Engineering Elections: The Experiences of Women in Panchayati Raj in Karnataka, India

Engineering elections through gender quotas is a crucial component of strategies that seek to empower women through increased participation in the political system. In the south Indian state of Karnataka, this experiment has seen mixed results: it has made women more visible, decreased levels of corruption in Panchayati Raj institutions, and increased self-efficiency of women representatives. It is more difficult, however, to claim a substantive change in institutional priorities and state accountability. As important is the fact that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) often provide significant training and support in successful cases. Engineering elections thus highlights possibilities for change through increased participation by women.     

政治发展:社会和谐的动力之源

和谐社会的目标已经成为当前中国社会的共识,在此前提下,如何切实推进这一进程就成为最重要的议题。在我国,政治发展与和谐社会能否顺利构建之间有着极大的内在关联性。政治发展既是和谐社会构建的动力之源,又是和谐社会实现的基本前提条件。     

国家、政党、社会三者关系视域中的中国共产党执政方式探究

新中国成立以来,中国共产党对中国国家权力的执掌方式经历了众多变化,从国家、政党、社会三者关系的角度分析党的执政方式,可以把中国共产党执政方式的变迁划分为两个重要阶段:新中国成立到改革开放、改革开放以后。面对新的国内外形势,从国家、政党、社会三者"应然"与"实然"关系逻辑看,中国共产党仍须继续调整执政方式,在"科学执政、民主执政、依法执政"的轨道上不断探索。     

论执政党运行机制创新与党的执政能力提高

执政党在执政过程中,对外要处理好执政党与国家政权机构的关系,对内要处理好党内各级组织之间及与党员之间的关系,这些对内、对外运行机制,即执政党运行机制。执政党运行机制是执政能力的实现形式和实践依托,是执政能力在实践中的具体体现。执政党运行机制创新是提升党的执政能力的重要途径。     

The Pegida Movement and German Political Culture: Is Right‐Wing Populism Here to Stay?

This article outlines the rise and fall of the ‘Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West’ (Pegida), a right‐wing populist street movement that originated in the city of Dresden in October 2014 and peaked in January 2015. The Pegida movement combined fear of ‘Islamisation’ with general criticism of Germany's political class and the mainstream media. This ambivalent and largely undefined political profile proved its strength in mobilising a significant minority of right‐wing citizens in the local context of Dresden and the federal state of Saxony, but generally failed to spill over to other parts of Germany. The social profile of the Pegida movement, which included ‘ordinary citizens’ with centre‐right to far‐right attitudes, points to significant overlap between general disenchantment of the political centre ground in Germany with the political system, as outlined in recent sociological research, and the ability of a largely leaderless populism to mobilise in the streets.     

Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain their Policy Positions and How Citizens React

Legislators claim that how they explain their votes matters as much as or more than the roll calls themselves. However, few studies have systematically examined legislators’ explanations and citizen attitudes in response to these explanations. We theorize that legislators strategically tailor explanations to constituents in order to compensate for policy choices that are incongruent with constituent preferences, and to reinforce policy choices that are congruent. We conduct a within‐subjects field experiment using U.S. senators as subjects to test this hypothesis. We then conduct a between‐subjects survey experiment of ordinary people to see how they react to the explanatory strategies used by senators in the field experiment. We find that most senators tailor their explanations to their audiences, and that these tailored explanations are effective at currying support—especially among people who disagree with the legislators’ roll‐call positions.     

Queer(y)ing Hannah Arendt,or what’s Hannah Arendt got to do with intersectionality?

Abstract

This article takes an unlikely approach to thinking about intersectionality theory. Exploring key concepts from the writings of Hannah Arendt, such as plurality, conscious pariah, and statelessness, alongside her embodied interrogation of anti-Semitism and the Jewish Question, it suggests a way to transgress the ordinary boundaries of the concepts of queer, international, and feminist and, conversely, to unbound the ordinary ways Arendt’s theories have been interpreted as less relevant, if not antithetical to, feminist, intersectional, and queer theories and politics.     

How voters' perceptions of junior coalition partners depend on the prime minister's position

Recent studies document that voters infer parties' left‐right policy agreement based on governing coalition arrangements. This article extends this research to present theoretical and empirical evidence that European citizens update their perceptions of junior coalition partners' left‐right policies to reflect the policies of the prime minister's party, but that citizens do not reciprocally project junior coalition partners' policies onto the prime minister's party. These findings illuminate the simple rules that citizens employ to infer parties' policy positions, broaden understanding of how citizens perceive coalition governance and imply that ‘niche’ parties, whose electoral appeal depends upon maintaining a distinctive policy profile, assume electoral risks when they enter government.     

Territorial Polarization in Brazil's 2014 Presidential Elections

The 2014 presidential elections showed a growing political polarization based on regional differences in Brazil. Against this backdrop, President Dilma Rousseff was re-elected by the slimmest margin ever obtained by a Brazilian president. Rousseff's Workers’ Party (PT) has held the presidency for the past 12 years, gaining widespread support for reducing social inequality and maintaining macroeconomic stability in the country. However, as the latest presidential elections show, this support for the PT and its presidential candidate has eroded. This article argues that as a result of fiercer competition for votes, a more politically polarized discourse was used in the presidential campaign to mobilize voters around Brazil's regional divide between the richer south and the poorer north. In the analysis, the article attempts to elucidate possible causes of territorial patterns of voting in Brazil's 2014 presidential elections.