Making Marriage Promotion into Public Policy: The Epistemic Culture of a Statewide Initiative

Though political sociologists have sought to understand how self-interest influences politics and policymaking, little research has examined the mechanisms involved in the relationship between constructing knowledge and forming policy. This article extends the concept of epistemic culture to the field of policymaking to uncover the mechanisms of knowledge production in policy formation. It offers an extended case study of government marriage promotion policies that seek to fund and disseminate marriage education among poor couples with the goal of lifting them out of poverty. Based on an ethnography of a statewide marriage initiative in Oklahoma, this article maps out the parameters of an epistemic culture of marriage promotion shaped by three mechanisms: 1) The articulation of connections between policy, commonsense ideas, and extant epistemologies; 2) The formation of policy that consolidates research findings to quell controversy; and 3) The creation of networks to convince relevant actors of the importance of marriage promotion policy.     

Contradictory tendencies in the political culture of Croatian youth: unexpected anomalies or an expected answer to the social crisis?

A successful democratic consolidation of post-socialist societies depends, among other things, on their citizens’ political culture, younger generations included. Moreover, youth civic engagement today and in the future is a guarantee of the continuity and development of democracy, which means that scientists need to gain insight into young people’s political culture. In this paper we look at political values, institutional trust and participation as relevant components of the civic political culture. The analysis is based on quantitative data collected in the empirical studies of Croatian youth, carried out between 1999 and 2013. Based on longitudinal study results, a downward trend is identified regarding selected political culture indicators: acceptance of liberal-democratic values, trust in social and political institutions, interest in politics and party preference. However, there is a simultaneous increase in participation in various types of organizations, especially political parties. The interpretation of established tendencies is placed in a broader context of an inherited democratic deficit, economic recession and social crisis. Current trends are both indicators and consequences of young people’s inadequate political socialization as well as weaknesses of political institutions and various actors during the transition and consolidation period.     

The Malawi 1964 cabinet crisis and its legacy of ‘perpetual regression of trust’ amongst contemporary Malawian politicians

Malawi's cabinet crisis was one of the most critical incidents in Malawi's political history. The crisis emanated from a disagreement between the Prime Minister and his six cabinet ministers over domestic, as well as foreign policies. The end result was that the six cabinet ministers resigned or were fired from government. While this article acknowledges that the link between the cabinet crisis and Dr Banda's leadership style during the one party era is undisputed, it argues that a further link between the crisis and contemporary Malawian politics has remained unexplored. The central argument of this article is that the cabinet crisis did not only determine the nature of political relations during the Banda era, but also that of contemporary Malawian politics in what may be identified as the legacy of ‘perpetual regression of trust’ among politicians.     

Who are the active and central actors in the ‘rising civil society’ in Mexico?

The debate about the rise of civil society in Mexico suggests that the processes of political and economic liberalization are multiple and uneven and, thus, have different and contradictory effects on different social groups. This study takes such arguments into account and examines the nature of collective identities and social networks that are more likely to be mobilized in the rising civil society. Who, with what types of social networks and identities, are the active actors in this rising civil society in Mexico? This study also attempts to identify the central actors who take an active part in multi-sector coalitions. As such a broad coalition often leaves profound effects on politics and society, it is vital to ask which actors are likely to take an important step toward multi-sector coalition making. Using a catalog of 1797 protest campaigns collected from three Mexican newspapers between 1964 and 2000, event frequency analysis is employed to find active actors and social network analysis – blockmodel method and degree centrality measure – is applied to uncover central actors. The analyses reveal that while workers, peasants, or students continue to be very active, the centrality of these actors in contentious networks and coalitions has not increased. New central actors in the rising civil society turn out to be civic associations and NGOs formed around single issues, such as environment, retirement, and human rights. When a multi-sector coalition occurs in contemporary Mexico, NGOs and civic associations are likely to play a crucial role in it.     

Anarchy in Iceland? The global left,pirates and socialists in post-crash Icelandic politics

ABSTRACT

The historically stable Icelandic political party system has been uprooted since the 2008 financial crisis. In this paper, we explore to what extent the global left movement of anarchists and socialists has manifested in Icelandic politics in this period. We provide a historical overview, starting with the 2008 financial crisis which brought to power the first entirely left-wing government in the country's history, but also gave birth to numerous new political parties that alternately united and divided socialists, anarchists and reformers. The Pirate Party spearheaded this movement from the 2013 elections, but internal disputes have plagued the party in recent years, and both they and the Left Greens now have a fresh challenge from the left: the Socialist Party. We conclude that the current prospects for a united uprising of these movements are dim, although history suggests that they can work together when focusing on common goals of political reform.     

The Disconnection In Online Politics: the youth political web sphere and US election sites, 2002-2004

In recent years, candidates and other political actors have dramatically increased their presence and activities online. Although the notion of these activities reaching beyond a limited set of early-adopters is relatively new, younger citizens have long been at the forefront of new developments on the web and continue to make up a substantial proportion of those seeking political information online. Given longstanding concern over levels of civic and political engagement among young people, questions concerning what young people seeking information and opportunities for political involvement online might find there are particularly relevant. In particular, we explore political websites that are directly targeted at younger voters (e.g. Rock the Vote and similar sites), websites produced by candidates and political parties, and possible linkages between these two web spheres. Based on content and hyperlink analyses spanning the 2002 and 2004 US election cycles, we find a complex evolution of the online political information environment offered to youth. Although the youth engagement web sphere experienced dramatic growth during this time period, our data also identify a reluctance of many mainstream political actors to speak directly to young people through the web, and a surprising underdevelopment of linkages between youth politics websites and the wider web of political information online. We conclude by considering the implications of these patterns for future research on the role of new media in processes of political communication and engagement.     

Police Unions and the Politics of Democratic Security and Order in Postcolonial India

State attempts to ensure a secure liberal democratic order through legal regulation and enforcement may work to prevent harm, provide public resources, or realize civic and human rights. Such attempts may also increase generalized risk of harm, reinscribe social inequality, circumscribe citizenship or instigate mass protest. These contradictory forces and relations, and their conditions of possibility—what we may call broadly the “politics of democratic security and order”—tend to be analyzed through the lens of government impositions on, and opposition to, the general public, for example focusing on how anti-terrorism legislation violates peoples’ civil liberties. This article addresses the politics of democratic security and order from a different and under-theorized angle that troubles the assumed opposition between a powerful state apparatus and subjugated citizens’ rights: namely, special restrictions placed on the rights of security enforcement agents themselves. Through ethnographic and archival research in India on attempts to form police unions—which are legally banned by a parliamentary act, yet politically active in many states of the country routinely touted as “the world’s largest democracy”—I demonstrate how conflicts related to these organizations may create new possibilities for mass politics, state-society alignments, and legal advocacy for civic and human rights, even as extant laws, regulations and, perhaps most importantly, public discourses around security and police discipline place extraordinary constraints on the political subjectivity of state security actors.     

Protests,signaling, and elections: conceptualizing opposition-movement interactions during Argentina’s anti-government protests (2012-2013)

ABSTRACT

This article explores the interface of protest movements and opposition parties, considering this remains conceptually under-specified. It does so by proposing a processual framework involving three mechanisms of party-movement interaction – signaling, frame-alignment, and coalition-building – at play in different phases of a contentious cycle unfolding under electoral conditions. Drawing on novel interview data, the article validates this proposal by tracing direct and indirect effects between protest signals, activists, and Argentine opposition parties during the year-long contentious cycle that preceded the defeat of the Kirchner government in the 2013 legislative elections. On this basis, it is argued that interactive dynamics between protest actors and political parties can significantly affect opposition politics, supporting the emergence of collaborative strategies that may have major electoral implications. The article thus makes relevant theoretical and empirical contributions, by both offering an analytical bridge between social movement and party politics literatures with potential for further elaboration, while illuminating new developments concerning the positioning of Latin American center-right parties in relation to mass protests.     

The Contradictory Effects of Work and Family on Political Activism

This paper examines the contradictory effects of occupations and families on political activism. Based on a comparative study of left-wing and right-wing activists from the 1960s, I find that although people maintain their beliefs and values across the life cycle, occupations and family life become competing interests in sustained political involvement. At the same time, careers can serve as an extension of political beliefs; families also act both to nurture and confirm political beliefs as well as pull people away from the world of politics.     

Intervention and representation of poverty

Any intervention against poverty is not so much an administrative process as a social relation between categories of actors that are partly defined by it. Being a social action, it implies a construction of meaning that will guide the behavior of the actors. This semantic network needs an interpretation. This article presents a simplified model (an "ideal-type") of this meaningful interaction. It will contrast the way the professional actors of the poverty field present poverty and poor people and the way poor people themselves present their situation and the difficulties they face. This comparison will show the great distance between these discourses.     

Poverty research and policy for rural America

Resurgent interest in poverty in the U.S. by both researchers and policymakers offers an opportunity to bring increased attention to the plight of the rural poor. Rural poverty is widespread and severe, and fundamental changes in the structure of the national economy portend continued distress in remote areas. High labor force participation by the rural poor has important theoretical and policy implications for understanding the causes, consequences and intervention strategies for combating poverty. Research on the characteristics and circumstances of different groups of the poor in rural areas could make a significant contribution toward dispelling some of the myths about “deserving and undeserving” categories of poor people that continue to impede design and implementation of appropriate policy. We review what is currently known about rural poverty, what needs to be learned, and how such research applies to current policy debates. has conducted applied research on the working poor and economic development in Appalachia. specializes in rural labor markets, gender and stratification, and political sociology. She is on the advisory board of the Aspen Institute’s Rural Economic Policy Program. The authors contributed equally to this paper. Helpful comments were offered by anonymous reviewers. An earlier version was presented at the 1987 Rural Sociological society Meetings, Madison, Wisconsin.     

Social Conservatism, New Republicans, and the 1980 Election

Using data from the 1980 National Election Study, we examinethe claims (1) that those voters who shifted to Ronald Reaganin 1980 ("New Republicans") were drawn disproportionately fromthe lower to middle strata of the population: (2) that theywere social conservatives motivated by issues like abortionand ERA: and (3) that they were more religious and alienatedfrom the federal government than average. Our results stronglysuggest that all of these assertions are false and thus questionthe emergence of a "neopopulist" or "Middle American Radical"political constituency on the right wing of American politics.Our findings also have implications for prominent theories aboutconservative political movements and about the changing natureof party politics in a postindustrial society.     

Special Forum on the Millennium Development Goals: Introduction

Abstract

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight time-bound targets aiming, amongst other issues, to reduce extreme poverty, address school enrollment and the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, expire in September 2015. World leaders, civil society organisations, philanthropists, and the private sector are all frantically negotiating and consulting over what will follow them. This special forum in Globalizations is dedicated to questions which explore the politics of the MDGs, and the subsequent discussions which are framing their successor development framework, the Sustainable Development Goals. Most research into the MDGs tends to be technocratic, addressing issues of how we might achieve the goals better, faster, and more efficiently. Questions of what kinds of societies might be created by the achievement of the goals, and what alternative societies people living in poverty might wish to build for themselves tend to get left aside, as do questions which address the fundamentally capitalocentric logics which underpin the MDGs. This special forum introduction briefly explores some of these issues before introducing the contributors, who include leading scholars on the critical politics and international political economy of international development, such as Suzan Ilcan, Philip McMichael, Kathleen Sexsmith, Carl Death, Japhy Wilson, Anita Lacey, Maia Green, and Heloise Weber.     

Assessing Television’s ‘Political Dramas’

Because drama is so important to the television schedules, and because television remains a ubiquitous and pervasive medium, TV drama is a constant cultural presence. Some of its stories are about politics, featuring the work of government, the contestation of elections, party rivalry and negotiation, and so on, with a cast of characters including leaders, advisors, journalists, celebrities and citizens: they echo, refract, replay, model and feed into narratives about real‐world politics in a variety of ways. Dramatic stories of this kind are important for the sake of their potential contribution to what citizens believe ‐ and feel ‐ about politics itself. Dramatised political stories and characters appear in a wide range of genres, from factually based docudramas to situation comedy and soap opera, and have become the focus of international academic attention for a number of scholars in politics departments as well as those working from within media and cultural studies. This article looks at a range of approaches to studying political drama on television, raising questions about generic variety, the ideas and the kinds of analysis that have been applied and the varying assessments that have been put forward.     

Echoes of the present?: The politics and policy of child support 1945–70

SUMMARY. Child poverty has been an emotive and political issue for many years. This article sets out to look at the concepts of poverty—both absolute and relative. It then analyses government and political party attitudes to poverty from 1945–70, concluding that little has been achieved, particularly for the poorer and larger. families. In drawing out lessons for the present day, the paper argues that assumptions about the causes of poverty and ways of tackling it need to be questioned before progress can be made. This article is based on material contained in Michael McCarthy's 1986 book Campaigning for the Poor: CPAG and the Politics of Welfare. It appears here by permission of the publishers, Croom Helm.     

Framing Identity Politics: Right-Wing Women as Strategic Party Actors in the UK and US

ABSTRACT

Women’s political underrepresentation in right-wing parties remains a global phenomenon. Despite their rejection of “identity politics,” the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party and the United States’ Republican Party have launched formal initiatives to recruit women legislative candidates. In this article, we ask: How do right-wing women advocate for increasing women’s representation within parties that explicitly reject group identity politics? More specifically, we examine 1) how party elites frame the UK’s Women2Win and the US’s Project GROW campaigns, and 2) the role that women play in each of these initiatives. Through interviews with party elites and content analyses of news articles and campaign materials, we show that right-wing women in both countries function as strategic party actors, advocating for women’s representation tactically within the specific ideological and electoral context of their party.     

What’s Wrong with Us? Sexual Misconduct and the Discipline of Political Science

ABSTRACT

Sexual misconduct matters not only when it is perpetuated by political actors in political institutions. It matters wherever it happens and whomever it happens to, because it is, at its base, political. Politics is fundamentally about power: who gets what, when, and how. As political scientists it should be at the heart of what we study, but it isn’t. Our discipline creates artificial (and somewhat arbitrary) boundaries about which studies of politics count as meaningful research and which do not. We discourage research that explores more expansive notions of how politics is practiced in broader society. As academics we have the luxury of speaking out. I argue here that political scientists ought to embrace an expansive definition of politics to address the real questions of power, its abuse in our society and in our profession.     

Plebiscites,Fiscal Policy and the Poor: Learning from US Experience with Direct Democracy

Many countries are contemplating direct political participation as a way of giving marginalised people more say in national fiscal policies. The United States is a natural laboratory for studying how large‐scale direct democracy actually works in this regard. Every state allows voters to decide certain ballot questions about how to raise and spend public revenue. The 100‐year record shows, however, that state‐wide plebiscites fail to produce uniformly equitable or financially sustainable government budgets, or to mobilise low‐income groups to defend their economic interests. When called upon to make decisions about state government spending, the electorate is apt to disregard any hardship for poor people. Traditional political parties and advocacy organisations are usually a more promising avenue for promoting anti‐poverty budgets.     

Civic life in Gray Mountain: sizing up the legacy of New England’s blue-collar middle class

When President Clinton took Congressional and business leaders on a tour early this summer to places where chronic poverty has persisted despite the nation’s booming economy, they visited Appalachia’s coalfields, the Mississippi Delta, the Pine Ridge Indian reservation and inner-city neighborhoods in East St. Louis and Los Angeles. They did not visit New England. Not that New England’s inner cities aren’t plagued with poverty and social problems; they are. And many poor families are struggling to get by in rural Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Yet the notoriously bad conditions that took the president to the nation’s “poverty pockets” are exceedingly rare in the six-state region. Why? Why have poverty rates stayed so high in the South compared with New England? And what can the region expect in the future?The answers lie in the kind of civic culture generated by each community’s economy and social structure. Chronically poor places are divided by race and class and saddled with corrupt politics, ineffective schools, and self-interested elites. Distrustful of one another, people in these places look out only for their own families. Escaping poverty is possible only for the lucky few who have a kind relative, caring teacher, or coach who pushes and inspires them to finish school and aim high. But most stay trapped in the same poor conditions their parents and perhaps grandparents knew.In contrast, when communities have a large middle class, the poor are less likely to be cut off from the mainstream. And they are more likely to have the set of contacts, habits and skills—the cultural tool kit—they need to leave poverty behind. More importantly, the community institutions that poor families rely upon are more likely to be effective because the middle class is committed to them. The poor can get ahead without relying solely on personal intervention from a mentor or other benefactor.During the 1990s, I studied poverty and community change in three remote, rural communities: a poor Appalachian coal county I call “Blackwell,” a poor Mississippi Delta plantation community I call “Dahlia” and a more stable and economically diverse northern New England mill community, “Gray Mountain.” The idea was to learn why poverty persisted generation after generation in Appalachia and the Delta, what made the difference when people did achieve upward mobility, and why it was so hard to bring about change. I examined 100 years of Census data detailing changes in population, patterns of work, income distribution and education. I read histories of each region, as well as the local weekly newspapers. But the heart of the study is the 350 in-depth interviews colleagues and I conducted with people living in these communities—not only the poor, but also the rich and those in between. These open-ended conversations revealed how each community’s civic culture—its level of trust, participation and investment—shapes opportunities for both individual mobility and social change.     

Even the ‘Rich’ are Vulnerable: Multiple Shocks and Downward Mobility in Rural Uganda

Poverty data rarely capture processes of change, limiting our ability to understand poverty trajectories at the individual or household levels. This article uses a household survey, village‐level participatory studies and indepth life‐history interviews to examine people's poverty trajectories and to identify what drives and maintains chronic poverty. Composite shocks can propel previously non‐poor households into severe and long‐term poverty. Poverty is hard to escape, and people born into chronically poor households find few opportunities for accumulation and wealth creation. The analysis highlights the importance of poverty interrupters, including the end of conflict and the re‐integration of internally displaced people, and suggests that state‐led interventions would be needed to provide real opportunities to the chronically poor.