scholarly journals Donald Trump's Gift to Feminism: The Resistance

Daedalus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 149 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-85
Author(s):  
Susan Chira

Donald Trump's surprise win in 2016 galvanized once-politically quiescent women and jolted those who had believed second-wave feminist victories were enduring. This “resistance” drew on two potent forces: the passion of the newly awakened, primarily grassroots participants; and the organizing experience of professionals and institutions determined to channel that passion into sustainable electoral and policy gains. The movement expanded beyond the political to encompass the social and cultural spheres and gave women of color a place in the spotlight. As women ran for national, state, and local office in record numbers, the #MeToo movement toppled men who once harassed with impunity. Record numbers of women won in the 2018 midterms, retaking the U.S. House of Representatives for the Democrats, and six women declared their candidacy for president in 2020. But it remains unclear whether these gains will be lasting and overcome remaining ambivalence about women and power.

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-106
Author(s):  
Khaled Elgindy

This essay looks at the hearing held by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in April 1922 on the subject of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, as well as the broader congressional debate over the Balfour Declaration at that crucial time. The landmark hearing, which took place against the backdrop of growing unrest in Palestine and just prior to the League of Nations' formal approval of Britain's Mandate over Palestine, offers a glimpse into the cultural and political mindset underpinning U.S. support for the Zionist project at the time as well as the ways in which the political discourse in the United States has, or has not, changed since then. Despite the overwhelming support for the Zionist project in Congress, which unanimously endorsed Balfour in September 1922, the hearing examined all aspects of the issue and included a remarkably diverse array of viewpoints, including both anti-Zionist Jewish and Palestinian Arab voices.


1968 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson W. Polsby

Most people who study politics are in general agreement, it seems to me, on at least two propositions. First, we agree that for a political system to be viable, for it to succeed in performing tasks of authoritative resource allocation, problem solving, conflict settlement, and so on, in behalf of a population of any substantial size, it must be institutionalized. That is to say, organizations must be created and sustained that are specialized to political activity.1 Otherwise, the political system is likely to be unstable, weak, and incapable of servicing the demands or protecting the interests of its constituent groups. Secondly, it is generally agreed that for a political system to be in some sense free and democratic, means must be found for institutionalizing representativeness with all the diversity that this implies, and for legitimizing yet at the same time containing political opposition within the system.2Our growing interest in both of these propositions, and in the problems to which they point, can begin to suggest the importance of studying one of the very few extant examples of a highly specialized political institution which over the long run has succeeded in representing a large number of diverse constituents, and in legitimizing, expressing, and containing political opposition within a complex political system—namely, the U.S. House of Representatives.The focus of my attention here will be first of all descriptive, drawing together disparate strands—some of which already exist in the literature3—in an attempt to show in what sense we may regard the House as an institutionalized organ of government. Not all the necessary work has been done on this rather difficult descriptive problem, as I shall indicate. Secondly, I shall offer a number of speculative observations about causes, consequences, and possible lessons to be draw from the institutionalization of the House.


1968 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson W. Polsby

Most people who study politics are in general agreement, it seems to me, on at least two propositions. First, we agree that for a political system to be viable, for it to succeed in performing tasks of authoritative resource allocation, problem solving, conflict settlement, and so on, in behalf of a population of any substantial size, it must be institutionalized. That is to say, organizations must be created and sustained that are specialized to political activity. Otherwise, the political system is likely to be unstable, weak, and incapable of servicing the demands or protecting the interests of its constituent groups. Secondly, it is generally agreed that for a political system to be in some sense free and democratic, means must be found for institutionalizing representativeness with all the diversity that this implies, and for legitimizing yet at the same time containing political opposition within the system.


2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley ◽  
Chien-san Feng

The student-led anti-media-monopoly movement in Taiwan has generated strong momentum since mid-2012. In early 2013, the National Communications Commission responded by drafting the “Prevention of Broadcasting and Television Monopoly and the Maintenance of Diversity Act”, which was approved by the Executive Yuan in April 2013 and is now waiting to be debated in the Legislative Yuan. In contemporary Taiwan, the social is often connected with the political. The existing democratic system, which is a legacy of the democratisation process in the twentieth century, no longer seems adequate to serve the citizens of the twenty-first century. This paper considers the anti–media-monopoly movement and the burgeoning civic movements in recent years as part of a “second wave” of democratisation for further political reform and democratic consolidation. When martial law was lifted in Taiwan in 1987, the “first wave” of media liberalisation ended with the commercialisation of industry. The “second wave” of media democratisation has picked up where the first wave left off and may finally establish, through increasingly more thoughtful media policies, a better and fairer media environment that is more suitable for democratic Taiwan.


Author(s):  
Michael D. Robinson

This chapter follows the political aftermath of John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859. Brown, an abolitionist, attempted to start a massive slave rebellion and although unsuccessful, the incursion added another layer of animosity to the sectional conflict and made it all the more difficult for white border southerners to adhere to a middle ground position between the North and the South. The possibility of future abolitionist attacks, which would undoubtedly take place on the soil of the Border South, pushed some white border southerners into the secessionist ranks and undercut the arguments of political moderates who espoused a proslavery Unionist outlook. This chapter also investigates the political divisions within the region by exploring the contest for Speaker of the House of Representatives which took place in the U.S. Congress just weeks after Brown’s raid.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin L. Young ◽  
Tim Marple ◽  
James Heilman

AbstractThe financial system is governed not just by formal rules but also by social relationships that pervade the elite strata of society. Understanding such dynamics entails understanding complex relational ties between actors, a task that can be facilitated through the use of network analysis. We argue that a latent feature of interest to scholars of the political economy of finance is one of social distance, which is a measurable concept. Using new data from the financial sector, we measure the social distance between a range of financial firms and one key regulator, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), over time to assess whether or not social distance is related to organizations’ advocacy behavior. We find a positive relationship between how close a given organization is to the SEC and how often it engages in advocacy. The result persists when we control for numerous factors related to organizational characteristics, firm size, and when we measure advocacy frequency in different ways.


Economies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franklin G. Mixon ◽  
Chandini Sankaran ◽  
Kamal P. Upadhyaya

This study extends the political science and political psychology literature on the political ideology of lawmakers by addressing the following question: How stable is a legislator’s political ideology over time? In doing so, we employ Nokken–Poole scores of legislators’ political ideology for members of the United States (U.S.) House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate who were elected prior to the 103rd Congress that began in early 1991 and who served consecutively through the 115th Congress, which ended in early 2019. Results from individual time-series estimations suggest that political ideology is unstable over time for a sizable portion of the members of both major political parties who serve in the U.S. Congress, while analysis of the pooled data suggests that, after accounting for inertia in political ideology and individual legislator effects, Republican legislators become more conservative over time. These results run somewhat counter to the finding in prior studies that the political ideologies of lawmakers and other political elites are stable over time.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
Mohammed Abed Hammadi ◽  
Magda Ali Saleh

The study discusses the influence of the electoral system on the political representation of the social compositions of the Iraqi people, and the nature of their political participation in the ongoing political process in Iraq, by means of structuring entities and parties on basis of subsidiary identities, aside from the national identity. The study is divided into two research objectives. The first research objective is examining the nature of the political representation of the social compositions after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, through exploring the religious and nationalistic diversities of the social compositions of the Iraqi society, in addition to discussing the political blocs and parties in the Iraqi system post 2003. The study realizes that these parties and political blocs depend on the sectarian and doctrinal dimension as well as the nationalistic ideology shedding its shadow on the entire political process. In turn, the political process employs quota systems as an approach towards its formation, which also brings about weak leadership and personnel loaded with personal gain against loyalty and citizenship. The second research objective is discussing the development of the electoral system and its effect on the representation of social compositions within the political process, through tracing three legislative elections taking place after 2003. The study reached several points of results, the most important of which is the influence of the electoral system on the political process and its effect on the nature of political representation of social compositions, since this system produces a majority out of a single composition at the expense of other social compositions in the Iraqi society. As a result, it gave rise to a house of representatives unable to fulfill its legislative and inspective functions, and that operates as a field for settling preset agendas and expressing authoritative judgments.


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