Search results for "politic"

The ‘Open Garden of Politics’: The impact of open primaries for candidate selection in the British Conservative Party

2016

International audience; Since 2003, hundreds of open primaries for the selection of parliamentary candidates have been held by the British Conservative Party as a means of democratising party organisation and enhancing representativeness. In the run-up to the 2015 general election, only 26 primaries could be identified. This article will apply the analytical framework provided by Hazan and Rahat to demonstrate that the relative failure of the experiment in terms of intra-party competition, participation, representation and responsiveness is counterbalanced by the benefits brought by this procedure, both as a tool of party branding at the national level and as a strategy for raising the prof…

Der Wettbewerb zwischen Parteien der Extremen Rechten und der linken Mitte

2016

Seit den fruhen 1980er Jahren gehoren Parteien, die der „Extremen“, „Radikalen“, „Populistischen“ oder „Neuen Rechten“ zugerechnet werden, zur Realitat westeuropaischer Parteiensysteme. Die Etablierung dieser neuen Parteienfamilie stellt die westeuropaischen Demokratien vor eine Vielzahl von Herausforderungen. Dabei ist der Aspekt der Konkurrenz um Stimmen von zentraler Bedeutung. Es gibt gute Grunde zu vermuten, das die Extreme Rechte auch und gerade den sozialistischen und sozialdemokratischen Parteien Europas zusehends Konkurrenz machen konnte. Die neuen Rechtsparteien haben ihre ursprunglich oft marktliberale Rhetorik abgeschwacht und umwerben die Arbeiterschaft mit protektionistischen …

Rodzinna postpamięć Ślązaków

2017

Family Postmemory of the People of Silesia
 The author suggests a possible use of postmemory to analyse the contemporary family memory of the people of Silesia. Their memoirs about WW2 (such as working for the Wehrmacht, the Red Army invading Silesia, working in labour camps, nationality verification, displacements to Germany, and deportations to Siberia) bear signs of latent memory which is rarely revealed even to the next of kin. Present mainly within the family circle, within the local society, and among friends, these memoirs integrated Silesians and made them a unique community that considers itself a stigmatized minority. This contributed to mythologizing and stereotyping the who…

The changing functions of the mass media: A historical perspective

1989

Miracles in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt and Refugees as ‘Vanguard’

2019

AbstractThe radical uncertainty that refugees face because of war, flight and exile often dramatically shapes their participation in society. Violent conflict and human rights abuses are not just disproportionately experienced by, but can also create, political subjects. Such life events can transform the motivations, sense of responsibility and political actions of individuals with refugee backgrounds. In this article, we explore the links between civil–political engagement and the life stories of such individuals, analysing our empirical data through themes in the work of Hannah Arendt. We make three central points. First, we highlight the possibility of refugees as ‘vanguard’, playing a …

The impact on disaster governance of the intersection of environmental hazards, border conflict and disaster responses in Ladakh, India

2018

Abstract The Indian border region of Ladakh, in Jammu and Kashmir State, has a sensitive Himalayan ecosystem and has experienced natural hazards and disasters of varying scales over the decades. Ladakh is also situated on a fault-line of multiple tensions, including ongoing border disagreements and intermittent conflict with China and Pakistan. The Indian army has thus become a permanent fixture in the region. This paper examines the implications of the intersection of these environmental and security factors for disaster governance in the region. Using Social Domains theory, the paper argues first, that a hazard-centred paradigm of ‘universal’ disaster science emerges from the colonial per…

State effects and the effects of state building: institution building and the formation of state-centred societies

2016

AbstractThis article discusses the assumptions underlying state-building efforts and the effects of these efforts. It addresses two main questions: why has state building not led to the establishment of effective states? And what are the effects of statebuilding? It is argued that these efforts have been based on an institutionalist model of the state derived from a Weberian framework, and that the basic reason why state building has failed is that the creation of effective states requires the creation of state-centred societies, where both material and symbolic resources are concentrated in the state. This is very difficult to achieve for external actors. But, although state building has n…

The Impact of Regionalism on Democracy Building: An Examination of the Southern African Development Community (SADC)

2017

Since the early 1990s, the world has witnessed a new wave of regionalism and a mushrooming of regional integration organizations, particularly in the global South. Focusing on Africa, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) ranks among the most promising examples of regionalism on the continent. The SADC explicitly aims at building and advancing democracy in the region and its member states as part of its broader agenda on regional development. From a political science perspective, there is general agreement that regional integration and parallel institution building can be useful measures to promote and strengthen democratic rule, since an appropriate institutional “lock-in” impl…

Young People and Political Activism in Moldova

2020

The election of a Socialist and pro-Russian candidate in December 2016 as president of Moldova marks a new turn in Moldovan politics. This is in contrast with the pro-Western attitudes of the previous government. Political instability and changing international orientations, as emphasized by this article, are partly due to political alternative victories of parties supported by different social groups. Focusing on young people's activism, the article underlines the differentiation between the political success made possible by street protests in April 2009 and the political failure in December 2016. The findings may add a new explanation to Moldova's permanent instability.

Connecting theories of cascading disasters and disaster diplomacy

2018

Abstract Disaster diplomacy examines how and why disaster-related activities (disaster risk reduction and post-disaster actions) do and do not influence peace and conflict processes, especially whether or not a causal chain can be established between dealing with disaster risk or a disaster and outcomes in peace or conflict. Cascading disasters might provide a useful theoretical framing for mapping out causal pathways for disaster diplomacy. In conceptually exploring the intersection between disaster diplomacy and cascading disasters, this paper concludes that both disaster diplomacy and cascading disasters have limitations because they try to develop focused causal chains which, when exami…