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| 1 |
ID:
061917
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| 2 |
ID:
078521
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| Publication |
2006.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The success of the Indian National Congress (INC)-led alliance in the 2004 general elections after years of terminal decline marks a critical juncture in the history of the party and Indian democracy. The 2004 elections were the outcome of a decade-long silent revolt of those who felt left out of the reform process. Efforts by its leadership to achieve organisational and political cohesion while emphasising ideological clarity served to persuade voters that the INC could represent a more inclusive governance approach. However, ever since the INC-led government began implementing social and economic policies designed to pursue the liberalising agenda, it has struggled to reconcile the contradiction between economic reforms that benefit the elite and upper-middle classes and its mass support among the poor who have been the losers in this process. This article examines the structure and pattern of transformation within the INC, both in its policy and strategy and in its organisation and leadership. It considers whether the INC's dual approach of seeking to appease the powerful middle-class constituency while appealing to the economic majority has a deeper strategic purpose of achieving centrism and a broad-based social coalition. It discusses whether this shift in direction signals the arrival of more inclusive development policies to bridge the growing socio-economic divide and, if so, whether this can be sustained in the long term.
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| 3 |
ID:
019213
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April 2001.
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| Description |
1-25
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| 4 |
ID:
078121
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| 5 |
ID:
078693
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2007.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article addresses the question of why Ethiopia's post-1991 decentralisation reform is not taking the desired direction of matching diverse needs with available resources and creating accountable, responsive and autonomous regional governments. Given regional governments' relatively diverse socio-economic positions, the intention of the reform to create autonomous regions with devolved administrative, fiscal and political power is appropriate. Nonetheless, the implementation of the elements of the reform - expenditure assignment, revenue assignment, intergovernmental fiscal transfer and sub-national borrowing - is flawed. Existing studies that question the effectiveness of Ethiopia's devolution focus on political or fiscal aspects, and fail to link the de facto centre-region political power relationship with intergovernmental fiscal relations. This article, based on detailed field research in three regional governments, argues that the flawed intergovernmental fiscal relations reform is best explained by the clientelistic relationship between central and regional political parties.
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| 6 |
ID:
147326
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The aim of this article is to show a comparative analysis of contraceptive use in areas of traditionally high fertility that have gone through profound changes. Data have been taken from the latest Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). Logistic regression models were adopted for four selected representative countries, namely Egypt, Mali, Namibia and Niger. There were two selection criteria: data should be recent, and selected countries should have high (Egypt 57.4%; Namibia 46.4%) or low (Mali 7.5%; Niger 10.0%) contraceptive use. The probability of using contraception when a woman has had one to four children is 2.4 times higher than when they have had no children. Contraception data are always gathered at a point of time, but cross-sectional data are not sufficient to understand all the mechanisms hidden behind contraceptive use. Different contraceptive behaviours need good estimation tools to develop specific family planning programmes.
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| 7 |
ID:
076727
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2007.
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After a paradigm shift in Russian economics around 1990, in the period 1992 - 2002 Russian economists increasingly returned to the path-dependent shared mental models that had prevailed earlier in their country. In particular, after the liberal reform concept seemed to have failed to solve the socio-economic problems of transition, the old debate between 'Westernisers' and Slavophiles was forcefully revived. The conflict between these camps has not yet been settled. This makes it difficult to predict the further development of Russia's economic and political order.
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| 8 |
ID:
076315
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| 9 |
ID:
176832
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| 10 |
ID:
075611
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| Publication |
2006.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper examines the changing nature of Hindu ritual performed in neighbourhood temples in the Malleswaram 'locality' of Bangalore city against a background of sweeping socio-economic change driven by globalisation. The investigation points to several 'accretions of change' in the embedded and experiential world of popular urban Hinduism. I argue that in the changing, competitive and multi-sectarian field of urban sacred landscapes in India, Hindu Brahmin priests act as 'religious entrepreneurs' and agents of change to create 'dynamic' adapted rituals that enable innovative approaches in order to expand their devotee base. The restructured and revitalised rituals lead to the invention of a 'new cultural grammar' that allows a reinterpretation and contextualisation of the language of traditional Hindu ritual to suit the needs of 'modern' devotees. The paper focuses on the nature, performance and experience of 'dynamic' ritual in an era of 'mass customisation', including three exemplar 'strategies of engagement' brought about by the Hindu priests in Bangalore: the incorporation of technology; the language of international imagery; and modern conceptions of hygiene.This paper is dedicated to my father Prof. M.N. Srinivas who was unstinting in his support of my study of the sacred landscapes and Hindu priests of Bangalore, and whose enjoyment of my fieldwork stories kept me going back for more.
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| 11 |
ID:
083782
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2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Recent cross-national studies have returned their attention to the structural determinants of political regimes, highlighting in particular the factor of "landholding inequality" as a decisive barrier to democratization. This article provides the first systematic test of such hypotheses at the microlevel and proposes a new account of authoritarianism's durability by examining the crucial case of pre-World War I Prussia. The article analyzes the results of a roll-call vote on a watershed piece of legislation that was defeated on the eve of World War I-legislation that would have democratized suffrage rules in Germany's largest state. When examined systematically, this historically and theoretically important vote reveals two surprising lessons: first, landholding inequality undercuts the prospects of democratization even holding income inequality constant. Second, the nature of elite competition and electoral considerations, shaped by the institutional configuration of nondemocratic regimes, can also thwart democratization, even when socioeconomic conditions may appear to make a society ripe for regime change.
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| 12 |
ID:
076482
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| 13 |
ID:
061852
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| 14 |
ID:
082866
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| 15 |
ID:
185367
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| Summary/Abstract |
Scholars debate the role of legal institutions in promoting human rights in Africa. Much of the discussion focuses on Anglophone countries and does not examine the gender of litigants. We propose a constitutionalism constrained perspective that argues that which and whose rights are adjudicated are shaped by the context of constitutional reform. Where reformists are primarily concerned with safeguarding civil and political rights, high courts may protect civil and political rights claims more often than socio-economic ones. Examining hundreds of human rights decisions issued by Benin’s Constitutional Court, we ask, which and whose rights does the court protect? We find the court is more likely to reject litigants’ claims on technical grounds when the issues involve socio-economic rights than when they concern civil or political rights. When a case is heard, moreover, the court finds violations of civil and political rights more often than socio-economic rights. Further, we find that an overwhelming percentage of litigants are men; women rarely appear as petitioners, although when women’s claims are heard, they are just as likely to succeed. Our findings about socio-economic rights and gender in Benin’s Constitutional Court have broader implications for understanding the limitations of constitutional reform.
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| 16 |
ID:
076039
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| 17 |
ID:
081350
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| Publication |
2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The political community is the social basis for modern democracies. A strong political community is particularly difficult to achieve when different social cleavages, such as ethnic identities, "divide" society into more or less stable and mutually exclusive groups. At the same time, inequality in the distribution of income and property can generate class-based cleavages. Using survey data from Bolivia and Guatemala, this paper focuses on the effect of ethnicity on the strength of citizens' attachment to their nations. Findings suggest that ethnicity has a relevant effect on the way people feel about the nation only when ethnic differences are consistent with socioeconomic cleavages, but socioeconomic differences have an effect that is independent from other factors
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| 18 |
ID:
078120
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| 19 |
ID:
163456
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper differs from previous studies in arguing that sectarianism has overwhelmingly been created consensually by/or as a result of the elites’ behavioral patterns. Religious or communal pluralism does not categorically lead to political sectarianism; The development of pluralism into political sectarianism can thus be adduced as dependent upon other factors—first and foremost the behavioural patterns of the elite. While the imperial legacy, theological controversies, and socio-economic gaps feed political sectarianism, in and of themselves they are insufficient to cause it. A survey of the history of Egypt and the other countries in the Fertile Crescent reveals that the development of political sectarianism or sectarian violence has been organically linked to elites' political behaviors and interests. sectarianism takes the form of the instrumental exploitation of a religious or communal identity or framework in order to enable political organization, the gaining of political legitimacy, the promotion of political change, or the preservation of the control held by interest groups. While in the eyes of many critics, sectarianism forms a striking example of the elites' intrinsic weakness, sectarianism is first and foremost a product of the elites’ quest for power.
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| 20 |
ID:
080982
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| Publication |
2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Recent large-N studies of civil war conclude that inequality does not increase the risk of violent conflict. This article argues that such conclusions may be premature because these studies, which usually test the conflict potential of `vertical inequality' (i.e. income inequality between individuals), tend to neglect the group aspect of inequality. Case studies suggest that what matters for conflict is a concept closely linked to both economic and ethnic polarization: `horizontal inequalities', or inequalities that coincide with identity-based cleavages. Horizontal inequalities may enhance both grievances and group cohesion among the relatively deprived and thus facilitate mobilization for conflict. This article provides a quantitative test of this argument, exploring whether various forms of polarization and horizontal inequalities affect the probability of civil conflict onset across 36 developing countries in the period 1986-2004. National household data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) are used to construct measures of ethnic, social and economic polarization, as well as vertical and horizontal inequalities along two dimensions: social and economic. The article also introduces a combined measure of ethnic/socio-economic polarization as an alternative to the horizontal inequality measure. Robust results from panel and cross-section analyses show that social polarization and horizontal social inequality are positively related to conflict outbreak. Variables for purely ethnic polarization, inter-individual inequalities and combined ethnic/socio-economic polarization are not significant.
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