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The article discusses the political upheaval in Central America over the past fifteen years, focusing on El Salvador and Guatemala. It explores the transition to democracy in the 1990s after years of civil wars and U.S.-backed military regimes. The text highlights the challenges faced by these countries in addressing fundamental material inequalities and the impact of neoliberal policies on their political and economic landscapes. The article also delves into recent political events in El Salvador and Guatemala, including the rise of President Nayib Bukele and President Bernardo Arévalo, shedding light on the democratic crises each nation currently faces. [Extracted from the article]

Most scholarly literature explores the relationship between regime type and terrorism, while little attention has been paid to the influence of regime on terrorist groups' decision to engage in civil war. This paper argues that the onset of civil war involving terrorist organizations is conditioned by regime type. Democratic regimes create conditions that prevent the onset of civil war involving terrorist organizations, although similar regimes might provide the opportunities for such groups to emerge in the first place. The pacifying effect of democracy on terrorist organizations' decision-making calculus is, however, mediated through a set of democratic institutions. Empirical tests on a global dataset of terrorist organizations show that democratic institutions such as political rights, repression (lack of), rule of law, civil liberties and high state capacity indeed mediate the effects of a democratic regime in lowering the likelihood of civil war onset involving terrorist organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines economic freedom's impact on quality of life conditional on the political risk factors in Africa over the period 1985–2016, using the Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) estimation technique. The results show that economic freedom has a significant positive effect on the quality of life. However, political risk fundamentals, namely civil liberties, political rights and conflict, cause economic freedom to deteriorate the quality of life in African. These results support North's (1990) argument that political institutions play a cardinal role in Africa's economic outcomes and well-being. Therefore, governments in Africa must improve on the political factors to enhance economic freedom's impact on quality of life. Moreover, policies that lead to an increase in aid and economic growth will improve the quality of life in Africa. JEL: C23, I31, P25 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of smart cities has brought about a paradigm shift in urban management and citizen engagement. By leveraging technological advancements, cities are now able to collect and analyze extensive data to optimize service delivery, allocate resources efficiently, and enhance the overall well-being of residents. However, as cities become increasingly interconnected and data-dependent, concerns related to data privacy and security, as well as citizen participation and representation, have surfaced. This article emphasizes the significance of regulating smart cities to foster a culture of citizenship and safeguard civic rights, security, and privacy. Effective regulatory frameworks are crucial in striking a balance between technological innovation and the protection of fundamental rights. The article examines various pivotal policies and regulations concerning data protection, cybersecurity, and citizen involvement in decision-making processes. Data protection regulations play a vital role in safeguarding individuals' personal information and ensuring its collection, processing, and usage comply with legal requirements. Similarly, cybersecurity regulations are indispensable in fortifying smart city systems against cyber threats. Regulations promoting citizen engagement and participation can cultivate a sense of ownership and responsibility among citizens, contributing to the creation of more inclusive and democratic urban environments. This study used an artificial neural network (ANN) to examine the effects of cyber security regulations, citizen participation, information sharing laws, and data protection on smart city development. Implementing these policies led to a 30% increase in citizen participation over 4 years, which continued even when regulations were temporarily suspended. However, unchanged or reduced regulations led to declines in information sharing. The neural network's predictions showed acceptable error compared to experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I explore how radio served as an important platform in the intellectual and feminist trajectories of Spanish Republican women writers living in exile in Argentina after its vast expansion as a form of mass media in the 1930s. Radio took off around the country at a particular moment for feminisms, when women were asserting their social and political rights and becoming more active in the public sphere. This moment coincided with the arrival of intellectuals exiled following the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and their incorporation into the cultural market. Through a study of writers María Teresa León's (1903–1988) and María Martínez Sierra's (1874–1974) participation in cultural activities on Radio El Mundo in 1942–1943 and Radio Nacional in 1959, respectively, I examine their relationship with the medium and how contact with this new communication technology led them to transform the kinds of cultural products they created in order to develop their feminist ideas through radio broadcasts. I argue that although this radio archive has received scant critical attention, recuperating and analyzing it allows us to complicate our view of the relationship that exiled women had with their host culture and to have a broader understanding of the Republican exile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Yellow Vest Movement in France, which began in 2018 as a protest against rising fuel taxes. The movement was characterized by a lack of clear political nature, with debates on whether it was about environmental justice or selfish motives. The Yellow Vests claimed to represent the sovereign people, reminiscent of the French Revolution's Sans-Culottes, demanding control over representatives and a moral renovation of democracy. The movement's use of revolutionary imagery and demands for popular control over elected officials reflect a resurgence of popular sovereignty in modern protests, challenging traditional forms of representation. [Extracted from the article]

The present inquiry addresses the nexus between the development of electronic government and corruption in the provision of public sector services in developing and transition economies. The study analyzes the potential contribution of electronic government in combating petty corruption within the framework of two superimposed principal-agent model and show that electronic government could potentially limit bureaucratic corruption. To address the research question empirically, the study applies random tobit and linear random effects panel estimators to a dataset made of 121 countries, which covers the time period between 2008 and 2018. Estimations reveal that the adoption of electronic government in the delivery of public sector services has been the central factor that contributed to the reduction of petty corruption in developing and transition economies. The level of per capita income, political rights, civil liberties and share of natural resources in gross exports also correspond with less bribery in the public sector service delivery. Furthermore, the study finds that a lower level of socio-economic development corresponds with a greater level of petty corruption. Hence, e-government presents one of the utmost opportunities for socio-economic development and offers solutions for the improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of public administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text discusses the late/post-Ottoman region of difference, encompassing southeastern Europe, Turkey, and the Arab East from the mid-1800s to the 1940s. It explores how the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire led to the creation of a region characterized by volatile differences and joint contests. The region was influenced by two processes: sovereignty contests and state-building impacts, which were intertwined due to the empire's premodern religious-ethnic heterogeneity becoming a modern issue. The text highlights the region's unique characteristics, short-lived nature, and transformative rhythm, offering insights into modern late/post-imperial region formation. [Extracted from the article]

The article provides a critical analysis of Alessandro Ferrara's book on sovereignty and constitutional interpretation. The author raises objections to Ferrara's concept of constitutional interpretation as a conversation and his limited view of democracy, advocating for a more inclusive and participatory democratic process. Additionally, the article questions Ferrara's views on political representation, judicial review, and the distinction between the transgenerational people and the electors. The author highlights concerns about the potential implications of Ferrara's ideas for populism and authoritarianism. [Extracted from the article]

Bryan Stanley Turner is a professor of sociology and politics who was born in Birmingham, England on January 14, 1945. Bryan S Turner is also a director of the religious committee at The City University Of New York. He is also the director of the Centre for Contemporary Islamic Studies at the University of Western Sydney. Not stopping there, Brayen is also registered as a member of the American Sociological Research Association. This study uses a literature study. Literature study research is oriented to theories relevant to research problems. In this satisfaction study, it analyzes Bryan Stanley Turner's journal of philosophical thought about the analysis of the outline of citizenship published in 1990 in the British Sociological Association and several other relevant reading sources. Turner's view of the conception of citizenship is a set of rights and obligations that give a formal legal identity to individuals. These legal and formal rights have historically been united as a set of social institutions such as the jury system, parliaments and the welfare state. Bryan Turner offered a revised model of citizenship that included legal rights (or civil rights in the Marshall model), political rights, social rights and human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freedom of religion or belief is guaranteed in international human rights law. Incorporating the right to apostasy as a fundamental aspect of religious freedom encounters challenges in different state practices. To study this phenomenon, this article explores the interaction of the conceptualization of the right to apostasy in international human rights law and in the context of apostasy-based refugee claims. The main argument of this article is that ambiguity in international human rights law exists on the concept of 'apostasy'. This results in human rights protection gaps when states are unwilling to grant their inhabitants the right to apostasy. These gaps in protection are sometimes filled in by refugee law. However, in the specific context of apostasy-based refugee claims, this article identifies an issue with the identification and application of the concept of apostasy—and this conceptual ambiguity may lead to a lack of protection. Indeed, conceptualization shapes practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding progressive institutional change remains a central concern in development studies. This paper examines two such cases: constitutional change in Nepal, which broadened political rights, and the outlawing of metal mining in El Salvador, which redistributed resources. To understand institutional change, this paper proposes a cultural political economy approach to Khan's 'political settlements analysis'. Applying the proposed approach to these cases demonstrates how political movements organise around beliefs and identities as well as interests to achieve rights and status, not just material gain. Identifying cultural as well as material sources of power allows a fuller explanation of institutional change processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of civil liberties and political rights on environmental disclosure, and the moderating effect of board gender diversity on the relationship between civil liberties and political rights and environmental disclosure, have not to date been studied in detail, as evidenced by the previous literature available. Therefore, this study aims to analyse how these institutional factors affect corporate environmental disclosure practices across different countries. The firms in our sample operate in 36 countries, spread across all the continents, and the period covered is 2009–2019. The database used to collect economic, social, environmental and governance data is Thomson Reuters' ASSET4, while the items for measuring civil liberty and political rights scores come from the Freedom House organisation (https://freedomhouse.org). The method used for estimating the model is the generalised method of moments (GMM) proposed by Arellano and Bond. The main findings of the study show that levels of civil liberty and political rights in the countries where the firms operate are positively associated with environmental disclosure. Furthermore, according to our evidence, the presence of female directors on boards plays a positive moderating role in the relationship between the level of civil liberty and environmental disclosure and between political rights and environmental disclosure. Additional robustness analyses corroborate our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The role of the current research is to set up a conceptual and analytical framework of the security, democracy and human rights linkage in contemporary society mainly based on the indexing, monitoring and research of online content for the period 1945-2019. Methods and methodology: Due to the focused timeline outlining the scientific research for the period 1945-2019, the paper favors both quantitative and qualitative approaches that follow a systemic framework of several thematic clusters which act as supporting pillars of analytical research by using Google Ngrams: (a) norms and constitutional values and principles; (b) civil and legal liberties; (c) human and individual approaches; (d) institutional governance and organizational establishment; (e) freedoms, civil and political rights. Results and discussions: The research results explore the variations in the frequency of appearances of the selected concepts in the specialized literature indexed by the Google platform indicating essential aspects of the conceptual and theoretical evolutions in strict dependence to the significant resolutions of the Security Council of the United Nations adopted in the same period and focusing on three central concepts: security, democracy and human rights. The spectrum of research singles out fifteen figures and an integrated analysis of contextual, historical, political, institutional, legal and social factors. Conclusion: The research aims to expand the field of reference and analysis of the three notions of security, democracy and human rights by integrating the multifactorial and multi-conditional analysis for the interpretation of the results of the fifteen figures. In the broader framework of online monitoring and complementarily with the spectrum of UNSC resolutions, the research will use contemporary topics, intensely debated, used and monitored, focusing on the conceptual and linguistic study and on the relationship between the analytical inventory of scientific research and the international decision-making spectrum. This relationship is mediated by the lexicon of politics and the sociology of international relations, which reflected a growing evolutionary linguistic semantics since 1945, the year of the establishment of the United Nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the concept of militant democracy and its paradoxes, with a focus on the ideas of Otto Kirchheimer. Kirchheimer analyzed the challenges faced by Weimar democracy in defending itself against legal revolutionaries and identified weaknesses in its defensive measures. The text discusses Kirchheimer's views on the German Basic Law and the use of political rights restrictions to counter antidemocratic organizations. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing and confronting antidemocratic organizations early on and the need for careful governance when implementing political rights restrictions. The article also acknowledges the potential for abuse and highlights the importance of addressing underlying socioeconomic issues. The text concludes by providing a list of academic resources on the topic for further research. [Extracted from the article]

Children and young people have a right to freedom of association and to have their views given due weight when they act collectively. However, when they come together in groups to engage in collective action, in school and elsewhere, they are often criticised for not being "representative" of all/other young people. The concept, while frequently cited, remains undefined and fails to incorporate how young people understand, experience and enact representation. This article presents data from an empirical study with youth activists who established a Secondary Schools Students' Union during the Covid-19 pandemic to lobby for change in education decision-making. The study was carried out as a collaboration between two university-based researchers and two secondary school students who were founding members of the union. Drawing on focus groups and interviews with union executive members, this article presents findings that convey young people's navigation of adults' perceptions of their representativeness, focusing on issues of legitimacy and efficacy. Based on this study, we propose a new youth co-authored and youth-informed theory of representation that conceptualises it as immersive and mutually symbiotic and, we suggest, enables meaningful implementation of child and youth activists' civil and political rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Supreme Court has adopted divergent interpretations of the Equal Protection Clause as applied to race and redistricting. Vote dilution doctrine requires mapmakers to consider race to ensure that racial minorities are not packed or cracked. Congress, moreover, has embraced vote dilution doctrine in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. By contrast, racial gerrymandering doctrine triggers strict scrutiny if mapmakers subordinate traditional redistricting principles to race, thereby threatening Section 2's constitutionality. To resolve this doctrinal riddle, this Essay examines whether, as originally understood, the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendment governed the use of race during redistricting. The Equal Protection Clause did not apply to political rights. Indeed, the Fifteenth Amendment enfranchised Black men nationwide. The Reconstruction Framers debated whether the Fifteenth Amendment also protected the right to hold office, but they barely discussed redistricting. This Essay then turns to postratification evidence. The Enforcement Acts did not regulate the use of race during redistricting. During the 1870 and 1880 redistricting cycles, Republican Southern states empowered Black voters whereas Democratic Southern states packed and cracked them. This Essay argues that, from an originalist perspective, the competing doctrines of vote dilution and racial gerrymandering are improperly grounded in the Equal Protection Clause. This Essay further claims that, under the Fifteenth Amendment, there is some historical evidence in favor of vote dilution doctrine but virtually no historical support for racial gerrymandering doctrine. The upshot is that Section 2 is valid legislation under Congress's Fifteenth Amendment enforcement authority to protect the rights to vote and hold office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access, learning, and opportunity are usually conceptualized in a sequential and linear way: with access to school comes learning and with learning comes opportunity. But for most refugee students-and for most marginalized students globally-this model simply does not hold. In settings where students' mobility and their social, economic, and political rights have massive restrictions, access to school does not translate into learning, and learning does not translate into opportunities. Creating education that enables refugee young people to feel a sense of belonging and prepares them to help build more peaceful and equitable futures requires us to address these misalignments, which are rooted across the ecosystem, from macrolevel geopolitical arrangements to micro-level interactions in classrooms. I pose three questions as central in understanding these misalignments: Who is allowed to be where and for how long? Who is responsible for refugee education? And who can feel a sense of belonging? Answering these questions informs how we might work, through policy and practice, toward alignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrants' access to the national territory is filtered through categorisation processes that entangle the legal–administrative statuses produced by immigration controls with stratified access to social and political rights, representing a form of internal bordering. Drawing upon qualitative data on Civil Society Actors (CSAs) who provide services to homeless migrants in an Italian frontier town, this article identifies two main types of practices that can be used by CSAs to reshape internal borders: either de-institutionalising internal borders through the circulation of non-state resources or engaging with institutionalised internal borders by expanding or ensuring migrants' access to state resources through a mix of cooperation and conflict with governmental actors. The article contributes to the broader debate on the role of CSAs in drawing internal borders in frontier towns and discusses the policy implications of CSAs' actions at the local level and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atrocities do not happen in a vacuum and incitement to discrimination, hostility, and violence is one of their main drivers – offline and now online. But states continue to disagree about how to deal with inciting speech. Under international law, there is much debate about whether obligations to prohibit incitement, such as the one found in Article 20(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, applies universally to all states. This article finds common ground in the overlooked human right to be free from incitement to discrimination, reflected in Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and binding on all states under customary international law. It gives rise to common but differentiated responsibilities to refrain from and protect individuals and groups from different forms of incitement. In the digital age, this right can be protected by a range of online content governance measures that this article explores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we critically examine the nature and legal force of interim measures requests (IMRs) issued by the Human Rights Committee (HR Committee) in response to communications received under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR-OP1). Despite the lack of express provisions in the Covenant or the Optional Protocol regarding the power of the HR Committee to issue IMRs or the obligation of States to comply with them, the HR Committee has established its own Rules of Procedure to issue purportedly binding IMRs in certain circumstances. This article is the first thorough examination of whether IMRs are binding and, if so, on what basis. We conclude that States parties must comply with IMRs in good faith under Article 26 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. However, we note that this interpretation requires a forward-leaning approach that privileges the object and purposes of the ICCPR-OP1. The article contributes to the ongoing debate surrounding the legal nature and force of IMRs issued by the HR Committee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is widely recognized for its protection of civil and political rights. However, it has fewer explicit provisions for social and economic rights. The majority of social and economic rights also apply to the right to work. The ECHR indirectly protects certain social and economic rights, or at least social and economic interests, which have garnered attention. The Convention can be said to protect at least some aspects of the right to work. This is especially true for negative obligations and non-discrimination obligations. This article provides an overview of the right to work and discusses how case law offers protection for its components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between democracy, capitalism, and inequality in America. It discusses the arguments made by Angus Deaton, who claims that democracy is undermined by money's influence on the legislature and wealthy minorities blocking provisions for the less wealthy. However, the article presents counterarguments, suggesting that "deaths of despair" and income stagnation may not be as prevalent as Deaton suggests. It also challenges Deaton's claim that the rich drive policy, presenting evidence that the middle class often gets what it wants in terms of congressional votes. The article explores the undemocratic nature of the Senate and proposes reforms, but argues against them, stating that they misunderstand the divisions in America and that the Constitution was designed to create unity. The article concludes by cautioning against further expansion of executive power and majoritarianism, suggesting that federalism may offer a solution to accommodate the differing tribes in America. [Extracted from the article]

Within recent public policy and administration scholarship, there has been a growing focus on the concept of “administrative burden” to describe the learning, compliance and psychological costs incurred by citizens when trying to access services and exercise social and political rights. Specifically, in the context of activation and welfare‐to‐work programmes, scholars have highlighted the effects of administrative burdens on claimants' autonomy, dignity and well‐being. We bring critical social policy scholarship on administrative harm into conversation with Adam and Balfour's concept of “administrative evil” to highlight the underlying dynamics of masking, moral inversion and dehumanisation that facilitate street‐level workers to adopt dispositions of enforcement of administrative burdens. To illustrate the applicability of Adam and Balfour's work to understanding how experiences of administrative burden can be intensified by the practices and dispositions of street‐level workers, we draw on examples of from an ethnographic study of the delivery of welfare‐to‐work in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberalism advances democratic rights and representation through three principles. First, it seeks to protect individuals from abusive state power. Second, it shares an affinity with the epistemology of the Enlightenment, where an objective world can be discovered and observed. Third, it limits "tyranny of the majority" through civil liberties that counter the weight of public opinion and political rights that enable political competition of ideas. Rapidly evolving demands for recognition in the United States have advanced a broad critique of liberalism, highlighting the boundaries it imposes on representation as well as its limited success protecting rights. This essay traces disenchantment with liberalism to two very different sources: first, many progressives who resent how the jurisprudence of equal opportunity obscures efforts to achieve actual equality reject "anonymity" under the law-removing a core civil rights principle for promoting fairness. Such demands for more explicit rights and representation conflict with the majoritarian model's application of liberalism, which biases cultural assimilation over multicultural integration. Movements for recognition increasingly challenge both assimilation and the institutional devices of multicultural integration. The other source of tension around recognition comes from the right, where populists have set out to revive nativist ideas of coerced assimilation or outright homogenization through exclusion (ie, nonrecognition). Such failures of representation have promoted subjectivist views as a credential for contesting facts. The paper argues for "pluralist solidarity" as a tool for reconciling multiculturalism with new rights and demands for recognition emanating from liberalism's traditions of individual liberty. This device aims to help separate the quest for recognition and dignity from the subjectivity that contributes to post-truth politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the colonial history of the theory of ‘property-owning democracy.’ Focusing on R.R. Torrens’ title registration system, the paper links property-owning democracy to nineteenth-century debates on land rights and title registration. Instituted in South Australia in 1858, Torrens’ system linked the simplification of transactions in land to visions of a property-owning society. Seeking to replace complex land laws, Torrens’ system’s emphasis on speeding up land transactions appealed both to settler society and metropole. This transformation facilitated the dispossession of Indigenous lands and intertwined property law with colonial narratives of progress, liberty, and democracy. Ultimately, Torrens’ vision identified democracy with a new property regime securing the future of property title and political rights. Through a common engagement with nineteenth-century Britain’s ‘land question,’ Torrens’ project in South Australia is linked to the development of the twentieth-century political concept of property-owning democracy. The paper makes the case that exploring land registration debates reveals the importance of secure property rights and human capital in the history of ideas of property-owning democracy. Legal and bureaucratic innovations like the property register were considered to free individuals to invest in their own economic development and create the economic conditions for democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the increasing engagement of indigenous movements with international law-making challenges the state-centric approach to international relations, few studies explore how Indigenous peoples of the Global South struggle for the international recognition of their political agency. This article analyzes Indigenous peoples’ role and aspirations in the international governance of the Amazon. Based on the study of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) and one of the biggest international indigenous organizations, the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (COICA), the article discusses how the international governance of the Amazon has incorporated Indigenous peoples by recognizing only a limited version of self-determination with no political rights. Although ACTO has formalized indigenous issues within its units, agendas, and programes, it fundamentally rejects the possibility of having Indigenous peoples in the deliberative processes of the organization. Indigenous peoples continue to struggle to decolonize the international governance of the Amazon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Far-right movements are gaining political prominence across Europe. Do they represent a resurgence of early twentieth-century autocratic regimes, or are they a new phenomenon? The Iberian Peninsula offers a unique opportunity for analysis, with Spain and Portugal transitioning from dictatorships in the 1930s to democracies in the 1970s, and illiberal movements re-entering political institutions in the 2010s. To explore this evolution, this article employs an interdisciplinary approach, combining the analytical strength of history with the practical advantages of computational methods. The analysis reveals that Vox emerged as a reaction to a perceived breakdown of the transition agreements and is driven by a commitment to an exclusionary nationalism resembling that of the Francoist regime. This contrasts sharply with Chega's lack of connection to Salazarism and its focus on contemporary politics. However, both parties share a common agenda with the global far-right movement on secular issues, particularly in restricting political rights for women and LGBTQI+ identities. The article highlights the importance of considering the historical development of the political system when examining emerging phenomena. It also uses a computational institutionalist approach that could assist other scholars in assessing current political trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the place of citizenship in the Hirak protest movement with the view to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the current modes of being citizen in an authoritarian regime in the Arab world. It identifies and analyses the tensions and frictions that generate change and the strategies of the ruling elites and the social movement to articulate and implement their choices. In this perspective, we frame the popular discontent that resulted from the candidature of Bouteflika to a fifth presidential mandate as a case of social mobilization giving a 'voice' to new projects of citizenship. We analyse key demands and propositions of this 'voice' strategy in relation to the 'loyalty' counter-narratives of the regime and its clients. Beyond the attempt at revising civil and political rights, we also link these modes of protesting and being to the experiences of lived citizenship under authoritarianism and how these fuels 'exit' strategies discounting formal citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Ethiopia: Federalism's Failure?" examines the historical context and challenges of federalism in Ethiopia, focusing on ethnonational and regional divisions impacting the political system. It discusses the struggle between central authority and demands for inclusion and autonomy, critiquing the current federal arrangement for issues of marginalization and centralization. The text explores the promises and challenges of federalism under different regimes, emphasizing the importance of constitutionalism, power-sharing, and impartial institutions in managing diversity and addressing identity-based conflicts in Ethiopia. [Extracted from the article]

The article explores the relationship between political norms, legitimacy, and democracy through a radical realist lens, focusing on the establishment of politics and the deepening of democracy. It critiques Bernard Williams' concept of a "basic legitimation demand" and argues that the establishment of politics does not necessarily encompass the conditions for deepening democracy. The authors suggest that elite forbearance and acquiescence of the relatively powerless are key factors in politics, challenging the idea that legitimacy is the universal objective of politics. The article also discusses the implications of de-politicization and de-democratization in the current "crises of democracy." [Extracted from the article]

"Reconstruction Revisionism Revisited" by Manisha Sinha in Reviews in American History delves into the complexities of defining and understanding the Reconstruction era in American history. Sinha challenges traditional narratives and offers a new perspective on Reconstruction, emphasizing the agency of Black people, the struggle for interracial democracy, and the interconnected reconstructions of democracy, capitalism, women's rights, and the West. The text highlights the ongoing scholarly debate surrounding Reconstruction, its impact on American society, and its relevance to contemporary challenges to democracy and racial equality. [Extracted from the article]

Contrary to the dominant narrative of the historical formation of democracy in Denmark, which emphasises a smooth and gradual linear transition to democracy and modernity, this paper accentuates a discontinuous and contentious road towards democratisation. Based on quantitative and qualitative sources, this article identifies four major waves of popular mobilisation that paved the way for the introduction and expansion of political rights. The first wave of popular protest began in the 1830s and culminated in 1848 with the fall of absolutism and the transition to constitutional monarchy. The next protest wave from 1885 to 1887 arose from the so‐called 'constitutional struggle' and mobilised hundreds of thousands of ordinary Danes and contributed to the nationalisation and parliamentarisation of the political system. The third wave unfolded around the end of the Second World War, while the hitherto last wave of popular struggle erupted in 1968 with the youth rebellion. The analysis shows that 'democracy' was the central issue of contention in all four protest waves and supports the main thesis that periods of intense interaction between popular protest and the state have had a decisive formative influence on the genesis and further development of Danish democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Brunei's state formation and development from 1906 until 2023 to demonstrate the hybridization and reformulation of subjecthood and citizenship within the last absolute monarchy in the Asia-Pacific region. The absence of active political parties and calls for a representative government has led most scholars to portray Bruneians as passive subjects of the Sultan. Such a portrayal is inaccurate; Bruneians are both citizens and subjects. The article thus introduces a new category of political membership based on synthesized ideas of subjecthood and citizenship, termed here, "civic subjecthood." This coexistence is only possible as a result of the British residential system, which was established in the Bruneian Sultanate at the beginning of the twentieth century. The British resident initially created a dual-state apparatus – consisting of the traditional negara and the modern state – to keep the façade of indigenous rule in Brunei. However, the Sultan of Brunei and the traditional ruling class eventually took control of both apparatuses after abolishing the residential system in September 1959. Both apparatuses function to this day, allowing for the coexistence of subjecthood and citizenship in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral control refers to attacking elections by adding, deleting, or partitioning voters or candidates. Hemaspaandra, Hemaspaandra, and Menton recently discovered, for seven pairs (T, T ′ ) of seemingly distinct standard electoral control types, that T and T ′ are in practice identical: For each input I and each election system E, I is a “yes” instance of both T and T ′ under E, or of neither. Surprisingly, this had previously gone undetected even as the field was score-carding how many standard control types various election systems were resistant to; various “different” cells on such score cards were, unknowingly, duplicate effort on the same issue. This naturally raises the worry that perhaps other pairs of control types are identical, and so work still is being needlessly duplicated. We completely determine, for all standard control types, which pairs are, for elections whose votes are linear orderings of the candidates, always identical. In particular, we prove that no identical control pairs exist beyond the known seven. We also for three central election systems completely determine which control pairs are identical (“collapse”) with respect to those particular election systems, and we also explore containment and incomparability relationships between control pairs. For approval voting, which has a different “type” for its votes, Hemaspaandra, Hemaspaandra, and Menton’s seven collapses still hold (since we observe that their argument applies to all election systems). However, we find 14 additional collapses that hold for approval voting but do not hold for some election systems whose votes are linear orderings of the candidates. We find one new collapse for veto elections and none for plurality. We prove that each of the three election systems mentioned have no collapses other than those inherited from Hemaspaandra, Hemaspaandra, and Menton or added in the present paper. We establish many new containment relationships between separating control pairs, and for each separating pair of standard control types classify its separation in terms of either containment (always, and strict on some inputs) or incomparability. Our work, for the general case and these three important election systems, clarifies the landscape of the 44 standard control types, for each pair collapsing or separating them, and also providing finer-grained information on the separations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research on Indigenous educational policies (IEPs) in the postcolonial histories of Colombia and Mexico focuses on: 1) identifying key normative concepts encoded in IEPs adopted in national policymaking, 2) analyzing how the evolution of normative concepts relates to political tensions between state, Indigenous, and international actors, and 3) discussing how the evolution of IEPs expose achievements and obstacles to decolonial struggles to advance Indigenous rights and pluriversal knowledges. A critical discourse analysis of laws and regulations adopted between1820 and 2020 in Mexico and Colombia shows a gradual and conflictive recognition of cultural and political rights, most recently through normative concepts like bilingualism, biculturalism, interculturalism, autonomy, and self-determination. These discursive shifts have operated, however, against the backdrop of ongoing political struggles of Indigenous peoples to demand that nation-states implement the agreements and principles enacted. This history of IEPs thus illuminates continuing tensions between the semiotic and material conditions of Indigenous communities as well as emerging practices of resistance and organization that may carry implications for further policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores Alain Locke's value theory in relation to his defense of beauty in the 1920's "beauty vs. propaganda" debate. Animated by a pragmatic commitment to resolving real-life value conflicts many theories of valuation—including those proposed by Ralph Barton Perry and John Dewey—explored the question of whether values can be formed beyond interest and whether they can be arranged in a single hierarchy and compared. Locke turned to transvaluation—changes in value category—as a potential resolution for real-life value conflicts. This essay examines how Locke's philosophical work as a value theorist can be brought in relation to his other forays into African American cultural politics: mainly his unremitting defense of beauty and cultural production even in the face of more urgent imperatives like civil and political rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the notion of a 'morally equipped' childhood and adolescence, and how such a notion can help us get a fresh perspective on the relation between young people's participation and empowerment, and the formation of personal and the collective moral repertoires of modern society. Utilising a mixed-methods approach inspired by the sociology of conventions (SC) and the sociology of regimes of engagement (SRE), we analyse letters to the editor of the Norwegian children's newspaper Aftenposten Junior, to investigate the formats of children's generalised moral arguments. We demonstrate that our informants exhibit a broad moral sensibility in the letters we have analysed, particularly showing keen engagement with issues related to civic rights. We discuss the young participants' expressions in the light of convention theory. We make a case for how becoming 'morally equipped' could be understood as being able to engage, challenge, and articulate the tensions and negotiations between personal formats of daily experiences and interactions, and collective formats, such as public expressions, throughout childhood and adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the limitations associated with the basic classification of human rights into several categories. The topic of whether international trends have an impact on the view of the State regarding the significance of implementing rights through the acceptance of individual complaint procedures is complex. Starting with an acknowledgment of the infinite extent of the issue, this paper displays a belief in the fallacious conceptions of differences in human rights. It investigates and assesses the institutional contribution to the advancement of human rights through a chronological analysis of historical processes that give rise to changes in the 20th century. To address this particular distinction, this paper examines the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Program of Action and the new Optional Protocol for validation and endorsement. By highlighting many similarities in the language and nature of State responsibilities, it challenges the reader to consider whether non-justiciability provides a basis in the first place. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the function of dispute resolution mechanisms during the implementation phase. From a practical standpoint, it compels the reader to contemplate if the committee procedures outlined in international conventions serve just as symbolic representations of non-cooperation by States or are put into effect. This paper ultimately presents the reader with some thought-provoking material in the dichotomy between enforcement and justiciability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, drawing on Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and embracing the decentring agenda in European Union (EU) external relations, discusses the substance of human rights promotion in the negotiations of the Samoa Agreement. It documents how the EU has concentrated on civil and political rights, whereas Africa has advanced an innovative approach to economic, social and cultural rights underpinned by the right to development. More importantly, going beyond the 'heaven–hell binary', which draws neat lines between the good North and the bad South, and the 'one‐way traffic paradigm', which claims that human rights flow from the North to the South, it shows that the human rights corpus may be slowly evolving from its paradigmatic western orientation towards a truly universal project: the EU and Africa have started recognising each other as being holders of diverse yet legitimate perspectives on human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiculturalism, a federal policy that emphasises cultural, social, and political rights for ethnic minorities in Canada, is a crucial aspect of immigrant life. Concurrently with the implementation of multiculturalism by the federal government, Canada adopted bilingualism as its official language policy. Although the primary motivation for this policy was to protect the French language and culture, it holds significant relevance for immigrants, especially those residing in Francophone-dominant areas such as Quebec. Despite the importance of these policies to immigrant life, few studies have explored immigrants’ perspectives on both federal policies. Addressing this gap, the present study examines the lived experiences of six adult Chinese immigrants who arrived in Canada and obtained permanent residency or Canadian citizenship after 2010. Through narrative inquiry, this research shares participants’ stories to explore how recent adult Chinese immigrants understand Canadian multiculturalism and bilingualism. Taking a critical stance on multiculturalism and bilingualism, this study examines, discusses and interprets the lived experiences of its participants with the goal to confront issues of inequality, privilege, and power dynamics. The findings reveal that Chinese immigrants’ understanding of multiculturalism and bilingualism is shaped by their personal experiences with both policies. Participants leverage their experiential knowledge of multiculturalism and bilingualism to navigate their new lives in Canada. Although participants voice some concerns about these policies, they also presented nuanced perspectives and opinions on both federal policies. These perspectives not only enrich the literature on Canadian multiculturalism and bilingualism, but also highlight Chinese immigrants’ desire for integration in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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