‘Living Rights’, rights claims,performative citizenship and young people – the right to vote in the Scottish independence referendum

This paper examines the rights claims-making that young people engaged in during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum when the right to vote was extended to 16- and 17-year-olds for the first time in the UK. Understanding citizenship and rights claims-making as performative, we draw on the novel idea of ‘living rights’ to explore how young people ‘shape what these rights are – and become – in the social world’. They are co-existent and situated within the everyday lives of young people, and transcend the traditional idea that rights are merely those that are enshrined in domestic and/or international law. We explore the complex and contested nature of rights claims that were made by young people as ‘active citizens’ in the lead up to the referendum to illustrate how the rights claims-making by young people is bound up with the performativity of citizenship that entails identity construction, political subjectivity (that challenges adult-centric approaches) and social justice.     

Who ‘marries’ whom? The influence of societal connectedness,economic and political homogeneity,and population size on jurisdictional consolidations

For decades, political scientists have been asking how political jurisdictions are formed and reshaped. Nevertheless, studies of local government jurisdictional formation are few and often plagued with endogeneity since the formation of jurisdictions cannot be separated from sorting effects. In this article, the unique case of the Danish structural reform is utilised to overcome endogeneity due to migration‐related sorting by studying patterns of municipal amalgamations. In the recent Danish reform, 239 of 271 municipal entities were forced to amalgamate simultaneously, while who actually amalgamated with whom was left entirely to negotiations between the respective municipalities. Applying logistical regression to a dataset where the unit of analysis is dyads of municipalities allows the construction of a relational model for estimating the effect of different political and societal variables on the likelihood of amalgamation. Societal connectedness, population size and geography are important predictors of amalgamation patterns, while political and economic homogeneity between municipalities does not appear to matter much.     

Yao Li,Playing by the Informal Rules: Why the Chinese Regime Remains Stable despite Rising Protests (Cambridge University Press, 2019), 207 p. £ 75.00 hardback

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

济南92岁老人捐款1万元,支援战“疫”

虽然已是农历二月,这两天的山东省会济南仿佛因新冠肺炎疫情与人作对,重回寒冷冬季,但有一位90高龄老人的亲笔慰问信却让人异常温暖,除了这封慰问信,1万元捐款也一并到账。2月27日下午15:48,一笔1万元的爱心捐款汇入济南慈善总会的专门账户。捐款人叫张健,家住济南市天桥区标山小区。为了献出自己的一份心意,今年已经92岁高龄的张奶奶在家人的陪同下亲自来到中国农业银行,将带着体温的现金捐了出来。笔者了解到,老人来回走了一个小时,第一家银行没开门,她又去了动物园门口的农行,终于办成了这笔业务,了却了这儿天一直念念不忘的心愿。     

Boricuas,African Americans,and Chicanos in the “far west”: Notes on the Puerto Rican pro‐independence movement in California, 1960s‐1980s 1

Abstract

From the late 1960s through the 1980s, Puerto Ricans developed a movement in California in support of Puerto Rico's political independence that allied itself with Anglos, African Americans, Chicanos and other Latinos. These alliances were strategic in extending the influence of the movement in solidarity with Puerto Rico's struggle beyond the relatively small and geographically dispersed Puerto Rican population in California. These implicit and explicit political alliances with other sectors led to an interesting ideological and cultural exchange between radical Puerto Rican organizations and these groups. These notes initiate an exploration of this period, through the oral histories of some of the participants in this movement. The focus of the initial exploration is on those who were in positions of leadership and influence in Northern and Southern California within the radical politics of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party—at the time, the main Puerto Rican socialist organization in Puerto Rico and the US.