recreational and ecological uses. These instabilities are deeply embedded in the metropolitan region’s unequal spatial-political structure, particularly disparities between upstream and downstream municipalities. We use the YRP case to develop a preliminary conceptual outline of a metropolitan political ecology, which highlights the spatial, environmental, and political complexities and inequalities of the metropolitan region and their consequences for the production of urban nature. This perspective extends the critical approach of urban political ecology, highlighting the metropolitan region as a critical scale at which natural watersheds intersect with geopolitical arrangements of territorial control, and at which environmental concerns are negotiated between numerous jurisdictions, conflicting land uses, and competing political-economic interests. The article suggests that metropolitan political ecology is a distinct and useful approach to understand not only urban river restoration but also other complex environmental issues.Keywordsurban rivers; green and gray infrastructure; pollution; metropolitan regions; urban political ecology; Yarqon river

Clinical Legal Education for Human Rights Issues: How Students Can Implement Their Basic Knowledge of Human Rights in Reality

Human rights was recognized as a fundamental issue both internationalcommunity and regional community like ASEAN. The student capabilityto transfer their knowledge concerning to the human rights wasbecome very important thing for legal development as well as lawenforcement. Through clinical legal education, students were beprepared to be available bring a justice in their real lives. Clinical legaleducation which specifically for human rights issues prepares studentfor lifelong careers in social justice advocacy around the globe. Throughthe Clinic, students join a community advocates working to promotehuman rights and recalibrate the global power imbalances that driveeconomic and political inequity, exploitation, threats to physicalsecurity, poverty, and environmental injustice. Through fact-finding,reporting, litigation, media engagement, advocacy, training, andinnovative method, the Clinic seeks to prevent abuse, advance respectfor human rights, and promote accountability for violations. The paperdivided into three main folds, first, how was the human rights issues onclinical legal education in some practices, second, how was the studentencourage the basic knowledge of human rights through clinical legaleducation, and three, how was the student use their knowledge in theirreality lives. The paper emphasized that, at the intersection of theoryand practice, the Clinic can be used as a laboratory for testing andmodeling new and innovative modes of human rights work, and seeksto be a model of rigorous and critical human rights advocacy. Thisincludes a focus on enhancing human rights methods throughinterdisciplinary partnerships, critical reflection on human rightspractice, and sustainable advocacy through attention to vicarioustrauma and resilience.

Information, Political Bias, and Public Perceptions of Local Conditions in U.S. Cities

Using two unique surveys, one that includes over 6,000 respondents interviewed across 39 cities and another that includes over 47,000 respondents interviewed across 26 U.S. cities, we investigate the extent to which perceptions of local conditions—the state of the local economy, the quality of local schools, and local crime—reflect actual local conditions. We examine individual-level differences in the accuracy of perceptions of local conditions using two different frameworks, one that emphasizes factors that limit information acquisition and may exacerbate political inequalities, and another that emphasizes motivations for information processing. Objective conditions influence perceptions of conditions, but the relationship between objective and perceived local conditions is strongest among individuals with high levels of education and preexisting knowledge. In addition, we find that partisanship plays a role in shaping perceptions of local conditions. While the partisan match between a respondent and the mayor of their city has little effect on local perceptions, the match between a respondent’s partisanship and the president’s party has a strong effect on perceptions of the local economy.

Land Rights of Women: A Study of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana States, India

Empowerment of women takes place through structural changes in women’s lives such as provision of land rights, promotion of non-farm employment, self-employment and support to unleash their potential of entrepreneurial qualities and their participation in decision making at various levels. The initiatives undertaken by the Government such as promotion of rural livelihoods (NRLM) and wage employment (MGNREGS) resulted in enhancement of livelihoods and economic freedom to women. The need for the study arises from the fact that ensuring effective and independent land rights for women is critical as it can serve multiple functions in rural women’s lives and empower them to challenge the socio-economic and political inequalities prevalent in rural semi-feudal society. The present study while looking at the situation of land rights of women covered five districts from two states, examined the efficacy of ‘Bhoomi’ initiative and studied the processes of securing land rights by eliciting the perceptions of stakeholders in a non-survey method supported by secondary data. The data from Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty of state governments established that the para-legal assistance strategy and Bhoomi Nyaya Sahaya Kendram initiative helped poor women to secure land rights and improve their status significantly. The study found that the initiative of land purchase by the government helped poor women to access land while gender mainstreaming in government departments was a felt need. It is a classic example of ensuring land rights of poor women and thus improving their status and livelihoods among others.

Health and political efficacy in context: What is the role of the welfare state?

Health affects nearly all facets of our lives, including the likelihood of getting involved in politics. Focusing on political efficacy, we zoom in on one potential mechanism as to why people in poor health might, for example, stay at home on Election Day. We first look at the ways in which health is related to both people’s perceptions of their abilities to take part in politics (internal political efficacy) as well as the extent to which they believe policymakers are responsive to citizen needs (external political efficacy). Second, we examine how the social policy context intervenes in the relationship between health and political efficacy. Multilevel models using 2014 and 2016 European Social Survey data on roughly 57,000 respondents nested in 21 European countries reveal complex results: while good health, rather unsurprisingly, fosters internal and external political efficacy, more generous welfare states, though associated with higher levels of political efficacy, are not a panacea for remedying political inequalities stemming from individual health differences.

The Turnout Gap: Race, Ethnicity, and Political Inequality in a Diversifying America. By Bernard L. Fraga. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 286p. $105.00 cloth, $26.99 paper.

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Public Perception of Rentier Elites in the Middle East and North Africa

ABSTRACTLack of cohesion among the elites within a society invites conflict. However, the robustness of the elites’ power is demonstrated by their capacity to recycle, propelling the system to persist. There is a great degree of ingrained public mistrust in the elite despite the latter’s regeneration, because of their inclination to build bureaucratic systems that are costly in terms of treasure. Despite waves of revolutions and uprisings in MENA, the political outcomes were no different in style from their predecessors. In some cases, it was simply a reproduction of autocracies and cronyism through the revolving door of power and wealth. The common denominator among elites is how to capture the state’s rents in order to maximize their own self-interest. Using the Arab Barometer data, our study will not be focused on the political identity of the elite, but on public perception in evaluating public institutions and political attitudes. Elites are perceived negatively because they missed opportunities to provide exemplary leadership, as well as economic development and accountability. The outcomes are political turmoil, social injustice and economic inequality.

Decentralisation and political inequality: a comparative analysis of unequal turnout in European regions

This article analyses whether and how the persistent positive relationship between socioeconomic status and political participation can be moderated by institutional design. Hopes to boost turnout rates of socially disadvantaged citizens often rest upon the introduction of participatory institutions. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill had already asserted claims about the educative effect of close political institutions at the local level, which presumably result in a decrease in social inequality. More recently, campaigns for greater regional authority throughout Europe have represented a demand for opportunities to participate in decentralised, accessible polities. Based on data from 259 regions in Europe, we investigate whether political decentralisation and increased opportunities to participate are appropriate means of mitigating political inequality. The results not only fail to meet expectations but show that decentralisation in fact reinforces unequal voter turnout. These findings are particularly relevant for combatting inequality and indicating the potential side effects of decentralisation campaigns.