Traditional Excluding Forces: A Review of the Quantitative Literature on the Economic Situation of Indigenous Peoples,Afro‐descendants,and People Living with Disability

Unequal income distribution in Latin America and the Caribbean is linked to unequal distributions of human and physical assets and differential access to markets and services. These circumstances, and the accompanying social tensions, need to be understood in terms of traditional fragmenting forces; the sectors of the population that experience unfavorable outcomes are also recognized by characteristics such as ethnicity, race, gender, and physical disability. In addition to reviewing the general literature on social exclusion, this article surveys several more specific topics: relative deprivation (in land and housing, physical infrastructure, health and income); labor market issues, including access to labor markets in general, as well as informality, segregation, and discrimination; the transaction points of political representation, social protection, and violence; and areas in which analysis remains weak and avenues for further research in the region.     

Economic liberalism and the Philippine telecom industry

It may be important and even necessary to build a free and fair market competition environment, which could encourage industrial innovation and increase the long-term social benefits of development. However, there is a need for a stronger and more autonomous state authority to settle and safeguard the liberalized market. Since state protection of the market fattens the monopoly company, the liberalization policy should be linked with state efforts to undo the previous monopoly structure. This article argues that specific industrial development, or national economic development in general, may rely more on the intrinsic characteristic of the state rather than on the economic paradigm per se, i.e., statist or neo-liberalist. Furthermore, the improvement of social welfare may depend more on the power structure among political players rather than on the political system itself whether authoritarian or democratic     

‘A Pre-eminent Right to Political Rule’:1 Indigenous Fijian Power and Multi-ethnic Nation Building

Abstract

The indigenous Fijian conviction of entitlement to political power was encouraged by their privileged position in the colonial state and their marginalisation in the modern economy. The development of a cohesive nation state has been impeded by ongoing conflict between two political imperatives: indigenous nationalism and the need to shape a system of political representation and government accommodating the interests of the non-indigenous citizens, primarily the Indians, who together number over 40% of the population. This paper traces the course of that conflict from the commencement of decolonisation in the early 1960s to the political instability arising from strengthened ethno-nationalism and military intervention since 1987.     

The Missing Link: Explaining the Political Mobilisation of Islam in Indonesia

Abstract

Why has an increase in personal piety among Indonesia's Muslims not translated into electoral gains for Islamic political parties? To help explain this conundrum, this article focuses on the role of Indonesia's mass Islamic social organisations, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah. Using a political economy lens, it argues that control over state resources and the provision of social welfare facilities have helped political parties maintain power over the years and that NU and Muhammadiyah have at times played important mediating roles in this process. Extending this analysis into Indonesia's contemporary politics, it then proposes that since 2004 in particular, the health and education facilities provided by NU and Muhammadiyah are becoming less important to ordinary people in relation to the services provided by the state. It concludes that this trend has weakened the ability of these organisations to channel public support to political parties/candidates and is one reason why Islamic parties have not been able to capitalise on increased religiosity in the social sphere.     

Labour militancy in Taiwan: Export integration vs authoritarian transition

Since the 1980s, the Korean state has witnessed significant challenges from big business (chaebol) as well as from organized labor and popular sector. Regime transition has influenced the social and political relations between the state and big business. Thus the central argument is therefore that the developmental state has gradually eroded as the power and capability of the developmental state was increasingly affected by economic liberalization and political democratization. At the same time the state and big business are increasingly connected within more institutionalized networks. The argument will be advanced that the traditional relationship between the state and big business, which was characterized as one of state domination and the subordination of big business, has been changing more radically than the statist analysts presumed.     

Learning the Limits of Power: Privatization and State-Labor Interactions in Mexico

Despite repeated conflict with organized labor, the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–94) pushed an aggressive divestment agenda that transformed Mexico into Latin America's leading privatizer. Explanations of Salinas's achievements typically emphasize centralized presidential power (including control over the ruling party) and autonomy; technocratic and political savvy; and weak labor opposition. This article questions such a pure "capacity-outcome" approach. Of equal importance are the learning effects of repeated interaction between the state and labor, which changed the course of divestment struggles and thereby influenced their outcomes. Lessons learned in successive confrontations led to patterns of interaction conducive to widescale privatization. The article develops this argument through comparative analysis of major divestment episodes in the aviation, mining, steel, and telecommunications sectors.     

Staatlich gesteuerte Tarifautonomie

The German Tarifautonomie, the state-free collective bargaining system on working conditions, can be considered as an institutionalized arrangement of political exchange between labor market associations and the state. This understanding allows to examine the state’s interests in regard to free collective bargaining as well as the state’s options to achieve his interests and to impact the social partnership activities. The article highlights the intentions, the methods and the effects of various forms of state intervention. As a result, the decade-long institutional change of the German industrial relations system can be seen inter alia as an outcome of the dynamic and flexible relationship between associations and the state. A central feature of this relationship is the finding of a guided autonomy.     

Parliament and nation-building: Max Weber and the German state

SUMMARY

The foundation of the German state in 1871 represents an interesting case of nation-building, since it accomplished political unity among different sovereign states already connected by language and culture. The considerations of Max Weber (1864–1920) are of particular relevance because they not only highlight the specific questions concerning the German nation, but they also apply to several fundamental issues about the formation of new political organizations. First of all, Weber stresses the difference subsisting between the political unity of a nation, which can also be attained in a short time, and the nation-building process, which is more lengthy and complex. In this respect, Parliament plays a central role, because it is entitled to represent the interests of all members of a nation and it constitutes a functioning mediation between the state and the individuals. By analyzing the personality of Otto von Bismarck (1815–98) and the indisputable role played by him in founding and organizing the new state, Weber discovers the relevance of a charismatic leader especially for young nations, which is nevertheless accompanied by the tendency to the concentration of power. Thus, the function of the parliamentary system consists of granting a plurality of charismatic political leaders and at the same time in supervising them. In the course of time, Weber thinks of different reforms strengthening democratization and parliamentarization. On this subject, he argues that efficient technical solutions can be shared by different nations and then adjusted to particular needs. However, he also adds that institutional reforms can ensure better procedures, but they do not solve all political problems.     

Auflösung des Liberalisierungsdilemmas

Scholars and unionists often claim an “excessive” flexibility and unilateral manager power in the labor relations system of Central Eastern Europe, while others observe “insufficient” flexibility and etatism. Beyond mere political reasoning the article provides an explanation for these contradicting diagnoses by reconstructing the varying influence of three conflicting concepts within the institutionalization process: economic liberalism, etatism and the continental European idea of social partnership. Focusing on Poland and the Czech Republic, it is argued that the varying influence of the three concepts contributed to permissive labor relations that clearly differ from Anglo-Saxon voluntarism: The labor relations are not permissive by formal standards but by deviation. During the 1990s the weakness of actors in regulating interaction and establishing powerful sanctions created a dilemma for liberalization. On the one side strong formal regulation by the state provided little incentives for employers to bargain. On the other side, a further withdrawal of the state from regulation did only ease unilateral decision-making of management as collective bargaining is weak. The impacts of harmonization with the EU regulatory regime are ambiguous. While establishing new minimum standards and regulations in new areas it also provided an opportunity structure for actors to push for the dissolution of the liberalization dilemma without compensating employees with more bargaining strength.     

Judicial Justice for Special Economic Zone Land Resistance

Abstract

The context for land resistance in liberalising India is dynamic. As the state promotes capital investment, lines between public and private are blurred. Land is central to these efforts, as new industries, mines, large-scale agricultural projects and infrastructure initiatives all require vast amounts of land. The introduction of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in the Indian state of Goa highlight land deal tensions. Following protests rallying thousands and widespread public mistrust of land and regional planning processes, the state’s chief minister halted the zones. This action mollified public unrest and temporarily appeased anti-SEZ social movements. However, scepticism arose as the chief minister failed to legally de-register the zones and return SEZ lands to original owners or collectives. Amidst state inaction, movement members sought judicial justice. Protest and corruption theories are integrated with political interpretations of liminality in this article to frame how social movements shift their patterns of intervention in response to or in anticipation of inaction. Enhanced opportunities for corruption, exemplified by the SEZ model, lead movements to adapt strategies of resistance beyond state-oriented protest. The interventions discussed represent a shift in the ritual form of protest and the degree of political engagement with the judiciary. The multi-faceted contestation altered power structure, while politicising and scrutinising land deals.     

Bright Lights,Big Cities? Metropolisation,Intergovernmental Relations,and the New Federal Urban Policy in Switzerland

Disparities between increasing urban economic power and cities' limited political autonomy have put pressure on intergovernmental relations in many countries. Some authors have claimed that this process leads to a strengthening of the position of cities with respect to higher state levels such as regions or the nation state. The aim of this article is to test this hypothesis for the case of Switzerland. In the first part, we show that, due to the existing intergovernmental framework, the current dynamics of urbanisation (which we describe as “metropolization”) have produced specific problems for governance in Swiss urban areas: spillovers in the distribution of costs and benefits, new political cleavages between core cities and surrounding communes, as well as increasing autonomy conflicts between cities and cantons. In the second part, we argue that initiatives taken in order to tackle these issues of urban governance have contributed to transforming Swiss federalism. “Politikverflechtung” is increasing in urban areas. In particular, the new federal urban policy has introduced a new vertical dimension of co‐operation between cities, cantons and the Confederation. Although Swiss cities have gained new influence in the process, we conclude that cantons still hold the key position. Therefore, like other federalist countries, Switzerland has not experienced a considerable strengthening of urban governments with respect to higher levels. Nevertheless, current developments in this area can be seen as a move away from the hierarchical pattern of co‐operative federalism towards a more heterarchical pattern of multi‐level governance in Swiss intergovernmental relations.     

The arithmetic of rights: Zionist intellectuals imagining the Arab minority May–July 1938

ABSTRACT

This article examines Zionist debates regarding the status of the Arab minority in the Jewish State following the Royal Commission's recommendation to partition Palestine. Three conclusions arise from the debates: first, that the Zionist leadership regarded the civil and political rights of the Arab minority to be dependent on the power equilibrium between Jews and Arabs in all of Palestine. Second, the Zionist leaders imagined the Jewish State as a parliamentary democracy, but argued that a democratic regime should be created only after a Jewish majority had been achieved. Finally, because democracy in the Jewish State – including minority rights – was dependent on the creation of a Jewish majority, Zionist plans to transfer Arabs out of the Jewish State were not considered by them to be undemocratic, but rather a precondition to the creation of a Jewish and democratic state.     

Challenging the anocracy model: Iran’s foreign policy in Iraq as an obstacle to democracy?

ABSTRACT

Since America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the consequent partial collapse of the state Iraq has been undergoing a process of deterioration and disintegration mainly because America’s vision of establishing a new, more democratic political order there encountered a lack of readiness to understand what the structure of a democratic state should be. The political process that Iraq has been going through – that is the transition from autocratic dictatorship to adopting a kind of democratic system is called anocracy, which means a political system that is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic.

Furthermore, the Iranian intervention into Iraqi politics that took place after 2003 has led to the creation of a virtually imperial model of regional power (Iran’s) that has turned Iraq into a kind of informal protectorate in ethnic and religious issues. This article wishes to offer a better understanding of the anocratic political shift that Iraq has been going through by adding the component of Iran’s influence and foreign policy upon it as an ambivalent factor that is both accelerating yet also preventing the process of democratization from properly establishing itself in Iraq.     

Comparing Brokers in India: Informal Networks and Access to Public Services in Bihar and Gujarat

ABSTRACT

Faced with unresponsive and intimidating state institutions, citizens often need to rely on brokers to obtain state benefits. This article compares the ways in which brokers help people gain access to public services in two Indian states. Using ethnographic fieldwork in both states, we compare Bihar and Gujarat to argue that the evolution of the informal networks through which citizens gain access to public services constitutes an important dimension of democratisation processes. In both Gujarat and Bihar such brokerage networks have fragmented considerably over the last 40 years, while also becoming less marked by social hierarchies. This change has taken place despite a differing role and strength of political parties in the two states. The fragmentation and levelling of brokerage networks have enabled citizens to put more pressure on state institutions and power holders. This process of “informal democratisation” suggests that the comparative study of brokerage networks constitutes a promising and largely unexplored avenue to interpret the challenges facing governance and local democracy in India.     

Taking the bus in 1920s and 1930s Tel Aviv

This article examines the role and effects of the state on the operation of social capital through a case study of Islamic holding companies in Turkey and their social networks within transnational space. In the last two decades, there has been a proliferation of Islamic enterprises, banks and holding companies which formed their own business organization in 1990. The capital outlay of these holding companies was created, without any legal basis, through mobilizing the savings of hundreds of thousands of pious small savers in Turkey and across Europe. While the state actors initially overlooked, at times encouraged, this mobilization of savings, the development of political Islam in the 1990s raised a concern that political Islam along with its economic base and power posed a significant threat to the secularist political regime. Consequently, the secularist state elites actively intervened in both domestic and transnational spheres to disrupt and undermine these networks which provided monetary inflows into these companies. The intervention and campaigns of the state in Turkey and Europe led to bankruptcy of several Islamic holding companies, exposed the mismanagement of fund by some companies and resulted in widespread distrust toward Islamic holding companies among small local and migrant investors.     

Contested Territoriality: Ethnic Challenges to Colombia's Territorial Regimes

This article studies ethnic social movement autonomy claims in three regions of Colombia. It maintains that place‐based and regime‐specific political processes condition institutional change affecting common property regimes. The article finds that to assert local self‐determination and territorial control, ethnic social movements (a) respond to territorial regimes threatening local autonomy; (b) use innovative tactics to negotiate autonomy; and (c) engage in deliberation to redefine identities and understand the conditions limiting local autonomy.     

The genesis of the ‘Exceptional’ Republic: the permanency of the political crisis and the constitution of legal emergency power in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Almost half of the political life has been experienced under the state of emergency and state of siege policies in the Turkish Republic. In spite of such a striking number and continuity in the deployment of legal emergency powers, there are just a few legal and political studies examining the reasons for such permanency in governing practices. To fill this gap, this paper aims to discuss one of the most important sources of the ‘permanent’ political crisis in the country: the historical evolution of legal emergency power. In order to highlight how these policies have intensified the highly fragile citizenship regime by weakening the separation of power, repressing the use of political rights and increasing the discretionary power of both the executive and judiciary authorities, the paper sheds light on the emergence and production of a specific form of legality based on the idea of emergency and the principle of executive prerogative. In that context, it aims to provide a genealogical explanation of the evolution of the exceptional form of the nation-state, which is based on the way political society, representation, and legitimacy have been instituted and accompanying failure of the ruling classes in building hegemony in the country.     

Diversity of Southeast Asian Capitalisms: Evolving State-Business Relations in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Empirical gaps exist in the literature about diverse forms of capitalism. The first is thematic, involving the incomplete institutional and political account of how the state can, through a series of policies, shape the development of domestic enterprises. The second gap is regional in nature: this literature does not deal with the historical development of firms that have played a central role in industrialising Southeast Asia. One reason for this is that since most existing theories are based on Western contexts, they are theoretically ill-equipped to deal with the concepts of power and state-business nexuses when the political system is not democratic in nature. But state-business ties, where politicians in power distribute government-generated rents on a selective basis, have resulted in diverse business systems such as highly diversified conglomerates, state-owned companies and small- and medium-scale enterprises. This article deals with these theoretical and empirical gaps. To better understand the nature and implications of evolving state-business ties in Southeast Asia, this topic is examined through the lens of regulation theory. To appreciate the complexity and implications of state-business configurations on the political system and forms of enterprise development, a case study of Malaysia is provided.     

Introduction: two spaces of subsidiarity?

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on subsidiarity conducted since the nineteenth century has developed two strands of interpretation suggesting competing models of social organisation as far as the potential location of decision-making power is concerned. While this intellectual effort has mainly concentrated on political experiences in continental Europe, and gained further traction with the principle’s recognition in European Union law, the institutional architecture of Commonwealth countries has experienced relative neglect. This collection, however, examines the debates around competing ordering principles with evidence coming from operational problems of Westminster style democracies in four world regions, and considers how a multi-disciplinary perspective can guide comparative analysis.     

货币的政治逻辑与国际货币体系的演变

货币不仅仅只是市场交易的媒介,更是一种权力,它不仅对社会财富具有分配效应,同时也能够为货币发行者直接带来财富,货币从产生到被普遍接受与国家权力密不可分,这就是货币的政治逻辑。货币的权力特征使得国际货币体系的演变往往不能遵循以效率为原则的市场逻辑,而是充满着国家间的博弈和斗争。美元在崛起的过程中并不仅仅依赖自身的市场竞争力,也是美国政府积极运作的结果。美元所面临的挑战不仅在于欧元和人民币的竞争,更在于美国的传统盟友欧盟国家和日本能否在今后一如既往地支持美元,以及美国能否获得以中国、俄罗斯、巴西和印度等国家为代表的新兴经济体在货币问题上的合作。