THE DRIVE FOR TRANSPARENCY: ORGANIZATIONAL FIELD TRANSFORMATIONS IN SWEDISH HEALTHCARE

This paper provides an account of the rising clamour for transparency in the Swedish healthcare field. Previous research into accounting, auditing and classification has shown that such visualizing technologies potentially have the capacity to create new objects and ideals in a field ( Miller 1994; Power 1997; Bowker and Star 1999 ). It is thus reasonable to believe that the simultaneous use of various visualizing technologies in a field might transform it. This paper provides an analysis of the early stages of such a transformation process. The carriers that promote transparency are identified and it is shown that the drive for transparency has opened up the field to new actors. It is also shown that the drive for transparency has changed the quality discourse and as a consequence of that, the National Quality Registries are beginning to be opened up to the public.     

Protest participation and economic crisis: The conditioning role of political opportunities

The economic crisis that started in 2008 has negatively affected European nations to different degrees. The sudden rise in demonstrations particularly in those countries most hard hit by the crisis suggests that grievance theories, dismissed in favour of resource‐based models since the 1970s, might have a role to play in explaining protest behaviour. While most previous studies have tested these theories at the individual or contextual levels, it is likely that mechanisms at both levels are interrelated. To fill this lacuna, this article examines the ways in which individual‐level grievances interact with macro‐level factors to impact on protest behaviour. In particular, it examines whether the impact of individual subjective feelings of deprivation is conditional on contextual macroeconomic and policy factors. It is found that while individual‐level relative deprivation has a direct effect on the propensity to have protested in the last year, this effect is greater under certain macroeconomic and political conditions. Both significant results for the cross‐level interactions are interpreted in terms of their role for opening up political opportunities for protest among those who feel they have been most deprived in the current crisis. These findings suggest that the interaction of the contextual and individual levels should continue to be explored in future studies in order to further clarify the mechanisms underlying protest behaviour.     

Le pouvoir représentatif local en Bulgarie, 1878–1944

SUMMARY

In this article Maria Manolova has studied the changes in the structure of representative local government in Bulgaria between 1878 and 1944, in its juridical and historical aspects. The article analyses the structure and competence of the elected local authorities, built around the commune as the basic unit of government, and the attempts by the central government to exercise control over them. The resulting legislation on local government reflects the tensions between the two opposed principles of centralization and decentralization of government. The article reviews the principle legislative Act over the period and how their content was shaped by these competing principles and by the pragmatic needs of the political parties in their competion for power. But despite the fluctuations in the legislation, culminating in the strongly centralist decree-law of 1934, the concept of the commune as the basic institution of popular local self-government in Bulgaria has survived.     

Peuple,patrie et nation: les mots et les idées dans le Discours parlementaire portugais du dix-neuvième siècle

SUMMARY

In this article Maria Manuela Tavares Ribciro analyses how the Portuguese Republicans of the later nineteenth century drew inspiration from the ideas and the symbols of the Revolution of 1820 in Portugal. The subsequent liberal regimes located sovereignty in the Nation, which they distinguished from the People, who only shared in the exercise of sovereignty through voting. The will of the Nation was expressed through the elected deputies and was distinct from the will of the People and superior to it. Against this the Republicans set the revolutionary concept of the ‘Patrie’, distinct from the Nation and the direct embodiment of the collective will of the People. It was by drawing on the revolutionary concepts and symbolism of the 1820s that the late nineteenth-century Republicans articulated their claim that by setting up a republic, the People would re-invigorate the moribund liberal Nation by their direct, collective action and fashion a new and better Nation in its place.     

Le Parlement de Waterloo: la Chambre des Représentants (mai-juillet 1815)

SUMMARY

In this article, Maria Sofia Corciulo looks at the evidence on the proceedings of the Chamber of Deputies elected during the return of Napoléon Bonaparte as emperor in 1815. This took place under the terms of the Acte Additionnel drafted by Benjamin Constant, following Napoléon's expressed decision to reign as a constitutional monarch. Constant introduced a number of significant liberal modifications to the old Napoleonic constitution, and elections for the new Chamber were held in May 1815, though using the electoral bodies established under the 1802 constitutional arrangements. The article suggests that the outcome of these elections, from the very low participation levels in the voting to the character of the men elected, suggests an abscence of confidence in the likely stability of the restored Empire, and this tentative attitude held through the brief opening proceedings of the new legislature in the days immediately before Napoléon left to join the army. After the return to Paris from Waterloo, Napoléon rejected the advice of those who urged him to dissolve the obviously disloyal Chamber, and in view of its attitude was left with no option but abdication. In conclusion the article affirms that this outcome resulted not from the intrigues of Fouché, nor from the ambitions of Napoléon's family, but because the Chambers required it, though their expressed hopes of then being able to lay down conditions for the eventual sovereign chosen for France were thwarted by the will of the victorious allied powers.     

A woman patriot and fighter for Italy's unity and freedom: Antonietta De Pace in Southern Italy

SUMMARY

In the context of the history of Italy's Risorgimento and unification, Maria Sofia Corciulo recounts the adventurous life, the clandestine struggle, and the political significance of Antonietta De Pace (1818–1894), the leading figure among several women patriots in the kingdom of Naples during the period of pre-parliamentary republican struggle. Her trial after capture in 1855 caused an international sensation, and in 1860 she entered Naples with Garibaldi's triumphal army. She devoted her entire life to Italian unification, and her later years to improving the social, economic and cultural position of women. Her career suggests that, in the exceptional circumstances of independent women like her and the political turbulence of the age, nineteenth-century Italian society was prepared to allow a greater degree of equality to women than before.     

From Family Feud to Organised Crime: The Cultural Economy of Cannabis in Northeast Brazil

Abstract — Traditional family feuding and banditry as well as envy-inspired violence associated with capitalised irrigation have been intensified by the introduction of cannabis farming and organised crime in the Sertão of Northeast Brazil to the point that today the cannabis producing zone is one of the most violent places in the world. These three interrelated forms of contemporary violence arose, respectively, in the pre-1940 frontier setting, in the 1940 to 1980 period of rapid Brazilian industrialisation which depressed peasant sectors and stimulated the rise of capitalised irrigation and in the post-1980 period of economic stagnation and social-political crisis in Brazil which depressed consumer markets and induced the State to liberalise foreign trade policy to the detriment of periphery regions like the Northeast.     

Institutional constraints on cabinet formation: Veto points and party system dynamics

Research on government formation in parliamentary democracies has presented contradicting evidence on the role of political veto institutions and parliamentary polarization on the formation of cabinet types. Institutional rules may either provide significant leeway for political parties or seriously constrain them when forming sustainable coalitions. In contrast to previous studies we argue that the effect of political institutions is conditional on the degree of polarization in parliament. We test our hypotheses using original data on 842 cabinet formations in 33 advanced democracies between 1945–2018. In line with previous research, we find that the institutional rules have a pronounced effect on the type of cabinet formed, but that institutional rules moderate the effect of party system polarization. Thus, our findings provide important new insights on cabinet formation which are particularly relevant for today's increasingly polarized parliaments.