Linking democratic anchorage and regulatory authority: The case of internet regulators

Scholars and practitioners have repeatedly questioned the democraticness and the authority of transnational multi‐stakeholder organizations, especially those that regulate the internet. To contribute to this discussion, we studied the “democratic anchorages” and the regulatory authority of 23 internet regulators. In particular, we conducted a fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis assessing whether and which anchorages correspond to necessary and/or sufficient conditions for exerting regulatory authority. Our results show that strong anchorage in democratic procedures is specifically relevant for this outcome. Further, we find that weak anchorage in democratically elected politicians leads to high regulatory authority, confirming the significance of non‐state actors in this policy field. More generally, our findings support but also qualify expectations about the compatibility and mutual reinforcement of democratic quality and regulatory authority at the transnational level.     

牢记“四点希望”开创高校工会工作新局面——学习贯彻胡锦涛总书记在北京大学建校110周年座谈会上的讲话精神

胡锦涛总书记在北京大学建校110周年座谈会上的讲话中强调,教师乃至全体教职工在高校的高素质人才队伍建设中具有举足轻重的作用.高校工会组织要努力做好服务教职工的各项工作,就要紧扣总书记提出的"四点希望"的内涵实质,切实发挥高校工会的组织教职工、引导教职工、服务教职工、维护教职工的作用,努力开创工会工作的新局面.     

Youth organizations,citizenship, and guidelines for tourism in the wake of mass tourism in Finland

This paper will study tourism as a site of citizenship formation with a particular focus on the arrangements and lived practices of citizenship in the Finnish Youth Organization and in a sub-section of Northern Ostrobothnian Travel Club between 1965 and 1985. From the perspective of the model of citizenship in Finland, modern mass tourism was not unproblematic and it was uniquely incorporated in the program and activities of the Finnish Youth Organization, underlining the wider social and civic utility of tourism. In this paper, the examination of archive materials from this particular historical period will provide a nuanced understanding of the mutual formation of citizenship and tourism at multiple geographical scales and insight into how the model of citizenship has been of great importance for mobile people in many ways.     

The rise of the far right in Greece and opposition to ‘othering’, hate speech,and crime by civil and civic organizations

This article focuses on forms of opposition to ‘othering’ and far-right politics in present-day Greece. This opposition takes a variety of forms, comes from a range of actors, and is motivated by a number of concerns with differing assessments of what should be done. More specifically, the article focuses on the far right in Greece and discrimination, hate speech, and hate crime against the ‘other’ from the perspectives of those who are active in mobilizing against racism and counteracting the country’s populist and neo-nationalist turn. Concentrating on the forces opposing discrimination, the analysis describes present-day social movements and actions from grassroots to governmental level, their strategies and politics, their diversity of thought and action, and their contribution in providing the resources for social change, and the production of new meaning in the context of anti-racism in Greece. Trying to provide answers as to how social movements and activists produce meaning, we argue that activists develop less intentional, inadvertent meanings which emerge in the course of the not-always conscious schemas of their struggle. This calls for a more dynamic explanation of the relationship between practice and meaning-making in social movement contexts.     

Interorganizational Collaborations for Humanitarian Aid: An Analysis of Partnership,Community, and Single Organization Outcomes

Abstract

This article explores collaborative activities across organizational and sectoral boundaries. Interorganizational collaborations are an increasingly common setup to address societal needs; however, current research lacks insights into such collaborations and their outcomes. This study contributes to the existing literature by assessing empirically perceptions of interorganizational collaboration outcomes, considering different dimensions that should be measured when planning and performing tasks of social interest. The article is set in the context of disaster relief, where actors from different humanitarian relief organizations within the public and nonprofit sector engage in collaborative activities. I describe how interorganizational collaborations create outcomes for (1) the partnership structure that is established, (2) single organizational members involved in the collaborative activity, and (3) the community targeted by the interorganizational operation.     

Barriers to women’s access to decision-making positions in sport organizations: the case of establishing a girls’ volleyball academy in Israel

The aim of this paper is to highlight the nature of the barriers facing women in terms of their participation in decision-making in Israeli sport, and to identify and evaluate some of the strategies and tactics adopted to overcome these barriers. This is done by making reference to a particular case study, the case of the process of establishing a major policy initiative in Israeli sport – the founding of the national Volleyball Academy for Young Talented Girls. The case is analyzed in order to identify how and why the goal of establishing the Academy was successful, and to consider what may be learned in terms of the implications for the tactics and strategies used that might be adopted by other women in similar circumstances.     

State–peasant movement relations and the politics of food sovereignty in Mexico and Ecuador

This contribution argues that the articulation between the state and peasant organizations’ internal structures – the class characteristics of their mass bases, their leaderships and the modes of interaction between the two – is critical for determining the nature of contemporary struggles guided by the discourse of food sovereignty. It will show that that counter-hegemonic demands are not synonymous with counter-hegemonic practice; rather than struggling to replace the neoliberal food regime, many peasant organizations employ the food sovereignty discourse as a political tool in their negotiations with the state in order to access resources from within the prevailing neoliberal model, not to transform it.     

Seal the Deal: Bargaining Positions,Institutional Design,and the Duration of Preferential Trade Negotiations

Multilateral negotiations at the World Trade Organization have stalled. This has contributed to a steep rise in preferential trade agreements (PTAs). At the same time, negotiations for PTAs have not always proven quick and painless: While some treaties are sealed within a few months or days only, other agreements are preceded by protracted bargaining processes in trade and trade-related issue areas. In this article, we provide a theoretical explanation for this empirical variation. More specifically, we argue that PTA negotiations take longer the greater the distance between the prospective partners’ initial bargaining positions. Moreover, we contend that negotiation processes become more protracted the higher the relative ambition of the prospective PTA. Due to the limited links to the domestic political arena in autocracies, we expect this latter effect to play out for groups of democratic bargaining partners only. We test these two hypotheses for 198 preferential trade negotiations using novel measures for bargaining templates and the ambition of PTA clauses. In our two-stage survival models, we find support for our argument. In line with qualitative evidence from recent preferential trade initiatives, our models indicate that services, investment and intellectual property rights are particularly sticky agenda items for democratic leaders at the international bargaining table.     

Silenced narratives of women’s participation in labour and political struggle in Spain, 1960–1975

ABSTRACT

This article studies women’s participation in the struggle against the dictatorship in Spain (from 1960 to 1975). Drawing on life stories of women activists from el Marco de Jerez, it examines their repertoires of actions, their frames, and the lack of recognition from both academic and political spheres. A Gramscian approach and the perspective of hegemonic masculinity contribute to explain how women organized, how represented their collective action, and why their memories have been silenced. The theoretical approach has helped to identify relations of hegemony within feminist studies and political movement.     

Rural unions and the struggle for land in Brazil

Studies of Brazil's agricultural labor movement have generally neglected its relationship to the struggle for land, but this is neither fair nor accurate. Analyzing the rural labor movement's historical contributions to the land struggle in Brazil, this contribution has been organized into three main periods, emphasizing social relations, institutional activism and policy changes. It argues that despite the peculiarities of different historical contexts, rural labor consistently provoked protest against policies that privileged large landholders, whose concentration of power over land and labor resources continually worsened Brazil's ranking as one of the most unequal of nations. For more than half a century, the most constant opponent of this situation among the peasantry has been the National Confederation of Workers in Agriculture (CONTAG), a corporatist organization of rural labor unions founded in 1963.