The politics of HIV/AIDS in South Africa: government action and public response

A decade ago it seemed likely that African governments would be destabilised by the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This article tests some of the presumptions in such forecasting with an examination of the South African case. It begins with an assessment of the effects on the public health system of the South African government’s efforts to cope with the illness. Efforts to implement universal treatment of people who are HIV-positive appear to have strengthened government, while the costs have been affordable. The efforts have extended the embrace of the public health system and prompted the engagement of civil society in policy formation and implementation. Survey evidence suggests that the government has gained public approval and that its health service delivery has become more socially accountable. Civil protest to engender political reforms in the treatment of AIDS patients has enhanced the role of constitutional checks on executive authority.     

Securitization,history, and identity: some conceptual clarifications and examples from politics of Finnish war history

This article shows how we can use the securitization framework to study extreme history politics. Securitization refers to a speech act or discursive process in which an actor makes a claim that some referent object, deemed worthy of survival, is existentially threatened. If successful, securitization justifies the use of extraordinary measures to counter the threat. After introducing the concept of securitization in detail, the article presents three ways in which history and securitization can be connected: history can serve as a facilitating condition of securitization; history can be explicitly used to strengthen a securitizing move; or history, or a particular interpretation of it, can be the referent object of securitization. The second half of the article is devoted to a discussion on the role of history in the securitization of national identities. Historical myths are the standard building blocks of national identities; challenging these myths can be presented as threats to the survival of the nation. The article also discusses potential forms of resistance against securitization of history/national identities. Illustrative examples from the political use of WWII history in Finland will be used to show the practical consequences of various conceptual choices.     

Post-Arab Spring: changes and challenges

This paper advances the proposition that post-Arab Spring politics are a product of globalisation’s economic and social liberalisation. The global market and privatisation have fundamentally deconstructed centralised autocratic rule over state and society, while facilitating corruption and selective development, culminating in public outrage. The political order of the Middle East and North Africa since the Arab Spring synthesises globalisation’s dialectic duality, in which economic integration has contributed to the demise of national authoritarianism, inciting communalism and political fragmentation. This paper analyses emerging political trends and challenges based on a comparative analysis of Egypt and Tunisia.     

立法机关为什么能行使司法职能

立法机关司法职能的正当性来源于政治权力运行的逻辑必然和实现对它权的制约需要,分权并不排斥各政治部门之间为了合法的目的而进行最低限度的权力交叉;同时,发挥代议机构的政治协调功能以及司法权的社会分享也为之提供了价值支撑和理论根基。     

Mobilizing from the Margins: Domestic Citizen Politics and Yasukuni Shrine

Prime Minister Koizumi’s six consecutive annual visits to Yasukuni shrine played a key role in initiating a new phase of domestic citizen political mobilization not seen since the early 1970s. This paper is based on field research during the Koizumi years (2001–2006) centering on domestic groups that conduct activities in “protection” of or “opposition” to Yasukuni shrine. As a study of street-based politics, this paper seeks to uncover the processes, strategies, and outcomes of citizen responses to elite political action at Yasukuni Shrine as well as explore meaning of their actions within the context of Japan’s democratic polity.

People and places left behind: work,culture and politics in the rural United States

Using interview and survey data, we argue there are three types of places in the rural United States, and that their social and economic conditions help us understand emerging political trends, including the rural support for Donald Trump. More rural votes were cast for the Republican presidential candidate in 2016 than in other recent elections, yet shifts to Republican votes were greatest in places undergoing the most significant economic transitions. Work in rural communities has been a source of pride and cultural identity for people as well as places, but many feel the new economy is not working for them.     

Roads of change: political transition and state formation in Nepal’s agrarian districts

This paper explores the political field that has opened up in the wake of the recent civil war in Nepal. We focus on cultural-political developments in agrarian districts, where some of the most intriguing openings, and indeed the most pernicious closures, can be witnessed (as opposed to the national-state restructuring that commands more media and popular attention). Our research asks what spaces open up in the emerging political field at the district scale to entrench or transform dominant cultural codes and sedimented histories of socio-economic inequality. Preliminary research identifies specific sectors of local governance that have emerged as significant sites of struggle over the shape and meaning of ‘democracy’, namely forest management and infrastructure development. The primary contribution of the paper lies in specifying an analytical approach to the study of ‘post-conflict’ governance at the local scale via three conceptual terrains of inquiry – governance and planning, political subjectivity, and cultural politics. The ultimate objective is to develop a framework for assessing the conditions of possibility for a democratic restructuring of economy and society to accompany the official political institutions of liberal democracy.     

Emancipatory rural politics: confronting authoritarian populism

A new political moment is underway. Although there are significant differences in how this is constituted in different places, one manifestation of the new moment is the rise of distinct forms of authoritarian populism. In this opening paper of the JPS Forum series on ‘Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World’, we explore the relationship between these new forms of politics and rural areas around the world. We ask how rural transformations have contributed to deepening regressive national politics, and how rural areas shape and are shaped by these politics. We propose a global agenda for research, debate and action, which we call the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI, www.iss.nl/erpi). This centres on understanding the contemporary conjuncture, working to confront authoritarian populism through the analysis of and support for alternatives.     

论党内法规制度建设的理论基础问题

从“推进党的制度建设科学化”到“加快党内法规制度体系建设”,体现了我国政党治理法治化的发展趋势。法律的政治化与政治的法治化是近代以来世界民主法治建设的基本发展特点,党内法规制度建设应当以法治与政治的统一性原理建构其理论基础。要以政治性引领党内法规制度体系建设,确保其规范内容上体现先进性、规范目的上聚焦领导力、规范渊源上关照实践面。同时,更要以法治性补强以往党的制度建设的短板,运用法治思维和法治方式加快党内法规制度体系建设,增强其概念的可通用性、体系的可衔接性、执行的可协同性。     

Policy Adoption and Policy Intensity: Emergence of Climate Adaptation Planning in U.S. States

The United States is experiencing growing impacts of climate change but currently receives a limited policy response from its national leadership. Within this policy void, many state governments are stepping up and taking action on adaptation planning. Yet we know little about why some states adopt State Adaptation Plans (SAPs), while others do not. This article investigates factors that predict the emergence of SAPs, both in terms of policy adoption and policy intensity (goal ambitiousness). Applying the diffusion of innovation theory, I consider the relative influence of internal state characteristics, regional pressures, and test for conditional effects between government ideologies and severity of the problem. The results show interesting differences between predictors that influence policy adoption and ambitiousness. States are more motivated to adopt a policy when faced with greater climate vulnerability, have more liberal citizenry, and where governments have crossed policy hurdles by previously passing mitigation plans. The intensity of policies and goal setting, moreover, is more likely to be driven by interest group politics and diffuse through policy learning or sharing information among neighboring states in Environmental Protection Agency regions. These findings support an emerging scholarship that uses more complex dependent variables in policy analysis. These variables have the potential to differentiate symbolic from substantive policies and capture finer information about predictors of importance.