Immigrant Social Workers and Transnational Practices: The Example of Latin Americans in Switzerland

This article explores how Latin American social workers living in Switzerland develop transnational practices in their professional and civic life. It focuses more particularly on the forms of support that these migrants provide to their societies of origin or to their immigrant compatriots through the activities they carry out either through their job, through their extra-professional commitments, or by combining these two dimensions of their existence. From interviews with 17 Latin American social workers, a typology of four forms of transnational commitment is suggested: local social work and transnational civic activity, professional transnationalism, transnational alternative professional exchanges, and “glocal” social work.     

The EU and Multidimensional Forms of Power: Critical Moments and Change in Actorness and Power

This article introduces a framework for studying the European Union (EU) as power by focusing on what EU does rather than what EU is. Conceptualizing EU as a regional international society, EU is constituted along multidimensional lines. While a code of conduct limits internal and external practices, critical moments are important junctures for practitioners to reinterpret norms and rules, leading to the reproduction of EU as power. The practice of minority rights illustrates how a lack of intersubjectivity limits the EU’s power. It is first through practitioners’ engagement with norms and rules that new practices are established.     

Poetics of Disaster: Nationalism, Gender, and Social Change Among Palestinian Poets in Israel After Nakba

Following the 1948 Nakba (disaster) and collapse of Palestinian society, its national project and cultural sites, a residue of 170,000 Palestinians became citizens of the emerging state of Israel, which existed under a strict military rule until 1966. This residue was mainly illiterate villagers who were left without national and intellectual leadership. After a few years of frightened silence, a new intellectual stratum of young poets from this group began to publish reflections on their national situation. Intentionally simple, direct, and mainly easily memorized, their poetry became the ultimate cultural channel to create and disseminate a Palestinian version of the 1948 war, its subsequent state, and the vision of a desired future. These young poets gradually became the leading producers of Palestinian culture in Israel and abroad. Their poetry became the ultimate reference point for Palestine’s national ethos and myths. Palestinians abroad named them the “poets of resistance” and their poems were composed into inflaming national songs. But while this new intellectual strata became active cultural producers, intervening in “the nation building process,” their social role remained ambivalent and problematic. Despite their national enthusiasm and appeal for social change, they were unable to transgress the patriarchic rule that was hegemonic in Palestinian society. This hegemonic narrative was interwoven in three themes: (1) using the lexicon of natural disaster to conceptualize the 1948 events, presenting them as an irresistible natural disaster (even by God who appeared during the events as pathetic and useless); (2) representing the Palestinian defeat in 1948 through patriarchal language of “collective shame,” “land rape,” and “honor lost;” and (3) articulating the national liberation project as masculine, promising to liberate the “captured land-woman” and to recover the collective honor of the nation.

Supervisor Relationships,Teamwork, Role Ambiguity and Discretionary Power: Nurses in Australia and the United Kingdom

This paper reports comparative research comparing the relationship between supervisor-subordinate relationships, teamwork, role ambiguity and discretionary power for nurses working in public and private sector hospitals in Australia and the UK. The findings indicate that the four factors accounted for approximately a quarter of the variance for nurses in the UK and almost a fifth of the variance for nurses working in public sector hospitals. Moreover, the findings identify a significant difference across all variables for nurses working in public sector hospitals compared with private sector with nurses in the private sector having higher satisfaction levels and perceiving lower levels of role ambiguity. There were fewer differences for nurses working in Australian hospitals compared with UK hospitals with nurses in Australia perceiving a better supervisor-subordinate relationship and nurses in the UK perceiving greater satisfaction with teamwork.     

The politics of paper: negotiating over and around indigeneship certification in Plateau State,Nigeria

The certification of indigeneship in Nigeria has become one of the most contested documentation processes in the country, given its implications for Nigerians’ citizenship rights and political and economic opportunities. This paper analyses the contestations over and around indigeneship certification in Plateau State. It argues that while the notion of indigeneship has roots in the colonial period, postcolonial forces have reshaped and transformed it. The increasingly poor documentation practices of the Nigerian state, particularly at the local level, have interacted with a fragmentation and formalisation of “indigenous belonging” and given it new functions. In the context of Plateau State, then, this paper shows how these processes have resulted in at least two distinct forms of contestation over indigeneship: first, the intergroup competition over indigeneship in Jos North and, second, the contestation around the margins of indigeneship in the rural areas of Quan Pan.     

Small States and Nonmaterial Power: Creating Crises and Shaping Migration Policies in Malta,Cyprus, and the European Union

This article examines how the power relationships between Malta and the Republic of Cyprus, on the one hand, and the European Union, on the other, shape irregular immigration policies in these two sovereign outpost island states in the Mediterranean. As member states on the EU's southern periphery, Malta and Cyprus have faced new institutional structures since their accession in 2004 within which they now construct their migration policies. Here, I examine how the new structures influence the discourse and logic of migration policies and politics and also how the seemingly small and powerless states affect regional policies. My contention is that, within this EU framework and with limited material power, the two outpost states have developed strategies based on nonmaterial power in order to defend and promote their interests. Such strategies have resulted in treating irregular immigration as a crisis in order to attract support. The new dynamics have thus resulted in more barriers to migration, and in negative consequences for the individual migrants and refugees on the islands. Although the strategies of Malta and Cyprus have been surprisingly successful in influencing regional migration governance, their long-term effectiveness is questionable, and their effects on the migrant and local population problematic.     

The 1996 Split of the Islamic Movement in Israel: Between the Holy Text and Israeli-Palestinian Context

This article aims to explain the causes and meaning of the formal split of the Islamic Movement in Israel into two factions—following the decision to participate in the elections to the fourteenth Knesset (Israeli parliament) on May 29, 1996—while locating these in a larger theoretical framework. This split resulted from a delicate combination of doctrinal-ideological controversies relating to secular electoral competition and historical-political-tactical controversies that are rooted in the Israeli-Palestinian context. Specifically, the split of the Islamic Movement in Israel derived from two interpretations of the Islamic belief: a more literal or concrete interpretation and a more abstract one.     

Implementing Environmental Sustainability in Local Government: The Impacts of Framing,Agency Culture,and Structure in US Cities and Counties

This article focuses on the organizational factors of environmental sustainability implementation in local government. We investigate the interactions, as well as direct and indirect impacts, of the framing of environmental sustainability and organizational culture and structure on implementation outcomes. We use a survey of 217 city/county planners and managers in 146 randomly selected American mid-sized cities and counties. The survey was specifically designed to tease out organizational features and their impacts. We model these impacts using structural equation modeling. We find that horizontally and vertically integrated organizational structure supports two essential dimensions of organizational culture: innovation adoption and consensus building. These cultural traits positively impact the framing of environmental sustainability at the core of organizations’ logic, which in turn significantly supports implementation outcomes. These findings provide important insights into city/county managers seeking to promote sustainability, and provide a base for future studies of the organizational factors of implementation.     

Parties, rules and government legislative control in Central Europe: The case of Poland

A distinguishing feature of Central European polities is a strong policy-shaping role of parliaments. This article demonstrates how party political and procedural factors set the scene for the executive's loss of legislative control in Poland. Parties undermine the governmental grip because of their limited internal cohesion and competitive coalitional strategies. Parliamentary rules reinforce such party effects. The executive can shield its bills from amendments by relying mainly on partisan controls, not formal privileges. But, as an analysis of over 300 bills shows, when party discipline and coalition cooperation are in short supply, partisan controls are ineffective as instruments of legislative control.     

The reformists: Kalahi and the performances of local government officials in Bohol,Philippines

To make sense of the gap between the theory and practice of community-driven development (CDD), development scholars and practitioners have proposed that the success of interventions is relative to the reform-mindedness of local government officials. This article sheds some light on the good governance performances of local government officials as part of the CDD programme Kalahi in the province of Bohol, Philippines. It highlights that locally, mayors who styled themselves as reformists enjoyed heightened power and electoral victories. In parallel, the province experienced a pattern of ‘growth with immiserisation’ and persistent political clientelism wrapped in a discourse of pro-poor development.     

Social Capital,Civic Engagement,and Economics in a Transitioning Economy: The Case of Vietnam Provinces

Social capitalist assert that civic engagement and participation yield significant economic gains for a county but, generally focus on democratic governed societies. The objective of this research is to determine if social capital transitions to Vietnam, a single-party governed country. This analysis first identifies factors that impact civic engagement and participation. Then it analyzes the relationship between civic engagement, participation, and economics. Using the 2012 Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index, we find human capital is a stronger predictor of economics in Vietnam. We conclude by offering policy implications for understanding social capital in single-party, transitioning economy countries.     

The Perils of Bula Matari: Constraint and Power in the Colonial State

This review article argues that analyses of the food security implications of emerging powers in Africa could be strengthened through foregrounding the issue of perspective. Researchers working in this area should engage with food security opinion contests, and avoid obscuring these debates moving forward.     

Economic Reform and Social Change in China: Past, Present, and Future of the Economic State

China's socioeconomic crisis before 1978 and its success over the past two decades can be viewed as a zigzag process of politicization and depoliticization of the economic state. By summarizing the Chinese experience, this article shows the importance of a specific pattern of general public policy (GPP) in determining the nature of a policy system. China's economic and serialized reforms since 1978 are reviewed in order to illuminate the current situation and future direction of the nation. The changes have undermined the economic state by creating a trend of de-economicization in the Chinese government. If economic reform and social change are to continue smoothly, another transfer of state emphasis to more balanced development is required.     

The Politics of Anti-Corruption Campaigns in Putin’s Russia: Power,Opposition, and the All-Russia People’s Front

Abstract

The beginning of Vladimir Putin’s third term was characterised by the politicisation of corruption. Opposition forces focused on corruption and criticised the regime for tolerating it. This article explores how the regime reacted to opposition criticism. The regime encountered a dilemma: it could not ignore the opposition but promoting anti-corruption reforms was risky for the regime. This study focuses on the regime’s use of the All-Russia People’s Front (Obshcherossiiskii Narodnyi Front—ONF) and concludes that it functioned as a ‘parastatal’ anti-corruption movement, enabling the regime to deflect the blame without directly involving itself in the process.     

Centred discourse,decentred practice: the relational production of Russian and Chinese ‘rising’ power in Central Asia

Abstract

This paper challenges dominant understandings of ‘rising powers’ by developing a decentred, relational account of Russia and China in Central Asia. We ask whether Moscow and Beijing’s regional integrative strategies do not guide, but rather are led by, everyday interactions among Russian and Chinese actors, and local actors in Central Asia. Rising powers, as a derivative of ‘Great Powers’, are frequently portrayed as structurally comparable units that concentrate power in their executives, fetishise territorial sovereignty, recruit client states, contest regional hegemony and explicitly oppose the post-1945 international order. In contrast, we demonstrate that the centred discourse of Eurasian integration promoted by Russian and Chinese leaders is decentred by networks of business and political elites, especially with regard to capital accumulation. Adopting Homi K. Bhabha’s notion of mimicry (subversion, hybridity) and J. C. Scott’s conception of mētis (local knowledge, agency), and using examples of Russian and Chinese investments and infrastructure projects in Central Asia, we argue that in order to understand centring discourse we must look to decentring practices at the periphery; that is, rising power is produced through ongoing interactions between actors at the margins of the state’s hegemonic reach.     

Refugees,Islam, and the State: The Role of Religion in Providing Sanctuary in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Malaysia has a mixed track record in providing Muslims with refuge, yet it increasingly lays claim to being an Islamic country. This article charts a history of the refugee engagement Malaysia has had based mainly on a shared regional and/or shared religious affiliation (Sunni Islam). I argue that the recent Malaysian history of refugee treatment presents a case for Muslim solidarity, but one tempered by a prevalent racism in Malaysia against people from the Indian subcontinent. Nonetheless, Islam provides an alternative history for providing protection to people in need. The UNHCR has pursued this approach in Muslim majority countries that are not signatories to the refugee convention in the hope of carving out a complementary protection space based on Islamic law and practice. This article traces these attempts and situates them within the Malaysian sociopolitical terrain, drawing out the possibilities and limits to such an approach.     

The frustrating partnership: Honor,status, and emotions in Russia's discourses of the West

This paper analyzes Russia's presidential discourses and emotions of the West from March 2008 to December 2012. By studying the languages of inclusiveness and exclusiveness in annual addresses to the Federation Council and public statements, I have identified several distinct stages in the Kremlin's emotional evolution from fear to hope to frustration: the initial fear (March 2008–June 2009), hope (September 2009–the late 2010), and frustration (since the early 2011). The Russia's emotional shifts are shaped by the country's historically established social relations with the West and are not to be reduced to the dynamics of power and prestige/status. Russia's deep emotional connection to the West as well as Russia's own concept of national honor are the two factors that drive the nation's leaders' complex actions, feelings, and rhetoric. Russia displays emotions of hope each time it feels that its honor is being respected and those of frustration, fear and anger when in the eyes of Kremlin its identity/honor as not recognized.     

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.