Sites of power,instruments of public intervention: the Palace of Congress and the construction of federal power in Argentina, 1880–1916

SUMMARY

This article intends to provide an analysis of the process of building a house for the Argentine congress between 1880 and 1916. After the presidential campaign and revolution of 1880, Argentina entered a new political era that saw the definition of a political system under the hegemony of the Partido Autonomista Nacional and the consolidation of the federal state. The defeat of porteño militias in 1880 represented the end of the project of a national state controlled from Buenos Aires and the transformation of the city into the federal capital of the country. This new role meant that the city now needed buildings to accommodate new functions, a house for parliament among them. This article explores the significance of building the Palace of Congress as part of a broader plan by politicians, urban planners and bureaucrats to place symbols of republican greatness in central areas of the new capital. This study also focuses on the parliamentary debates that discussed the allocation of public funding for the construction of congress and the importance of giving the new capital examples of monumental architecture as a way to underscore its new political status. Finally, this article analyses the impact of the debates in congress and in the press about allegations of embezzlement and corruption that surrounded the building of the Palace of Congress.     

Therapies of Resistance? Yuta,Help-seeking,and Identity in Okinawa

In contemporary Okinawa shamanism and psychiatry are both employed by Okinawans to bring relief from what are understood to be godly or psychiatric interventions in their lives. This paper examines some of the reasons that shamanism is still popular and well-patronized in a society that is part of one of the world's most developed nations. By situating the role of shamans within a historical context, it becomes clear that repression of these women has taken place at a number of junctures in Okinawan history, mainly because they were seen as “backward,” “primitive,” or “too” Okinawan. In other words, their primary identity as Okinawans led those in political power to attempt to remove them from being socially acceptable, forcing them underground as the state reinvented itself to suit broader political strategies. Notwithstanding almost four centuries of discrimination and attempted repression, shamans continue to prosper in contemporary society, using markers of Okinawan identity (in particular ancestor worship) to legitimate their roles as therapists and healers. Patients, too, hybridize both systems today in informed and idiosyncratic ways, moving comfortably between treatment regimes. Both shamans and psychiatrists are perceived as therapists in this article.     

Out of Sight,Out of Mind? External Voting and the Political Representation of Portuguese Emigrants

Over recent decades, emigrants have gained expanded voting rights on a global scale. Despite the normative debates about this issue, there are few empirical studies on why states decide to implement external voting and how electoral systems perform. This article seeks to fill this gap by looking at the Portuguese case. Our study suggests that a combination of political and socio-economic factors explains the implementation of external voting. On the other hand, the interests of political parties and the low level of civil society engagement are key to determining the failure of electoral reforms and the attempts to overcome the shortcomings of external voting.     

Peeresses,Parliament and prejudice: the admission of women to the House of Lords, 1918–1963

SUMMARY

In this article Duncan Sutherland examines a subject that has been almost entirely ignored by British constitutional historians, the admission of women to the House of Lords. There had always been hereditary peeresses, their status as peeresses did not confer the right to sit in the House of Lords. The womens' suffrage movement had ignored the issue, and attempts to use the right of women to sit as MPs in the Acts of 1918 and 1919 to entitle peeresses to sit in the Lords failed. So did subsequent attempts to have them admitted by legislation: the political parties did not see it as an important issue, and it was inextricably mixed up with the wider question of general reform of the House of Lords. Only after the creation of life peerages, after 1958, were women admitted to the House, and even then the hereditary peeresses had to wait until 1963 for admission. The article concludes by considering the kinds of arguments advanced for continuing the exclusion of women. The long delay, in light of the feebleness and inconsistencies of the case for continuing the exclusion of women, seems to indicate the low importance that the political Establishment attached to the issue.     

Macroeconomic Policies and Agricultural Terms of Trade,Bangladesh, 1952–2005

Agricultural prices in Bangladesh have had a tendency to rise at a faster rate than industrial prices since the early 1950s. The resulting rising trend in the agricultural terms of trade has been pronounced since the mid-1980s when Bangladesh introduced IMF- and World Bank-supported deregulatory economic reforms. This rising trend in the agricultural terms of trade is inconsistent with the Prebisch-Singer thesis in the context of domestic economy, which suggests a secular deterioration in the terms of trade for primary products vis-à-vis manufactured products. It is, however, consistent with the view of classical economists who saw the possibility of an upward trend in the terms of trade for agricultural products (food) because of diminishing returns in agriculture. In fact, the classical idea of the rising terms of trade for primary products makes sense in a land-constrained growing economy with increasing population, such as Bangladesh, which remained semi-closed until the mid-1980s. This article reviews macroeconomic policies in Bangladesh since the 1950s, examines the time-series properties of agricultural prices, industrial prices and the agricultural terms of trade and draws inference on the issue whether the agricultural sector was squeezed systematically by turning the terms of trade against agriculture for industrialisation of the country.     

The institutionalization of relative advantage: formal institutions,subconstitutional presidential powers,and the rise of authoritarian politics in Russia, 1994–2012

What role do formal institutions play in the consolidation of authoritarian regimes such as the Russian Federation? Oftentimes, it is assumed that autocrats, usually potent presidents, wield informal powers and control far-flung patron–client networks that undermine formal institutions and bolster their rule. After the institutional turn in authoritarianism studies, elections, parties, legislatures, or courts have taken center stage, yet presidencies and public law are still on the margins of this research paradigm. This paper proposes a method for measuring subconstitutional presidential power and its change by federal law, decrees, and Constitutional Court rulings as well as a theoretical framework for explaining when and under which conditions subconstitutional presidential power expands. It is argued that as a result of a gradual, small-scale, and slow-moving process of layering, presidential powers have been accumulated over time. This furthers the institutionalization of presidential advantage toward other federal and regional institutions, which in turn contributes to the consolidation of authoritarianism.     

Weak States,Unruly Capitalists,and the Rise of Étatism in Late Developers: The Case of Turkey

Understanding why some nations turned to étatism in the early stages of economy building remains central to political economy. A general consensus, although it comes in different versions, holds that étatism became the developmental policy in nations where indigenous entrepreneurial classes were weak and small. Traditional accounts of Turkish turn to étatism in the 1930s generally draw on this premise. This article challenges these perspectives that associate étatism with a strong state and a weak entrepreneurial class. I argue that the turn to étatism in Turkey did not simply result from the developmental shortcomings of the newly emerging private sector. The state's own shortcomings at governing the newly emerging class of self-interest seeking entrepreneurs, and instituting order in the markets was a major factor.     

‘A matter of political expediency’: Iran,Britain, South Africa and the settlement of Reza Shah's estate

When Reza Shah, the former ruler of Iran, died in exile in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1944, he left some £110,000 in cash in his bank account and valuables and other items worth another £20,000. But he left no will; and the Union government proceeded to impose a tax amounting to over £43,000 (one-third of the total value) and to distribute the remainder among heirs as specified in Union law for persons who had died intestate. Reza Shah's son, Mohammad Reza Shah, the ruling Iranian monarch, hard up for money, fought these requirements. He claimed everything in his late father's possession was his, and that neither estate taxes nor distribution to heirs applied. A four-year battle over the estate ensued. It was eventually resolved, but only after vigorous efforts by two British ambassadors to Tehran, endeavours at the highest levels of the British government; the involvement of the South African prime minister and, finally, an act of the South African parliament. This article examines the intricate tug-of-war surrounding the settlement of the estate of Reza Shah and what it tells us about the principal parties involved.     

Debt,diplomacy and dreadnoughts: the National Bank of Turkey, 1909–1919

The National Bank of Turkey (NBT) (1909) was an attempt by the new Young Turk regime to assert economic sovereignty: creating a multinational bank able to provide financing free of the diplomatic conditions previously attached to loans by French banks. NBT's role financing naval rearmament and oil development has attracted a good deal of attention from historians. Using the archives of the bank's founders and Ottoman ministers alongside familiar diplomatic sources, this article is the first to combine Ottoman and European perspectives on NBT, challenging the traditional narrative which presents the Ottoman Empire as the helpless ‘victim’ of the fiscal imperialism of France, Britain and Germany in the years before 1914.     

The failure of economic reform in the Kurdistan region of Iraq (1921–2015): the vicious circle of uncivic traditions,resource curse,and centralization

This study sheds light on the causes of failure of economic reform in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). It argues that the success of economic reform largely relies on the choices available for ruling authorities as well as their willingness to share power with the people and with each other. Since the birth of the Iraqi state and the KRI the interaction of uncivic traditions, rent seeking, and centralization has been the main cause hindering economic reforms that are desired to sustain development. To investigate, the study provides a comprehensive account of the failure of the region’s past and present economic policies and the sociopolitical structure that supported it.     

The logic of no alternative? Political scientists, historians and the politics of Labour's past

This paper critiques the largely incommensurate approaches taken both by historians and political scientists to the governmental past of the British Labour Party. It argues that revisionist historians, in flight from the traditional left critique of parliamentary socialism, are in danger of damaging their capacity to produce general explanations, while political scientists (who specialise in the latter) have tended to preserve an outdated version of Labour's past that supports their greater interest in its present and future. Both approaches dovetail with the political strategy of the Party's current leadership, but do little to contribute to what could be a profitable breaking-down of the barriers between the two disciplines in this area.