Political Motivations Research Articles

Model city failure: New Haven and limits to the entrepreneurial state

ABSTRACT This paper critically examines the concept of the entrepreneurial state by focusing on the case study of New Haven, Connecticut, during the mid-20th century. We delve into the ambitious urban development efforts spearheaded by Mayor Richard Lee and his administration. In particular, we examine the construction of the Chapel Square Mall as a response to urban decline with the hope it would stimulate economic growth. Through a comprehensive analysis of historical records, political dynamics, and the socioeconomic context of New Haven, we highlight the inherent challenges and limitations faced by local governments in acting as entrepreneurs. Our findings reveal that despite the strategic intentions to revitalize the city and foster an entrepreneurial ecosystem, the project ultimately resulted in substantial financial losses, displacement of communities, and failed urban planning ambitions. This case study underscores the complexities of state entrepreneurship at the local level, where political motives, limited information, and the pursuit of voter support can diverge significantly from entrepreneurial objectives, leading to outcomes that are detrimental to both the city’s economic health and its residents. By comparing New Haven’s experience with broader critiques of the entrepreneurial state, this paper contributes to a nuanced understanding of the potential and pitfalls of government-led economic development initiatives.

Unraveling the Political Motives of Eritrea in the Tigray Conflict

Eritrea is one of the countries that has a significant influence in the Horn of Africa. In maintaining its influence and achieving its national interest, Eritrea has enrolled itself in the Tigray War. Participating in the Tigray War would drive themselves to be the regional superior in the Horns of Africa. This research will focus on how Eritrea's political motives in the Tigray War affected the achievement of its interests. This study will use the national interest concept and geopolitical theory to analyze the formulation of the problem that has been described. These theoretical frameworks will be suitable as these theoretical frameworks will be able to explain Eritrea’s national interest in the African Region. This research will also use qualitative methods and literature study data collection techniques. The results of this study suggest that Eritrea has political motives to be able to escape its international isolation status and become a regional superior in the Horn of Africa region. Eritrea also wants to expand its influence in Ethiopian domestic politics and avenge itself on the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) through its involvement in the Tigray war. Eritrea used a hawkish approach offensively in its involvement in the Tigray conflict.

“The Idea of Sports is Pure and Noble”: Internationalism, Zionism and the Formation of a Global Universal Language

Bridging the gap between international history, which often sees modern sport’s ideals as mere background noise masking economic or political motives, and philosophical and theoretical perspectives, which delve into the aesthetic appeal of sports, this article focuses on the interplay between the universal, ethical, and the spectacle of sports within Hebrew Culture in Palestine. Against the backdrop of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, the globalization of sports during the interwar period, and the emergence of FIFA and the IOC, it illustrates the growing influence of universal sports ideals within Zionist ultra-national revolutionary culture. By reassessing the mechanisms behind one of the most significant international phenomena of the twentieth century, and exploring the origins of inherent connection between physical activity, mega sporting events, and pseudo-religious discourse, this article offers a nuanced discussion on internationalism and globalization, particularly pertinent in our contemporary era, highlighted by the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and ongoing debates surrounding human rights violations in the name of sports.

Доктрина охлаждающего эффекта как универсальный инструмент защиты прав

Since March 2022, the dissemination of Facebook and Instagram has been prohibited within the territory of Russia, with Meta being included in the list of extremist organizations based on a court decision, thereby subjecting all users of said platforms and company shareholders to the threat of criminal prosecution. Moreover, the exodus of Russian political leaders from the popular social media has seen an expedited pace. Setting aside the issue of political motives behind such a ruling and its ethical implications, the author advocates for scrutiny of extant legal mechanisms operative in alternative jurisdictions relevant to the present case. One such instrument is the doctrine of chilling effect, positing that authorities may infringe upon rights even in the absence of direct intent for such constraint. Although the doctrine of chilling effect was not expressly invoked in the proscription of Meta within Russia, the doctrine could be applied in analogous disputes implicating other digital platforms.

The Panic of 2008 and Brexit: Regional Integration versus Nationalism

In June 23, 2016, voters in the United Kingdom have just approved a referendum calling for leaving the European Union. The case describes the motives for European integration, the rise of separatist movements in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and the referendum process itself.The purpose of this case is to provide a contemporary counterpoint to a discussion of the economic and political motivations for the American Civil War. Dominant themes highlighted here are economic nationalism, political nationalism, cultural centrism and ethnocentrism, and populism.

Understanding Farmers' Data Collection Practices on Small-to-Medium Farms for the Design of Future Farm Management Information Systems

Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS) integrate data from a variety of sources, including sensors, for the purpose of enabling farmers to interpret past activity and predict future performance. FMIS is traditionally designed for and used by large farms, given their capital and need for automation and scale-up. This paper examines the current data collection practices on small and medium farms so that FMIS systems can be better designed to their needs. Our empirical research comprises interviews conducted during 10 farm visits. Our semi-structured interviews incorporated questions about daily activities, points of decision-making, data sharing, and incentives for data collection. We analyzed the interviews by focusing on possible obstacles to adopting expanding digital data collection practices and how expanded data collection might help fulfill farmers' goals and motivations. We found that farmers use their own bespoke data collection techniques instead of or in parallel to more formalized methods and often hold key observations and hypotheses in their heads rather than committing them to any data collection system at all. Key barriers to FMIS adoption include technology skepticism, technical hurdles, lack of support, and self-doubt in technical skills. Based on this empirical work and analysis, we recommend that FMIS systems can best address the needs of small and medium farms by 1) accounting for the farmers' different approaches to memorizing vs. storing data, 2) integrating rather than trying to replace existing practices, and 3) considering the economic and political motivations driving farm decision-making and practices.

Annulment Actions and the V4 Member States: Taking EU Legislative Conflicts Before the Court of Justice

<p>The EU Member States have been using the action for annulment to challenge the legality of EU measures while pursuing a range of non-legal, essentially political motivations. This also holds true for the V4 Member States, which have also resorted to annulment actions to judicialize their legislative conflicts within the EU before the Court of Justice. Among the V4, Poland has been the most frequent litigant, using this institutional tool increasingly actively during the last ten years. Poland’s behavior appears to confirm expectations of differentiation among this group of Member States. It also coincides with a period of political change marked by deep conflicts with the EU. The V4 annulment challenges against EU legislative measures usually made a genuine effort to achieve the legal objective of annulling the challenged legal act. However, there is evidence that they also pursued certain political motivations or a combination of them. These could include the securing of gains in domestic politics, avoiding the local costs of an EU policy misfit and/or promoting a preferred policy position, and/or the influencing of EU competence arrangements. In a few cases, the litigant Member State aimed to avoid concrete material disadvantages. Securing a legal interpretation from the Court of Justice that would influence the behavior of other EU actors, or clarify the law affecting the position of the applicant Member State also motivated some of the V4 legal challenges.</p>

Un imperio en movimiento: género, movilidad femenina y <i>acllas</i> en el Tahuantinsuyo (1400 - 1532 d. C.)

Numerous studies have explored mobility along the Qhapaq Ñan. Most of them examine how the road influenced local, regional, and imperial dynamics by fostering exchange relationships and connecting societies, people, and territories. These investigations explicitly or implicitly assume that it was male individuals who mobilized to build the Tahuantinsuyo, while women remained within the domestic unit or were confined to imperial buildings. In this study, we seek to acknowledge potential patterns of women’s mobility as part of female collectives, including those identified as acllas (chosen ones) or mamaconas (matrons) within the Tahuantinsuyo territory, through a gender perspective. We do so by drawing on five cases supported by biogenetic data and published textile analysis, as well as ethnohistorical data from Inca llacta cemeteries and capacocha ritual events (a ritual of obligation to the Inca state where infants were offered). We identified modes of movement that consider the distance traveled, the age of female individuals, and the political motives framing each activity, and which, in turn, construct identity, Finally, our analysis indicates that the visualization and analysis of individuals’ mobility experiences are associated with types of movement related to local, regional, or imperial political interests that reveal certain logics of movement that have been hidden, in this case, those of female experiences within the Tahuantinsuyo.

Black Twitter and Digital Counterpublics in South Africa

The growth of technology has made the Internet an essential tool in society. Scholars have argued that the Internet supports a more deliberative democracy. However, scholars have also raised concerns about the role of the Internet in political matters. While scholars agree that the Internet has facilitated broader public discussion, in many regards, its ‘virtual public sphere’ still mirrors existing social structures. Twitter has become a common social media platform for many South Africans. This has led to a virtual community of Twitter users engaged in real-time discourses primarily related to Black South Africans. Black Twitter in South Africa is used for social, political, and economic motivations. This study argues for the practice of Black Twitter as a digital counterpublic in South Africa. The aim is to spotlight how black people in South Africa have used Black Twitter as a digital counterpublic for the marginalized groups within South Africa. The research will investigate the potential challenges and opportunities associated with Black Twitter functioning as a digital counterpublic. Utilizing digital ethnography, the study gathered a dataset of tweets from Black Twitter in 2022, focusing on those addressing social, political, and economic issues. More than 700,000 tweets were identified under these specific thematic hashtags.

Skateboard crime and the pirating of urban space

This paper seeks to analyze “skate crime:” what skateboarders do, why they do it, and why it is criminalized even in public spaces. I begin with a case example of the Dolores Street Hill Bomb in San Francisco, a seemingly over-criminalized annual event that treats skaters as enemies of the city, a logic of enmity. This same logic was used to criminalize 17th–18th century “Golden Age” maritime piracy, a heuristic that helps assess the role that stigmatization by dominant orders of authority plays in skate crime. I deepen this narrative of skate crime by discussing four diverse facets that distinguish whether they are caused by political motivations or not and whether they have effects of social harm or not. I argue further that Golden Age piracy also fits this four-fold narrative, leading to my conclusion that skateboarding might be considered a kind of piracy, a “street piracy.”

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: THE POLITICIZATION OF RELIGION AND CONFLICT

The Central African Republic (CAR) has been a theater of hostilities for decades, in cluding the Seleka rebellion in December 2012, which caused religious-based discrimination, especially between the Muslim minority and Christian majority. Opportunistic political leaders and armed groups have misused religion for political and egocentric gains in the CAR. The pur pose of this qualitative content analysis research is to investigate the use of religion for political motives in the CAR and how such actions impact conflict and sectarian divides in the so-called phantom state. The paper recommends ways to mitigate political influence and the misuse of religion by political and armed group actors in the CAR. Very little or no literature on conflict in the CAR has specifically addressed the influence of politics on religion and how it contributes to fueling conflict in the country. This study fills the gaps in the literature by investigating the historical narratives of the CAR conflict while highlighting instances of political abuse of religion. A review of existing literature on the political manipulation of religion establishes the basis for a critical analysis of the influence of politics on religion in the CAR and its impact on conflict. Keywords: Politics, religious identities, conflict, Central African Republic, anti-Balaka, Seleka.

Briefly Noted

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) handed down a unanimous decision on November 23, 2023, in a case brought by former Polish President Lech Walesa against the Polish Government. The Court concluded that a Polish Appeals Court, the Chamber of Extraordinary Review and Public Affairs (CERPA), had violated Walesa's right to an independent and impartial trial, breached “the principle of legal certainty,” and violated his right to respect for private and family life. The Court found that the CERPA “was not an ‘independent and impartial tribunal established by law’” and was often used by the state to “further its own political opinions and motives,” as the Prosecutor General of Poland and the Executive branch of government held considerable influence and authority over the judicial system. Additionally, the 2017 law that created the CERPA gave to the General Prosecutor “the unlimited power to contest virtually any final judicial decision” and extended the time limits for filing appeals, which enabled the Prosecutor to act retroactively and undermine the “requirement of foreseeability.”

Who’s the boss? Exploring public and private wage growth leadership in state-level education and health industries in Australia

ABSTRACT Public sector wage research has evolved beyond the estimation of public sector wage premiums to investigating the nature of interrelationships between public and private wage patterns. This article seeks to extend this wage leadership research to investigate intra-industry linkages and spillovers between public and private sector wage growth in Education and Health industries, using Australia as a case study. The research employs vector error correction models to encompass tests for full wage adaptability, long-run and short-run wage leadership. Results show that the public sector is the long-run leader in all models, regardless of industry and alternative jurisdictions’ public sector wage setting policy. Our findings have important policy implications for public sector wage setting practices, demonstrating that wage policies which may be based on political motivations can have widespread effects on the private sector.

Extent and dynamics of the remunicipalisation of public services

ABSTRACT Remunicipalisation of local public services has attracted the interest of scholars from different fields of the social sciences in recent years. Whereas earlier studies into this phenomenon were dominated by case-based analysis, there has been a noteworthy increase in quantitative studies in recent years. There is now, abundant evidence on the drivers of remunicipalisation especially the influence of pragmatic and political motivations. Other topics, such as the effects of remunicipalisation, however, remain underdeveloped. We provide an overview of the scope and dynamics of remunicipalisation, recent advances in its research, and discuss where future research should be directed.

Security threats for Europe and summer Olympic games in Paris 2024

Sport has historically played a significant role in spreading positive values and connecting cultures and nations worldwide, but it can also be exploited for political, religious, and ideological motivations. Sporting events have become targets of terrorist attacks in recent years. Terrorists and extremist groups may use sports events as means to propagate their ideologies or to attract attention through acts of terrorism. The threat of attacks during sporting events poses a serious risk to the security of the civilian population and, consequently, a significant challenge for its protection. The most notable sporting event in 2024 will be the Summer Olympic Games in Paris. France has experienced the highest number of terrorist attacks in Europe, making the Olympics a major security concern. The study analyzes terrorists' strategies related to attacks on sports events and potential attack scenarios at the 2024 Olympic Games. The insights gained can contribute to strengthening the security of sporting events and the protection of participants and spectators against potential threats.

ATTEMPTS TO OVERCOME THE USSR'S LAG IN THE FIELD OF PETROCHEMISTRY IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 1960S

The purpose of the publication is to investigate the problem of the evolution of the state industrial policy in the field of petrochemical development in the second half of the 1960s on the basis of declassified archival documents. It is proved that the country's leadership had all the data indicating both the significant role of petrochemistry in the economy of developed countries, the active growth of production volumes, and the significant lag of the Soviet Union in a number of areas. The data provided by Soviet diplomats and experts in this field accelerated the consideration of these issues in the Central Committee of the CPSU. The conclusion is formulated that measures were taken to overcome the backlog, but they proved insufficient and did not bring the expected results. Among the blocking factors are: the predominance of the interests of individual departments; planning miscalculations; lack of financing; low prices for oil and petroleum products, constraining the development and implementation of energy-saving technologies, economical power plants; wasteful consumption of raw materials, products of its processing; forcing the export of raw materials, including to the COMECON countries. It was often political motives that prevailed in this case, but not economic expediency.

Does development aid reach politically excluded groups? A Disaggregated Study of the Location of Aid in Sub‐Saharan Africa

AbstractMotivationDespite an increased focus on inclusive development, we know little about the extent to which development aid reaches politically excluded groups or how this varies across different donors.PurposeAddressing this knowledge gap, we develop and test a framework arguing that (1) areas where politically excluded groups live are less likely to receive development aid, and (2) there are differences between donor countries and organizations in how they instrumentally address inclusive development.Methods and approachUsing a geographically disaggregated panel dataset of aid projects covering sub‐Saharan African countries from 1996 to 2013, we combine sub‐national data on the location of aid by donor and type, and data on politically excluded ethnic groups.FindingsFor World Bank aid projects, we do not find evidence that areas with excluded groups are generally prioritized. However, when disaggregating by sector, we find that aid projects related to health and water access are significantly more likely to be allocated to areas with excluded groups. Furthermore, we see little indication that Chinese aid is targeted towards areas of political exclusion. Conversely, aid allocations made by donor countries whose development strategies emphasize inclusive and needs‐based approaches are more likely to be established in areas with politically excluded groups.Policy implicationsWe argue that these results indicate diverse underlying political motivations behind the provision of development aid by various donors. These motivations become evident when examining aid allocation by sector and type of donor.

Money first? Strategic and economic interests in the international arms trade network, 1920–1936

AbstractArms transfers result from economic and political motives, with the latter often dominating the former. While this is accepted knowledge for the post‐World War II period, it seems not to apply earlier. Much existing research argues that in the interwar years, weapons were traded as purely commercial goods because governments had neither the ability nor willingness to control and direct arms transfers. We reassess this idea and argue that, while formal control was largely absent, governments could steer weapons shipments nonetheless because arms producers depended on them as main customers, sales agents, and financiers of their export business. Anecdotal evidence suggests that governments actively used this influence. To test whether interwar arms transfers were the result of political or commercial interests, we use newly collected, historical data on the small arms trade and inferential network analysis methods. Our results suggest that although economic drivers existed throughout the interwar period, political considerations were especially influential when international relations were hostile at the start and end of the period. This research contributes to our understanding of international economic relations between the world wars and of the drivers of arms transfers across time.

An Appraisal of the Historical Development of the African Response to Extradition

The research work delves into the evolution of African countries' approach to extradition over the course of history. Extradition, the legal process of surrendering individuals accused of crimes to another jurisdiction, has undergone significant changes in Africa, influenced by regional cooperation efforts. The study provides an in-depth examination of the significant events in the development of extradition laws across the African continent. The impacts of World War II on extradition is also scrutinized, highlighting how political motivations sometimes influenced extradition decisions, leading to contentious cases and strained international relations. Additionally, the study examines how regional organisations such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the South African Development Commission (SADC), and also how African Union (A.U) in general work to promote integration and cooperation within the region on legal issues, including extradition. The work further analyses recent efforts to modernize extradition laws in some African countries, aligning them with international standards and practices. This has been facilitated by increased cooperation with international organizations, enhancing legal and operational capacities in extradition matters. This research study extensively analyses the historical development of the African response to extradition in Africa. It sheds light on the evolving approaches, challenges, and regional cooperation efforts concerning extradition practices on the continent. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how extradition has shaped and been shaped by Africa's legal, political, and social landscape throughout history. Keywords: AU, ECOWAS, Extradition, Cooperation, Crimes, SADC.

Women in Political Party Recruitment in Japan: A Comparative Study of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP)

<em>This research will shed light on the role of women in political parties in Japan. Japanis still in 125th position out of 146 countries in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index (GGI) Report 2023. This puts Japan at the bottom among developed countries. Even though various policies related to gender equality have been taken by the Japanese government. Politics as an instrument of democracy should ideally play a role in the promotion and campaign of gender equality in Japan. The ruling LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) and the opposition CDP (Constitutional Democratic Party) also played the issue of gender equality as part of efforts to respond to women's public. The response of political parties can certainly be traced to how political parties recruit and place women in party and parliamentary structures. This is the purpose of this study, to find out how the LDP and CDP recruit and candidacy women in their respective parties as an effort to realize gender equality. Using qualitative methods and party recruitment perspectives, it was found that both LDP and CDP provide space for women's involvement in their political parties. Although the LDP in the recruitment of women still uses a conservative and exclusive approach, the CDP is more progressive and inclusive. And also both, the LDP and CDP both consider the capital and political motivations of each female candidate. However, neither of them has made the affirmative quota policy effective within his party</em>