Search results for "Political System"
showing 10 items of 39 documents
How representative are referendums? Evidence from 20 years of Swiss referendums
2017
Direct democracy allows citizens to reverse decisions made by legislatures and even initiate new laws which parliaments are unwilling to pass, thereby, as its proponents argue, leading to more representative policies than would have obtained under a purely representative democracy. Yet, turnout in referendums is usually lower than in parliamentary elections and tends to be skewed towards citizens of high socio-economic status. Consequently, critics of direct democracy argue that referendum outcomes may not be representative of the preferences of the population at large. We test this assertion using a compilation of post-referendum surveys encompassing 148 national referendums held in Switze…
Attracting Major Sporting Events: The Role of Local Residents
2006
Abstract The decision where to host major sports events is the result of a political process, involving local and national politicians as well as national and international sport governing bodies. Politicians and local/national sport governing bodies decide whether to apply for an event, while international sports governing bodies select the host cities (nations). Local and national residents play an important role in this process as their opinion will influence whether the political system supports the application and is willing to fund the event. Many event impacts have characteristics of public goods and externalities. This represents a potential welfare economic rationale for the public…
The Selection and Deselection of Technocratic Ministers in Democratic Spain
2017
This chapter analyses the presence of non-political ministers in the Spanish cabinet in the democratic period since 1977, where one out of five ministers did not belong to the ruling party at the time of her appointment and one out of three can be considered as a non-political minister. By observing the selection and deselection of these individuals, it shows the cabinet dynamic behind the ministerial appointments and the differences between the more political type of ministers and those coming from outside political pathways. Despite some outstanding exceptions, non-political ministers are often recruited from outside the parliament and have fewer chances to develop a relevant ministerial …
Demographic structure and the security of property rights: The role of development and democracy
2013
Abstract It is often argued that countries with a high population share of children and young workers should attract large capital inflows from aging industrialized economies. However, many of these countries deter foreign investors by a high risk of creeping or outright expropriation. In this paper we explore whether the correlation between countries' demographic structure and the perceived security of property rights reflects a causal relationship. We show that, in low-income countries, the ratio of young to old workers has a positive effect on the perceived security of property rights if the political system is sufficiently democratic. By contrast, this relationship cannot be observed in…
Journalists’ Associations as Political Instruments in Central and Eastern Europe
2017
This editorial provides the overall context for the five cases—three national and two international—covered in this thematic issue. While the cases are from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), they highlight fundamental questions of journalism everywhere, including contradictions between freedom and control, professionalism and politics, individual and collective. The associations of journalists serve as very useful platforms to study these questions, especially at historical turning points when the whole political system changed, as happened twice in CEE after World War II.
On the ideological consistency between right-wing authoritarianism and social domince orientation.
2007
Abstract The authors argue that cross-national variation in the association between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) depends upon the degree to which political systems are organized along a single explicitly ideologically articulated left–right dimension. In societies where the political system is ideologized along a single dimension, RWA and SDO should be strongly positively correlated, and the magnitude of this association should be moderated by political identification. This hypothesis was tested in Italy, a society where the political system is highly ideologized, using analyses of concurrent data from student (N = 148) and community samples (N = …
Niektóre problemy związane z opozycją polityczną
2016
The opposition is an institution of the political regime, whose essential function is to allow alternation of power. According to the political scientist, it is a phenomenon from the sphere of governance, where different imperious and subordinate entities are in a relationship with partially common goals and partly contradictory, but remain always mutually dependent. The importance of the political opposition depends not only on the adopted institutional solutions, but primarily the political culture. Just as every society has the government it deserves, by analogy, the same is also true of the opposition.
State, law and gender studies
2003
La formación del estado y su ordenamiento jurídico se ha realizado por los varones con exclusión de las mujeres, la igualdad entre los hombres y las mujeres no ha sido un principio fundamental del derecho ni del sistema político. El derecho a la igualdad descansa sobre presupuestos de naturaleza cultural y filosófica que tratan al hombre como el sujeto universal y a la mujer como una categoría específica. La teoría feminista del derecho coincide en la crítica de estos presupuestos pero existen grandes diferencias en cuanto se pretende abordar un modelo teórico alternativo para resolver la desigualdad de género-sexo. La aprobación de la Constitución, la adaptación del ordenamiento jurídico a…
From Nazi holocaust to nuclear holocaust: a lesson to learn?
1986
In a 1986 address to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a German physician describes his profession's embrace of National Socialism. The nationalistic sentiments of German scientists led them to identify with the goals of the Third Reich and to participate in its programs. He gives examples of physician involvement in the Nazi Party, discrimination against "non-Aryan" doctors, "eugenic" mass murder, and lethal experiments with human subjects. The few who protested were regarded as traitors by the profession as a whole, and post-war apologists argue that physicians' organizations had no choice but to collaborate with the Nazis. Hanauske-Abel rejects this reasonin…
L’attesa come condizione esistenziale: SAID Landschaften einer fernen Mutter, 2001 e Marjane Satrapi Persepolis, 2007
2018
In this paper the author intends to analyze the concept of ‘waiting time’ that, in a different way, also seen the substantial artistic diversity, is present in the film Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, 2007, based on the namesake graphic novel written by the French-Iranian director in 2000, and in the novel Landschaften einer fernen Mutter written by the German-Iranian author SAID, 2001. The analysis that is conducted here wants to investigate how both, in the film and in the literary work, the ‘waiting time’ for the exile takes on totally personal connotations, becoming also not only part of the life of Satrapi and SAID, but above all a state of mind.