The Globalization of Politics: From Egypt to India

The world witnessed a startling phenomenon in the spring of 2011. Citizens across a set of countries were acting in similar ways to initiate negotiations with their governments for political change. Rapidly they learnt from each other. They shared a new understanding on how power should be organized and how national wealth should be used for the good of the public, putting forth a new political arrangement that spread, quickly across international borders. Nowhere else was this phenomenon more distinct than in the cities, usually centre points of cross-border flows of people, money and ideas, and that nurtured a certain section of citizenry exposed to external influences. This Profile illustrates that globalization facilitates the establishment of conditions for citizens to be able to compare themselves to other groups and perceive themselves as being relatively deprived. Globalization also broadens the range of factors and events that may trigger a social movement in a society, and allows actors across social movements in different countries to exchange notes, watch out for successful strategies and adapt those of others' into their own towards effective results. In this way, this Profile examines the transferability of recent urban social movements across international borders, particularly focusing on the factors leading to the transfer of certain elements from the pro-democracy movement of the spring of 2011 in Egypt to an anti-corruption movement in India that also took place at the same time.     

Politics in Spain: A Case of Monitory Democracy

Analysing the current political context in Spain is a major challenge to political theory. Spain is experiencing the accumulation of trends that in recent years have focused the attention of most theorists and political scientists: discrediting of the major parties, falling numbers of party members, disaffection, etc. In parallel, this trend has been accompanied by citizen mobilisations that, since 15 May 2011, are manifest in numerous channels and strategies. The aim of this paper was to analyse the complex Spanish context from the monitory democracy proposal. The results show how in recent years processes of public scrutiny have been consolidated through a range of citizen initiatives. The study offers an in-depth analysis of the main characteristics of the most notable cases and monitoring initiatives, and also reflects on their democratising potential.     

Beyond Politics: Rethinking the Future of Democracy1

Abstract The problem of order is central to all societies. Bacon, Hobbes and Smith each proposed to resolve the problem of order by investing moral authority in a “Leviathan” that would guarantee order: science, state and market, respectively. Later scholars adapted their works to other ends. But putting the Leviathans into practice had the unintended effect of relieving individuals of moral responsibility and creating wide-spread disorder. Widespread networks of democracy in all spheres of social life are proposed as an alternative solution to the problem of order, one that encourages the collective discovery of moral values.Such networks put moral responsibility neither on the shoulders of individuals where it becomes crushingly heavy, nor on society where it becomes unbearably light.     

Transnational Municipal Networks in Climate Politics: From Global Governance to Global Politics

In a multilevel and multicentric governance arena, pathways and mechanisms of influence are several and non-state capacities for technical leadership and norm entrepreneurship prove more significant than is the case within a strictly multilateral framework. Among actors with such capacities are municipalities, which multiply their influence through horizontal and vertical relationships. Transnational municipal networks present opportunities for both intermunicipal dialogue and the pooling of global influence, highlighting the presence and influence of the city in the world. This paper examines the collective response of some cities to climate change, exploring the place of cities in global environmental politics through analysis of two transnational municipal networks: the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives' Cities for Climate Protection and the International Solar Cities Initiative. The article addresses the following questions: How might municipal efforts toward a climate-stable future be significant to the larger issue of ecological justice in global environmental politics? Might cities be able to redefine the rules of the game and take a stand on ‘inefficient’ norms? After briefly accounting for the relationship between cities and the world, the article characterizes technical leadership as a legitimizing force of and in global environmental governance and norm entrepreneurship as a potential source of contestation and subversion in global environmental politics. The paper describes what cities are globalizing, in terms of pollution, environmental degradation, and risk, and in terms of management and politics. Finally, the article explores the possibility that emerging horizontal and vertical relationships, intermunicipal relationships, and relationships between cities or networks of cities and other scales of governance potentiate legitimizing roles for cities in climate governance and subversive roles in climate politics.     

Changing Indigeneity Politics in Indonesia: From Revival to Projects

Through the discourse of indigeneity, rural communities around the world are joining a global network of rural justice seekers. By articulating grievances collectively, they demand state recognition while seeking support from NGOs and international development organisations. In Indonesia, the manifestation of indigenous ‘adat’ politics is no longer confined to the national struggle for the recognition of land rights, but instead, has proliferated into many localised short term ‘adat projects’. This introduction to the TAPJA special issue on adat demonstrates that both the rural poor and local elites can be the initiators or recipients of these adat projects but, at the current juncture, the latter are better positioned to benefit from such projects. The special issue shows that in Indonesia, where adat is often firmly entrenched in the state, the promotion of indigeneity claims can work in contradictory ways. Findings from across the special issue show that adat projects tend to reinforce the power of the state, rather than challenging it.     

The Political Economy of Employee Ownership in the United States: From Economic Democracy to Industrial Democracy?

This study examines the development of economic democracy in the United States since the 1700s with particular emphasis on the last 30 years. The particular focus is on employee ownership, although the phenomenon of profit sharing receives some attention. The nature of research and documentation on the subject is reviewed. The study concludes that research in the area has emphasized narrative studies of particular companies and sectors until the 1980s. At that time the support for the concept by the US Federal Government created reporting requirements for companies to the US Department of Labor and the US Internal Revenue Service (the taxation authority) and the US Securities and Exchange Commission. These data-sets have made systematic research on the phenomenon possible. Results of the first national random sample of employed individuals and work sites on the incidence of employee ownership and profit sharing are presented. Finally, we conduct a political economic analysis of the phenomenon. We demonstrate that, despite the growth of employee ownership in particular, a form of employee ownership has developed which encourages workers to use their savings to buy stock in their companies. This form dominates employee ownership in terms of the number of workers, firms, and dollar assets involved. Nevertheless, there is significant employee ownership in a group of closely held firms that use traditional ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans) and in a group of publicly traded high technology companies that use broad-based stock options. These two sectors offer fertile territory for the development of both economic democracy and nascent forms of industrial democracy.     

State Formation and Radical Democracy in India

Since the advent of democratic electoral systems, some deeplyflawed others less deeply flawed, a major question for communitiesall round the world has always been: will my participation inpolitics make any difference? Manali Desai's book engages withthis question in the context of the Indian states of Keralaand Bengal from colonial rule through to Indian independenceand thereafter. This context appears at first sight to be esotericand arcane, but, in fact, turns out to have striking similaritieswith and lessons for almost everywhere in the world today. Inits attempt to explain the special     

Gender and Black Presidential Politics: From Chisholm to Moseley Braun

SUMMARY

Carol Moseley Braun's entrance into the 2003 Democratic presidential primaries brought Representative Shirley Chisholm's 1972 presidential run back into the spotlight. Numerous questions of interest immediately come to mind. Has the political environment for Black females interested in the presidency changed? Is a Black female candidate running nationally today in a better position than thirty years ago? Did Black Americans see a Black female as a serious contender in 2003 where they did not in 1972? Were Blacks more inclined to support a Black male in the race, Al Sharpton, regardless of the qualifications of Moseley Braun? While data are limited, this article attempts to address these questions and to draw some conclusions, albeit cautiously, about the current political environment for Black female candidates.     

From Pillarized Active Membership to Populist Active Citizenship: The Dutch Do Democracy

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This contribution about the Netherlands to the special issue [or: section] on volunteering and civic action focuses on...     

From Science to Social Technology: Eugenics and Politics in Twentieth-Century Switzerland

During the first half of the twentieth century, eugenics becamea mainstream approach to the solution of social problems acrossEurope and North America. Perceived to be part of these socialproblems, sexuality and gender non-conformity constituted athreat to the social order. In this context, eugenics becamean approach and a tool to rationalize the management of sexuality.The article examines how practices and discourses of sexuality,gender, and ideas about normalcy intersected with particularfears and anxieties about nation and degeneracy, thereby givingrise to the use of eugenics as a social technology. The connectionsbetween eugenics and politics are explored through the Swissexperience with eugenically based social policies and policydebates.     

From "Us" to "Them": Diasporic Linkages and Identity Politics

Global diasporas-a type of social formation mediating economic, political, and cultural affairs across borders-have been a focus of globalization researchers for some time. However, up to now, little knowledge exists on how social identification affects business participation in diaspora communities and how such participation modifies social identification. This article, based on empirical research on diasporic linkages between Taiwanese transnationals and ethnic Chinese overseas, serves to illustrate a) how globalization has enhanced the practical and economic roles of diasporas, and b) how economic practices and ethnic identification interact within diasporic communities. The author argues that ethnic membership still remains contested, despite diasporas serving as flexible forms of social organization in the mediation of capital flow.     

Jessica Joy Cameron,Reconsidering Radical Feminism: Affect and the Politics of Heterosexuality

ABSTRACT

The author reviews Jessica Joy Cameron’s recent book, Reconsidering Radical Feminism: Affect and the Politics of Heterosexuality (2018).     

Politics and Philosophy in Russian Social Democracy: Alexander Bogdanov and the Sociotheoretical Foundations of Vpered

Il’f and Petrov’s travel memoir, Odnoetazhnaia Amerika (One-Storied America), is an account of their travels across the United States in the mid-thirties. This work—much edited and censored for changing political climates—was a state-sponsored attempt to reveal the “real” America to the Soviet reader. Although many critics have asserted that Il’f and Petrov’s treatment of America is surprisingly positive, regarding the work as “positive satire” ignores important stylistic and rhetorical devices operational in the text. The authors’ positive assessments of America are invariably about services, behaviours or habits they judge to be potentially useful in the building of socialism. More interesting is how the text reflects on Soviet culture; One-Storied America is an instrument of mythologization of the authors’ native land in the tradition of much travel literature. Their frame of reference for the observations about the exotic, alien world they encounter is their own culture and establishing difference, in this case, entails value judgement: what is svoi is superior. The foreignness of the other (America) is established by Il’f and Petrov through plot structure and through linguistic tropes. Average Americans— those who are not politically conscious—are characterized as limited, prejudiced and lacking taste, and this is reflected in their primitive language. Those who are ideologically sympathetic (either Americans or displaced Russians) speak excellent Russian; their speech is not marked as other. One-Storied America can thus be read as Il’f and Petrov’s attempt to exploit the foreignness of American culture in the service of Soviet cultural construction. They are particularly concerned with the construction of image and perception—and misapprehension and fear of the other are effective tools.