Constitutional reform and new patterns of electoral violence: evidence from Kenya’s 2013 elections

In places prone to electoral violence, what effects can constitutional changes have on elites’ incentives to organise conflict? This article develops two hypotheses to address the above question. It proposes that in places where national reforms find sub-national resonance, national and local politicians’ incentives regarding the electoral utility of conflict will align. However, in places where national-level changes fail to be locally relevant, these incentives will deviate from one another. The research illustrates these logics through a controlled comparison of two Kenyan counties: one that experienced electoral violence and the other that maintained peace around the 2013 elections.     

Risks and Precautions of Homestead System Reform——the Practice of “the Three Rights Division” in Yiwu

Based on the case study of Yiwu as one of the 33 pilot projects cities of “Three Pieces of Land” in China, this article summarizes the risks and precautions of the reform of homestead system from the perspective of “the Three Rights Division of Homestead”. It also explores into the origin of “the Three Rights Division of Homestead” with the reform documents analysis and the discussion of the existing problems of the homestead system. Then we conduct a case study of the homestead reform in Yiwu, and finally put forward the precautions against the risks of the “Three Rights Division of Homestead”. The research methods used in this study are text analysis and case study. The following precautions are provided in the end of the article: 1) set up the implementation organization of homestead ownership; 2) standardize the conditions for obtaining qualifications for homesteads, and establish the paying system for the use of homesteads and achieve the right of qualification fairness through prices; 3) realize the right of qualification and the right of use, and clarify the power of the rights.     

告知承诺政策:一种政府给予民众的制度化信任资源

在国务院全面推行告知承诺制的政策背景之下,如何准确解读告知承诺政策的理论内涵已经成为一项十分重要的学术任务。究其根本,告知承诺政策乃是一种政府给予民众的制度化信任资源。这种制度化信任资源具备实践方式的行政性、价值导向的利他性以及灵活避险的决断性等基本特征。其实践路径应当包含重视信息甄别、跟进信息追踪、倡导德法并举、关切风险补偿等方面内容。从政府给予民众的制度化信任资源层面界定告知承诺政策,建构相关理论分析框架,有助于更深刻理解和剖析告知承诺政策的内涵本质,更好地明确和把握其具体实践策略,也为扩展和深化政策科学领域信任问题的相关研究视角提供了必要且极具针对性的现实依托。     

The Bifurcation of Politics: Two Englands

A dynamic of global economic development means that many countries are experiencing uneven development and their citizens are increasingly split between those who can access high‐skill jobs and those who cannot. As a result some citizens are living in cosmopolitan areas of growth and others in backwater areas of decline. There are emerging out of these processes two versions of England. In cosmopolitan areas we find an England that is global in outlook, liberal and more plural in its sense of identity. In provincial backwaters we find an England that is inward‐looking, relatively illiberal, negative about the EU and immigration, nostalgic and more English in its identity. This bifurcation of England is already having political effects, reflected in the outcome of the 2015 general election. It will further reconfigure politics over the next two decades, creating diverse political citizens and a complex array of challenges and dilemmas for governments, political parties, campaigners and political organisers.     

Korea and the global economic crisis

Abstract Korean policy-makers constructed the global economic crisis as a purely external threat to the domestic economy. This understanding of the crisis supported a selective retreat from neo-liberalism. More problematically, the construction of the crisis as an exogenous phenomenon allowed policy-makers to focus on maintaining short-term growth without seriously addressing the structural weaknesses of the economy that the crisis should have drawn attention to. Levels of household debt in Korea have risen since the crisis and are considerably higher than in the USA. Equally, the economy remains over reliant on exports as a source of growth.     

Reign-seeking and the Rise of the Unelected in Thailand

ABSTRACT

This article develops the concept of “reign-seeking” to capture the unprecedented collective action of the Thai professional and official elite prior to the 2014 military coup and the establishment of a military regime. It argues that this phenomenon reflects broad and deep political dynamics, for which the dominant scholarship on authoritarianism and Thai politics cannot adequately explain. The changing incentives of these supposedly non-partisan actors are interwoven with neo-liberal governance reform driven by a desire for depoliticisation and the minimisation of rent-seeking. This idea has been rationalised in Thailand since the promulgation of the 1997 Constitution resulting in the rise of technocratic and judicial bodies designed to discipline elected politicians and political parties. However, such institutional reconfigurations have consolidated the incentive for people considering themselves to be prospective candidates to “reign” in these organisations. As evident in the 2014 coup, these unconventional political actors – academics, doctors and civil society leaders – made collective efforts to topple the elected government in exchange for gaining selection into the wide range of unelected bodies. Governance reform in Thailand has hitherto reinforced the status quo, although the article further argues that reign-seekers should be seen as contingent, rather than consistent, authoritarians.     

From Cronyism to Oligarchy? Privatisation and Business Elites in Myanmar

Privatisation is often contentious yet in Myanmar it has not so much been its merits or drawbacks that have attracted attention as questions around implementation. In Myanmar, the implementation of privatisation has broad significance for the political economy. A first phase of privatisation was focused on small and medium-sized enterprises and did not have a significant economic impact. A second phase, commenced in 2008, consolidated the interests of a business elite with personal connections to the military regime. The impact of this second phase of privatisation was such that some elements of this elite strengthened to the extent that they no longer relied entirely on patronage, creating opportunities for diversification in their strategies of wealth creation and defence. For this reason, it is argued, the wealthiest strata of Myanmar’s business elite is now best conceived as not simply consisting of cronies but rather as a nascent form of oligarchy. In theoretical terms, this suggests that greater attention to the qualitative difference between cronyism and oligarchy is warranted, as is close study of processes – like privatisation and political reform – that enable or require a wider range of strategies of wealth defence.     

‘A second wife is not really a wife’: polygyny,gender relations and economic realities in Tajikistan

While polygyny in Tajikistan existed before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and has been a phenomenon of growing importance since Independence, it is still forbidden by law. To understand this renewal, I do not look at polygyny as a sign of religiousness, but as a form of patriarchal bargain in which women (who often experienced former matrimonial disjuncture) may have a greater power of decision in the spousal relations. I will explore women's points of view, from which polygyny is a strategy to accessing the symbolic and material resources they lack. I then explore the conditions to which becoming a second wife is possible: women's own resources, be they material, symbolic, familial, appear as of crucial importance in this accession to the status of being married anew.     

Portuguese Citizens’ Support for Democracy: 40 Years after the Carnation Revolution

Abstract

Forty years after the Carnation Revolution, the relatively young Portuguese democracy is experiencing dramatically low levels of public specific support for democracy. This article tests the leverage of demand-side and supply-side accounts to explain differentials in public satisfaction with democracy. Through ordinary least squares regression analyses that draw on the unique data of the ‘Barometer 40 Years of Democracy in Portugal (2014)’, this articles shows that age cohort, identification with extreme parties, evaluation of the country’s political past, and economic performance are strong correlates of citizens’ specific support for democracy.