The political participation of disabled people in Europe: Rights,accessibility and activism

This paper provides the first systematic cross-national assessment of disabled people's electoral and political participation, based on research in the 28 Member States of the European Union and in the context of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. A mixed methods approach included policy analysis, information requests to national experts and secondary analysis of European survey data. The evidence populated indicators which suggest four lines of action: (a) lifting legal and administrative barriers; (b) raising awareness; (c) making political participation more accessible; (c) expanding participation opportunities in public life. Civil society organizations as well as public institutions have an important role to play as change agents in this regard.     

New members as party modernisers: The case of the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland

Amid the literature on members of political parties, surprisingly little has been written on the potential or actual impacts that can be made upon party strategy or policies by a rapid influx of new members. New joiners may have different outlooks and desires than long-standing members. Although already sympathetic to the party they are joining, new arrivals, if signing up in large numbers, may hold sufficiently revisionist views to be able to re-orientate a political party in a direction not previously taken. Using data from the first-ever membership survey of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in Northern Ireland, the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly since 2003 and the fourth largest UK parliamentary party since 2005, this article analyses whether more recent joiners of the Party have brought greater pragmatism and moderation to an organisation previously dominated by hardline political, religious and ethnic attitudes. Modernisation from outsiders who become insiders can be a key aspect of party development. The DUP offers one of the stiffest tests of modernisation, given its history of opposition to moderation. This article shows that newer members have tempered beliefs in one of the most robustly ethno-religious parties in Europe.     

Discipline and power: knowledge of China in political science

Mainstream political science treats China as an anomaly that has not followed the “right” path of development, that is, a path that confirms the worldview, normative values, knowledge, and expectations of a Euromodern origin. This essay identifies inherent biases in the discipline and shows how the dominant disciplinary approach to Chinese politics has largely remained focused on validating questionable political-scientific tenets. A tentative proposal is offered for intellectual steps toward more openness and efficacy in disciplinary knowledge production and consumption. The argument is not about overcoming Eurocentrism by promoting Chinese exceptionalism. On the contrary, it is political, and challenges the power of current organizing principles of knowledge in search of a more accurate and cogent understanding of Chinese and global politics.     

Gender,money and professional identity: medical social work and the coming of the British National Health Service

The arrival of the British National Health Service (NHS) in 1948 heralded significant changes for all health workers, but the establishment of a ‘free’ health service was especially meaningful for the hospital almoners—or medical social workers, as they were starting to be known—who had previously been responsible for the assessment and collection of patient payments. It was on this basis they had gained a foothold in the hospital, capitalising on gendered assumptions of financial understanding and behaviour. Yet what might have caused an identity crisis was embraced. This was a dual strategy of both repositioning the profession in alignment with the planned NHS and of asserting an enhanced professional status by distancing themselves from the handling of payment. It was an episode in the history of this distinctly female profession that speaks to women’s historic relationship with money.     

The EU’s Emissions Trading System,Part 1: Taking Stock

This is part 1 of a paper that revisits the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) in an attempt to take stock of how the system has worked and evaluate it from the standpoint of radical political economy. The paper briefly discusses the basics of the scheme, including its design as a financial instrument and its performance during the first trading period (2005–2007). It then moves to elaborating on the workings of the scheme during phase 2 (2008–2012) and on the initiation of phase 3 (2013–2014). This analysis discusses the adjustments and the extensions of the scheme, compliance results and allowance trades and prices with a critical eye. The paper reveals the unsatisfactory results of the scheme (even in its own proclaimed aims), which include allowances surplus, allowance trades for pure financial purposes, low and volatile price of allowances, windfall profits, extensive use of Kyoto project-based credits, and several malfunctions and instances of fraud. These findings set the ground for part 2 of the paper which offers a critical assessment of ETS from the standpoint of radical political economy, putting emphasis on the needs and interests of the unprivileged working people.     

Distinguishing territorial structure from electoral adventurism: The distinct sources of static and dynamic nationalization

Estimates of static nationalization do not always reflect stark qualitative differences between parties. We use a research design oriented around a comparison of sharply different parties—the unstable Democratic Left in Ecuador and the stable Broad Front in Uruguay—to develop the distinctiveness of static and dynamic nationalization. Snapshot measures that only consider a single election suggest that both parties are poorly statically nationalized; but we show that the former case is highly statically nationalized, and that the observed territorial differences arise because it is poorly dynamically nationalized. We adopt the linear mixed modeling approach to reduce the bias in extant estimators. The approach is also informative about the sources of variance in a party's territorial support: relatively stable district attributes account for static nationalization, while features unique to the electoral cycle account for dynamic nationalization. Substantively, our study alters conclusions about parties operating in highly unstable electoral contexts.     

Operationalizing cultural citizenship: towards a concept of culture regime*

This paper contributes to the study of cultural citizenship by laying the foundations for a concept of culture regime. Depicting culture as a malleable concept that encompasses both particularistic and universalistic elements, the paper emphasizes the potential of the concept of culture regime to bridge those of citizenship, language and ethnicity regime. While presenting narrow conceptions of culture as ethnic identity as a defensible compromise in the context of comparative empirical research, the paper discusses how the study of culture regimes could integrate broader approaches to culture by incorporating other forms of cultural claims and identities that go beyond ethnic traits. In doing so, the paper aims to promote an inter-disciplinary dialogue on cultural citizenship, arguing that some of the differences in cross-disciplinary approaches to culture owe to methodological rather than ontological considerations.     

Self-attribution and identity of ethnic-German SpätAussiedler repatriates from the former USSR: an example of fast-track assimilation?

Repatriates – so-called SpätAussiedler – from republics of the former Soviet Union are one of the most important groups of immigrants in the Federal Republic of Germany. Granted German citizenship based on ethnicity, German policy supposed fast and smooth assimilation. Despite the fact that SpätAussiedler had advantages for structural and social integration into German society compared to immigrants of non-German descent and indications of rather smooth integration, the initial hopes for fast assimilation prove to be exaggerated. Instead, as revealed by a survey and interviews on the ethnic self-identification, cultural habits, and linguistic behavior of SpätAussiedler, a hybrid “Russian–German” identity has emerged amongst many repatriates.     

National identity in the contemporary Baltics: comparative quantitative analysis

This paper is about contemporary national identity attitudes in the three Baltic states as ethnic democracies. It presents the results of a quantitative comparative study using data from the International Social Survey Program, collected in 2013. The parameters of comparison include the perceived importance of various national identity criteria and the pride in a nation’s achievements in various spheres. The results show that Baltic national identity focuses not on ethnic homogeneity, but on commitment and loyalty, to reflect upon the current situation more than the historical past, and to have the potential for the integration of ethnic minority members.     

Identity,contact, and the reduction of mutual distrust: a survey of Chinese and Japanese youth

In the midst of rising tension between China and Japan, two powerful countries in Asia, the favorable attitudes of each country's citizens toward the other country have dropped to a historical low. The Taiwan issue, historical legacy, island disputes, and maritime resource competition are major obstacles in Sino-Japanese relations, but the most fundamental issue is a deep-seated mutual distrust and suspicion between the two countries, which result in rising threat perceptions. Beyond the structural and political elite-centered approaches, this study examines the evidence related to the three approaches (face-to-face contact, cross-cultural exposure, and social identity) to reduce mutual distrust and antipathy in the two countries. With a careful analysis of the survey data, this study sheds light on the conditions under which contact (a) results in improved attitudes toward outgroup, (b) has little or no effect on intergroup relations, and (c) yields more prejudice and hostility toward the outgroup. The findings of this study not only identify factors that could facilitate mutual understanding between Chinese and Japanese people and more favorable impressions of one another, but are also relevant to planning interventions to reduce prejudice and distrust among people from different races, religions, and countries.