Engineering Elections: The Experiences of Women in Panchayati Raj in Karnataka, India

Engineering elections through gender quotas is a crucial component of strategies that seek to empower women through increased participation in the political system. In the south Indian state of Karnataka, this experiment has seen mixed results: it has made women more visible, decreased levels of corruption in Panchayati Raj institutions, and increased self-efficiency of women representatives. It is more difficult, however, to claim a substantive change in institutional priorities and state accountability. As important is the fact that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) often provide significant training and support in successful cases. Engineering elections thus highlights possibilities for change through increased participation by women.     

论政府在经济转型中的作用 --俄罗斯与中国过渡经验之比较

一、引言 目前,新自由主义的制度、政策及其思想在世界上占主导地位.     

Islands and a Carceral Environment: Maltese Policy in Terms of Irregular Migration

Although security has become a common framework for analyzing dispositifs that aim to control irregular migration, island spaces themselves are seldom considered as security dispositifs. The case of Malta, where detention is mandatory upon arrival, epitomizes what could be conceptualized as a “sentinel island” within the European Union. This article demonstrates how the interaction between political discourse, administrative practices, and migrants’ experiences contributes to turning the island into a form of total-institution setting. The empirical data is based on qualitative fieldwork that combines ethnographic observation, migrants’ individual narratives and semi-structured interviews conducted with European and national policy makers.     

Electoral Fraud and Electoral Geography: United Russia Strongholds in the 2007 and 2011 Russian Parliamentary Elections*

Despite United Russia’s (Edinaya Rossiya—UR) dominance in repeated Russian legislative elections, the correlates of the party’s electoral support remain noticeably understudied beyond the influence of electoral manipulation. I pinpoint the specific contours of UR’s strongholds in the two most recent parliamentary elections in Russia—2007 and 2011—focusing on raion- and regional-level correlates of the vote using an original dataset. UR has been undergirded by geographically concentrated ethnic minorities and the countryside, and these patterns of support have persisted even in the absence of fraud, suggesting that the dominant party’s electoral windfalls cannot be attributed solely to electoral malfeasance.     

Women/Gender and Development: the Growing Gap Between Theory and Practice

Briefly reviewing the evolution of the field of women development, the author argues that the field has lost the dynamism characteristic of earlier periods of constructive tension between theory and practice that led to the adoption of the gender and development framework and the incorporation of issues of multiculturalism, human rights, and political participation into a field that had largely been defined in economic terms. Today, however, critical theory is caught in an “anti-neoliberal” position that is increasingly outdated and that has interpreted women’s work, individual agency, and the role of the state in ways that hinder rather than facilitate new thinking and better outcomes for women participants in WID/GAD projects and programs.     

受虐妇女报复性犯罪轻刑化处罚之根据

家庭暴力在社会生活中普遍存在,小暴不止会愈演愈烈发展到大暴,当受虐妇女忍无可忍,而又寻求不到有效公立救济时,会走上以暴制暴报复性犯罪的不归路。受虐妇女杀夫、伤夫案中,受虐妇女本属于家庭中的弱势群体,在家庭中处于被支配的地位,她们从原来的受害人被迫成为被告人,而成为被害人的原侵害人自身具有严重的过错,严惩这样社会危害性小、几乎没有人身危险性的受虐妇女,对国家、社会、被害人及其子女都有害无益。     

Nihilism in Political Chaos: Himmler,bin Laden,and Altruistic Punishment

Achieving cooperation in the midst of political chaos is difficult, yet possible if under‐stood within the context of facilitating conditions. These conditions are found within Germany after World War I, and portions of the contemporary Islamic world. Increased unity of the Palestinians since the onset of the current intifada, immense popularity of the name "Osama" since the events of September 11, and the extraordinary level of cooperation within Germany prior to and during World War II are examined. Altruistic punishment--costly to individual perpetrators of atrocity and without material gain for them--is used to explain this high level of cooperation. Where unity is deeply desired, self-sacrifice in the furtherance of a morally justified cause, however perverse, can increase the level of cooperation. The political views and experiences of Heinrich Himmler and Osama bin Laden, as well as those of their intellectual mentors, are offered to substantiate the importance of altruistic punishment as a progenitor of cooperation within politically chaotic settings.‐     

Microfinance and Gender: Issues,Challenges and The Road Ahead

Abstract

This special collection examines the claim that microfinance promotes gender equality. The focus is on three areas of the debate: first, the question of how successful microfinance has been in empowering women; second, whether and how negative gender discrimination operates within the sector; third, how power relations within and beyond the household shape the context and outcomes of microfinance initiatives. The papers in this collection demonstrate the divergence of circumstances and emphasise the need to go beyond the past searches for a simple narrative regarding the impact of microfinance. Rather, as the sector evolves and is incorporated into the mainstream financial system, the challenge ahead for researchers is to marshal the evidence on gendered dynamics to ensure that the gains made are built on through deeper understanding of why impact outcomes and processes differ and use this to inform new initiatives to further gender equality.     

Becoming patriots in Russia: biopolitics,fashion, and nostalgia

The article seeks to explore the common ground between biopolitics, fashion, patriotism and nostalgia. Taking off from the Foucauldian notion of biopolitics as a control apparatus exerted over a population, I provide an insight into the modern construction of the Russian nation, where personal and collective sacrifice, traditional femininity and masculinity, orthodox religion, and the Great Patriotic War become the basis for patriotism. On carefully chosen case studies, I will show how the state directly and indirectly regulates people’s lives by producing narratives, which are translated (in some cases designers act as mouthpieces for the state demographic or military politics) into fashionable discourses and, with a core of time, create specific gender norms – women are seen as fertile mothers giving birth to new soldiers, while men are shown as fighters and defenders of their nation. In the constructed discourses, conservative ideals become a ground for the creation of an idea of a nation as one biological body, where brothers and sisters are united together. In these fashionable narratives, people’s bodies become a battlefield of domestic politics. Fashion produces a narrative of a healthy nation to ensure the healthy work- and military force.     

Public Policy in the Party City: The Spectacle of Culture,Gender, and Locality

The article explores the bidding process for the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) award, an aspect of local regeneration policy reliant upon a specific conception of culture. The process is examined in terms of changes in urban layout, manifestations of cultural and community identity, media representations, and the spectacle of culture, gender, and locality. The process is viewed as an urban managerialist project, driven by private and public sector elites in pursuit of economic rather than cultural goals. A narrow and particular view of culture was employed in the bidding process to achieve essentially managerial goals, and cut adrift from significant issues of gender, identity, and class. “Culture,” as conceived within the ECOC process, is viewed as a policy product of local government, regeneration partnerships, government agencies, and business interests, in contrast to culture as a way of life or lived urban experience. As an elite process, the voices of local culture were largely excluded.