Roads of change: political transition and state formation in Nepal’s agrarian districts

This paper explores the political field that has opened up in the wake of the recent civil war in Nepal. We focus on cultural-political developments in agrarian districts, where some of the most intriguing openings, and indeed the most pernicious closures, can be witnessed (as opposed to the national-state restructuring that commands more media and popular attention). Our research asks what spaces open up in the emerging political field at the district scale to entrench or transform dominant cultural codes and sedimented histories of socio-economic inequality. Preliminary research identifies specific sectors of local governance that have emerged as significant sites of struggle over the shape and meaning of ‘democracy’, namely forest management and infrastructure development. The primary contribution of the paper lies in specifying an analytical approach to the study of ‘post-conflict’ governance at the local scale via three conceptual terrains of inquiry – governance and planning, political subjectivity, and cultural politics. The ultimate objective is to develop a framework for assessing the conditions of possibility for a democratic restructuring of economy and society to accompany the official political institutions of liberal democracy.     

Combatting corruption in Kazakhstan: A role for ethics commissioners?

Central Asian countries have, since gaining independence in 1991, suffered from endemic corruption as a legacy of their Soviet roots. There are multiple ways of tackling corruption ranging from preventative to control measures. One tool in this battery of measures is the use of codes of ethics enforced through ethics commissioners. Kazakhstan is attempting to take a lead role in driving public sector reforms in the Central Asian region but has achieved limited success in addressing the seemingly intractable problem of corruption. This paper offers a formative assessment of the impact of ethics commissioners on the problem. We find limited political commitment for the initiative, institutional weaknesses, and the absence of a problem solving approach by the Kazakhstani government.     

Rejecting representation? Party systems and popular support for referendums in Europe

Under what conditions do citizens favor deciding political issues by popular vote? Models of support for popular vote processes usually consider the influence of individual attitudes such as political trust and interest in politics. But much less is known about the effect of institutional variables on support for popular vote processes. This article builds on research showing that disaffection with elected officials shapes support for referendums by considering the influence of the party system. First, an analysis of multilevel data from twenty-four European democracies indicates that individuals are more supportive of referendums in countries with fewer effective political parties. Second, a mediation analysis provides evidence that the number of parties influences referendum support through individual-level political trust and external efficacy. Where there are fewer viable parties, feelings that elected officials are unresponsive tend to increase popular support for referendums. These findings suggest a trade-off between available representation by political parties and support for direct influence over public policy.     

Theoretically,yes, but also empirically? How the corruption-turnout link is marginally explained by civic duty to vote

Corruption is generally associated with low electoral participation. A recurrent explanation of the negative correlation between corruption and electoral turnout involves the rational calculus of the costs and benefits of voting. More specifically, in a context of high corruption, citizens do not vote because they think that doing so will hardly affect policy decisions. A number of influential studies has argued that corruption affects citizens' electoral engagement in a different and more fundamental way as well: It erodes their sense of civic duty to vote in elections. Yet, a relation between corruption and civic duty and a mediation effect of the attitude remains empirically untested. This article examines empirically whether perceived corruption and sense of civic duty are correlated, as well as whether civic duty mediates the relation between perceived corruption and turnout. It does so with the pooled Making Electoral Democracy Work data, as these data contain measures on individuals’ sense of civic duty to vote in four election levels, namely, national, regional, European, and municipal elections, as well as on their perception of corruption in each of these government levels, and on their participation in these four election levels as well. I find a weak relation between perceived corruption and civic duty, and a low mediation effect of the attitude (compared with rational factors), irrespective of the election level.     

‘You Can't Always Get What You Want’: The effects of winning and losing in a referendum on citizens' referendum support

In Western democracies, many citizens support the use of referendums. However, as referendums create satisfying outcomes for citizens with majority views, they could generate ambivalent feelings among voters for the minority option. Little is known about the effects of winning or losing a referendum for citizens' referendum support. This article analyses multiple-wave survey data from five referendums in Bavaria (Germany), Finland and the Netherlands. The findings show that losers' referendum support decreases in nearly all cases, but there is very limited evidence for an increase of winners' referendum support. Nevertheless, the results clearly indicate a winner-loser gap, suggesting that referendums have relatively more positive effects for winners' than for losers' referendum support. As such, this article extends previous findings of the non-stability of referendum support. As the legitimacy of democratic institutions depends upon losers' consent, these findings have important implications for the democratic potential of referendums.     

Does the Feldstein–Horioka puzzle exist among South Asian countries? A regime‐switching approach

A plethora of literature has been undertaken to study the validity of the Feldstein–Horioka (FH) puzzle. However, divergent views continue to persist in the FH puzzle literature. This study explores the empirical validity of the FH puzzle in the case of South Asian countries using annual data from 1960 to 2017. Both panel data approach and Markov‐switching regression approach are used to empirically analyze the FH puzzle. The results of the cointegration test confirm the long‐run relationships between saving and investment in the selected South Asian countries. The results of Markov‐switching regression confirm that the saving‐retention coefficient has shifted from high to low values and also from low to high values. Thus, the FH puzzle exists for a particular time period and mostly depends on the regime shifts in the South Asian countries. The results of panel fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) methods also confirm that FH puzzle holds for the South Asian countries. Therefore, the study suggests that any saving promotion policies are desirable for enhancing investment among the South Asian regions.     

A ‘society … divisible into the blessed and the unblessed’: Michael Young and Meritocracy in Postwar Britain

‘Meritocracy’ continues to unfold as both core conceptual framework and political ideal of the language of social mobility. In recent decades, politicians of various hues have declared it a sine qua non of the so-called ‘classless society’. The longer trajectory of postwar discourses of equality reveal a more chequered conceptual past. Its origins in the forums of revisionist social democracy of the 1950s, and subsequently popularised in the writings of social democratic polymath, Michael Young, are much more circumspect. The article considers pivotal contributions and developments of this conceptual history and trajectory. It considers the origins and emergence of meritocracy as a dimension of discourses of equality in the 1950s, and the formative contribution of Michael Young, reaction and responses on the left to his 1958 seminal work, The Rise of the Meritocracy, and the subsequent ‘meritocratic turn’. In spite of its satirical origins and warnings of dire social consequences, meritocracy presently enjoys a confirmatory position as a concept of opportunity and social mobility, as an embedded ideal of social organisation and means of allocating differential rewards.     

Populists,Producers and the Politics of Rentiership

Populism studies finds itself in a crisis of originality. While some scholars have signalled over-usage, others have argued that by contextualising populism, we are able to specify our own ‘populist moment’ and remedy the term’s slipperiness. This article opts for the latter tactic through a comparison of two aspects of contemporary populism with late nineteenth century precedents. In the late nineteenth century, the American People’s Party pioneered a mode of mass politics anchored in agrarian and industrial labour which launched the term ‘populism’ in Western discourse. Contemporary populists show rhetorical and political overlap with this template, but also come up against two new constraints: (1) a stagnant capitalism increasingly centred on ‘rentiership’; and (2) a disorganised civil society. These factors render today’s populism resistant to analogy but also conceptually more specific, sharpening the contours of our populist moment.     

Fact Checking is About What we Change not Just Who we Reach

This article explores how the UK’s fact-checking organisation Full Fact has sought to tackle misinformation since its inception in 2010. Full Fact describes itself as a ‘second generation’ fact-checking organisation with dual aims of seeking to stop the spread of specific pieces of inaccurate information and using the evidence base from fact checking to secure systemic changes that help make misinformation rarer and less harmful. Ultimately, we are pursuing culture change. We are trying to create institutions in societies that can help anchor public debate to reality and to challenge the casual acceptance of deceptive and misleading behaviour.     

The makings of a man: social generational masculinities in Bangladesh

Abstract

The emergence of specific forms of masculinity is bounded by space and time. While attention has been given to the contexts within which forms of masculinity develop, rather less is known about men’s enactment of masculinity from a social generational perspective. To address this gap, insights from Mannheim’s work on social generations, and Connell’s notions of masculinity are drawn upon to advance understanding of social generational masculinities in modern-day Bangladesh. A multi-site cross-sectional study was conducted in three cities, using interviews to elicit narratives of masculinity from 34 men of three social generations: an older generation (aged 53–75 years and growing up in the 1950s and 1960s), a middle generation (aged 30–46 years and growing up in the 1980s), and a younger generation (aged 19–27 and growing up post-1995). Thematic analysis was used to identify key notions around what it meant to be a man. While all men subscribed to the view that ‘real’ men should be providers, they differed by social generation with respect to perspectives on work, religion and sexuality. Historical, economic and cultural changes across the generations have shaped these differences, highlighting the importance of a social generational perspective for understanding masculinities in Bangladesh.