It has recently been argued that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is ‘political’. It has been neglected however, that firms also operate politically in a traditional sense, in seeking to secure ...favourable political conditions for their businesses. We argue that there are potential synergies between CSR and corporate political activity (CPA) that are often overlooked by firms and that recognition of these synergies will stimulate firms to align their CSR and CPA. We develop a conceptual model that specifies how various configurations of a firm's CSR and CPA – alignment, misalignment, and non‐alignment – affect the firm's reputation beyond the separate reputation effects of CSR and CPA. This model has important implications for understanding how and why firms should pay attention to their CPA and CSR configurations, and thereby contributes to the broader issue of why firms should make sure that they are consistent in terms of responding to stakeholder concerns.
Elections Under Authoritarianism Gandhi, Jennifer; Lust-Okar, Ellen
Annual review of political science,
01/2009, Letnik:
12, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Current scholarship on elections in authoritarian regimes has focused on exploring the relationship between elections and democratization, and it has generally used analytical frameworks and methods ...imported from the study of genuinely democratic elections to do so. These tendencies have kept scholars from asking a wide range of questions about the micro-level dynamics of authoritarian elections and the systematic differences among them. With these issues in mind, this review examines literature that investigates the purpose of elections in dictatorships; the electoral behavior of voters, candidates, and incumbents in these elections; and the link between elections and democratization. The review ends with a call to redirect the study of authoritarian elections toward uncovering and explaining the important differences among them.
Public opinion polarization is here conceived as a process of alignment along multiple lines of potential disagreement and measured as growing constraint in individuals' preferences. Using NES data ...from 1972 to 2004, the authors model trends in issue partisanship-the correlation of issue attitudes with party identification-and issue alignment-the correlation between pairs of issues-and find a substantive increase in issue partisanship, but little evidence of issue alignment. The findings suggest that opinion changes correspond more to a resorting of party labels among voters than to greater constraint on issue attitudes: since parties are more polarized, they are now better at sorting individuals along ideological lines. Levels of constraint vary across population subgroups: strong partisans and wealthier and politically sophisticated voters have grown more coherent in their beliefs. The authors discuss the consequences of partisan realignment and group sorting on the political process and potential deviations from the classic pluralistic account of American politics.
The urgent shift towards renewable energy sources in response to climate change highlights the necessity of thoroughly examining the obstacles that impede the progress of cleaner energy efforts. This ...study examines the socio-political barriers that hinder the expansion of the renewable energy industry in India, a nation facing the dual challenges of rapid economic growth and environmental preservation. Amidst increasing global apprehensions regarding the environment, this study employs a comprehensive analysis encompassing ANOVA, correlation, and regression to identify crucial aspects influencing the advancement of renewable energy in India. While previous studies have recognized financial limitations such as brief loan durations and significant capital expenses as substantial obstacles, our research explores the intricate interaction of several elements in greater detail. The key findings reveal substantial variations across the groups examined, providing insight into the differing degrees of awareness and concern surrounding renewable energy. Remarkably, limited connections arise between crucial factors such as awareness of renewable energy, care for the environment, and government energy policy. The regression analysis highlights the insufficiency of the variable "Development of renewable energy in India" in accurately predicting the dependent variable, thus indicating the presence of other relevant factors. India's present renewable energy capacity is only 18%, with hydro energy contributing 14%. Our research highlights the need for specific actions to address this issue. The study continues by recommending incorporating scholarly knowledge into policy development to encourage investor attraction and promote the widespread acceptance of cleaner and renewable energy solutions at both national and international levels. This research provides a detailed and insightful viewpoint to the ongoing discussion, highlighting the crucial influence of socio-political factors in determining the future direction of India's renewable energy sector.
In many respects, today's crisis resembles that of the 1930s, as described by Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation. Now, as then, a relentless push to extend and de-regulate markets is everywhere ...wreaking havoc -- destroying the livelihoods of billions of people; fraying families, weakening communities and rupturing solidarities; trashing habitats and despoiling nature across the globe. Now, as then, attempts to commodify nature, labour and money are destabilizing society and economy -- witness the destructive effects of unregulated trading in biotechnology, carbon offsets and, of course, in financial derivatives; the impacts on child care, schooling, and care of the elderly. Now, as then, the result is a crisis in multiple dimensions -- not only economic and financial, but also ecological and social. Given these structural similarities, it is no surprise that many analysts of the present crisis are now returning to Polanyi's magnum opus, nor that many speak of our time as a 'second great transformation', 'a great transformation redux'. Nevertheless, the current conjuncture diverges in a crucial respect from that of the 1930s: despite the structural similarities, the political response today is strikingly different. Adapted from the source document.
This article analyzes the European Union's reactions to breaches of liberal democratic practices in Hungary and Romania during 2012–13 in order to assess its capacity to lock in democracy in the ...Member States. The article finds that a combination of partisan politics and weak normative consensus thwarted the EU's ability to use the sanctioning mechanism of Article 7. The effectiveness of alternative instruments that EU institutions used – social pressure, infringement procedures and issue linkage – varied across issues and countries. In Hungary, changes to illiberal practices generally remained limited, but differences in the EU's material leverage explain cross‐issue variation. The EU's relative success in Romania suggests that it is not necessarily powerless against democratic backsliding. It might require a demanding constellation of favourable conditions for both social and material pressure, but there are grounds for a more optimistic interpretation that material leverage might be unnecessary if the conditions for social pressure are favourable.
Transparency has been hailed as the key to better governance, yet political actors have many reasons to resist transparency. This article studies one prominent transparency policy, Freedom of ...Information (FOI) laws, which have been passed by over 80 countries. By institutionalizing transparency, FOI laws increase the costs for political actors to use public office—and public information—for private gain. Why have so many states passed FOI laws despite this? I argue that, in competitive political environments, FOI laws can create benefits for political actors as well as costs. Uncertainty over future control creates incentives for incumbents to pass FOI laws in order to ensure their own future access to government information and to credibly commit to future transparency. Event-history-model results show that FOI law passage is more likely when opposition parties pose more credible challenges to incumbents and when recent turnover in executive office has been frequent.
Latin America at a crossroads Escobar, Arturo
Cultural studies (London, England),
01/2010, Letnik:
24, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This paper examines the socio-economic, political, and cultural transformations that have been taking place in South America during the past ten years, particularly in Ecuador, Venezuela, and ...Bolivia. Whereas at the level of the states the transformations do not seem to venture beyond alternative forms of modernization, the discourses and strategies of some social movements suggest radical possibilities towards post-liberal, post-developmentalist, and post-capitalist social forms. To entertain such a possibility requires that the transformations in question be seen in terms of a double conjuncture: the crisis of the neoliberal project of the past three decades; and the crisis of the project of bringing about modernity to the continent since the Conquest. At stake in many cultural-political mobilizations in Latin America, it is further argued, is the political activation of relational ontologies, such as those of indigenous peoples and Afro-descendents, which differ from the dualist ontologies of liberal modernity. Al maestro Orlando Fals Borda, luchador incansable, In Memoriam, por su honestidadintelectual y su compromiso politico con America Latina, con la vida y con el mundo. Reprinted by permission of Routledge, Taylor and Francis Ltd.
In this article, I argue that the Black experience in the United States settler colony is one primarily based in a systematic erasure of indigeneity from the enslaved African. Understanding the Black ...condition as a manifestation of White America's historical response to indigeneity, I consider the marginalized perspectives of Black decolonization work that has pushed and continues to push back against the centuries-long history of settler colonialism in the region known as North America. Placing Black and Indigenous decolonizing histories and practices in conversation with each other is part of what I call Black-Indigenism and is inspired by the work of Sylvia Wynter. Wynter and others recognize Blackness as an integral factor in the argument for Indigenism that informs and furthers the aims of Indigenist and Indigenous decolonization educative work and movements.
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