Political Regime and Economic Actors: The Response of Firms to the End of Colonial Rule

1981 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miles Kahler

The relationship between economic system and political regime has recently reemerged as a central issue in social science. An examination of the political perceptions and actions of individual firms and of sectors during the uncertainties of decolonization permits a new approach to this question, using the concept of political exposure. The firm or sector characteristics that are associated with greater political exposure are assessed. Political preferences cannot be equated with either political action or outcomes, however. The links between capitalism and political regime require further refinement and qualification.

1994 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. P. Salt

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the relationship between constitutional ideas and political action during the 1630s by comparing the privately expressed ideas of Sir Simonds D'Ewes regarding ship money with his conduct regarding the levy, especially while he was sheriff of Suffolk in 1639–40. The first section investigates the constitutionalist views expressed in D'Ewes's ‘autobiography’, unpublished during his lifetime, and their relationship to D'Ewes's attitude to the political role of the levy. The second section studies D'Ewes's conduct as sheriff, in which he gave almost no expression to constitutionalist ideas, and suggests that he struck a middle course between neglect and zeal, while finding means to oppose the levy through his connections at court. The third section seeks to establish the reasons for the inconsistencies between D'Ewes's privately expressed ideas and his public conduct, which may have lain in a belief that, in the prevailing political situation, criticism of the levy had, in order to be effective, to be expressed in terms acceptable to potentially sympathetic courtiers; D'Ewes adapted the tone of his comments on ship money to his audience in order to achieve political ends, but had also to act in ways which would make that tone convincing. Participation in the collection of ship money was therefore not inconsistent with opposition to it.


1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. R. Turton

This article investigates the relationship between different phases of Somali political activity in Kenya. A clear contrast emerges between the focus, the aims and the methods adopted by the Somali pastoralists along the northern frontier and those adopted by the Isaq and Herti Somali traders in Nairobi and Isiolo. The attitude of the former towards the Colonial Government was essentially negative. Yet, while they tended to be resisterspar excellenceand fought against the Government on a large number of occasions between 1893 and 1916, this article shows that their resistance was much more limited than has generally been supposed and that they were never united on a clan basis in their resistance. In fact intra-clan rivalries seriously undermined the effectiveness of their activities Moreover, certain weaker Somali segments actively cooperated with the Government in order to obtain military and political support for their positions which were threatened by stronger groups.On the other hand, Isaq and Herti traders attempted to manipulate the political institution in order to obtain additional privileges within the system. Their agitation had positive goals, for they campaigned to gain Asiatic status. They put pressure on the central organs of Government and hired lawyers to plead their case. They wrote numerous petitions and memorials to governors of the colony, to Secretaries of State and even to two British kings. They formed well-organized political associations and had contacts in British Somaliland and England. Yet, by a curious irony, it seems that the Somali Exemption Ordinance of 1919, which represented the closest they came to achieving non-native status, was not passed as a result of their campaigns. In fact, their later agitation achieved nothing; it seems to have represented a futile effort to counter the gradual erosion of privileges obtained at an earlier date.One of the main characteristics of the Isaq and Herti agitation was its essentially sectarian character. In fighting to obtain Asiatic status they emphasized traits that isolated them from other Somali groups, and they even ended by denying that they were Somali. As such, there was a considerable disparity between their aims and those of the Somali Youth League which emerged in 1946 as the main vehicle of mass Somali nationalism, uniting the Somali pastoralists and traders in one group.


1979 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Hoskin

The relationship between ideas and political action represents a continuing, albeit frustrating, point of contention among political analysts. Referring to the literature on ideology, Robert Putnam reflects this sentiment by noting, “Few concepts in social analysis have inspired such a mass of commentary yet few have stimulated the production of so little cumulative knowledge about society and politics. The lack of cumulation is due, above all, to recurrent confusion of empirical with definitional issues and of both with normative concerns” (Putnam, 1971: 651). The proliferation of definitions, measurement techniques, and frameworks for analyzing the concept should not be surprising because “for the political scientist the term ideology points to a cluster concept, i.e., belongs to the concepts that bracket a variety of complex phenomena about which one tries to generalize” (Sartori, 1969: 398).


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (7) ◽  
pp. 62-72
Author(s):  
Natalja J. Bukareva ◽  

This article examines the unique solution to the problem of the relationship between the creative personality and the state in the dilogy of the émigré writer Sergei Maximov. The author believes that this question is axiological, as it is related to the moral choices of the artist.The relationship between the artist and the authorities is directly linked to the historical situation and the political regime. The novels show different characters through the dialogue between the authorities and the artist. The choice of heroes is largely due to the Stalinist era, which totally restricted the artist's freedom of personal expression. One variant of the characters' behaviour is toadapt to the regime, with the consequent loss of individuality, writing to social order, creating stereotyped socialist-realistic texts, participating in establishing the «Stalinist myth», but living comfortably in the material world and without state repression. Maksimov speaks about the degradation of the artistic level in socialist realistic works that follow an invariant model, which results in the unification of creative individuality. Another important issue to the novelist is the artist's ethical authority, the idea of the moral responsibility of the writer strengthening the position of the criminal regime through his works. Alternatively, one can choose to find freedom of expression, opposition to power, leading to the destruction of the artist by the system. What both choices have in common is that it is a relationship of initially unequal forces, so their dialogue is not constructive.


Pravovedenie ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-517
Author(s):  
Viktor P. Kirilenko ◽  
◽  
Georgij V. Alekseev ◽  

Identification of political regime’s legality and legitimacy by the German lawyer Carl Schmitt seems to be an attempt to solve the problem of unjust laws which is close to the idea of legitimate domination stated by Max Weber. Popularity of the legitimacy paradigm within the framework of political and legal discourse on its way towards the provision of rational government is often associated with an underestimation of democratic charisma’s role in legitimation when it is compared to the legal bureaucratic justification of government. Noting the fact that rationality is the most important and at the same time the least reasoned part of Max Weber’s social theory, we need to assess the potential of the bureaucracy in securing the ideals of the rule of law with an extreme caution. If Carl Schmitt’s position on the relationship between legality and legitimacy changed along with the development of political events of the 20th century, the ideas of Max Weber were modified during the translations of his works from German and gave to legitimacy deep textbook value. Decrease in chances of unjust law’s application requires certain legal culture that allows not only to question any formal prescription of the law and to test it for legitimacy, but also gives an opportunity to assess the legality of any democratic decision before it is implemented. Understanding the legitimacy of democracy depends largely on the ideology that dominates society, and the legal culture of the person that assesses the political regime. It is obvious in the context of political mistakes made during the first half of the twentieth century that the danger of underestimating the threats to the rule of law, originating both from illegitimate authorities and from unlawful political decisions. Historical experience underscores the need for a broad understanding of the rule of law state (Rechtsstaat) in a modern democracy, which simultaneously protects the formal legality and legitimacy of the political regime.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oleksii Lyulyov ◽  
Tetyana Pimonenko ◽  
Natalia Stoyanets ◽  
Nataliia Letunovska

The bullet point of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 is improving of countries food security through decreasing of hungry level and providing equal conditions for food to everyone. Besides, according to the findings the issues with hungry index could be solved through developing the agricultural sector corresponding of SDGs principals. The findings showed that the agricultural sector is start point of decreasing the hungry. The authors proved the type of the political regime had impact on the efficiency of achieving of SDGs and countries’ food security. The hypothesis of investigation was checking the relationship between political profile of the countries and level of sustainable development of the agricultural sector (ASI). The assessment of the relationship between average level of ASI and countries' democratic profile (democracy level of public relations) for 28 countries of Post-Soviet bloc proved the non-existence of differences between countries with authoritarian and transitional regimes opposed to other political regimes (imperfect and full democracy). The authors allocated three segments of countries: authoritarian and transitional regimes, imperfect democracy and full-fledged democracy. The findings proved the hypothesis that democracy level had a statistically significant impact on the average level of ASI. Using the bivariate and multivariate models the authors empirically proved that the democracy level increase by 1-point leads to the increase of the target index by 0.087 points for countries with authoritarian and transitional regimes (to which Ukraine belongs). Thus, the transition to a more democratic model of the political regime will partially offset the threats to food security.


Author(s):  
S. Erdem Aytaç

This chapter examines the relationship between religiosity and political attitudes in Turkey during the incumbency of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). There were several restrictions on the public role and visibility of Islam in Turkey when the AKP came to power in 2002, and the party gradually lifted these restrictions over time. Did this change in the state’s policies and approach toward religion affect the political attitudes of devout Muslims? Analyses of a series of nationally representative surveys spanning the period 2002–2018 highlight that the AKP governments’ positive approach to Islamic religiosity in public life led to a rapprochement of devout Muslims with the political regime. There is no evidence that this rapprochement has been accompanied by a more pluralistic understanding of democracy, however, as more religious individuals tend to hold more populist attitudes than less religious ones.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Andrea F. Bohlman

The introduction defines “political action” and “solidarity” theoretically, as frameworks for organizing and dispersing the relationship between music and protest. It also introduces the Polish opposition to state socialism, giving an overview of the political agents (activists, critics, citizens, priests, bureaucrats, Party members, journalists) who are the main protagonists of this history and who guide the musics and scenes upon which the book focuses. One cabaret anthem, Jan Pietrzak’s “So That Poland Will Be Poland,” serves as an orientation point. The song’s text, key performances in Warsaw, and use by the US Information Agency for propaganda give insight into national and international perspectives on the Solidarity movement and its historiography from the 1980s into the present.


2004 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Macrae

The past decade has seen profound changes in the relationship between humanitarian and political action. The political determinants of humanitarian crises are now acknowledged, so too is their chronicity, and the limits of relief aid as a form of intervention are thus more fully understood. In 1994, in the refugee camps of Goma, Zaire, there was widespread manipulation of aid resources by armed groups implicated in the genocide in Rwanda. This experience highlighted a wider concern that, rather than doing good, emergency aid can fuel violence. The apparent consensus that humanitarian assistance can somehow stand outside politics gave way to calls for tighter linkage between aid and political responses to crises.


2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Ronzoni

The continuing ramifications of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 have forced social scientists to raise fundamental questions about the relationship between capitalism, democracy and inequality. In particular, Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Wolfgang Streeck’s Buying Time focus on, respectively, the economic and the political contradictions of capitalistic societies. Piketty argues that capitalism naturally tends towards the exacerbation of rent-based wealth inequality, whereas Streeck suggests that capitalism and democracy are ultimately incompatible. A striking feature of these two contributions is that their authors are social democrats, not Marxists or radical anti-capitalist thinkers. In this review article, I illustrate how the combination of social democratic convictions and the acknowledgment that capitalism cannot be tamed generates interesting tensions between the diagnosis offered by the two monographs and the solutions that are proposed. I end the piece by raising two remarks on the implications that this tension might have for normative political theory. On the one hand, it is time for theory to do more work on political action and agency. On the other, liberal egalitarian theorists might have to acknowledge that they are in the same predicament as Piketty and Streeck: social democracy is their ideal, yet it is perhaps unattainable. If this is the case, liberal egalitarians might be committed to adopt a more confrontational attitude towards capitalism: they might have to become reluctant radicals.


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