Political Restructuring Research Articles

Librarians as Facilitators of Democracy and Partners in International Relations

The end of the 20th century has been marked by unprecedented political and economic restructuring world-wide. The collapse of the communist regime in Central and Eastern Europe transpired into formation of new democracies and caused irreversible changes in the life of the global community. Despite the traditional perception of librarians as politically passive information specialists, due to a new world order, librarians are playing an increasingly important role in fostering international relations and collaboration in business, education, and culture. With the availability of Internet, librarians can strengthen democracy and economic development by facilitating access to international information and stimulating communication, critical thinking, and cross-cultural skills of their clients. This article presents a library networking case study between the U.S. and the New Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union. It shares outreach methods applicable to diverse projects targeting emerging democracies, and encourages greater participation by librarians in local and international cooperative initiatives

The Invention of Regions: Political Restructuring and Territorial Government in Western Europe

Regionalism has come back to prominence, as the political, economic, cultural, and social meaning of space is changing in contemporary Europe. In some ways, politics, economics, and public policies are deterritorializing; but at the same time and in other ways, there is a reterritorialization of economic, political, and governmental activity. The ‘new regionalism’ is the product of this decomposition and recomposition of the territorial framework of public life, consequent on changes in the state, the market, and the international context. Functional needs, institutional restructuring, and political mobilization all play a role. Regionalism must now be placed in the context of the international market and the European Union, as well as the nation-state.

Discourses of power and rurality: Local politics in Somerset in the 20th century

This paper examines the changing nature of the local power structure of a rural county in the UK during the 20th century. In contrast to previous accounts, which have focused on the material factors behind political restructuring, this paper follows recent thinking in political geography in considering the interrelation between ‘the cultural’ and ‘the political’. Using empirical examples from Somerset, the evolution of the local power structure is examined from the perspective of the discourses of power and rurality used to legitimate the leadership position of political elites. Domination of local governance at the start of the century by a landowning elite based on discourses of ‘the country gentleman’ and ‘stewardship’ is replaced after the first world war by a broader elite of landowners and farmers united by discourses of ‘agriculture’ and ‘community’. After the second world war the power structure fragments under pressure from new non-agricultural political actors acting within an environmentalist discourse. The paper concludes by discussing the empirically derived model in the context of the concept of ‘societalization’.

Decentralization or (Re)Centralization: Struggle for Political Power in Poland

The author argues that in Poland the 1989 commitment to political and administrative decentralization has weakened over the last seven years and has resulted in (re)centralizing tendencies. It is argued that the center's interest in gaining short-term political successes rather than engaging in long-term reforms fostered the retention of past centralized practices and the emergence of new (re)centralizing tendencies. This has been accomplished by the central state through application of three sets of forces: (1) fiscal, (2) political, and (3) systemic (preservation of the past). The first part of the paper lays out a theoretical framework for analysis of pressures and barriers to decentralization and (re)centralization. The second is an examination of the process of implementation in Poland, of local government and public administration reform over the period 1989–96. The third is an examination of (re)centralization processes in the context of political and fiscal forces as well as the inability of the center to reform itself and terminate the legacy of the past system in its multidimensional form (legal, institutional, territorial). The author concludes by asserting that, although clear (re)centralizing tendencies can be identified, Polish (re)centralization is characterized by the duality of the struggle: to move forward with the reforms and to dismantle the remnants of the past centralized system. Therefore, although Polish (re)centralization may appear similar in form, it differs in terms of causes from countries that are not subject to political and economic restructuring.

From Monarchy to Markets: The Phoenicians in Hellenistic Palestine

Outside of a few scattered inscriptions and historical references, little information exists concerning Phoenician activities in Hellenistic Palestine. Now, however, a ceramic ware of demonstrably late Hellenistic date and Phoenician (probably Tyrian) origin has been identified, along with the corpus of shapes produced in it and their various distributions. The ware is called Phoenician semi fine, and its distribution pattern reflects later second century B.C. Phoenician market routes. Vendors apparently serviced only two regions: the city and hinterland of c Akko-Ptolemais and the Hula Valley. Notably, though the country's Phoenician population was dispersed in both the south and the north, regular demand for these Phoenician products was solely in the north. Northern colonists may have been less willing to assimilate than Phoenicians living in the south. The stronger cultural and economic ties maintained between the north and Tyre may have been a factor in the region's subsequent political restructuring.

Political Leadership and Popular Consent: Party Strategies in Bolivia, 1880–1899

The governmental era of the Bolivian conservative parties—Constitutional, Democrat, and Conservative—encompasses the historical period from Bolivia’s withdrawal from the Pacific War (1880), which saw a Peruvian-Bolivian alliance against Chile, to the outbreak of the Federal War of 1899 between conservatives and liberals. Within this period of infighting lies the genesis of the Bolivian political party system. With the establishment of a truce in 1880 between Chile and Bolivia, without which Bolivia would have had to definitively withdraw from the conflict and break its Peruvian alliance, two positions arose concerning a resolution of the conflict: the continuation of the war or peace. These polar solutions adhered to the first ideological substratum of the Bolivian political parties, making it possible to define the various factions of the elite in light of the new political restructuring and the role of the State.

Engendered ideologies and leisure policy in the UK. Part 1: gender ideologies

I don't quite yawn when I see another project about the problems women face but I think to myself ‘This ground has been heavily walked over. We know it. It's been written about. It's been sung about. It's been acted about and it's been painted and performed about.’ It is very well worn territory and I'm now thinking ‘What next? How do you use that raised awareness and move on?’ (Keeper, arts and museums). This article draws upon PhD research to examine the restructuring of engendered leisure policy ideologies in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and to consider the implications for leisure provision for women. The article is in two parts. In Part 1, a typology of ideologies is developed in order to outline the kinds of gender ideologies circulating in leisure policy. Part 2 of the article examines the articulation of gender and professional ideologies, and the configurations of ideologies which were emerging as predominant at a time of political and economic restructuring.

Sociology and Social Reform

Abstract. Recently, there have been calls from several Canadian sociologists to make sociology more relevant to contemporary events in Canada. This paper examines certain features of current social reforms, and it considers their implications for Canadian sociology. The topic of particular concern is the nexus of labour market restructuring and the restructuring of the welfare state, in which increased unemployment is followed by cuts to income protection for the unemployed. Canadian political economy, which had correctly identified the salience of this problem, is described as being at a crossroads with no obvious civic role today. In this paper, it is recommended that sociologists should pay more attention to the micro-social effects of macro-social events, and especially to the unintended consequences of program changes. Introduction The recent history of sociology in Canada has been greatly influenced by the evolution of Canadian political economy, but this approach now stands at a crossroads. In her mid-1980s review of Canadian Political Economy, Patricia Marchak (1985) predicted that there would be two central problems for Canadian sociologists to address in the following decade. The first problem was falling political will for state intervention in the market economy, mainly due to attacks on the welfare state and on labour policies. The second problem identified by Marchak was growing unemployment and underemployment, as a result of global restructuring and the introduction of new technologies. Both of Marchak's predictions were accurate, and the effects of the changes she described are clearly visible in the face of poverty in the 1990s (Cheal, 1996b). As a political economist, Marchak was mainly interested in the significance of current trends of economic and political restructuring for understanding contemporary capitalism. However, there are other questions that can be raised, from different theoretical perspectives. One of the most fundamental issues in thinking about directions for sociology in Canada today is the need to re-examine our understanding of ideas about progress. The sociological study of progress has mainly taken the form of analysing societal modernization, understood as mutually reinforcing connections between social institutions which produce a constant expansion of life, liberty and happiness, plus the study of those groups who are left behind in the march of progress. (2) The latter groups, it is thought, can be re-integrated into the virtuous circle of progress through progressive social reform, in which the state should play a leading role. In Canadian political economy, the underlying assumption about the role of the state is that progress is most likely to be achieved in a socialist society (see especially the journal Studies in Political Economy). However, in the mid-1990s a socialist transformation of Canada seems increasingly unlikely, and socialist political economy therefore offers only faint hope of progress. Under present conditions, it is not at all clear what civic role is left for Canadian political economy. It is partly for this reason that Canadian sociologists now face the difficult task of redefining our relationship with our publics (Stasiulis and Guppy, 1995). How, then, are sociologists to think about the nexus of labour market restructuring and the restructuring of the welfare state, at a time when increased unemployment is followed by cuts to income protection for the unemployed? One way of thinking about that issue is to re-focus attention on the micro-social effects of macro-social changes. Family Incomes and Unemployment in Canadian Social Policy Social policy reform in Canada today means harmonising social policy with economic policy, for example by strengthening work incentives for the employable poor (O'Higgins, 1992; Reynolds, 1993). The manner in which employment and unemployment are addressed in Canada reflects the nature of the Canadian state as a liberal welfare state. …

Local politics, new agendas and strategies for change in English historic cities

This article introduces and discusses some of the implications of the effects of the dual processes of economic and state restructuring on historic cities in England. The article focuses on the politics of development which are emerging in historic cities in response to structural changes in the local, regional and national economy, and the move to reconstitute English democratically elected local government into a more widely constituted system of local governance. There is a wide literature on the heritage industry and conservation of historic cities, but there is little which examines the political economy of these places and the extent to which this shapes the development agendas and strategies being produced. The article begins to chart how economic and political restructuring in England impacts on historic cities, and focuses on how provincial English historic cities are responding to a range of competing and often contradictory economic and political pressures. The emergence of sustainable development policy frameworks which seek to reconcile the potentially incompatible requirements of growth, conservation and environmental sustainability in historic cities are seen as key sites of political contestation.

Back to Europe: back to Bismarck?

Since 1989 there have been enormous changes in all aspects of health policy, and the Former Socialist Economies (FSEs) are facing similar challenges. The general restructuring of politics and economies has resulted in two leading orientations in the transformation of health care systems: the separation of funding and service provision from the state, and the separation of funding and service provision from each other. Many FSEs have already passed legislation establishing a sickness insurance system under a single national funding institution, or a combination of compulsory and voluntary insurance, or a system involving private sector insurance companies in generating compulsory or voluntary health care funding. Due to the peculiarities and specific features of the German health care system, the uncritical intention to implement the "Bismarck model" in the FSEs faces several problems. These can be summarized in one main point: the relative stability of the German health care system, which may be attractive to the FSEs, is based on economic prosperity and on a strong ability to assert the will of the central state institutions: these preconditions are not present in the FSEs.

Introduction: Some Consequences of Economic and Political Restructuring and Readjustment

Journal Article Introduction: Some Consequences of Economic and Political Restructuring and Readjustment Get access JANE JENSON JANE JENSON Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, Volume 3, Issue 1, Spring 1996, Pages 1–11, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/3.1.1 Published: 01 March 1996

2 Transitions from Totalitarian Society

Abstract:At the time our survey was conducted in Estonia in 1991, the Soviet Union’s external empire in East-Central Europe had disintegrated and the Soviet Union itself was on the verge of collapse. This article reviews how this situation came about while also noting how unexpected the outcome was. Mikhail Gorbachev sought a perestroika (restructuring) of internal politics and New Thinking in the Soviet Union’s foreign relations. Yet few people, perhaps least of all Gorbachev, thought the internal Soviet empire was so near to its end. This historical overview of events in the Soviet Union sets the context for what happened in Estonia on the eve of its independence.

Africa in the 1990s and beyond: Alternative prescriptions and projections

This article examines the origins, dimensions and implications of Africa's crisis. It draws attention to the impact of historical experiences, the distortions and disarticulations of that experience, and to the coalitions, contradictions, crises and conflicts inherited at independence. It looks at postcolonial alignment and realignment of social and political forces, the crisis of accumulation and power, and the implications of the region's marginal location and role in the global division of labour and power. Calling for a need to transcend the manifestations of the African predicament, the article looks at regional and international responses to the crisis. It concludes by prescribing the need for a fundamental political restructuring, the empowerment of the people and their communities and organizations, a socially sensitive structural adjustment programme, and the recomposition of the content and context of politics and social relations.

Language change in South Africa: A geographical perspective

In the changing multi-ethnic South African society of the nineties, language planning has become a top priority on the national agenda of reform. Comprehension of the territorial dimensions of language is crucial if we are to penetrate its true cultural, economic and political effect. South Africa's language policy, as defined in the interim constitution, focuses mainly on the fact that in future the country will accommodate eleven official languages with equal status. Obviously, the nine provinces do not each have eleven official languages. A provincial legislative may, by a two-thirds majority vote, declare any of the national languages a provincial official language for the whole province or a part thereof. In the light of this it is of vital importance that the country's regional language patterns be analysed on a geographical basis. A visual and statistical representation of the geolinguistic realities in South Africa could support the planning and transformation process currently taking place at all levels of government in this multilingual country. The aim of this paper is to address the following geolinguistic issues on a national scale: The analysis of the 37 million people's first home languages in South Africa has been accomplished by utilizing an ARC/INFO Geographical Information System linked with the 374 statistical districts. Although the country is ethnically and culturally very diverse, three language groups, namely isiZulu, isiXhosa and Afrikaans, dominate the linguistic scene. Their respective distribution patterns are fairly segregated within specific regions, while their relative change patterns are substantially influenced by urbanization trends and political restructuring.

The Politics of Ethnicity in Malawi's Democratic Transition

While the western media were directing their gaze towards South Africa's political restructuring, another democratic transition was taking place to the north that was no less remarkable and no more imaginable a few years ago. Since Malawi obtained independence in 1964, it had been governed by Dr Hastings Banda (as he was then known) and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) under a system of absolute rule which the country's élites refused to reform or relinquish. In March 1992 the Catholic bishops issued a formal protest against President H. Kamuzu Banda's political high-handedness, initiating a popular movement for democratic reform and anti-régime demonstrations by university students and staff, as well as factory workers.1 When additional pressure was exerted by the international community, holding foreign aid hostage to democratisation, the Government finally yielded, holding a referendum for multi-party democracy in June 1993 that led to presidential and parliamentary elections in May 1994. Banda and the MCP were ousted, Bakili Muluzi and the United Democratic Front (UDF) were elected, and Malawians of all parties revelled in the freedom to be openly, aggressively political.

Economic restructuring and gender in Canada: Feminist policy initiatives

This paper examines Canadian policy responses to economic and political restructuring over the past decade and the attempts by feminist groups to influence this agenda. It considers the success of these attempts to have gender issues taken up in the macro policy environment and relates feminist policy positions to theoretical themes emerging from the feminist economic literature on macroeconomics and adjustment.

Administrative Reforms in the Context of Political and Economic Re-Structuring

Administrative Reforms in the Context of Political and Economic Re-Structuring

Post-Fordism and the NAFTA Debate

This article situates the debate about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in on-going economic, social and political global restructuring, which has commonly been termed post-Fordism. The author examines two broad theoretical discourses, the neo-liberal and the State interventionist, which are useful for analyzing the debate about NAFTA and other free trade agreements. The author concludes that both discourses have overlooked particular realities of the post-Fordist transformation that will be important in future debates.

The Orange Riots: Irish Political Violence in New York City, 1870 and 1871.

In this book Michael A. Gordon examines the causes and consequences of the tragic and bloody Orange Riots that rocked New York City in 1870 and 1871. On July 12 of both years, groups of Irish Catholics clashed with Irish Protestants marching to commemorate the victory of 1690 at the Battle of the Boyne that confirmed the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. The violence of 1870 left eight people dead; the following year, more than sixty died. Reconstructing the events of July 12 in those years, Gordon provides a riveting and richly detailed account of the riots. He maintains that they stemmed from more than religious hatred or generations of oppression in Ireland. Rather, both years bear witness to a struggle between two profoundly different visions of the promise of America: a re-creation of European social classes or a form of life liberated from the constraints and stratifications of the Old World. These visions were enmeshed n the turbulent ideological and political confrontations arising from industrialization and newly found immigrant power under New York City's notorious mayor, William Marcy Boss Tweed. Gordon concludes by showing how the riots sparked a reform movement that toppled Tweed from power and led to the restructuring of city politics in the 1870s.

Patriarchs, politics and ethnicity in the making of the Ciskei, 1945–1959

Abstract The demise of the Ciskeian General Council or Bunga in 1955 was followed by the implementation of the Bantu Authorities Act (1951) and the reinforcement of patriarchal control. This political restructuring was linked to ongoing changes in gender power relations and was partly an attempt to contain them. Vast opportunities were offered to collaborating men by a Bantu Affairs Department seeking a measure of consensus for its new‐style indirect rule. Concomitantly, militant chiefs and fiery African nationalists were removed and replaced by those who saw some gain in adopting an ethnic stance and a reinforcement of patriarchal authority.