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.     

The Social Backgrounds of Nazi Leaders: A Statistical Analysis of Political Elites in Weimar Germany, 1918–1933

This article compares the social backgrounds of Nazi leaders and representatives of democratic parties in the Weimar Republic. It does not advance any overarching new narrative on Nazism’s social origins, but rather aims to present a nuanced statistical picture of Weimar’s political elites. The results of this analysis are derived from an index of German members of parliament and from a new dataset, which has recently been collected from the Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB), Germany’s largest biographical encyclopaedia. Together, these two samples cover more than 2000 German politicians, industrialists, diplomats, political writers, academics, high state officials, and important journalists. This article reveals sociological differences between the politicians who led the Nazi party in parliament and those elites that promoted Nazism in the media, in academia, or within the German civil service. While Nazi politicians in the Reichstag were recruited from a variety of social classes, ranging from industrial workers to members of the aristocracy, National Socialist elites outside the parliament typically belonged to the Bildungsbürgertum and sociologically resembled the highly educated members of democratic and liberal parties. Overall, the picture of a generation of Nazi leaders emerges that was sociologically far more heterogeneous than is often recognized by historians.     

Elite positionings towards Hindi: Language policies,political stances and language competence in India1

In India, Hindi is imagined and institutionalized as the national language which weds together India's pluralistic population under the banner of a shared Indian identity. Approaching language competence as embedded in and performed through language practices and ideologies, I explore how a New Delhi elite community positions themselves towards Hindi vis‐à‐vis national language policies and political movements. Contrasting with traditional unified elite portrayals, e.g. ‘elite closure’ ( Myers‐Scotton 1990 ), India has multiple sociolinguistically discordant elite groups, and these liberal elites ideologically construct their Hindi (in)competency in an alternative framework attending to the history (and failure) of Hindi‐based nationalism, their disalignment with modern right‐wing movements, and their continued affiliation with English. This perspective of some elites as negotiating and disagreeing with contemporary political movements and language policy legislature illuminates language competencies as socially constructed and locally grounded, and challenges past interpretations of postcolonial elites as unified actors controlling the dominant linguistic marketplace.     

Accounting for success and failure in policy implementation: The role of commitment in India's MGNREGA

Commitment or political will is often notable by its absence. While lack of commitment is a key factor in policy failure, it has been challenging to identify and operationalize how commitment can shape successful implementation. This article applies Brinkerhoff's (2000) framework of expressions of commitment to explain how commitment of policy elites shape policy implementation processes. Evidence for five characteristics of commitment traces these expressions from two types of policy elites — politicians and bureaucrats. Primary data from four Indian states were used—Chhatisgarh, Assam, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh—to examine the case of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act (MGNREGA). The data were collected through interviews with state‐level elites, supplemented by secondary data on the political economy of these states. In explaining how successes and failures of the MGNREGA are attributable to the commitment of these actors, the article considers the politics of policy implementation. It argues that commitment is critical at the sub‐national level in India, and explains the different outcomes of MGNREGA in the four states. The article considers how to strengthen policy implementation, and demonstrates that this can be done through capitalizing on positive feedback loops between different strands of commitment, as well as between commitment of administrative elites and political party leaders. The paper concludes that commitment and capacity feed off each other, improving implementation of social policies.     

Is Nigeria a soft power state?

ABSTRACT

The increasing relevance given to soft power by Western and Chinese academics and more importantly their public officials has prompted some African scholars to examine the utility of soft power in the African context. Whilst the literature on South African foreign policy and regional powerhood has paid attention to this issue in recent years, there are few studies on Nigeria’s soft power. Against this backdrop, this article examines whether or not Nigeria is a soft power state. It argues that whilst the country possesses remarkable soft power resources, particularly in Africa, this has not been optimally deployed to achieve the desired outcomes. The article highlights the constraints to Nigeria’s soft power capacity and concludes that Nigeria is at best a potential soft power state. It therefore, urges public officials to pay more attention to the utility of soft power in their foreign policy process and challenges Nigerian academics to take a cue from their counterparts abroad and begin to engage their country’s soft power.     

Credibility or Credulity? Examining Political Organization-Public Relationships in an Election of Interloping Candidates

ABSTRACT

This national online survey (N = 493) examined the political organization-public relationship (POPR) that voters perceived with their own political party and their opposing political party, as well as voters’ assessment of the credibility of candidates running for president during the primary season of the 2016 election. Results indicated that although credibility assessment of one’s own party’s candidate was much as expected, POPR with the Democratic Party was generally stronger than that with the Republican Party. Data showed no evidence that a poor POPR with one’s own party would drive voters to support interloper candidates. We conclude by reflecting on the importance of POPR with the opposing party and what weak relationships may mean for parties in the long term.     

The Form of Children’s Political Engagement in Everyday Life

This article explores the form of children’s political engagement, considering the politicization of events, their political understanding and alignments. It draws on research into memories of childhood and social change in the latter half of the 20th century and builds on academic debates about children’s political participation. Children’s experience of policing, industrial unrest, popular dissent, social movements and party politics is discussed. Children’s political engagement involves three elements. They must navigate different political perspectives, their understanding grows through feelings of concern and empathy, and they align to groups they can relate to and feel might make a difference.     

Public Policies and Father Involvement

SUMMARY

The last two decades have been marked by a series of social and policy developments that are changing both how men see themselves as fathers and how policies conceptualize and encourage their involvement in the lives of children and families. This paper focuses on several areas of intersection between research on fathers and policy. The paper first summarizes the research that led to the current political and social interest in fathers. The paper then describes the Fatherhood Initiative, a set of activities that stemmed from a 1995 memorandum from President Clinton. This Initiative led to coordinated efforts by U.S. Federal Statistical agencies to collect better data about fathers. The paper concludes with a discussion of what we know about the effects on father involvement of policies such as welfare reform, child support, work place policies, responsible fatherhood programs, and other fatherhood interventions. Examples of new programs and initiatives on father involvement are also given.     

Impugning the Humanitarian Defence

This article examines the claim that democratic states are justified in restricting access to asylum seekers on the grounds that failing to do so reduces public support for humanitarian refugee policies – referred to here as the humanitarian defence. Drawing on detailed historical, comparative and interpretive analysis of migration policy in Canada and Australia, the author builds on Matthew Gibney’s development of practically guided normative theory to assess cases in which political elites may legitimately enact restrictive policies in response to strong public opposition. Challenging the normative basis of the humanitarian defence, the article engages in a detailed discourse analysis of asylum crises in Canada (1987, 1999) and Australia (1979, 2001). The findings suggest that political elites do not respond to an independently arrived at, and objectively established, public opinion as implied in the humanitarian defence. Rather, political elites play a crucial role in shaping the discourse on asylum seekers and consequently, influence the very “public opinion” to which they claim to be responding. The author concludes that political elites should attempt to foster an environment in which the public accepts international obligations to refugees but accepts that in some cases political elites may be justified in implementing restrictive measures.     

A theory of income taxation where politicians focus upon core and swing voters

We construct an equilibrium model of party competition, in which parties are especially concerned with their core and swing voters, concerns which political scientists have focused upon in their attempts to understand party behavior in general elections. Parties compete on an inifinite-dimensional space of possible income-tax policies. A policy is a function that maps pre-fisc income into post-fisc income. Only a fraction of each voter type will vote for each party, perhaps because of issues not modeled here or voter misperceptions of policies. Each party??s policy makers comprise two factions, one concerned with maximizing the welfare of its constituency, or its core, and the other with winning over swing voters. An equilibrium is a pair of parties (endogenously determined), and a pair of policies, one for each party, in which no deviation to another policy will be assented to both its core and swing factions. We characterize the equilibria: they have the property that both parties propose identical treatment of a possibly large interval of middle-income voters, while the ??left?? party gives more to the poor and the ??right?? party more to the rich. An empirical section uses the data of Piketty and Saez on taxation in the US to assess the model??s predictions. We argue that the model is roughly confirmed.     

The unknown refugee crisis: expulsion of the ethnic Lhotsampa from Bhutan

Bhutan has been strained by ethnic conflict. The Lhotsampa, one of the three largest ethnic groups, have sought a system of equality under which they would be allocated what they need as an equitable share of Bhutan's polity and economy. The ruling Drukpa elites perceived the Lhotsampa as a threat to their dominance and initiated policies to oppress or force out the Lhotsampa and others through ethnic cleansing. Bhutan's ethnic conflict and the refugee crisis it has produced are the outcome of ethnonationalism clothed in the slogan of ‘One Nation, One People’, and the contrived mechanisation of the ruling elites. The policies of these elites have effectively disenfranchised people who were born in Bhutan and have lived there for generations as citizens, for no other reason than their ethnicity. This is an issue not just for the Lhotsampa of Bhutan but also for any groups at the receiving end of an ethnically repressive order. The Lhotsampa case illustrates some characteristics of human‐rights violations in situations of ethnic strife.     

Policy advocacy for women's unpaid care work: comparing approaches and strategies in Nepal and Nigeria

This article focuses on policy advocacy programmes in Nepal and Nigeria, instigated by ActionAid International with local women's rights organisations and non-government organisations, and supported by the Institute of Development Studies, UK. These programmes aimed to challenge women's unequal responsibility for care work and to influence policymakers to understand the importance of providing services to support them. One of the main components of these programmes was child care, a responsibility which most women experience 24/7 for at least two decades of their lives, and which profoundly shapes their lives and opportunities. We examine the processes through which each of the country teams have engaged with public policies on this issue, focusing on the similarities and differences in each context. Although the programme of activities has been implemented in much the same way in both countries, and each chose to focus on early child-care provision as the main policy demand, the partnerships and policy processes chosen differ greatly. Specifically, we distinguish between ‘critical engagement’ (in the case of Nepal), as compared to ‘constructive engagement’ (in the case of Nigeria). The article ends with some reflections on the challenges facing the teams during their work, and the implications and lessons that can be drawn from these two case studies.     

European policy developments and their impact on social work†

ABSTRACT

Europe, in the throes of global trends, dissolves and yet re-establishes boundaries, both on its external perimeter and in terms of its internal social and political structures in a process reminiscent of the early period after the industrial revolutions. Once again it poses a fundamental question for social work: is the profession’s mandate limited to containing the effects of this process at the level of its individual victims or can it play a role in shaping European social policies which would deal with structural issues and further the cause of European integration? By examining the spaces created by the EU’s ambiguous initiatives on social issues – in areas like child welfare, poverty or migration – it will be shown that social ‘rescue’ attempts might only serve to legitimate exclusion and to further the decline of social solidarity within European states – and ultimately the disintegration of the European Union itself. The alternative lies in taking a wider political perspective and practising ‘relational citizenship’, giving people rights to belong and to participate.     

Cooptation and non-cooptation: elite strategies in response to social protest

ABSTRACT

The risk of cooptation – of being absorbed by powerful elites without gaining new advantages – is an important concern in studies of social movements and social change. Through cooptation, elites undermine movements by stripping them of their credibility as agents of change. This paper aims to explain why, despite its powerful rationale, cooptation does not occur more frequently. Building on political process theory and relational sociology, it demonstrates that cooptation appears rational only on the condition that cooperation is valued lower than political domination. But elite-movement interaction may result in mutually strategic relationships that are conditional on each side’s recognition of the other’s interest. Two empirical cases illustrate this possibility: the US Civil Rights Movement and Latin American participatory budgeting. In both cases, the actors involved chose a strategy of ‘mutually assured autonomy’ over cooptation.     

The new EU industrial policy: authoritarian neoliberal structural adjustment and the case for alternatives

ABSTRACT

In 2017, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker declared the re-industrialization of the European Union (EU) a top priority. The new EU industrial policy seeks to boost industrial competitiveness and leverage investments into manufacturing, thereby increasing industry’s share of EU Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 20% by 2020. What may appear to be a Keynesian industrial policy and thus a move away from the EU’s previous neoliberal agenda, however, seeks to calibrate a further neoliberal structural adjustment in a highly authoritarian fashion. Internal devaluation through devaluing labour, intensifying competition and reducing corporate taxes takes centre-stage. As an auxiliary to the European Semester, national productivity boards have been established to monitor wage developments alongside labour productivity and to suggest policy adjustments when cost competitiveness lags behind the Eurozone average and that of the main trading partners. Not only have formal democratic institutions and organized labour been circumvented in the decision-making process regarding such boards, they will have little voice in the future, and this an area that hitherto fell largely within the scope of member states: wage bargaining. Hence, the new EU industrial policy needs to be discredited, de-legitimized and thus, politicized. A political counter-project, rooted in an alternative industrial policy geared towards fostering horizontal and democratic solidarity economy initiatives which have proliferated since 2008, is discussed in the article’s closing pages.     

Improving Tobacco-Free Advocacy on College Campuses: A Novel Strategy to Aid in the Understanding of Student Perceptions About Policy Proposals

Abstract

Objective: Tobacco-control policy proposals are usually met with opposition on college campuses. Research to understand students’ viewpoints about health-related policy proposals and messaging strategies, however, does not exist. This study investigated students’ perceptions about a smoke-free policy proposal to help understand their positions of support and opposition and to inform the development of effective messaging strategies. Participants: In January 2012, 1,266 undergraduate students from a midwestern university completed an online questionnaire about smoke-free campus policies. Methods: Responses were coded and analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software and chi-square, independent-samples t tests, and binary logistic models. Results: Most students who supported a smoke-free policy considered environmental or aesthetic conditions, whereas most opponents used personal freedom frames of thought. Supporters viewed smoking policies in personal terms, and opponents suggested means-ends policy reasoning. Conclusions: Taken together, points of reference and emotions about proposed policies provided insight about participants’ perspectives to help inform effective policy advocacy efforts.     

Augustus Melmotte in Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now: characterizing the swindler as an important cultural and organizational figure

ABSTRACT

The current paper revisits Anthony Trollope's Victorian novel, The Way We Live Now, focusing on the main character of Augustus Melmotte. The paper analyzes the novel and its literary figure of a corrupt financier or swindler, drawing out theoretical and pedagogical contributions for organizational and management research. Contributions are framed in terms of imaginative organizational role archetypes embodied in swindler characterizations, swindlers’ institutional work across societal elites, and the dark sides and grey areas associated with swindlers’ organizational and financial misconduct. The rise and fall of Augustus Melmotte in Trollope's Victorian English society thus finds its cultural parallels today in outsiders who challenge financial and political elites and the status quo, at high personal risk to themselves and others complicit in their schemes. The conclusions concern the importance of recognizing dynamic figures that seize immense power over organizational, financial and political cultures.     

Policy diffusion as empowerment: domestic agency and the institutional dynamics of monetary policy diffusion in China

ABSTRACT

The policy diffusion literature has often focused on external pressures on domestic policy. However, by analysing the evolution of China’s monetary policy regime, we demonstrate a pattern of highly selective diffusion that is largely shaped by domestic political and institutional dynamics. We use an historical institutionalist approach to probe how the most relevant institutionally embedded agents, in this case, those within the Chinese central bank, have strategically engaged with this process. We show how selective diffusion has been shaped by epistemic policy learning through international engagement by China’s central bankers, and, in particular, how they have strategically used imported policy ideas as an institutional empowerment strategy, furthering the interests and agenda of the People’s Bank of China.     

The Evolution of Family Policy in Spain

Summary

The aim of this article is to trace the evolution of Spanish family policy from its beginning in the 1930s to the present, showing the shifting role played by the State in defining and supporting family formation and functioning. Different periods areconsidered according to the objectives and characteristics of this policy as well as according to the support it received from the political forces ruling in each period. For each period, objectives, mechanisms, output and outcome are analyzed. The evolution over the whole period has been, on one hand, away from support of the patriarchal family to the recognition of family pluralism, and, on the other, evolution from a government provided family salary to a policy intended to combat poverty.     

Online readiness assessment for Smoke- and Tobacco-free campus policies

ABSTRACT

Objective: Develop and test an online survey to assess campus readiness to adopt smoke- and tobacco-free (SF/TF) policies. Participants: Key informants (N = 18) at four campuses in Kentucky without a SF/TF policy recruited April 2015. Methods: Cross-sectional design. The survey assessed six dimensions: knowledge about SF/TF policies; leadership for campus policy; resources for policy development; campus climate surrounding tobacco issues; existing tobacco policies; and political climate for campus policy development. Dimension raw scores were rescaled to range from 0–1 and summed to determine overall stage of readiness (0–6). Results: Political climate was highest dimension across all campuses (0.83–1.0). Knowledge dimension ranked lowest (0.0–0.50). Overall readiness scores ranged from 2.53–3.94; two campuses in preplanning and two in preparation. Conclusions: Development of the online measure is timely considering the impetus to implement SF/TF policies. Findings reinforce that campuses are at varying stages of implementing these policies, and stage-based interventions are necessary.