Famines in 19th century Indian history: A materialist alternative to ecological reductionism

This article charts the ways in which gender politics have featured within political landscape of contemporary Singapore. It is shown that there has been remarkable consistency in the approaches of the Singaporean government to women and gender relations in the post-independence period. Gender policies have consistently been interventionist and proactive, and have revealed the willingness of the government to subordinate the interests of women to those of the state. Fluctuations in policy regarding women are traced, and shown to be related to such factors as changes in Singapore's position within the global economy, the putative invasiveness of Western culture and perceived ethnic imperatives of Singapore's dominant ethnic group, the Chinese.     

Early‐Life Origins of Life‐Cycle Well‐Being: Research and Policy Implications

Mounting evidence across different disciplines suggests that early‐life conditions can have consequences on individual outcomes throughout the life cycle. Relative to other developed countries, the United States fares poorly on standard indicators of early‐life health, and this disadvantage may have profound consequences not only for population well‐being, but also for economic growth and competitiveness in a global economy. In this paper, we first discuss the research on the strength of the link between early‐life health and adult outcomes, and then provide an evidence‐based review of the effectiveness of existing U.S. policies targeting the early‐life environment. We conclude that there is a robust and economically meaningful relationship between early‐life conditions and well‐being throughout the life cycle, as measured by adult health, educational attainment, labor market attachment, and other indicators of socioeconomic status. However, there is some variation in the degree to which current policies in the United States are effective in improving early‐life conditions. Among existing programs, some of the most effective are the Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), home visiting with nurse practitioners, and high‐quality, center‐based early‐childhood care and education. In contrast, the evidence on other policies such as prenatal care and family leave is more mixed and limited.     

Impossible Jobs or Impossible Tasks? Client Volatility and Frontline Policing Practice in Urban Riots

Various public administration jobs are described as “impossible,” meaning that they have an unpopular or illegitimate client base, stakeholders have conflicting values, and leaders and their agency's mission are continually questioned. Although this framework is widely used, it has also become overgeneralized. The authors propose three theoretical extensions to understanding impossible jobs based on findings from a three‐year multimethod study of riot policing. First, a distinction can be drawn between impossible jobs and impossible tasks. Second, the relationship between impossible jobs and street‐level bureaucracy is clarified; the case of riot police shows that some street‐level bureaucrats face impossible tasks. Third, the authors show that the conceptualization of the client base has been overly static—in some situations, the client base fractures, or grows rapidly, and legitimacy can change in real time.     

National protest agenda and the dimensionality of party politics: Evidence from four East-Central European democracies

Contemporary democracies show considerable differences in the issue composition of their protest politics, which tends to remain relatively stable over time. In countries like Germany or the Czech Republic, the vast majority of protests have been mobilised around sociocultural issues, such as human rights, peace, nuclear power or the environment, and only a tiny portion of protest has focused on economic issues. At the opposite extreme, protest in France or Poland usually has a strongly economic character and voices demands relating to material redistribution and social policy. What lies behind the cross-country differences in national protest agendas? In this article, the national protest agenda depends on what issues mainstream political parties are contesting: the content and strength of the master-issue dimension. In reference to the literature on the multidimensional political space and niche political parties, one should expect that there is a substitutive effect; where the stronger a specific master-issue dimension is in party politics, the less salient that issue dimension is in protest politics. This substitutive effect results from the tendency of electoral politics to reduce political conflict to a single-dimension equilibrium, which decreases the importance of other issues and relegates the contest over secondary, niche issues to the realm of policy-seeking strategies, with protest being a common type of this political strategy. In party systems where single-dimension equilibrium does not exist and the master-issue dimension is weaker, the same dynamics result in a more convergent relationship between party and protest politics and a greater similarity between the protest- and party-system agendas. To investigate this theory, the national protest agendas in four countries are examined. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia show four combinations of two crucial factors that are not available in the old Western democracies: the content and the strength of the master-issue dimension. The study draws on an original dataset of protest events organised in the four countries between 1993 and 2010, and on qualitative and quantitative data on issue dimensions of party politics obtained from studies on party politics and expert surveys. The results show that in the Czech Republic, where the master-issue dimension has remained strongly economic, protest has been predominantly sociocultural. In Poland between 1993 and 2001 and Hungary between 1993 and 2006, the master-issue dimensions are strongly sociocultural, while protest is predominantly economic. There is no single-dimension equilibrium in party politics in Slovakia or in post-2001 Poland and mainstream parties compete on both economic and sociocultural issues. Consequently, the substitutive dynamics between party and protest politics is weaker and the issue agendas in party and protest arenas are here more alike.