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This study refers to students' perspectives on perspectives and attitudes in relation to ethnicity in Malaysia. There are several reasons why this research was conducted, including to answer the readiness of students in multicultural life. This study aims to determine the awareness, views, and attitudes in multicultural life on campus from various ethnic backgrounds of students. This research is descriptive qualitative research with the strategy of collecting the main data through research on the object of research. The number of samples is 25 respondents which aims as a sampling procedure for the sample data used. The process of collecting data in this analysis is by collecting questionnaires. Data collection was carried out by distributing dissemination via Google Form to participants to determine public perceptions of views and attitudes in multicultural life on campus. In analyzing the data, the researcher used a descriptive qualitative approach. It is used to determine student perceptions in analyzing data comprehensively. The results showed that 60% of students were very happy to associate with other ethnicities, 32% did not agree with the equality of social and cultural rights. 48% agree that inter-ethnic encounters reduce interethnic relations. 48% is neutral on the granting of political and economic rights to other ethnic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bound Testing cointegration approach to study the long-term relationship between internal conflict, economic growth, and human development in Pakistan. We show that, by offering better opportunities and reducing radicalization, education could help reduce conflict in Pakistan. The government's spending on its defense budget, however, is high, and results in low social spending. We also show a positive contribution to conflict reduction by public order which justifies the government's anti-terrorist policy. It also appears that economic reforms and wealth do not help to reduce internal conflicts in Pakistan. This result is an illustration of a situation in which globalization is perceived as a threat, and economic growth fuels political and social unrest. Political rights and civil liberties do not seem to reduce conflict either, because periods of democracy have experienced a resurgence of violence. This finding suggests that, in a fragile country like Pakistan, respect for public order is a priority before restoring democracy. Pakistan seems to be caught in a low development trap in which conflict is the main variable to consider before seeing the benefits of reforming the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well-established in the research literature that authoritarianism leaves behind cultural and institutional legacies that make it difficult for countries to develop robust democratic regimes and the rule of law. This insight, however, cannot explain why some countries that experienced authoritarian regimes are more successful than others in building strong and effective judicial systems in the post-authoritarian stage. I answer this question by studying Mexico (1934-2008) and Spain (1939-1978) in comparative-historical perspective. Franco's military dictatorship in Spain was a harsher form of authoritarianism than Mexico's PRI-regime, with Franco exercising a degree of control over the judiciary unlike anything the PRI ever achieved. As a result, one would expect Spain's path toward the rule of law to have been more troubled than Mexico's. And yet, the exact opposite is true. While Mexico struggles to build a minimally effective judicial system, in Spain the judicial protection of civil and political rights is practically indistinguishable from older, more established democracies. Why? Using archival data collected at various archives in Spain and Mexico, I argue that the key to answering this question lies in understanding the specific mechanisms through which the executive power in each country controlled courts and judges during the authoritarian period. These mechanisms bequeathed different types of organizational structures and bureaucratic cultures to the judicial systems of these countries in the post-authoritarian era, thereby defining the political and institutional context in which legal reforms of the judiciary were attempted. This research shows how the longstanding conceptual opposition between authoritarianism and democracy obscures our understanding of the multiple paths countries can take to build strong judiciaries. It also brings into sharp relief the modernizing effects of certain authoritarian legal structures. In doing so, it makes theoretical contributions to our understanding of the paradoxical institutional origins of the rule of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interesting challenge to political sociology theorizing and empirical research is the choice of research topics. Why do certain topics produce tremendous bodies of research and others go largely neglected. This is an intriguing sociology of knowledge question. Take, for example, scholars who support the Donald Trump presidency. There is in the sociology of intellectuals - one important subfield of political sociology - an important literature on left-leaning intellectuals. But intellectuals on the political right have received far less attention. There is considerable interest in populist movements, opinions, and political leadership particularly in Europe and the US, but strikingly little on scholars supporting populist agendas. Why? Politically right as well as left intellectuals can be influential in shaping political agendas. This paper will offer some plausible reasons for this lack of attention to conservative academics and it will look at the population of scholars who support the Trump presidency in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study seeks to investigate the progression of women's political, economic, and social rights across 13 culturally and geographically significant world regions. Through a secondary analysis of the CIRI Human Rights Dataset, we plotted observed trends in women's political, economic, and social rights for each region. We also used STATA generalized least squares (GLS) to evaluate region's role in such rights. Results supported our hypothesis that variation exists in the progression of women's political, economic, and social rights across major world regions between 1981 and 2011. We found that the prioritization of political, economic, and social rights in Western Europe and the Anglosphere was inconsistent with previous research. Overall, while respect for women's political rights was seen to improve across the three decades for all regions, little improvement was found for the respect for women's economic rights and for women's social rights since 1981. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that "the discovery of personal whiteness... is a very modern thing - a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed." Du Bois locates the invention of whiteness as a specific historical phenomenon, not as a social category abstracted from larger geopolitical and socio-historical processes. Building on this approach, this paper makes two arguments: First, it investigates Du Bois' chronological claim - that whiteness came about in the 19th century. I do this through analysing the four-year long political debates following the use of state-violence to quell colonial uprisings in Jamaica in context of post-slavery 19th century Britain. Second, it theorizes the emergence of whiteness in relation to British democratic formation, arguing that race-thinking was essential to extending the franchise in metropolitan Britain. The paper thereby connects two bodies of literature in comparative historical sociology: racial formation theories and the literature on democratic formations. While racial formation theories have shown the entrenchment of racial structures to modernity, these theories have so far existed analytically separate from studies of democratic formations in Europe. Examining the Jamaican Morant Bay state violence, which occurred at roughly the same time as the extension of the franchise to the white working classes, I show how white worker organizers at first aligned themselves with the grievances of their colonial counterparts in the attempt to abate state power. Yet, I then show how this alliance broke and while white workers gained voting rights, colonial orders became even more entrenched, thus further anchoring what Du Bois called the relationship between color and democracy. As historical sociologists of democratic formation tend to assume the nation state as the unquestioned unit of analysis for democratic struggle, this relational study of metropolitan Britain and colonial Jamaica offers a corrective to the making of liberal democratic formations in sociological literatures today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fundamental political right guaranteed by the Constitution of the Slovak Republic is the freedom of expression and the right to information, without this right the existence of a genuine democratic establishment is not possible. Democracy and its basic principles, expressed in the Constitution and in the laws of every democratic state, represent a legal institution in terms of the theory of law. As it follows from Article Number 26, Paragraph 1 of the Constitution of the Slovak Republic, freedom of expression and the right to information are guaranteed. In this paragraph, the Constitution generally guarantees freedom of expression and the right to information, while the remaining four Paragraphs and Article Number 34, Paragraph 1 to 3 and Article Number 51, Paragraph 2 provide for a more detailed explanation of the content of these terms and the definition of the basic limits of possible restrictions belongs to Article Number 45 of the Constitution of the Slovak Republic, whereby the Constitution guarantees to everyone to have the right to timely information on the environment and the causes and consequences of this condition. The implementing legislation of this article is the Implementation of Freedom of Information Act is the subject of this contribution. In our opinion, this is a specific topic that legal theorists are not interested in. Using scientific methods of research, as well as the study of scientific literature and Slovak and Czech case law, we analysed selected Provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. The result of the paper is a review of the Freedom of Information Act to realize the right to information on the state of the environment and to find an answer to the research question whether it is necessary to amend or supplement the Freedom of Information Act. The paper is focused on the area of administrative law, but it goes far beyond the constitutional law of the Slovak Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of contemporary private law is due to the recognition of the importance of human rights, knowing a real progress in the last period of time, which has led to the promotion and protection of the person's subjective civil rights. It is very important that, in addition to legal coercive values, society should accept the importance of civil subjective rights and respect them. Correspondences to civil subjective rights are the obligations, and in terms of family law, the personal obligations of spouses are of particular importance. In order not to be ineffective, these rights must be applied rationally and it is necessary that they come to defend the injured person both physically and mentally. It is very important that, in addition to legal coercive values, society should accept the importance of civil subjective rights and respect them. Although at European level we can observe an exponential increase of the values protected by the adoption of the European Convention on Human Rights and its implementation from the adoption until now in Romania the respect of the civil subjective rights remains at the discretion of each individual, force can not cover all the cases that may arise. Correspondences to civil subjective rights are the obligations, and in terms of family law, the personal obligations of spouses are of particular importance. The husband's personal rights and obligations are inseparable from spouses and can not be alienated. They can not be the subject of the matrimonial agreement or of any other contracts. This provides an essential principle of family law - the equality of spouses in family - and excludes any attempt to violate it by concluding legal acts. Equality of spouses in rights derives from all social relations based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Political Rights of Women, adopted by the United Nations on 20 December 1952, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women adopted on 18 December 1979, Civil Code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the inequality of income distribution in the Republic of Croatia from 2010 to 2016. Today, in modern countries, people are equal in their democratic and political rights, but there are significant differences in the distribution of income and wealth. On the one hand, inequality in income distribution can stimulate economic development whereas, on the other hand, it can also cause economic damage. In the Republic of Croatia, income inequality is expressed by the Gini coefficient since 2010. Gini coefficient ranges from 0 to 1, with 0 showing complete equality and 1 complete inequality. Another known measure of inequality of income distribution is the income quintile share ratio (S80 / S20), which measures the ratio between the top fifth (20 %) and the lowest fifth (20%) incomes in a country. The purpose of the paper is to give an overview and statistical interpretation of income inequalities using the Gini coefficient and the quintile income ratio, and to analyze European commission recommendations and distribution of income in the Republic of Croatia during the pre-accession negotiations and first years of EU membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like in many other countries, the status of women in Croatian politics is neither satisfactory nor have their political rights been developed to an adequate degree. Croatian women face numerous prejudices and stereotypes and are almost invisible at a high political level. Consequently, the number of Croatian female MPs is small despite the fact that the rules on electoral gender quotas were introduced in 2008. As stipulated by those rules, there shall be at least 40% of women on parliamentary candidate lists. Instead of a rise in the number of female MPs, both the 2015 general election and the 2016 snap election brought a considerable fall of this figure, which causes great concern of the public. For instance, at the last snap election held in 2016, only 19 women (12% of all MPs) got into the Croatian Parliament. This paper provides an overview of the negative trends with respect to the number of women in the Parliament and analyses the reasons for the ineffectiveness of electoral gender quotas, using the Croatian example. The paper also proposes potential measures and redefines the respective sanctions with the aim to change the current situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the role of morality in financial contract enforcement, specifically the historical abolition of imprisonment for debt. In the late eighteenth century, creditors' right to arrest and detain debtors for default was taken for granted. By the middle of the nineteenth century this power was widely and permanently revoked. Using archival evidence, this article shows how changes in creditor-debtor interactions, macroeconomic dynamics, and political rights generated new moral understandings of borrowing, lending, and default. The shifting moralization of credit in turn reshaped the policy and practice of debt collection. The history of the debtors' prison and the sociology of morality have implications for the analysis of the non-contractual basis of contract, as well as for contemporary financial politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purposes of this study were to investigate and analyze the management of communication process and how to enhance the level of community participation on community radio as well as to develop guidelines to create a high level of participation on community radio. This was a mixed research of qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative method included documentary research and an in-depth interview with three producers. The quantitative method included questionnaire with four parts distributed to 400 samples. The findings revealed that the management of communication process to enhance the level of participation consisted of four components which were senders, messages, channel of communication, and receivers. In terms of the senders, the respondents revealed the process of acquiring the information, understanding the community problems, experience, interest of the producers were important. The messages, however, consisted of three different kinds of programs: music, news and music, and conversation and music. The components of channel of communication were ready in terms of techniques and equipment but still unable to provide total coverage of the Dusit area due to the intervention of other waves. In terms of the receivers, the majority of them listened to the community radio mainly at home and at university. The management of community radio was created as a two-way communication. The benefits of community radio included solving community problems, provide the channel of communication and exchange opinions, and provide information and knowledge that could be applied in daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last years an assiduous attention is given to the issues of ensuring asylum seekers' rights. Since the State Border Guard is the first institution coming into contact with asylum seekers it has undisputable role in observing asylum seekers rights. The EU member state successfully provide the establishment of a common asylum system, which defines asylum seekers rights according to the principles of democratic and law government states with respect of definitions and criterion defines in international legal provisions. The defined scope of asylum seekers' rights is sufficient in Latvia and sometimes it creates barriers for effective asylum application processing and also serves as a basis for "malicious" use of asylum procedure. One of the most important issues is detention of asylum seekers. When detaining an asylum seeker it is important to estimate the necessity of detention with person's rights to freedom. At the same time it is important to remember about persons who use asylum procedure for malicious purposes and ensure that asylum procedure does not lose its primary meaning. The main thing is to ensure proportion between asylum seekers and state and observation of rights of the rest of the society. State Border Guard when ensuring definite asylum seekers' rights also fulfils its task to protect society's interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collapse of the USSR and the world socialist system, that happened more than twenty years ago actualized processes of implementation of national models of political modernization related to democratization and liberalization of society and state. Russia implements etatist model of political modernization, involving, on the one hand, the structural and functional modernization of the Russian state as a political institute, and on the other - the production of specific mechanisms of interaction between government and civil society, search of agreement between diverse interests, combination of many directions, that is the true meaning of democracy. Affirmation of the incompatibility of democratic institutions with the Russian political tradition is theoretically contradictory and almost dangerous as it prevents from creating them or makes it easier to eliminate them because of "otherness" in comparison to European liberal samples. The use of modernization paradigm and concepts of globalization and the use of data of empirical studies conducted by the author and his colleagues (expert interviews, content analysis of documents) allows to prove the author's vision of technologies of reaching agreement, the optimal combination of national interests, national and state security and requirements of the existing system of global relations in the process of implementation of various national models of political transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past two decades the member states of the European Union have undergone a process of transformation leading to a gradual relinquishing of attributes of sovereignty to the organs of the Union. The content of citizenship, traditionally the basic mark of the political nation has also been changed. The main question addressed by the text is: what happens with the basic components of the nation, both political and cultural, if the dismantling of the nation-state continues? The reflection is reduced here to some questions related to territory, language, ethnicity, genealogy, and the fate and vocation of the nation in a historical perspective. Can a supranational integration deal with these elements as the nation-state does, channeling and moderating towards the common good their distinctive and potentially explosive political potentials? The democratic nationstate, among others through the rule of law, has been able to rationally limit potential excesses of popular sovereignty. Will the deepening integration within Europe lead to a super-state, a federation, as many claim, or to something else? This is open to speculation, but the survival of the basic components of the nation on a longer term seems almost sure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents research related to the factors that are obstructing media freedom in East Asia. It mentions some of the recent events that occurred in China and North Korea including the case of Al Jazeera television's reporter Melissa Chan in China that poses question mark on the extent of political rights, civil liberties, and media freedon in East Asia. Also the factors that influence the media organizations are discussed.

Women consumer magazines (glossies) represent the most important part of the specialized media all over the world. The main ingredients of their editorial "recipe" are the positive tone of the articles, and the optimistic, yet shallow approach to all the theme/subjects covered. Magazines are considered to be beautiful objects that inspire people to cherish them. Women magazines have been criticized in feminist media studies for portraying women in a stereotyped way and for encouraging a consumerist behavior among them. The role models offered by these media are mainly taken from the show business and fashion industry. Women politician are rarely present in the pages of these publications, especially in countries as Romania where the political participation of women is one of the lowest in Europe. The paper presents in the first part official figures regarding the political participation of Romanian women, and it discusses the results of the most important academic studies on women and media. A previous research showed, for example, that in a four years period, three important Romanian magazines published only 9 article presenting women politicians. The general assumption in magazines desks (and in the society) is that politics is a dirty business that does not match the beautiful world of magazines. The second part will focus on a case study, considered to be relevant for explaining the general image of women politicians and politics in Romanian consumer magazines. A visual analysis (from the popular culture perspective) will be done to Elena Udrea's pictorial feature for Tabu (Taboo) magazine (November 2011). The choice of the case study was motivated by the following reasons: Elena Udrea is a controversial, yet successful politician, she has impersonated popular culture icons (Madonna, Jackie, Cleopatra) and the feature has generated many positive and negative comments in media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the importance of several factors for the social reproduction of human life and labor power across different geographies including political rights, education and health. It cites the integration of digital technologies that offer experience of modernity and program for modernization in the everyday life of the people. It mentions the emergence of a global governance for a compelling geographical imagination on the human life.

The article discusses the significance of traditional media for political participation. The role of social networking sites (SNSs), blogs, instant messengers and online forums in the process of civic and political engagement is explained. It is suggested that social media is utilized by young political activists to engage traditional media gatekeepers.

This study explores the relationship between civic participation and daet-geul, the comments posted under online news articles. Based on dividing daet-geul into reading behavior and writing behavior, the study presents findings that show not only the types principally associated with entertainment news, but those associated with writing behavior that is associated with civic participation intention. Meanwhile, reading daet-geul has no effect on participation intention. The study also indicates that engaging in online communities enhances political participation intention. Further, civic attitude significantly influences civic and political participation intention, but each kind of trust has a differentiated effect on each kind of participation. The implications and limitations of the study are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This exploratory cross-national study examined the global diffusion of access to information laws in developing and industrialized nations and the contexts in which Access to Information (ATI) laws have been adopted, implemented, or utilized. This research found that the majority of developing nations that have adopted the law have done so in the new millennium and more of them are in the lowest income groups than the previous decade. The pattern of nations adopting ATI laws in concentration appeared to follow the level of regional treaties, declarations, conventions, and charters that were signed. The study also showed that as a group, developing and industrialized nations with ATI laws had stronger political rights and civil liberties, though there were a number of nations in the group of developing countries that had weak political institutions. Industrialized nations without an ATI law were the highest income group; however, these nations scored lower as a group on political rights and civil liberties than developing nations with the ATI law. Six nations with an ATI law had GNI per capita of less than $826, which raises questions about the adequacy of infrastructure to implement the laws. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we evaluate common approaches to the measurement of political discussion in the survey literature. We compare the use of "discussant generators" and, for lack of a better term, "general" approaches to the measurement of network size, agreement, and disagreement. We further evaluate various criteria for assessing agreement, including shared party identification, shared gender, shared race, and respondent self-assessment of tendency to politically agree with specific discussion partners. We assess the extent to which research conclusions about the size of networks and the extent of exposure to political disagreement are likely to vary based on these different measurement approaches in the literature. We also evaluate the extent to which associations between network size, agreement, and disagreement and outcomes such as political knowledge and political participation are likely to vary depending on the measurement approach. We conclude that descriptive assessments are probably only weakly affected, but relationship assessments may well be more substantially affected by measurement technique, especially for network size. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing recognition of indigenous human rights as "group rights" poses important challenges to the predominant liberal and individualistic conception of human rights and law enforcement. Security rights, for example, which encompass life, bodily integrity, and liberty, continue to be equated, even by human rights scholars, legal professionals and activists, with the so-called first generation of civil and political rights. Yet how can the life integrity of individual members of indigenous groups in Latin America be separated from the protection of their territories - a collective right? How can the state, which is both a violator and protector of human rights, guarantee the security of indigenous groups? This paper analyses this question drawing on the case of the indigenous struggles over security-land rights carried out by the Xucuru do Ororubá people and their allies in Northeast Brazil. The case of indigenous struggles in Brazil, where indigenous peoples are a minority and fight for both security and land rights, helps to address this question by exposing the tensions between dual conceptions of liberal-individual-monocultural rights versus collective-multicultural rights. These tensions can be found in the Brazilian legislation on indigenous rights and in the legal and political practices of the state. In light of this case-study, the paper attempts to offer theoretical insights into the contradictory role of the State and challenges facing the indigenous human right to security in the Brazilian context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the occasion of massive participation in the media ownership proceedings at the Federal Communications Commission in 2002-2003, many practitioners, policymakers, and scholars have begun to embrace participatory politics in communications policymaking. Against this context, this study uses a Habermasian framework to reassess the legislative and legal frameworks which structure participation and decision making in communications rule making. An analysis of legislative documents and legal precedents illustrate how participatory mechanisms ultimately serve agency discretion. This discretionary power enables the Commission to move beyond public inputs in a proceeding and potentially override the arguments, evidence, or normative claims entered into the rule making record. While participatory democrats argue that agency discretion diminishes the accountability of agency officials to assertions entered into the record by commenters, this paper reconsiders the potential of agency discretion to produce legitimate outcomes. Insofar as members of the public generate, circulate, and make audible opinions on issues pertaining to a rule making proceeding, agency discretion can direct officials towards public-spirited rather than narrowly interested decisions. Such an interdependent process between the rule making setting and the larger public sphere renders the achievement of legitimacy doubly challenging but arguably more profound. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With publics continuously shifting and reforming, what prompts publics to participate in political action as well as characteristics about active publics remains unknown. Even less is known about young adults and the college-aged population and what common characteristics politically active and inactive publics within this group have. The purpose of this study is to examine the knowledge, attitudes, and motivations of politically active college students through use of the situational theory of publics. This study examines the factors associated with this diversity of political activity. The existence of several well-funded, national-level student political organizations suggests the importance that the major political parties place on student involvement in political activity, particularly at the grass roots level. This study also examines the views of the students that become involved in politically and socially active student organizations, in contrast to those who do not.While some studies have tested the situational theory of publics within political situations, this remains an area needing further exploration. The study investigates the degree to which students involved in politically active student groups perceive constraints on their political involvement, the importance of political issues, and their involvement in political issues on a general level. This study further investigates two variables, problem recognition and constraint recognition, in more depth and detail centering on specific issues as well as other factors contributing to political activity including media usage, proximity level of issues, and inclusion in groups. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sought to analyze the potential of online social capital on revitalize political participation in Singapore. A representative nationwide CATI survey and a series of focus groups were conducted to examine the relationship between online social capital and political participation. Survey findings suggest a positive association between the two variables, with online bridging capital likely to predict online political participation, and online bonding capital likely to predict traditional political participation. Furthermore, focus groups indicate that bridging-wise, the Internet promotes information flow; connection with a broader range of people; sense of being a part of a group; and reciprocity within a community. Bonding-wise, 'politically active' groups recognized the ability to facilitate and organize online, but indicated a preference to participate effectively in the traditional sphere. In general, however, focus groups suggest a certain level of distrust in online relationships. Still, the confidence expressed in traditional bonding relationships that are overlapping with those online, indicates the potential of online bonding capital to grow. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how people's participation in politics is influenced by their social contacts' political activism. Using unique egocentric network data, this study attempts to achieve two goals: first, this study tries to separate the causal effects of social contacts from selection effects and simultaneous bias; second, once the causal effects are identified, this study examines whether the effects are driven by mobilization efforts of social contacts or by endogenous social effects of their political activism. The findings suggest that while the social contact's political activism does have causal effects, the effects are largely due to the social contact's mobilization efforts through political discussion networks rather than endogenous effects of the activism itself. The implications of the findings on the political mobilization process are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rhetoric is to culture what strategy is to action: a conceptual toolkit that emphasizes observable, micro-level interactions rather than broad structural metaphors. From these small things we can build up to the larger structures and processes that have long fascinated social-movement scholars. But our research and theory will advance only if we get the little things right in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I focus on the efforts of one advocacy non-governmental organization (NGO)—Aurat Foundation— in promoting women's political participation in Pakistan. Pakistan's history is marked by a lack of women's political participation. Women have been historically excluded from governance at the local, provincial, and federal levels. I discuss the many obstacles that Aurat Foundation (AF) faces in its campaign to increase women's political participation. The sexual division of labor, essentialist notions about the "nature" and roles of men and women, the culture of criminalization and corruption that pervades the public and political sphere, and fear of "character assassination", prevent women from entering politics in large numbers. The image of NGOs as "western agents", and the fact that gender issues (such as women's political participation) are not necessarily seen as a priority, make AF's job even more difficult. I then analyze the different types of strategies employed by AF's workers in order to overcome these obstacles and promote women's political participation and discuss the reasons for their popularity among NGOs, even though these strategies have met with much criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how interpersonal recruitment affects citizen participation in politics. Previous studies have argued that interpersonal recruitment causally affects participation: people participate because somebody asks. However, recruitment attempts are not made randomly but are targeted toward people with high participation potential. This implies that there could be a strong selection bias in the effect of recruitment on participation. In other words, interpersonal recruitment may work simply because recruiters ask the people who would participate anyway. This study employs the counterfactual framework of causal inference to address the issue of selection bias. Using propensity score matching and sensitivity analysis, I show that interpersonal recruitment affects only non-electoral forms of participation but not electoral ones such as campaign participation or donation. This study also finds that the effect of recruitment is not constant across individuals but varies by the propensity of being a recruitment target. Ironically, people who have a higher chance of becoming targets are less likely to be influenced by recruitment attempts while those who have less chance of receiving requests are most likely to be affected. I discuss the implications of these findings on the declining but increasingly unequal political participation in America. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes two important contributions. First, it introduces the Children's Rights Index (CRI). We believe the CRI is the first international measure of children's rights; we provide scores for over 180 countries. Second, this paper seeks to explain differences in levels of children's rights. This paper has two components. It first presents descriptive information on children's rights. After presenting total CRI scores, this paper maps levels of civil, political, social and economic rights of children across the world. The second component employs ordinary least squares regression analysis and Fuzzy-Set/Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to consider the explanatory powers of cultural diversity, legal institutions, political power, country wealth, and demographic structures on levels of children's rights. QCA is especially useful for examining combinations of structures, actors, interests, and resources associated with some theories of policy innovation. Preliminary regression and QCA results indicate that countries with relatively large proportions of children do not have high levels of children's rights. This result runs counter to notions that with numbers comes power. Given that children are less powerful compared to adults, this result implies that governments may view children as an expense. The QCA results indicate the explanatory importance of internationalization of law and the role of an independent institution responsible for monitoring children's rights. These two factors suggest that, on their own, governments do not promote children's rights. Some governments respond to international influences and others respond to domestic, non-government actors who promote children's rights. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of a larger project in which I attempt to develop a causal understanding of the conditions and processes through which particularistic notions of citizenship rights transcend their institutional, cultural, and conceptual limits, as they become incorporated into universal categories of human rights. Following recent work that identifies the importance of ideas in shaping policy outcomes, I argue that informal, cultural precepts on the one hand, and the structure of formal law-making institutions, on the other, define the range of ideas that are able to influence the development of legal rights principles. Ultimately, though, cultural factorsâ?”particularly normative understandings of groupnessâ?”weigh most heavily in defining the ideas that produce the institutional changes necessary for the universalization of particularistic categories of rights. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of surveillance on the exercise of foundational political rights in the United States. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we link protected assembly and association rights to social movements theory. The analysis assesses the impacts of surveillance on the analytical dimensions of social movements identified by scholars: resources, political opportunities, framing, cultures of resistance, political consciousness, and social movement organizations. We draw on interviews with 71 formal and informal "social justice" organizations experiencing different levels of surveillance from 1998-2006 in 4 regions of the U.S. Our findings suggest important implications for social movements scholars and for future litigation of surveillance-related issues ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrant labour has become increasingly significant within many advanced capitalist labour markets. Scholarly research indicates that migrant workers hold a wide range of occupations, from undocumented workers in informal economies to highly mobile professionals. These workers are incorporated into Northern labour markets through guestworker programs and social policies that accord varying degrees of political and economic rights to various categories of migrants. With a focus on temporary labour programs in Canada, this paper identifies the ways in which national and transnational regulatory frameworks shape patterns of labour mobility, labour market incorporation, and the social rights of migrant workers. While focusing on the Canadian case, the study of these guestworker programs is instructive for our broader understanding of how social policy shapes both global labour migration patterns and the social rights of migrants. Specifically, it demonstrates how national and transnational policy frameworks regulate global migration patterns in ways that contribute to the production and reproduction of what can in cases become permanent flows of temporary foreign workers. Further, with respect to social rights, it illustrates how states regulate and incorporate migrant groups in different ways - in this case, based on occupational status - and how the differential forms of incorporation that stem from this contribute to patterns of labour market segmentation and the marginalization of particular groups of migrant workers. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disability has long been considered a personal and family issue within the private domain of society in Taiwan. Starting in the 1980s, however, disability issues, particularly the rights of disabled citizens, have been brought into the public sphere through an increasing number of organized collective actions. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with members of the Parents Association for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (PAPID), I explore the meanings of activism for parents who participated in the disability rights movement. First, I show the impacts of disability stigma for family members, especially for the mothers of disabled persons. Second, I analyze the identity transformation and empowerment of disability rights activists. I argue that the participants in this movement, mainly the mothers of intellectually disabled children, not only promoted the welfare of their children but they also learned to confront social stigma and renegotiate their gender roles. The parents' associations became an important public space for these mothers to escape home confinement and enjoy civic life. In contrast, the fathers who participated viewed activism as an obligation and were less likely show emotional attachment to the civic organizations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, over five million Americans are denied the right to vote as a result of prior felony conviction. The large number of citizens removed from the electorate because of a felony conviction raises the question of what effects disenfranchisement might have on electoral outcomes. If felons and ex-felons could vote, would they? And if they did vote, would it matter? Previous research has approached these questions in one of two ways: counterfactual analyses of individuals' voting behavior (Uggen & Manza 2002; Manza & Uggen 2004; 2006) or analyses of aggregate turnout figures across demographic groups or states (Miles 2004; Grose & Yoshinaka 2002). These analyses reach different conclusions regarding the electoral impact of felony disenfranchisement. In the present paper, I approach this debate with a new method, which takes advantage of temporal variation in state laws regulating felon voting rights. The variation comes in the form of state-level policy changes that re-enfranchise certain classes of convicted felons. Time series analyses of voter turnout in select states fails to identify any significant changes in voter turnout levels following re-enfranchising policy changes. These results suggest that felon re-enfranchisement may have a rather limited impact on the American electoral environment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing literature on the politics of inclusion/exclusion points out that a complete conceptualization of democracy includes women's access to government, their participation in society and the economy, and their right to claim state protection of personal status. In the Middle East, it is difficult for women to win elective office and hard to change national laws that discriminate, even though women in nearly every Middle Eastern state have formal political rights, such as the right to vote and the right to run for elective office. Kuwaiti women, among the most publicly assertive and active women in the Middle East, were denied political rights until May 2005. This paper examines the struggles related to achieving political rights in Kuwait and the changing status of women, paying particular attention to the context surrounding the recently achieved enfranchisement of women and the potential for increased participation in and protection by the state. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the human rights legal foundation for ‘information intervention’ or ‘media intervention’ conceived of as a part of rebuilding post-conflict societies. The media space is a critical site for post-conflict reconstruction, particularly when factional conflict and violence persist after the war, as in the present case of Iraq. Media / information intervention refers to the means of getting involved in a humanitarian crisis where there is evidence that the mass media have been manipulated to incite hatred and violence. It will be demonstrated that media intervention as a practice has ambiguous legal support in international law, due to the conflict between the jus cogens principle of non-intervention and the limited derogation of that principle provided by Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and by exceptions to allow restriction of speech provided in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). A review of the legal framework in international law that has an impact on media intervention campaigns will be provided. Reference will be made to media intervention experiences in previous post-war situations, e.g. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Rwanda, Cambodia. It will be argued that between an absolute prohibition of intervention and a set of specific conditions allowing derogation to non-interventionism, lies a small window of opportunity – a ‘limited exceptionism’ – for cultivating a media space that respects human rights. The stakeholders involved in rebuilding the media space should grasp the significance of this narrow opportunity to establish peace and security in post-conflict zones. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing theory on citizenship assumes a universal state that directly contracts rights and responsibilities with categories of citizens. Yet this phenomenology of citizenship does not fit the American state, which is best described as a complex network of "public" and "private" organizations that operate between federal, state, and local governments. This paper asks how street-level bureaucrats conceptualize citizenship in relationship to their work. I propose a new conceptual tool, the "cultural model of citizenship," to denote the metaphors and cultural distinctions that people use to talk about the relationship between the state, the polity, and individual citizens. I interviewed 42 street-level bureaucrats, from a cross-section of policy domains, in a medium-sized city in Texas. An inductive analysis produced two distinct cultural models: Incorporative Citizenship and Conditional Citizenship. Most of the sample drew on both models in a more ad hoc and ambivalent fashion, without evidence of a third model. I illustrate how people draw on these "cultural models of citizenship" to evaluate the fairness of state practices. I argue that research on political culture should measure situational metaphorical reasoning about institutions, which is distinct from conventional measures like attitudes, values, and liberal-to-conservative political ideology. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of mass media render the discursive power of advertisements as sites of identity construction reflecting cultural hegemony. Using ethnographic content analysis, this study explores the production of Queer identity through the political economy of print advertisements in the Advocate and Curve from 2000-2002. Over 1,000 advertisements were examined based on three schematic themes: race, sex and gender, relationship and children, and textual messages. Men are more likely than women to be portrayed within gender normative scripts in relation to their status as the ideal representation of the Queer niche market. As compared to Caucasians, African Americans are branded through restricted representation by visibility, product type, and sexual appeal. Furthermore, advertisements reveal a cooptation of language for political rights. The findings show evidence that support the role of niche marketing in the commodification and homogenization of Queer identity in consumer society privileging hegemony within a politically marginalized group. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACTNot Just Class: African Americans, Political Participation, and the Gender DivideWhile numerous studies discuss the political implications of class divisions among African Americans, few studies analyze gender differences in political participation. This study finds that African American women's political participation differs from that of African American men. Employing data of a national cross-sectional survey with a sample of 1205 adult African American respondents from the 1993 National Black Politics Study (NBPS) conducted by the Center for the Study of Race at the University of Chicago (Dawson, Brown, and Jackson, 1993), this study concludes that 1) African American women's political participation is less than that of African-American men; 2) While the Black church facilitates political participation, it's affects are stronger for men than for women; 3) Belonging to an organization that improves the status of Black Americans facilitates equal gender political participation; 4) Black feminist consciousness decreases political participation on the part of men, but has no affect on Black women's participation; 5) Black nationalism facilitates Black women's political participation while having a negative affect on men's participation. These findings have important implications for post-civil rights era political mobilization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the best indicators of how societies treat their vulnerable populations is the incidence of child hunger. Drawing on WHO and UNDP estimates of change in child hunger rates in 88 less developed countries between 1990 and 2000, we show that militarism and human rights protection, especially countering gender discrimination and insuring political rights, are critical to reducing child hunger. These effects show net of controls for economic growth, increase in food supply, total food aid and emergency relief aid, suggesting that world hunger is fundamentally a political problem that should best be addressed by protecting basic political rights, reducing violent conflict and improving the status of women. While there is some "trickle down" from economic growth, we find no effects of total international food aid and emergency relief aid. Famine early warning and related efforts to counter child hunger should focus on institutional political change and efforts to counter gender discrimination in addition to boosting economic growth and food supply. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the migration and nationality policies in Argentina, Italy, and Spain from 1853-1919. The state plays a very important role in gendering migration and state membership processes through law and associated practices. Argentina, Italy, and Spain, from 1853-1919, were linked by migratory flows that were significant in magnitude. Immigration policies helped them in generating, regulating and shaping the composition of migration flows from abroad. Nationality policies were based on closure around nation-states' tangible and intangible goods.

Utilizing data from the woman suffrage movement, we explore what factors influence four distinctly different movement processes and outcomes: 1) the establishment and legitimation of the social movement itself as indicated by a) the existence of a state suffrage organization with a hierarchical leadership structure and b) established ties with other women's organizations within the state, 2) the implementation of generalist strategies (defined as the use of both insider and outsider tactics), and 3) elite mobilization and support as indicated by a referendum on woman suffrage. Utilizing an institutionalist account of movement mobilization and support, we examine the effect of state characteristics (age and legislative size), rules and procedures, and political climate (bill introduction and referenda held), 2) democratization, party choice, party support, and alliances with men's groups that supported suffrage for women, and 3) changing institutional logics (women's economic rights, school suffrage, and women's labor force participation) as well as trans-state forces of diffusion, isomorphism, and national suffrage mobilization. Findings lend support to critics of political opportunity structure who argue against formulations that suggest a window of opportunity or an opening in political and institutional space. Instead the findings suggest that institutional forces influence movement outcomes at various points—including movement mobilization, strategies, and elite support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study which explains the variation in women's suffrage adoption across the 48 contiguous U.S. States' between 1848, when formal activism for suffrage began, and 1918, before the ratification of the 19th Amendment. According to the author, during the 19th century and into the 20th century, it was believed that only men should inhabit the public sphere of business and politics, while considering women biologically and socially fit for only the domestic sphere. The study of the historical accounts of women's suffrage movements in the West suggested patterns inconsistent with mobilization theory.

While it is widely acknowledged that corruption has negative effects on economic growth, investment, and social welfare, the structural causes of corruption have not been received adequate cross-national analysis. Using structural equation models this cross-national analysis investigates several important structural determinants of cross-national variation in levels of corruption (or more precisely control of corruption). For the purpose of cross-validation, two independent sources of control of corruption data are analyzed separately, one based on 2002 data and one based on 2004 date. Our structural equation analyses yield three major findings: (1) Indicators of democracy—political rights, civil liberties, press freedom, and economic freedom consistently show significant positive effects on control of corruption; (2) ethnolinguistic fractionalization consistently shows negative effects, both directly and indirectly; and (3) state strength has a positive direct effect on control of corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political communication scholars have put forward contrasting theories and produced contradictory evidence in attempts to explain the impact of heterogeneity of political discussion on active citizenship. However, most of these studies examined the effects of heterogeneous discussion independently of homogenous discussion. This is overly simplistic, of course, given that most citizens are likely to be mobilized through discussion with both likeminded and non-likeminded discussion partners. This study examines the opposing claims on the civic consequences of heterogeneous political discussion empirically and directly compares the influence of heterogeneous and homogeneous political discussion on indicators of active citizenship. Overall, two general findings emerged. First, heterogeneous political discussion does encourage democratic citizenship and, second, heterogeneous political discussion and homogeneous political discussion have different effects on indicators of active citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protest event analysis has been concerned more with the relation between mobilization and shifting political opportunities than with the substance of claims. While there is plenty of event analyses of claim making, few of them have done serious analysis of claim making. This paper intends to fill this hole in the literature and presents the analysis of ?claim networks?. Using a database of over three thousand events of popular protests in Mexico between 1964 and 2000, I reexamine an important finding from Sergio Tamayo?s political discourse analysis, namely, transformation of social protests demanding social and economic rights into political protests demanding civil and political rights. By examining how popular groups make claims of different citizenship rights (civil, political, social, etc.), this study discovers that political rights ?crucial for democratization?became predominant claims in the neoliberal period not necessarily in term of frequencies these claims were asserted. Rather, the real importance of political rights lies in that popular groups needed to address political issues even when they were trying to satisfy other issues like social rights, civil rights, or economic and material demands. Mexico?s democratic movements became durable and powerful because these were closely tied to everyday economic and material issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]