In this book, Carol Mershon and Olga Shvetsova explore one of the central questions in democratic politics: how much autonomy do elected politicians have to shape and reshape the party system on ...their own, without the direct involvement of voters in elections? Mershon and Shvetsova's theory focuses on the choices of party membership made by legislators while serving in office. It identifies the inducements and impediments to legislators' changes of partisan affiliation, and integrates strategic and institutional approaches to the study of parties and party systems. With empirical analyses comparing nine countries that differ in electoral laws, territorial governance and executive-legislative relations, Mershon and Shvetsova find that strategic incumbents have the capacity to reconfigure the party system as established in elections. Representatives are motivated to bring about change by opportunities arising during the parliamentary term, and are deterred from doing so by the elemental democratic practice of elections.
Shows that the politics of democratic societies is moving towards a presidentialized working mode, even in the absence of formal institutional changes. These developments can be explained by a ...combination of long-term structural changes in modern politics and societies’ contingent factors that fluctuate over time. While these contingent, short-term factors relate to the personalities of office holders, the overall political agenda, and the majority situation in parliament, there are several structural factors that are relatively uniform across modern nations. First, the internationalization of modern politics (which is particularly pronounced within the European Union) has led to an ‘executive bias’ of the political process that has strengthened the role of political top elites vis-à-vis their parliamentary groups and/or their parties. Their predominance has been amplified further by the vastly expanded steering capacities of state machineries, which have severely reduced the scope of effective parliamentary control. At the same time, the declining stability of political alignments has increased the proportion of citizens whose voting decisions are not constrained by long-standing party loyalties. In conjunction with the mediatization of politics, this has increased the capacity of political leaders to bypass their party machines and to appeal directly to voters.As a result, three interrelated processes have led to a political process increasingly moulded by the inherent logic of presidentialism: increasing leadership power and autonomy within the political executive; increasing leadership power and autonomy within political parties; and increasingly leadership-centered electoral processes.The book presents evidence for this process of presidentialization for 14 modern democracies (including the USA and Canada). While there are substantial cross-national differences, the overall thesis holds: modern democracies are increasingly following a presidential logic of governance through which leadership is becoming more central and more powerful, but also increasingly dependent on successful immediate appeal to the mass public. Implications for democratic theory are considered.
The Engaged University Watson, David; Hollister, Robert; Stroud, Susan E. ...
2011, 20110715, 2011-07-15
eBook
The Engaged University is a comprehensive empirical account of the global civic engagement movement in higher education. In universities around the world, something extraordinary is underway. ...Mobilizing their human and intellectual resources, institutions of higher education are directly tackling community problems – combating poverty, improving public health, and restoring environmental quality. This book documents and analyzes this exciting trend through studies of civic engagement and social responsibility at twenty institutions worldwide.
This timely volume offers three special contributions to the literature on higher education policy and practice: a historical overview of the founding purposes of universities, which almost invariably included a context-specific element of social purpose, together with a survey of how these "founding" intentions have fared in different systems of higher education; a contemporary account of the policy and practice of universities – all over the world – seeking to re-engage with this social purpose; and an overview of generic issues which emerge for the "engaged university."
David Watson is Principal of Green Templeton College, Oxford.
Robert M. Hollister is Dean, and Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Professor of Citizenship and Public Service in the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University.
Susan E. Stroud is Executive Director, Innovations in Civic Participation.
Elizabeth Babcock is Talloires Network Coordinator, Innovations in Civic Participation.
Series Editors' Introduction
Preface
Talloires Declaration on the Civic Roles and Social Responsibilities of Higher Education
Introduction and Acknowledgements
I. University-Community Relationships: The long view
1. Historical and Geographical Perspectives
2. Types of Capital and Citizenship
3. Contemporary Drivers
II. The Engaged University
4. The project
5. The profiles
5.1 Australia and its Higher Education System
5.1.1 Two-way learning: Profile of Charles Darwin University
5.1.2 Sharing knowledge: Profile of the University of Melbourne
5.1.3 A University without Walls: Profile of the University of Western Sydney
5.2 India and its Higher Education System
5.2.1 An Enlightened Woman is a Source of Infinite Strength: Profile of Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey (SNDT) Women’s University, Mumbai
5.3 Israel and its Higher Education System
5.3.1 "Institution-wide commitment to social responsibility": Profile of the University of Haifa
5.4 The Occupied Palestinian Territories and their Higher Education System
5.4.1 "Education and Service for Political Change and Development" Profile of Al-Quds University
5.5 Malaysia and its Higher Education System
5.5.1 Community Partnerships to Address National Priorities: Profile of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
5.6 Mexico and its Higher Education System
5.6.1 Cultivating ethics and citizenship: Profile of Tecnológico de Monterrey
5.7 Pakistan and its Higher Education System
5.7.1 A Unique University with a Mandate for Social Development: Profile of Aga Khan University
5.8 Peru and its Higher Education System
5.8.1 A regional leader for human and economic development: Profile of the Universidad Señor de Sipán (USS)
5.9 The Philippines and its Higher Education System
5.9.1 Volunteer Service to the Poor: Profile of Notre Dame of Marbel University
5.10 South Africa and its Higher Education System
5.10.1 Community Partnerships for Development and the Appropriation of New Knowledge: Cape Peninsula University of Technology
5.11 Sudan and its Higher Education System
5.11.1 Empowering Women as Agents of Change through Education: Ahfad University for Women
5.12 Tanzania and its Higher Education System
5.12.1 Knowledge for Development: University of Dar es Salaam
5.13 Ukraine and its Higher Education System
5.13.1 Building Civil Society: Profile of Petro Mohyla Black Sea State University
5.14 The United Kingdom and its Higher Education System
5.14.1 Open access for social justice: Profile of the Open University
5.14.2 Reinventing liberal higher education: Profile of the University of Winchester
5.15 The United States of America and its Higher Education System
5.15.1 Knowledge to Serve the City: Profile of Portland State University
5.15.2 Social justice education and research and service: Profile of Georgetown University
5.16 Venezuela and its Higher Education System
5.16.1 From education for national development to community solidarity: Universidad Metropolitana en Caracas (UNIMET)
6. Findings: Common patterns and influences
III. An Engaged University Movement
7. Networks: A unifying force
8. The world upside-side down: university engagement from the South to the North
9. Implications for policy and practice
Appendix 1. Institutional questionnaire
Appendix 2. Field research questions
Acronyms
References
Notes on Contributors
Index
In the crowded and busy arena of obesity and fat studies, there is a lack of attention to the lived experiences of people, how and why they eat what they do, and how people in cross-cultural settings ...understand risk, health, and bodies. This volume addresses the lacuna by drawing on ethnographic methods and analytical emic explorations in order to consider the impact of cultural difference, embodiment, and local knowledge on understanding obesity. It is through this reconstruction of how obesity and fatness are studied and understood that a new discussion will be introduced and a new set of analytical explorations about obesity research and the effectiveness of obesity interventions will be established.
This book asks why some countries devote the lion's share of their social policy resources to the elderly, while others have a more balanced repertoire of social spending. Far from being the outcome ...of demands for welfare spending by powerful age-based groups in society, the 'age' of welfare is an unintended consequence of the way that social programs are set up. The way that politicians use welfare state spending to compete for votes, along either programmatic or particularistic lines, locks these early institutional choices into place. So while society is changing - aging, divorcing, moving in and out of the labor force over the life course in new ways - social policies do not evolve to catch up. The result, in occupational welfare states like Italy, the United States, and Japan, is social spending that favors the elderly and leaves working-aged adults and children largely to fend for themselves.
Across the world political liberalism is being fought for, consolidated and defended. That is the case for nations that have never enjoyed a liberal political society, for nations that have advanced ...towards and then retreated from political liberalism, for nations that have recently shifted from authoritarian to liberal political systems, and for mature democracies facing terrorism and domestic conflict.
One fifth of the population of the United States belongs to the immigrant or second generations. While the US is generally thought of as the immigrant society par excellence, it now has a number of ...rivals in Europe.The Next Generationbrings together studies from top immigration scholars to explore how the integration of immigrants affects the generations that come after. The original essays explore the early beginnings of the second generation in the United States and Western Europe, exploring the overall patterns of success of the second generation.
While there are many striking similarities in the situations of the children of labor immigrants coming from outside the highly developed worlds of Europe and North America, wherever one looks, subtle features of national and local contexts interact with characteristics of the immigrant groups themselves to create variations in second-generation trajectories. The contributors show that these issues are of the utmost importance for the future, for they will determine the degree to which contemporary immigration will produce either durable ethno-racial cleavages or mainstream integration.
Contributors: Dalia Abdel-Hady, Frank D. Bean, Susan K. Brown, Maurice Crul, Nancy A. Denton, Rosita Fibbi, Nancy Foner, Anthony F. Heath, Donald J. Hernandez, Tariqul Islam, Frank Kalter, Philip Kasinitz, Mark A. Leach, Mathias Lerch, Suzanne E. Macartney, Karen G Marotz, Noriko Matsumoto, Tariq Modood, Joel Perlmann, Karen Phalet, Jeffrey G. Reitz, Rubén G. Rumbaut, Roxanne Silberman, Philippe Wanner, Aviva Zeltzer-Zubida, andYe Zhang.
Negotiating Demandsis an original and thought-provoking study that not only advances our knowledge of police organization and decision-making strategies but also refines our understanding of how ...processes of social inclusion and exclusion occur in different liberal regimes and how they can be addressed.
Places of Pain and Shame Logan, William; Reeves, Keir
2009, 20081205, 2008-12-05, Letnik:
3
eBook
Places of Pain and Shame is a cross-cultural study of sites that represent painful and/or shameful episodes in a national or local community’s history, and the ways that government agencies, heritage ...professionals and the communities themselves seek to remember, commemorate and conserve these cases – or, conversely, choose to forget them.
Such episodes and locations include: massacre and genocide sites, places related to prisoners of war, civil and political prisons, and places of ‘benevolent’ internment such as leper colonies and lunatic asylums. These sites bring shame upon us now for the cruelty and futility of the events that occurred within them and the ideologies they represented. They are however increasingly being regarded as ‘heritage sites’, a far cry from the view of heritage that prevailed a generation ago when we were almost entirely concerned with protecting the great and beautiful creations of the past, reflections of the creative genius of humanity rather than the reverse – the destructive and cruel side of history.
Why has this shift occurred, and what implications does it have for professionals practicing in the heritage field? In what ways is this a ‘difficult’ heritage to deal with? This volume brings together academics and practitioners to explore these questions, covering not only some of the practical matters, but also the theoretical and conceptual issues, and uses case studies of historic places, museums and memorials from around the globe, including the United States, Northern Ireland, Poland, South Africa, China, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Timor and Australia.
1. Remembering Places of Pain and Shame 2. Let the Dead be Remembered: Interpretation of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial 3. The Hiroshima "Peace Memorial": Transforming Legacy, Memories and Landscapes 4. Auschwitz-Birkenau: The Challenges of Heritage Management Following the Cold War 5. "Dig a Hole and Bury the Past in It": Reconciliation and the Heritage of Genocide in Cambodia 6. The Myall Creek Memorial: History, Identity and Reconciliation 7. Cowra Japanese War Cemetry 8. A Cave in Taiwan: Comfort Women's Memories and the Local Identity 9. Postcolonial Shame: Heritage and the Forgotten Pain of Civilian Women Internees in Java 10. Difficult Memories: The Independence Struggle as Cultural Heritage in East Timor 11. Port Arthur, Norfolk Island, New Caledonia: Convict Prison Islands in the Antipodes 12. Hoa Lo Museum, Hanoi: Changing Attitudes to a Vietnamese Place of Pain and Shame 13. Places of Pain as Tools for Social Justice in the "New" South Africa: Black Heritage Preservation in the "Rainbow" Nation's Townships 14. Negotiating Places of Pain in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland: Debating the Future of the Maze/Prison/Long Kesh 15. Beauty Springing from the Breast of Pain . "No Less than a Palace: Kew Asylum, its Planned Surrounds, and its Present-Day Residents 17. Between the Hostel and the Detention Centre: Possible Trajectories of Migrant Pain and Shame in Australia
"William Logan and Keir Reeves are to be congratulated for putting together an outstanding collection of essays that critically evaluate the potentials and pitfalls of different sites of 'difficult heritage.' ... Importantly, these papers consistently strike the right tone between rigorous intellectual inquiry and respectful dialogue. The authors all seem acutely aware that these sites should not just be academic playthings but are vital to people’s sense of personhood, history, and justice." - Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Current Anthropology , Volume 51, Number 3, June 2010
“This is an interesting and courageous book that explores a challenging and fascinating subject through many significant political and cultural sites. It makes an important contribution to, what is at least in Australia, a modest body of literature that critically engages with and examines heritage theory and practice and connects it with the constant work of communities and nations in trying to imagine, define and cohere identity.” - Peter Romey and Sharon Veale
International Perspectives on Youth Conflict and Development brings together essays discussing the social, political, and economic contexts of youth conflict across fourteen countries on seven ...continents. Contributors from around the world draw on research and interventions in order to describe young people's participation in armed conflict, fighting and social exclusion, from the time they enter the public sphere to adulthood, as defined in their local environments. Case studies include children involved in armed conflict in Mozambique, Angola, the Philippines, and Nigeria; young people exposed to postwar tensions in Bosnia, Croatia, and South Africa; youth in the streets in Brazil and Colombia; Arab and Jewish youth in the ongoing crisis in Israel; children socialized to hate, mistrust, or exclude those of other ethnic, economic, or social identities in the United States, Germany, and Korea; and young people experiencing the dramatic political and economic transition in China. Rather than focusing on character flaws and socio-cognitive deficits or other problems of individual youth, their families, or cultures, the volume examines youth conflict as a social practice embedded in local, national, and international processes. The volume aims to shift the foundation of youth conflict study from the more typical focus on maturation, behavior, and personality, to a characterization of youth as participants in society. It also expands the analysis of youth development to include societal problems such as political instability, unequal access to material resources, racism, and social injustice. Offering insights about the interdependent spheres of conflict involving young people, this compilation describes processes of a violent world rather than of violent youth.
