Relative Power Position Research Articles

Moving towards smarter social contracts? Digital transformation as a driver of change in state–society relations in the MENA region

ABSTRACT Digitalization has far-reaching yet under-researched impacts on state–society relations. This article addresses this gap and explores digitalization as a driver of change to social contracts. The conceptual framework explains how it changes (a) the state’s duty to grant protection, provision, and participation in exchange for legitimacy; (b) the modes of state–society interaction; and (c) the contracting parties with respect to their location and their relative power position. Based on a literature review and recent developments in digitalization, the article then discusses how this plays out in the MENA region. It shows that digital surveillance by authoritarian regimes often dominates over the states’ duty to protect their citizens. Spaces for political participation increase through social media and online platforms but often fail to translate into ‘offline’ mobilization. Digitalization can improve public service provision, but only for digitally-connected citizens. Thus, digitalization tends to enhance the relative power positions of MENA states even if states themselves partly depend on external actors for access to and control over digital technologies. Overall, digitalization is an important, structural driver of change to social contracts but pre-existing state–society relations and governance framework conditions lead to either more inclusive or rather more authoritarian social contracts.

Power and vulnerability: managing sensitive language in organizational communication.

Organizational responsibilities can give people power but also expose them to scrutiny. This tension leads to divergent predictions about the use of potentially sensitive language: power might license it, while exposure might inhibit it. Analysis of peoples' language use in a large corpus of organizational emails using standardized Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) measures shows a systematic difference in the use of words with potentially sensitive (ethnic, religious, or political) connotations. People in positions of relative power are ~3 times less likely to use sensitive words than people more junior to them. The tendency to avoid potentially sensitive language appears to be independent of whether other people are using sensitive language in the same email exchanges, and also independent of whether these words are used in a sensitive context. These results challenge a stereotype about language use and the exercise of power. They suggest that, in at least some circumstances, the exposure and accountability associated with organizational responsibilities are a more significant influence on how people communicate than social power.

Invisibility in global health: A case for disturbing bioethical frameworks.

In recent years, the global health community has increasingly reported the problem of 'invisibility': aspects of health and wellbeing, particularly amongst the world's most marginalized and impoverished people, that are systematically overlooked and ignored by people and institutions in relative positions of power. It is unclear how to realistically manage global health invisibility within bioethics and other social science disciplines and move forward. In this letter, we reflect on several case studies of invisibility experienced by people in Brazil, Malaysia, West Africa and other transnational contexts. Highlighting the complex nature of invisibility and its interconnectedness with social, political and economic issues and trends, we argue that while local and targeted interventions might provide relief and comfort locally, they will not be able to solve the underlying causes of invisibility. Building from the shared lessons of case study presentations at an Oxford-Johns Hopkins Global Infectious Disease Ethics Collaborative (GLIDE), we argue that in dealing with an intersectional issue such as invisibility, twenty-first century global health bioethics could pursue a more 'disturbing' framework, challenging the narrow comforting solutions which take as a given the sociomaterial inequalities of the status quo. We highlight that comforting and disturbing bioethical frameworks should not be considered as opposing sides, but as two approaches working in tandem in order to achieve the internationally set global health milestones of providing better health and wellbeing for everyone. Insights from sociology, anthropology, postcolonial studies, history, feminist studies and other styles of critical reasoning have long been disturbing to grand narratives of people and their conditions. To rediscover the ethos of the WHO Alma Ata Declaration-a vision of "health for all by the year 2000"-these thinking tools will be necessary aids in developing cooperation and support beyond the narrow market logic that dominates the landscape of contemporary global health.

Being intentional about intersectionality and positionality

ABSTRACT This paper describes how a familiar exercise, known as the ‘Privilege Walk’, or Step Forward or Back line activity, could be used to develop s understanding of the skills and knowledge needed, prior to their first placement. Specifically, the activity puts particular emphasis on the need to apply ethical principles, values and anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive principles into professional practices, as well as applying, and advancing human rights and promoting social justice and economic wellbeing. Encouraging a deeper understanding of students’ motivations to become social workers, particularly exploring Carl Jung’s 1951 ‘wounded healer’. The activity, used in the training of foster carers and adopters, will be described as a teaching technique to provide an opportunity to understand the intricacies of privilege, and to explore how membership of specific social identity groups endows individuals with privilege and power. Social work courses can help students recognize ways that they can use their privileges, both collectively and individually, to work for social justice. The purpose is not to imply culpability, provoke shame or guilt due to being in a position of relative power or privilege. Instead by raising awareness of the obstacles and benefits experienced, students gain an understanding of the significance of identity in order that they become better social work professionals.

The Influence of Government Ideology on Renewable Energy Consumption in the European Union Countries

By utilizing the panel quantile regression method and employing unbalanced panel data covering the years between 1972 and 2020, this study examines the impact of government ideology on renewable energy consumption for 26 EU member countries. The estimation results indicated that an increase in the relative power position of right-wing parties in government was correlated with a decrease in renewable energy consumption, whereas a rise in the relative power position of left-wing or center-wing parties in government was associated with an increase in renewable energy consumption across all quantiles evaluated. The estimation results were robust to different indicators of renewable energy consumption and government ideology. The estimation results of this study also indicated statistically significant positive associations between the share of seats in parliament for political parties classified as green and renewable energy consumption, and between the total Christian democratic governing party seats as a percentage of all legislative seats and renewable energy consumption. This result suggests that green parties and Christian democratic parties may be the key driving forces behind the positive coefficients for variables representing left-wing and center-wing parties in our study.

Responsive governance: an approach to the conservation and sustainable use of Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction

Marine areas beyond national jurisdiction represent 64% of the total surface area of the oceans and around half of the planet's total surface area. Through their remoteness and vast expanse, they were largely protected from human interference in the past. However, technological advances have removed this protection, exposing this largely unknown ecosystem to unsustainable human activities. To address this emergent problem, the United Nations General Assembly agreed on the legally binding nature of a future agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of BBNJ under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). However, consider a business-as-usual scenario, in which individuals and decision-makers respond to problems rather than working to prevent them, this paper applies the responsive governance lenses to evaluate ten years of Ad Hoc Open-ended Informal Working Group meetings aiming to prove that governance is a problem-driven and it may be tightly connected to the on human perceptions of specific signals and the actors’ relative positions of power. Thus, the chances of having a flexible agreement that will only comply with a partial response to the environmental problem are significant and this will only reduce or mitigate part of the problem but not all. In cases like that, the governance will remain ineffective in some ways.

Swedish politicians’ perspective on civil servants’ collaboration, financial resources, and contextual knowledge in eldercare: A qualitative study

ABSTRACT Swedish municipalities are the main employer for the staff in eldercare, a sector where sick leave rates are high and work environment deficiencies are reported. This qualitative grounded theory study aimed to explore how the politicians accountable for eldercare in Sweden perceived their collaboration with civil servants, their understanding of the financing of eldercare, and views regarding their own existing knowledge of their assignment within eldercare. The study comprised interviews with 41 politicians from municipalities across Sweden. Three categories emerged: (1) holding a position of power, (2) lacking finance of eldercare, and (3) wanting to increase their knowledge base. The strongest finding showed that the civil servants can be viewed as holding a position of power in relation to the politicians. Politicians relied on the civil servants to gather and present information regarding eldercare so they could make accurate decisions; at the same time, they were aware that information might be incomplete. Most of the accountable politicians believe that the financial resources allocated for eldercare were insufficient. The politicians also believed they needed to increase their own knowledge base and expressed a desire to learn more about eldercare and the employees’ work environment. Further studies should explore the role of the first line managers of staff in the eldercare organization and their work environment, and how they perceived their collaboration with civil servants and the accountable politicians.

Dispositional and situational factors on bargaining concession rates and outcomes: predictive power of NIMBuS–an integrated model of Buyer-Seller negotiations

We propose a process model that examines the antecedents and consequences of bargaining concession rates with managerially relevant constructs grounded in social psychology to predict negotiation outcomes in a sales setting involving multiple issues. The situational factors of relative power, constituent’s monitoring, time pressure; and dispositional factors of bargainer’s personality toughness and risk-taking propensity are integrated to test the associated set of hypotheses. Our novel approach employs a fractional factorial design experiment to test the predictions of our NIMBuS solution. The results of our sophisticated bargaining experiment support our model and hypotheses and add to the literature for empirical generalizability. We find in our integrated test that concession rates tend to be lower when bargainers are in a higher relative power position, are under lower time pressure, have higher personality-toughness, or have a higher risk-taking propensity. The underpinning of economic models asserting the importance of discount rates for concession-making does not hold. Our results indicate that the cost-prohibitive mechanism of organizational monitoring of salespeople may not be needed. Importantly, under asymmetric bargaining power situations, our model predicts actual outcomes better than the Nash solution. The critical importance of integrating social-psychological factors to understand the bargaining process and improve predicted outcomes is underscored.

Pandemics and the punitive regulation of the weak: experiences of COVID-19 survivors from urban poor communities in the Philippines

Using first-hand data collected from interviews with 21 coronavirus disease (COVID-19)-positive participants in a public quarantine facility in Quezon City, the largest city in the Philippines, this research aims to uncover the ways in which features of the neoliberal agenda shape experiences of resource-poor COVID-19 positive individuals, influence the decisions they make, and mediate their interactions with actors in relative positions of advantage and power. The first part and second part lay the foundation for neoliberalism as the main lens of analysis and situate this current conjuncture within the Philippine political economy. The third looks at COVID-19 testing, and how testing is accessed and experienced by the participants in public health settings. The fourth part examines quarantine arrangements and explores the experiences of COVID-19 patients in a public quarantine facility from the point of entry until they are allowed to go home. The last part – drawing on the data of the first and second parts – reflects on the aspects of neoliberalism that impede an inclusive, pro-poor and humane response to the pandemic.

Sex for survival: Terrorism, poverty and sexual violence in north-eastern Nigeria

ABSTRACT This study advances the discourse on factors behind conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). Focusing on terrorism-affected north-eastern Nigeria, it argues that terrorism creates poor economic conditions that compel women and girls to engage in transactional sex in exchange for money, food, shelter, protection, and marriage, despite the risks of socio-legal persecutions. This further intensifies the vulnerability of women and girls to sexual violation by security force personnel and aid workers who may exploit their positions of relative power. Furthermore, the lax government response to the rise of CRSV, partly arising from this trade in sex, has contributed to its growth. Thus, this study builds on the debate regarding the motivations behind CRSV. It advances the sex economy framework building on Elisabeth Wood’s discussion of the ‘toleration’ of sexual violence. This pattern of CRSV also has implications for the state’s capacity to access intelligence for the purpose of curbing terrorism.

Conflicting Obligations

This article considers the problem of conflicting researcher obligations in RHM, particularly when professional medical rhetoric is analyzed with the goal of improving patient care. Taking one case as illustrative, this article argues that medical professional participants are in positions of relative power, and that their choice to participate in RHM research or not can have downstream effects on more vulnerable patients. Furthermore, this case demonstrates that the interests of medical professional participants may diverge from the interests of their patients. As a result, when RHM researchers assume traditional orientations towards medical professional research participants, they may find themselves unable to advocate for more vulnerable patient populations.

Necessary Leaven: Hypocrisy and the Heptaméron

Hypocrisy is a recurring concern in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron, part of the wider dynamic of dissimulation, pretence, and exposure explored in the storytelling project. This article discusses the contexts in which hypocrisy is revealed and debated in the Heptaméron. While clerical and feminine hypocrisies are familiar from medieval discussions of lecherous friars and unchaste women, Marguerite de Navarre’s evangelical emphasis presents hypocrisy more generically as an inevitable consequence of the Fall. Beyond general statements about the human condition, there emerges a more nuanced condemnation of hypocrisy that acknowledges relative positions of power and exploitation.

Parties to an alliance: Ideology and the domestic politics of international institutionalization

While much research has been done on the domestic determinants of alliance institutionalization, there has been a neglect of the effect of domestic politics, by which we mean contestation between political actors in the same country. We hypothesize that the ideology of the parties governing countries negotiating the terms of security relationships will affect their preferences over the degree and kind of institutionalization seen in alliances. Drawing on previous literature, we argue that rightist parties are more sensitive to sovereignty costs and will therefore insist on maintaining more control over policy than their leftist counterparts. They can assert control either by imposing hierarchical forms of institutionalization when they are a stronger party to an alliance or by avoiding institutionalization altogether if they are the weaker party in an alliance. In contrast, we expect leftist parties to be less sensitive to sovereignty costs and generally favorable to more voice-driven, egalitarian institutions that have institutionalized mechanisms for consensus-building, regardless of their country’s relative power position. Combining the ATOP dataset on alliance design with the Parties Manifesto Project, we find broad support for our hypotheses. Our findings indicate that scholars should pay more attention to the internal ideological contestation within countries, making room for domestic political factors that go beyond regime type.

Climate Change Awareness: Empirical Evidence for the European Union

In this paper, we assess public attitudes on climate change in Europe over the last decade. Using aggregate figures from the Special Eurobarometer surveys on Climate Change, we find that environmental concern is directly related to per capita income, social trust, secondary education, the physical distress associated with hot weather, media coverage, the share of young people in the total population, and monetary losses caused by extreme weather episodes. It is also inversely related to greenhouse gas emissions, relative power position of right-wing parties in government, and tertiary education. Moreover, we find a significant, opposite impact for two dummies for years 2017 and 2019, which we respectively associate with the effects of Donald Trump's denial campaigns and the U.S. Paris Agreement withdrawal announcement, and Greta Thunberg's environmental activism.

Accommodating an Uninvited Guest: Perspectives of Researchers in Switzerland on 'Honorary' Authorship.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the attitudes and reactions of researchers towards an authorship claim made by a researcher in a position of authority who has not made any scientific contribution to a manuscript or helped to write it. This paper draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with 33 researchers at three seniority levels working in biomedicine and the life sciences in Switzerland. This manuscript focuses on the analysis of participants' responses when presented with a vignette describing an authorship assignment dilemma within a research group. The analysis indicates that researchers use a variety of explanations and arguments to justify inclusion of what guidelines would describe as honorary or guest authorship. Fuzzy parameters such as "substantial contribution" lead to varied interpretation and consequently convenient application of authorship guidelines in practice. Factors such as the culture of the research group, the values and practice shaped by the research leaders, the hierarchy and relative (perceived) positions of power within research institutions, and the importance given to publications as the currency for academic success and growth tend to have a strong influence on authorship practice. Unjustified authorship assignment practices can be reduced to some extent by creating empowering research cultures where each researcher irrespective of his/her career stage feels empowered to confidently raise concerns without fearing adverse impact on their professional lives. However, individual researchers and research institutions currently have limited influence on established methods for evaluating academic success, which is primarily based on the number of high impact publications.

THE INDONESIA-MALAYSIA CULTURAL HERITAGE DISPUTES: A CASE STUDY OF THE PENDET DANCE AND RASA SAYANGE FOLK SONG

Abstract This article analyses the role of nationalism and power politics (external/domestic) in shaping Indonesia’s relations with Malaysia during the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY). More specifically, it examines how nationalism, namely domestic nationalist pressure interacts with other external-domestic determinants in shaping Indonesia’s external behaviour and options towards Malaysia when managing the cultural heritage disputes, with particular attention given to Malaysia’s alleged claims of proprietorship over the Pendet dance and Rasa Sayange folk song. By adopting a neoclassical realist construct, this study seeks to address the pertinent questions of why, how, when and to what extent nationalism affects the perceptions and calculation of the SBY administration and Jakarta’s policy options during their altercations over the two cultural heritage debacles. Special attention is given to examining the interactions between domestic nationalist pressure and the related external-domestic determinants influencing Indonesia’s foreign policy towards Malaysia, to assess the extent to which nationalism constrained the SBY administration’s handling of the related episodes of the cultural heritage disputes. This study found the salience of nationalism and/or domestic nationalist pressure in constraining/affecting SBY administration’s management of the cultural heritage disputes affecting the Indonesia-Malaysia bilateral ties to be dependent on the Indonesian state-elites’ perceptions/calculation of the external-domestic conditions, namely their domestic political resolve vis-à -vis nationalist forces and Indonesia’s relative power position compared with Malaysia, which predisposed specific foreign policy-options during the given time period and context.

The EU-China partnership: balancing between divergence and convergence

The EU-China relationship is driven by two distinct underlying logics: a power-based one and a transformational one. The power-based logic is premised on a belief that because of anarchy, power politics and conflicts of interest cannot be entirely overcome. According to this view, intercourse between the EU and China will reflect their relative power positions and display concerns about relative gains, making cooperation between them more difficult. In contrast, a transformational logic reflects a more liberal/constructivist perspective. It suggests that rules and shared norms can sharply reduce conflicts of interest and mitigate concerns about relative gains through the creation of trust and reciprocal socialization, making enduring cooperation between the EU and China more likely. The EU-China relationship is thus clearly mixed, consisting of an array of cooperative and competitive elements. At any given moment, the relationship can be pictured as residing somewhere along a spectrum that extends from pure cooperation at one extreme to unrestrained competition at the other. Diverging trends, which are mutually reinforcing, are pushing the relationship toward competition, converging trends—also reinforcing each other—are promoting cooperation. The direction in which the EU-China partnership can possibly evolve—more competition or more cooperation—will be moulded by the relative strength of diverging and converging trends.

Social influence and MNE strategic response to political risk: A global network approach

According to the conventional view of MNE–host country relations, MNEs faced with political risk condition their strategic responses on each party’s relative power positions – or bargaining influence. Drawing insight from network theory, institutional theory, and international relations research, I argue that firm sensitivity to political risk is contingent upon a complementary concept: social influence. Social influence arises through the mutual embeddedness of MNE and host government in a complex global network of nations. To test my hypotheses, I construct a global network of trade relations that I combine with a unique transaction-level dataset from the global petroleum industry. My results demonstrate that social influence, as modeled by home–host structural equivalence, moderates the effects of political risk. Further, my findings provide support for a conceptual and empirical distinction between social influence and the traditional bargaining influence examined in the literature.

The Brexit Negotiations: Hampered by the UK’s Weak Strategy

This paper scrutinises the UK government’s approach to the Brexit negotiations. Brexit negotiations were always going to be incredibly tough given the complexity of issues and a deeply divided country in the wake of the EU referendum but Theresa May’s government compounded these challenges with a poorly executed negotiation strategy both in Brussels and at home. The UK government embarked on negotiations with the EU without a clear set of negotiating objectives; it was unable to represent itself as a unified negotiating team; often found itself on the back foot, responding to EU proposals on both sequencing and content; and it pursued an ill-judged distributive strategy that did not reflect the nature of the underlying negotiating prob-lem or the UK’s relative power position. Across the negotiating table, the UK faced an EU negotiating team that had a clear set of negotiating objectives; maintained unity during the negotiations; and always seemed to be a step ahead, with a carefully thought-through strategy and detailed proposals. The shortcomings in the UK government’s strategy reflected weak political leadership. The Prime Minister focused on securing the short-term political survival of her government amidst turbulent and fractious domestic politics, over negoti-ations with the EU27.

Mujeres lesbianas en el movimiento LGBTI+ chileno. Motivación y experiencia

La investigación contenida en este artí­culo nace de la inquietud acerca de la participación de las mujeres lesbianas en el movimiento LGBTI+ chileno. Considerando el género como un factor que otorga al individuo una posición de poder determinada respecto de otros y que, además, media en la experiencia de este individuo, tanto en la sociedad como en el movimiento, se analizaron las motivaciones de las mujeres lesbianas para participar en el movimiento LGBTI+ y sus experiencias al interior del mismo como elementos clave en el desarrollo de su participación. Con este objetivo en mente, se entrevistó a diez mujeres lesbianas que trabajaban activamente en distintas organizaciones-miembro del movimiento LGBTI+ chileno (Fundación Iguales, MOVILH, MUMS y Rompiendo el Silencio).