Development's Denial of Social Justice

Abstract

American public administration as a field is “mature” in terms of its identity, roles, knowledge, and open-system nature. Yet it lacks maturity in the sense of an adequate sense of self-worth. This “inferiority complex” is revealed by the field's obsession with two intertwining, persistent themes: a perceived state of societal illegitimacy and of permanent need for reform.     

Morton's Fork: “Democracy” Versus Neopatrimonialism in Developing Countries

It is argued that conditions for social justice in developing countries are deficient under both state capitalism (“democracy”) and neopatrimonialism. Development assistance is similarly constrained, but it also has shortcomings in relation to “democracy” promotion. Political economy analyses can provide authentic insights into how poor people negotiate for public goods, but such interactions seem unlikely to yield sustainable social justice for most citizens. The assessment calls for a reconfiguration of power relations and a more egalitarian distribution of public goods within and between countries, which is what most people are predisposed to want and are entitled to expect and enjoy.     

Is the Impact of Alcohol Consumption on Violence Relative to the Level of Consumption?

Two ideas concerning the link between bullying in school and violence on the streets are investigated. (1) Bullying and victimization in school is a product of the school situation and people's inability to choose their levels of exposure to others. According to this hypothesis, bullying is largely a phenomenon that is isolated to the school context. (II) Bullying behaviour in school and inflicting damage to others outside school is a reflection of a more general aggressive behaviour pattern and, hence, bullying in school and violence on the streets will, to a great extent, involve the same individuals. The literature offers suggestions that either could be the case. Participants were 2915 14-year-olds in a medium-sized county in Sweden who responded to a self-report questionnaire.Theresults showed that bullying others in school was strongly linked to violent behaviour and weapon-carrying on the streets, both among boys and girls. It was also found that bullying others in school was related to being violently victimized on the streets. The findings remained the same when statistically controlling for loitering and nights spent away from home, which were both related to bullying behaviour. It is concluded that bullying behaviour in school is in many cases a part of a more general violent and aggressive behaviour pattern and that preventive efforts targeting individuals with bullying behaviour in school could, according to the present study, decrease violence among adolescents out in the community as well.     

Population Pressure,Horizontal Inequality and Political Violence: A Disaggregated Study of Indonesian Provinces, 1990–2003

All parts of a country are rarely equally affected by political violence. Yet statistical studies largely fail to address sub-national conflict dynamics. We address this gap studying variations in ‘routine’ and ‘episodic’ violence between Indonesian provinces from 1990 to 2003. Within a grievance framework, the article focuses on the violence potential of resource scarcity and population pressure, as well as inter-group dynamics related to polarisation and horizontal inequality. Demographic pressure and inequality seem to have little effect in isolation. However, in provinces where population growth is high, greater levels of inequality between religious groups appear to increase the violence risk.     

How political parties’ issue ownerships reduce to spatial proximity

Abstract

Scholarly interest in issue ownership is growing rapidly. Although originally introduced as a competence-oriented, alternative concept to the predominantly spatial understanding of voting and party behaviour, parties’ policy positions are an inescapable aspect of issue ownership. Using data for multiple issues in several countries over time, this article shows that the party with issue ownership sides with the median voter. A party earns issue ownership by taking up a position as close to as many voters as possible. Moreover, the analysis indicates that a party’s issue emphasis only matters to issue ownership insofar as it is used as a device to make its position credible to voters. Hence, to have issue ownership is to have a credible position, and in that sense, issue ownership has less added theoretical value to spatial proximity than previous literature suggests.     

Party Elites' Perceptions of Voters and Public Opinion

Given the vast amounts of research on party competition, party strategy, political communication and electoral campaigning, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the study of national party elites' perceptions of voters and public opinion. This article argues that the mindset of leading party officials, and more specifically their perceptions of voter and public opinion rationality, driving forces and knowledge, is a much‐neglected explanation for why parties adopt the electoral strategies they do. Analysed here are unique internal party documents from two Swedish parties during the period 1964 to 1991: the Social Democratic Party and the Conservative Party. A simple analytic framework is proposed for the study of party elite perceptions of voters and public opinion. In contrast to the overwhelmingly pessimistic view of voter rationality that still prevails in contemporary research, the findings presented in this article suggest that national party elites in general have had a surprisingly positive view of voters and, in particular, public opinion. Perceptions of voters and public opinion were largely unaffected by the parties' electoral fortunes, and did not become gloomier over time.     

Which democracies prosper? Electoral rules, form of government and economic growth

Electoral rules and form of government have important economic effects, for example on taxation and public spending. However, there are no robust results in the literature when it comes to their effect on economic growth. This paper investigates whether electoral rules and form of government affects economic growth by applying panel data techniques on a very extensive dataset. There is no robust effect of presidentialism or parliamentarism on growth. However, there is very robust evidence for a positive, and quite substantial, effect of Proportional Representation (PR) electoral rules on economic growth. This is partly due to PR systems’ propensity to generate broad-interest policies, like universal education spending, property rights protection and free-trade, rather than special interest economic policies. Also semi-proportional systems seem to enhance growth relative to plural-majoritarian systems.     

Struggles over Identity and Territory: Regional Identities in Ethnoreligious Conflict in Northern Nigeria

This article explores how ethnoreligious conflict over boundaries and territoriality involves a politics of scale, that is, how positions and demands are framed by actors according to, for instance, local, regional, and national scales. The analysis focuses on how Muslim actors in a conflict in Kaduna State in Nigeria frame a regional, northern Nigerian identity that varies in content and form depending on the scalar context in which communal conflict is placed with regional and national politics yielding different identifications.