This article explores the main features and the implications of the colonial medical policies and legislation regarding Venereal diseases (VD) during the colonial period (the 1930s-40s) in Fiji. The ...British Parliament has intensively discussed the VD, enacted various regulations, introduced prevention campaigns to combat this deadly infectious disease, and rescued its military citizens. The current literature on the history of medicine in relation to the growth and implications of VD in Fiji needs to be studied more. Therefore, the analysis investigated how imperial VD, legislation in Fiji, and the loss of allied acts passed. The research represents the historical, ethnic, and cultural context of developing new markers of apparent predominance among Europeans, Indians, Natives, and others in the national population. This study objectively re-examines the un-researched quantitative and qualitative data available in the National Archives of Fiji and other repositories to document the growth and evolution of VD and it's cures in colonial Fiji.
Recent controversies in the literature on the electoral effects of cash transfer programs reveal the limitations of traditional models associating public policies to voting. Why would beneficiaries ...reward parties for programmatic policies when the government has no control over the distribution of the benefits? Are they guided by short-term retrospective voting in favor of the incumbent without forming durable links? By studying the Brazilian case, based on the Bolsa Escola-Program, formulated by the PSDB, and the Bolsa-Família Program, formulated by the PT, I test different theories and propose an alternative approach. My thesis is that the long-term electoral effect of programmatic policies is a consequence of credit-claiming efforts made by the competing parties, resulting in reciprocity from voters. My argument is built on the examination of parliamentary deliberations throughout the formulation of these programs and on the analysis of public opinion surveys conducted in 2005, a transitional moment when there were beneficiaries of both programs, and in 2018, the year of the first presidential election with the Bolsa-Família Program being implemented with the PT as an opposition party. The data show that party leaders came to the defense of these social programs to varying degrees and in different moments of their terms in office and that these different mobilization strategies reflected on voting behavior.
In 2021, the Conservative UK government announced a proposal to introduce mandatory voter identification (ID) in elections, raising concerns around how these measures might disenfranchise already ...marginalised groups. Using computational content analysis techniques, this study analyses all parliamentary debates to date on voter ID to understand how political elites frame these requirements. Despite voter ID being justified as necessary to tackle voter fraud when the new Elections Bill was first announced, this study instead finds both Conservative and Labour Members of Parliament agree voter fraud numbers are small. Conservatives nevertheless significantly frame voter ID as necessary to strengthen public confidence in the electoral system, which contrasts Electoral Commission's 2021 data instead finding 90% of the public consider voting to be safe from fraud at the polling station. Overall, this study sheds light to the 'framing contest' and polarisation present in parliamentary debates about voter ID, an increasingly contentious issue of the proposed Elections Bill.
This open access book focuses on the importance that EU politicization has gained in European democracies and the consequences for voting behaviour in six countries of the EU: Belgium, Germany, ...Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain. Most of the studies which research the way the EU is being legitimised focus on the European Parliament elections. In this book we argue that to understand how EU accountability works, it is necessary to focus instead on national elections and the national political environment. Through a detailed, multimethod analysis this book establishes rigorously the paths of European accountability at the national level, its propitious contexts in the media and parliamentary debates, and whether the paths are similar from Greece to Germany. The findings have implications for both national and European Union democracy, underlining the importance that national institutions have in enabling citizens to hold the EU accountable.
In recent decades, poverty has increasingly been marginalised in Australian policy discourse. One strategy used by social justice advocates to revitalise a poverty policy agenda has been the annual ...Anti‐Poverty Week campaign, which aims to stimulate community debate around policy innovations to relieve poverty. This paper analyses the Commonwealth parliamentary debates around Anti‐Poverty Week for 10 years from 2012 to 2021. We analyse and compare how politicians from three political parties – the Liberal and National Party Coalition, the Australian Labor Party and The Australian Greens – identified the key statistics for and groups in poverty, their sources of evidence, the consequences of poverty for those affected, the causes of poverty including whether or not disadvantage was linked to wider structural inequities, and the framing of poverty and potential policy solutions. Some conclusions are drawn from these findings about potential strategies for reinvigorating the poverty debate.
Populist language permeates political debate. While much has been said on the shape and colours of populism, less is known on its strategic use. This article offers a diachronic overview (1948-2020) ...of Italian deputies' strategic use of populist language, by applying a novel dictionary to a new dataset on Italian parliamentary debates. Our analysis shows that populism has no single political colour, as left- and right-wing parties use it to a similar extent. Differently, populist claim-making is used more by parties with demarcationist ideological positions, as it is likely to reinforce the persuasiveness of their in-group/out-group thinking. Finally, it is used less by ruling parties, as their governing status asks them to adopt a more inclusive style of communication.
Abstract
This paper examines how politicians employ metaphors to express starting points in British parliamentary debates. Because these metaphors are conceptual tools that may have presuppositions ...and entailments that are not in line with the ideas and values of all discussion parties, political opponents can resist them by advancing argumentative criticisms. This paper aims to explore how different types of metaphor can be used to express starting points, and how various types of responses can be instrumental to achieving diverging outcomes in the discussion stage at which starting points are commonly decided. To this end, we present a number of case studies of resistance to metaphorically expressed starting points found in British Public Bill Committee debates. Our analysis reveals that metaphors can be important strategies in parliamentary debates when starting points are established between parties, and that resisting them seems to be a pertinent skill.
The historical development of rules of debate in the UK House of Commons raises an important puzzle: why do members of parliament (MPs) impose limits on their own rights? Despite a growing interest ...in British Political Development and the institutional changes of nineteenth-century UK politics, the academic literature has remained largely silent on this topic. Three competing explanations have emerged in studies of the US Congress, focusing on efficiency, partisan forces and non-partisan (or: ideology-based) accounts. This article falls broadly into the third category, offering a consensus-oriented explanation of the historical development of parliamentary rules. Working from a new dataset on the reform of standing orders in the House of Commons over a 205-year period (1811–2015), as well as records of over six million speeches, the author argues that MPs commit more quickly to passing restrictive rules in the face of obstruction when legislator preferences are proximate within both the opposition and government, and when polarization between both sides of the aisle is low. The research represents, to the author's knowledge, the first systematic and directional test of a range of competing theories of UK parliamentary reform, shedding light on the process of parliamentary reform over a prolonged period of Commons history, and advancing several new measures of polarization in the UK House of Commons.
Abstract Research on issues of women has largely focused attention on, among others, power asymmetries and gender stereotypes, with less emphasis on positive linguistic mechanisms of women. Drawing ...on a critical discourse analytical approach and using Ghanaian parliamentary debates as data, this paper examines how female members of parliament (MPs) construct solidarity. The paper finds that, first, Ghanaian female MPs construct solidarity by positioning themselves as agents and the voice of (Ghanaian) women by using the inclusive- we and our/us . Second, the MPs engage in solidarity formation for (Ghanaian) women empowerment by championing the cause of women and calling for female empowerment. Third, the MPs demonstrate solidarity through congratulatory messages that highlight the achievements of (Ghanaian) women. Finally, the MPs resist discourses that discriminate against (Ghanaian) women. This paper highlights the need for marginalized voices to be centred in CDA research and contributes to the burgeoning scholarship on reparative critical practices.
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