Islam,médias,mise en place du Sénat et article 37 de la Constitution: changement de paradigme au Burkina Faso (1991–2014)?

Abstract

In the context of socio-political liberalisation, which has been happening since 1991, together with the competition between the different religions in the public arena in Burkina Faso, the visibility of Islam has increased considerably with the creation of Islamic media and the growing use of the Internet. This article examines the impact of the growing mediatisation of Islam on the agency and the content of the discourse of Muslim elites in Burkina Faso. This has led to the emergence of new, very mediatised religious figures who have gained authority in the public arena. However, the multiplication of the Islamic message is not accompanied by greater politicisation. Their agency resides rather in their relative capacity to invest in the public arena to defend their vision of society governed by Islamic moral norms. The debate surrounding the introduction of the Senate and the revision of Article 37 of the Constitution between 2011 and 2014 has shown the lacklustre agency of the Muslim leaders.     

Do street traders have the ‘right to the city’? The politics of street trader organisations in inner city Johannesburg,post-Operation Clean Sweep

Street trader organisations are paradoxical objects of study. Their claims resist being analysed through the ‘right to the city’ lens, so contested are rights to inner city spaces between multiple users, not all of them in dominant socioeconomic positions; and so ambiguous is the figure of the street trader, oppressed but also appropriating public space for profit, increasingly claiming, in neoliberalising cities, an entrepreneurial identity. In the aftermath of the 2013 ‘Operation Clean Sweep’ (in which the City of Johannesburg unsuccessfully attempted to evict street traders from its inner city), this paper unpacks the politics of street trader organisations: how they organise their constituencies, frame their claims, forge unlikely alliances and enter into disempowering conflicts in engagements with a divisive municipality.     

Paths to the recognition of homo-parental adoptive rights in the EU-27: a QCA analysis

Although the recognition of the adoptive rights of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) couples is a socially salient topic, cross-national variation regarding this issue has been largely underexplored in social science research. With the aid of configurational analysis, this article fills this gap and shows the conditions that explain the recognition of the adoptive rights of homosexual couples in the countries of the EU-27. It is argued that two different paths led to this outcome. All countries where adoptive rights were recognized had higher degrees of secularization and lower levels of social homophobia. In addition, in Northern European countries, the Protestant background and absence of conservative governments for a certain time period seemed to be the determinant. However, for the remaining European countries that recognized these rights, rising levels of gender equality appeared to have a more salient role.     

Do Nasty and Pleasant Surprises Regarding Tax Revenue Explain Spending Drifts? The Case of the Swiss Cantons

This article aims to explain the difference between the expenditure reported in governmental end-of-the-year budgets and the amounts previously forecasted in the approved beginning-of-the-year budgets. We measure how political, financial, and institutional variables affect this spending drift. We focus on two much-debated factors, namely, tax revenue budgeting errors and the stringency of fiscal rules. Our econometric approach uses a panel based on the 26 Swiss cantons covering the period of 1980 to 2011. Results suggest that stringent fiscal rules discourage budget overruns, whereas underestimating tax revenue—i.e., a budgetary “pleasant surprise”—offers the opportunity for some overspending.     

Strategies of Resistance: Diversification and Diffusion

Why do organizations choose to use nonviolence? Why do they choose specific nonviolent tactics? Existing quantitative work centers on mass nonviolent campaign, but much of the nonviolence employed in contentious politics is smaller‐scale nonviolent direct action. In this article, we explore the determinants of nonviolence with new data at the organization level in self‐determination disputes from 1960 to 2005. We present a novel argument about the interdependence of tactical choices among nonviolent options in self‐determination movements. Given limitations on their capabilities, competition among organizations in a shared movement, and different resource requirements for nonviolent strategies, we show that organizations have incentives to diversify tactics rather than just copy other organizations. The empirical analysis reveals a rich picture of varied organizational resistance choices, and a complex web of interdependence among tactics.