Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: ‘Let your women keep silence in the churches…’

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz chose to take the veil not only because she had no wish to marry but because in her time the convent was the only environment which sanctioned a woman's desire for a life of study and meditation. However, her brilliant mind ventured far beyond the parameters permitted by her church, for she devoted a large part of her literary activities to secular topics, dared to criticize the male Catholic establishment and questioned the Church's inconsistent—and to her, oppressive—treatment of women. In her autobiographical letter ‘The Reply to Sister Philotea’ (1691) she took her most radical feminist stance and artfully manipulated both Scripture and patristic texts to support her personal ends: the right of women to an education and to an intellectual life.     

Norway between NATO,the EU,and the US: A Case Study of Post-Cold War Security and Defence Discourse

This article addresses the post-Cold War security and defence discourse in Norway, focusing on the impact of the transformation of NATO, an increasingly ambitious EU within security matters and the transatlantic tensions in the War on Terror. The article argues that changes or continuity in policy result from the discursive battle between various power constellations, which are forcing conflicting understandings of reality on each other. In this battle, the dominant representation frames NATO's transformation as a precondition for national defence with reference to alliance solidarity, loyalty and interoperability. The alternative representation, on the other hand, has framed NATO's transformation as negative for national defence, claiming that forces trained for global, warlike missions are neither capable nor available for national defence tasks such as containment of Russia's strategic interests in the Barents Sea. The EU has been brought into the security and defence discourse only when new integration steps, such as the European security and defence policy and EU Battle Groups, put the question of how far Norway may participate, to a test. However, developments like the slow withering away of NATO and unilateralist US foreign policy on Iraq are contributing to pushing the Norwegian discourse, and hence policy, closer to Europe.     

Women’s empowerment and democratization: The effects of electoral systems,participation, and experience in Africa

This article investigates three hypotheses suggested in the literature on women’s political empowerment, operationalized here as increased legislative representation. These hypotheses are that (1) electoral systems manipulate women’s political empowernment; (2) increased popular participation empowers women in particular; and (3) accumulated experience gained over several electoral cycles facilitates increased political empowerment of women. In Africa, as well as in other parts of the world, majoritarian systems discriminate against women, while the effect of large parties in proportional representation systems is more ambiguous, and popular participation and repetitive electoral cycles are increasing women’s legislative representation. This article demonstrates the value of studying gender relations under democratization, even with a narrow institutionalist focus using an elitist perspective. Finally, it shows that institutions can travel over diverse contexts with constant effects. Staffan I. Lindberg is a Ph.D. candidate at Lund University. He has published on state building, democratization, and clientilism. From 1999 to 2001, he worked as an international consultant to Parliament in Ghana. His dissertation is on elections and the stabilization of polyarchy in sub-Saharan Africa. I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments from Goran Hyden, Andreas Schedler, Wynie Pankani, two anonymous reviewers, and the editors of the journal. The content, of course, is the author’s sole responsibility. This research has been made possible by Sida Grant No. SWE-1999-231.     

Belgrade,Pale, Knin: Kin-state Control over rebellious puppets?

The importance of kin-state involvement in ethnic conflicts and wars is often recognised in the literature, yet little theorising exists. This article analyses the links between the Serbian regime and the Serb leaders in Croatia and Bosnia during the Yugoslav war. Contrary to widespread assumptions, it finds that Slobodan Milo?evi? was not always able to control local developments; the local Serb leaders became increasingly rebellious and possessed means for limiting Belgrade's influence. Instead of assuming static ethnic solidarities, the analysis focuses on intra-ethnic divisions and the supply of resources and is thereby able to capture the fluidity of kin-state relations and the potentially limited longevity of such ties. It shows that links between a kin-state and its ethnic brethren may be weakened despite the existence of extreme insecurity.     

Red Tape: Developing and Validating a New Job‐Centered Measure

Red tape studies typically focus on burdensome rules that have negative effects on organizations, as perceived by managers. The one‐item general red tape scale is representative of this approach. However, scholars have called for improved measures that address the scale's shortcomings. This article introduces a new measurement scale that features (1) red tape as a two‐dimensional construct that includes compliance burden and lack of functionality and (2) a job‐centered approach that measures red tape as experienced by employees in their jobs rather than more generally in the organization. A set of survey questions derived from interviews with government employees was validated using data from 1,203 government employees. The findings indicate that the two‐dimensional job‐centered red tape scale is reliable and valid. The authors conclude that this measure can improve research and be used by managers for a “quick scan” to detect the location and severity of red tape.     

Cultivated ties and strategic communication: do international environmental secretariats tailor information to increase their bureaucratic reputation?

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - The past few years have witnessed a growing interest among scholars and policy-makers in the interplay of international...     

The Role of Just World Beliefs in Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Social Justice Research - This study investigated whether people’s personal belief in a just world (BJW) is linked to their willingness to physically distance themselves from others during...     

Security sector reform,gender and local narratives in Burundi

This paper maps the difficulties with operationalising the gender discourse described in the peace accord and post-conflict documents, which guide Burundi's peace-building process, through local women's narratives from the security forces. The author claims that due to limited international and local investment, the local women involved in the security forces initiate small practical changes by referring to their vision of femininity, while theoretically legitimising these demands by linking them to the international human rights discourse in order to survive in an overwhelmingly masculine arena. International organisations and donors’ focus on traditionally feminine and softer areas, such as reconciliation and reintegration programmes, together with local elites’ tendency to view gender as an ‘add-on’ contribute to this development.     

Talking the Talk of Public Service Motivation: How Public Organization Logics Matter for Employees' Expressions of PSM

This article aims to move beyond the public-private dichotomy in studying public service motivation (PSM) by showing how organizational logics matter for the type of PSM (instrumental, normative, or affective) that employees express. Using data from 50 interviews in police stations, prisons, hospitals, municipalities, and schools, we show that differences in service logic (the user's feeling of the desirability of a service) and user logic (people-changing or people-processing services) matter for employees’ expressions of PSM in that this results in different emphases within public service motivation. We conclude that institutions such as organizational logics matter for PSM expressions and that research on PSM should account for differences between public service-providing organizations.     

Poor communities as corporate stakeholders: A bottom-up research approach

Abstract

This article strives to provide an understanding of salient issues affecting the daily lives of participants from various developing communities in the country, and within the bigger picture, discuss some implications for organisations that affect or are affected by such communities. A key implication is that the process of constant connectivity and dialogue, including dissent, with communities as corporate stakeholders, may be more important in establishing trust and earning accountability, than the outcomes of well-planned corporate social responsibility campaigns. The study is based on qualitative research undertaken between 2006 and 2008 in 35 South African rural and township communities in Limpopo Province, North-West and Gauteng. A bottom-up research approach was proposed by the researchers, which, instead of evaluating the effects of corporate communication campaigns on communities, was to begin at a grassroots level with communities themselves, by exploring top-of-mind issues. From the findings it was apparent that a vicious cycle of extreme and endemic poverty was the focal area that occupied community members’ minds. This study provides a linkage between certain aspects of corporate social responsibility, normative stakeholder theory, strategic communication and stakeholder dialogue, in an attempt to provide organisations with guidelines to evaluate and respond to the challenges of poor communities, and offer a perspective on the way strategic communication with poor communities should take place.