Migrant protest in times of crisis: politics,ethics and the sacred from below

This paper focuses on the 300 Migrant Hunger Strikers event in Greece to explore the material conditions of possibility for migrant politics in times of crisis. It identifies three elements that played determinant roles in the articulation of the event: the politics of equality enacted by migrants, the ethics of hospitality and witnessing enacted by the Greek activists and host populations and the sacredness of the event. Critically engaging with the theories of Rancière, Derrida, Agamben and Durkheim, this paper demonstrates how these elements encountered and how their encounter helped migrants to achieve rights, albeit limited and temporary. Moving beyond the particularity of the event, this paper also highlights the event’s importance for migrant politics in times of austerity, and increased surveillance and racism against migrants. Despite its limited and temporary success, the event demonstrates how a politics of equality, ethical openness and respect for human life can form the basis of true cosmopolitan universality. The event also demonstrates how cosmopolitan universality is constructed from below by the migrants, who despite their undocumented status, engaged in an act of citizenship to demand equality.     

Constitutional courts as veto players: Lessons from the United States,France and Germany

The number of constitutional courts and supreme courts with constitutional review rights has strongly increased with the third wave of democratisation across the world as an important element of the new constitutionalism. These courts play an important role in day‐to‐day politics as they can nullify acts of parliament and thus prevent or reverse a change in the status quo. In macro‐concepts of comparative politics, their role is unclear. Either they are integrated as counter‐majoritarian institutional features of a political system or they are entirely ignored: some authors do not discuss their potential impact at all, while others dismiss them because they believe their preferences as veto players are entirely absorbed by other actors in the political system. However, we know little about the conditions and variables that determine them as being counter‐majoritarian or veto players. This article employs the concept of Tsebelis’ veto player theory to analyse the question. It focuses on the spatial configuration of veto players in the legislative process and then adds the court as an additional player to find out if it is absorbed in the pareto‐efficient set of the existing players or not. A court which is absorbed by other veto players should not in theory veto new legislation. It is argued in this article that courts are conditional veto players. Their veto is dependent on three variables: the ideological composition of the court; the pattern of government control; and the legislative procedures. To empirically support the analysis, data from the United States, France and Germany from 1974 to 2009 is used. This case selection increases variance with regard to system types and court types. The main finding is that courts are not always absorbed as veto players: during the period of analysis, absorption varies between 11 and 71 per cent in the three systems. Furthermore, the pattern of absorption is specific in each country due to government control, court majority and legislative procedure. Therefore, it can be concluded that they are conditional veto players. The findings have at least two implications. First, constitutional courts and supreme courts with judicial review rights should be systematically included in veto player analysis of political systems and not left aside. Any concept ignoring such courts may lead to invalid results, and any concept that counts such courts merely as an institutional feature may lead to distorted results that over‐ or under‐estimate their impact. Second, the findings also have implications for the study of judicial politics. The main bulk of literature in this area is concerned with auto‐limitation, the so‐called ‘self‐restraint’ of the government to avoid defeat at the court. This auto‐limitation, however, should only occur if a court is not absorbed. However, vetoes observed when the court is absorbed might be explained by strategic behaviour among judges engaging in selective defection.     

Bullying in Context: An Analysis of Psychosomatic Complaints Among Adolescents in Stockholm

Using multilevel modeling, this study examined how different types of bullying, involving both peers and teachers, relate to psychosomatic health complaints. Data were obtained via the Stockholm School Survey from 41,032 ninth- and eleventh-grade students in the years 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010. Results showed that students involved in bullying as either a bully, a victim, or both a bully and a victim displayed poorer psychosomatic health than those not involved in bullying. Victims of peer-bullying also reported significantly poorer health than perpetrators. Two class-aggregated measures of bullying remained positively associated with ninth-grade student health complaints even when their individual-level analogues were taken into account. Thus, both the proportion of victims of teacher-bullying and peer-bullying in the school class appeared to generate health problems that go beyond the directly exposed students. However, an interaction revealed that the latter association was confined to female students only.     

Turkey’s struggle with the PKK and civilian control over the Turkish Armed Forces

Although most scholars of Turkey’s civil-military relations argue that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) insurgency has led to a decrease in civilian control over the Turkish military from the 1980s onwards, this has not always been the case. This article argues that the presence or the degree of the PKK threat is not sufficient to explain the civil-military balance of power in Turkey throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. Instead, the article shows that in the face of the PKK threat, three major factors have influenced the behaviours of both civilian and military policy-makers in Turkey and shaped the level of civilian control. These factors are first, the Turkish political leaders’ control over their political parties and these parties’ control of a majority of seats in the parliament; second, how negatively or positively the military perceives the political leadership; and third, European Union pressures for democratisation.     

Turkey's Military Victory over the PKK and Its Failure to End the PKK Insurgency

This article explores the major reasons why Turkey could not end the PKK insurgency despite its military defeat in the late 1990s. It argues that Turkish governments have failed to sufficiently address two key aspects of their low-intensity conflict with the PKK, namely the fact that the PKK is not just a group of armed militants, but rather a complex insurgent organization and that it appeals to a large number of Kurds. Turkey's inability to definitively quell the PKK insurgency raises significant questions regarding the justification and effectiveness of the use of military force in dealing with insurgencies.     

Testing the Impact of Political Generations: The Class of 94 and Pro‐feminist Ideas in the Swedish Riksdag

How can one explain the transformation of elected assemblies like national parliaments? In this study it is argued that much can be gained from taking the assumption of political generations more seriously when trying to explain transformations of the political agenda – for example, of themes and topics brought up in the parliamentary process. More specifically, the article expands on previous research in three ways: first, it launches the concept of ‘parliamentary political generation’ where the core element is the combination of an influx of large numbers of newcomers into the elected assembly and an electoral context that is formative – that is, that exhibits characteristics that distinguish the election from other elections. Second, an empirical test is conducted where other factors such as party affiliation and social background characteristics are controlled for. Finally, the test on the impact of parliamentary political generations is conducted in a context – the Swedish Riksdag – where parliamentary party groups are strong. The data used is the Parliamentary Surveys 1985–2010 conducted at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The political generation in focus is the ‘Class of 94’. The results show that the Class of 94 distinguish themselves by being more feminist than their senior colleagues and other groups of newcomers in Swedish elections. This is the feminist generation in Swedish politics.     

Policy Congruence and Style of Representation: Party Voters and Political Parties

This article focuses on whether styles of representation influence policy congruence. Style of representation is defined at the party level as the proportion of representatives within parties who are partisans, delegates or trustees. Policy congruence refers to how close on the left–right scale the mean position of a party as placed by its candidates is compared to that of party voters. The article concludes that where there are higher proportions of trustees within parties, there is a greater degree of policy congruence, whereas a higher proportion of partisans results in less policy congruence. The proportion of delegates has no significant impact on congruence after taking account of other party and country measures. This indicates that party constraints on representatives are applied at the cost of congruence with voters, and that when representatives enjoy more flexibility to follow their own opinions, the party displays greater congruence with its own voters.     

Modernisation and Political Management Arrangements: The Case of Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council

In the United Kingdom the Labour government has placed considerable emphasis on the need to modernise public services. In the case of local government, Labour's belief in the need for modernisation has resulted in radical measures to change local authorities' political management arrangements designed, in part, to achieve greater efficiency, transparency and accountability. In its response to the Labour government's agenda, Redcar &; Cleveland Borough Council established interim political management arrangements in May 2000 prior to the establishment of permanent arrangements. The permanent arrangements were to be decided upon following public consultation and a review of the interim arrangements. This article reports the outcomes and, in doing so, provides evidence of the impact of Labour's measures to achieve change in local government.