To Care and Protect: Care Workers Confronting Sweden Democrats in their Workplace

Austerity policies across European countries have encountered diverse forms of public protest and resistance. In Sweden, we have seen the emergence of a number of networks and organizations which take care workers’ professional identity as their point of departure. These networks and organizations stress the impossibility of being professional care workers in slimmed-down, neoliberal organizations. Parallel to this, and sometimes embedded into one another, female-dominated professions (e.g. social workers, nurses, doctors, and teachers) have been engaged in opposing restrictive refugee policies. This article analyses how care workers in an emergency room in Malmö mobilized against a visit by Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the right-wing, xenophobic Sweden Democrats. The article explores how workers used a gendered discourse of care and professionalism to argue that their actions were consistent with both organizational culture and their professional ethics. The article shows how, by defending their professional role of providing quality care to all in need, workers challenge both austerity and racist policies, which both impose restrictions on who has the right to care. Theoretically, the article explores how the politicization of care creates spaces of resistance, to critique both austerity policies and exclusionary understandings of national belonging. The study stresses the importance of identifying emerging forms of collective resistance among care workers at the intersection of the struggles against austerity and right-wing xenophobic parties.     

Two-level games,issue politicization and the disarray of Taiwan’s cross-strait policy after the 2000 presidential election

This study aims to illuminate the interactive relationship between domestic politics and external policy in Taiwan’s mainland China policy after the 2000 presidential election. Following the logic of Putnam's two-level games, this paper demonstrates how the newly elected President Chen Shui-bian adopted an ambiguous and evasive approach as well as frequently shifted positions in his dealings with the mainland China issue due to the constraints of his pro-independence constituents and a vigilant, anti-independence Beijing. Employing Knopf's three-to-three games as well as Puchala’s issue politicization, it further shows how Taiwan's opposition parties—the KMT, the PFP, and the NP—as well as Chen's political rivals, took advantage of Chen’s inability to break the Strait impasse by initiating active engagement with Beijing in order to gain political advantages.     

"政治效果"的法理学分析

"政治效果"具有独立性价值,其源于法律与政治关系的传统法学理论,是法本质的内在要求,并服务于政治文明,脱胎于"社会效果",成为进行个案利益衡量并影响法官心证的新增因素."政治效果"论与法的价值理论在终极关怀上具有一致性.法的正义、秩序和效率价值与政治统治的内在逻辑是一致的,与政权建设的需求是吻合的.正是这种同质性,法的运行才完全没有必要也无法排斥政治因素,因而从某种程度上说,对"政治效果"的尊重也必然就是对法律信仰的坚持.     

The Nordic governments' responses to the Covid-19 pandemic: A comparative study of variation in governance arrangements and regulatory instruments

Government responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in the Nordic states—Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden—exhibit similarities and differences. This article investigates the extent to which crisis policymaking diverges from normal policymaking within the Nordic countries and whether variations between the countries are associated with the role of expertise and the level of politicization. Government responses are analyzed in terms of governance arrangements and regulatory instruments. Findings demonstrate some deviation from normal policymaking within and considerable variation between the Nordic countries, as Denmark, Finland, and to some extent Norway exhibit similar patterns with hierarchical command and control governance arrangements, while Iceland, in some instances, resembles the case of Sweden, which has made use of network-based governance. The article shows that the higher the influence of experts, the more likely it is that the governance arrangement will be network-based.     

政府执行力弱化的体制成因与对策

政府执行力生成和强弱的体制条件在于政治与行政的相对独立。在具体的执行过程中,政治行政化和行政政治化的体制状态通过影响政策方案的合法性、执行活动的有效性、执行评估的合理性、执行监控的有效性和执行终结的及时性而成为政府执行力的体制症结。实现政治与行政的相对独立以提升政府执行力,必须从规范党政关系入手。为此,应从改进和完善党的领导制度、加强公务员队伍建设、健全和完善行政组织法体系等方面寻找对策。     

The Obama Administration's Challenges after the “War on Science”: Reforming Staffing Practices and Protecting Scientific Integrity in the Executive Branch

In this article, we examine the difficult leadership position President Barack Obama inherited as he took office with respect to science and technology policy making and implementation, particularly following the Bush administration and years of the so‐called “war on science.” We contend that the Obama administration's challenge is not only to take substantive policy action, but also to reform certain administrative practices, particularly in light of the previous administration's practice of the politics of strategic vacancies, a managerial technique that rearranges an agency's ideological inclinations not through the usual forms of active politicization (i.e., by filling the appointee ranks with like‐minded ideologues) but instead by “starving” the agency of staff and co‐opting its agenda that way.     

Issue politicization and social class: How the electoral supply activates class divides in political preferences

Against premature claims about the declining political relevance of social class in post-industrial democracies, recent research indicates that class continues to be a relevant determinant of political preferences. In post-industrial societies ‘old’ class divides on economic issues coexist with ‘new’ class alignments on cultural topics. While there is cumulated evidence of social classes’ distinct placement on these issues, this paper argues that the strength of class divides depends on the extent to which these issues are politicized by political parties. Studying preferences on economic and cultural issues (attitudes towards redistribution, immigration, gay rights and European integration), this study shows that class divides in preferences are context dependent. The multilevel analyses drawing on data from the European Social Survey and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey for 27 European democracies demonstrate that classes’ differences in preferences are accentuated on issues strongly contested and emphasized by parties, and mitigated on issues where party conflict is weaker. Adding to recent literature on parties and class conflict, this study identifies another stage at which parties can affect the strength of class voting. The varying strength of class divides across contexts also has implications for parties’ ability to garner support beyond a single class. This becomes increasingly unlikely in contexts of high issue politicization.     

Equal Employment Opportunity in the Public Service: Theory and Practice in Bangladesh

Although EEO has considerable appeal and is often part of a nation's constitutional and legal framework the application of the principle appears to be far from satisfactory in most cases. Generally the gap between theory and practice of EEO is too wide—especially in developing countries where a range of factors influences the implementation of EEO. As a result, EEO has remained largely elusive in such contexts. This article seeks to contribute to the understanding of EEO in a developing country — Bangladesh—from theoretical and practical terms. Based on mainly secondary sources of information it shows that despite constitutional provisions and the presence of various rules and regulations to this effect, there are a variety of ways in which EEO principle is compromised and violated in the public service. It further shows that in recent times the administration of EEO has been frustrated and undermined further given the increasing trends of politicization of the public service and the high incidence of corruption and patronage in its management.     

A Big Bang for Japanese Mandarins? The Civil Service Reform of 2014

In 2014, the largest reform since the US postwar occupation was enacted in Japanese civil service. It was designed as the final step of the two-decade-long effort to restructure the “1955 System,” that is, the politico-administrative system developed under the Liberal Democratic Party’s hegemony. Its purpose was to remold Japan’s independent-minded bureaucrats into the elected officials’ obedient servants. Unfortunately, the reform is unlikely to deliver expected results. The failure’s major reason concerns the fact that Japanese bureaucracy’s unusually large role in policymaking paradoxically discourages elected officials to use their major reining tool against it, namely, appointive power.     

American Republican Religion? Disentangling the Causal Link Between Religion and Politics in the US

Recent research in American political behavior has examined at length the link between evangelical Protestants and the Republican Party. These works however do not consider the idiosyncratic nature of religiosity in the US, and insist on treating religion as an ‘unmoved mover’ with respect to political contexts. The question posed herein is: during the participation of religious communities in partisan politics, should we expect politics to eventually constrain religious behavior? Motivated by a political social identity approach, I use American National Election Study panel data and structural equation modeling techniques to explore the untested possibility that religious and political factors are linked through reciprocal causation. Conditional upon religious and temporal context, findings highlight the causal impact of ideology and partisanship in shaping religious behavior.