Contacting and Complaining: Political Participation and the Failure of Democracy in Russia

This article analyzes mass political participation as a factor contributing to the failure of Russian democracy. Data from public opinion surveys and firsthand interviews are used to evaluate patterns in Russian citizens' engagement in nonvoting political participation from the late Soviet era to the present. The article asks whether Russians expanded their participation in acts constraining elites, such as party-development work and protests, and investigates practices of contacting public officials, considering the implications of contacting for the deepening of democratic institutions. The factors contributing to patterns of participation, including the weakness of Russia's party system and the paucity of Russian civil society, are also discussed.     

Laughter and Liability: The Politics of British and Dutch Television Satire

Contemporary politicians face immense rhetorical and communicative challenges. Performing on the intertwined stages of politics, media (including Internet) and everyday life, they need to master diverse and contrasting repertoires of talk. Political communication research, at present, has ignored the question of how politicians face and experience these challenges, and how they reflect on the new communicative field. In this article, we begin to redress this situation by analysing and comparing the motives, experiences and reflections of politicians who appeared in the British satirical TV show, Have I Got News for You, and its Dutch adaptation, Dit was het Nieuws. Based on in-depth interviews with seven Dutch and 14 English MPs, we conclude that they draw from three repertoires to legitimise and reflect on their participation: a strategic, indulgent and anti-elitist repertoire. The first repertoire is predictable in the context of current political communication research, whereas the latter two add new dimensions of pleasure and bottom-up representation to it.     

Ideology, Institutions and Ideas: Explaining Political Change in Venezuela

This article scrutinises the links between patterns and modes of political participation and the emergence of Bolivarianism in Venezuela in the early 1990s. I study how Bolivarianism triumphed over competing projects in a period characterised by widespread unrest and its relationship to the Punto-Fijo institutional structure it overthrew. I argue that the ideas of Bolivarianism are derived from contradictions inherent to the existing institutions, and can only be understood in relation to the values and practices embedded in them, which Bolivarianism aimed to replace.     

90年代菲律宾政党的变化及其特点

步入九十年代 ,菲律宾政治渐趋稳定 ,但政党活动十分活跃。一些在全国影响较大的政党面对新的情况 ,进行了力量整合 ,政纲调整 ,也进行了新的权力角逐 ,在政治发展中留下了鲜明的印迹。随着政治和经济格局的变化 ,菲政党政治也呈现出新的特点 ,这是菲律宾政治中值得注意的新趋向。     

越南未来五年政治经济发展走向预测——基于对越共“十一大”制订的发展目标之分析

2011年年初,越南共产党召开了具有划时代意义的第十一届全国代表大会,大会通过了《2011—2015五年的方向和任务》、《2011—2020年经济社会发展战略》等文件,制订了未来五年具体的经济奋斗目标。本文以本次会议为契机,以会议所通过的一系列决议为基础,以现行经济政策为参照系,全面分析在未来五年中越南政治经济改革走向以及将因此而面临的种种机遇与挑战。     

The 'Lessons' of Dictatorship: Political Learning and the Military in Chile

This article argues that political learning with regard to civil-military relations in Chile has proved an obstacle to democratization. In the postauthoritarian period, both the armed forces and political parties have referred to history when considering civil-military reform, especially with regard to how to avoid a repeat of the conflict of the Unidad Popular period. Meanwhile, the military also utilizes the Spanish example when resisting changes it feels are inimical to its interests. The 'lessons' each takes from the past directly influence political strategies and the overall result is that while civilian rule continues, democratic civil-military relations are not necessarily advanced.     

Local Politics and Political Power in Russia: The Case of Yaroslavl'

An American political scientist surveys local political reforms in Russia as they were proposed in 1988-1989 and implemented in 1990-1991. Using the city and provincial governments of Yaroslavl' as a case study, the author examines whether old political elites have shown themselves capable of adapting to the new political rules and retaining influence over local decision making. The paper then assesses differences in the strength of this influence in rural and urban areas and consequences of the power struggle between old and new political elites for Russian President Yel'tsin's reform program. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: P20, H1.     

Intractable Policy Failure: The Case of Bovine TB and Badgers

The failure to eliminate bovine TB from the English and Welsh cattle herd represents a long-term intractable policy failure. Cattle-to-cattle transmission of the disease has been underemphasised in the debate compared with transmission from badgers despite a contested evidence base. Archival evidence shows that mythical constructions of the badger have shaped the policy debate. Relevant evidence was incomplete and contested; alternative framings of the policy problem were polarised and difficult to reconcile; and this rendered normal techniques of stakeholder management through co-option and mediation of little assistance.     

Political decentralisation and conflict: The Sharia crisis in Kaduna,Nigeria

When states in northern Nigeria started processes for implementing Sharia laws in 1999, it triggered sentiments all over the country. In Kaduna State, the proposal led to demonstrations and violent clashes. The article examines the ways in which different scales of politics are mutually constituted in the Sharia case and how the Sharia proposal subsequently resulted in clashes in Kaduna. It is argued that the Sharia initiative, even though it started as a sub-national question, was connected to a national power contestation. However, the federal government remained passive and diverted the issue to local political space. In Kaduna, the issue took dimensions that incurred with apprehensive local political contention that made it escalate into violence and polarising people according to religion. An analysis of the crisis in Kaduna is offered that does not regard the conflict as locally confined, but as inherently related to wider political and historical processes.     

The Middle Way: The Discourse of Planning in Britain,Australia and at the League in the Interwar Years*

Through an examination of speeches, articles and scholarly writing, this article traces the development of the idea of planning and the related doctrine of rationalization in Australia, Britain and at the League of Nations up to the Second World War. These terms denoted scientific control of social forces, an idea that emerged as the major response to interwar perceptions of crisis. Although rationalization and planning were viewed as potentially international in scope by the League's Economic Section, their treatment in Britain and Australia tended towards the provincial, with the rhetoric surrounding them progressively being tailored to suit local and imperial concerns and commitments. The defences of planning often relied on sentimental appeals to British character and traditions, although these same appeals were later used to undermine its rhetorical status.     

从政治视角理解把握十九届五中全会的精神品质与要义

党的十九届五中全会提出并讨论通过了国民经济和社会发展第十四个五年规划和二○三五年远景目标,这是富于强烈政治制度色彩以及持续性极强的国家治理方式和举措,是党的政治领导与思想指导反映于国家经济社会发展领域的重要制度安排,是中央政府宏观指导地方与地方党委政府了解把握全局的结合点和切入点,是引导社会与凝聚民心士气的有效方式和重...     

The Limitations of Water Regulation: The Failure of the Cochabamba Concession in Bolivia

This article examines the limitations of governmental capacity to regulate private sector participation in urban water supply in developing countries through an analysis of the most dramatic failure to date of a major franchise contract for supplying water and sanitation services to a large city – the 40-year concession awarded in September 1999 to Aguas del Tunari (AdT) in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Five months later, the population rioted against water tariff increases and the contract was cancelled. The paper analyses the background, context and factors that explain the failure of the concession and seeks to draw lessons for the regulation of future concessions.     

Inequality,Ethnicity, Political Mobilisation and Political Violence in Latin America: The Cases of Bolivia,Guatemala and Peru*

The paper explores the relationship between political violence and ‘horizontal’ inequality in ethnically‐divided countries in Latin America. The cases studied are Bolivia, Guatemala and Peru. Preliminary results are reported on the measurement of horizontal inequality, or that between groups, defined in cultural, ethnic and/or religious terms. The Latin American cases are shown to be often more unequal than the cases from Africa and Asia included in the wider study of which the work forms a part. The complex relationship between such inequality, ethnicity and political violence is explored historically. Ethnicity is today rarely a mobilising factor in violence in the Latin American cases, but the degree of inequality based on ethnicity is shown to be highly relevant to the degree of violence which results once conflict is instigated. History explains why.