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This article will consider the polycentric topography of politics in the centres of southern Italy between the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. The institutional fluidity which characterized the universitates of the Kingdom of Naples determined the use of different types of 'informal' spaces by the municipal bodies which administered the cities via groups of local elites and royal officials. These included wide, hybrid spaces, such as city squares and markets, smaller structured spaces such as the open loggias and archways, as well as shops and taverns. Within a context of 'spatial fluidity' which implied the parallel use and interchange of such spaces, the article will look to the use of spolia, namely ancient sculptures and inscriptions, and of new all'antica artistic and architectural features to confer administrative and juridical authority to spaces that were intended to host multiple functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research aims to study the propaganda of the Russian Empire in Central Asia on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. In the work, the method of comparative analysis and civilizational approach was used, which made it possible to assess the impact of propaganda narratives on the development of the region. The study found that the jubilee celebrations were an occasion for the build-up of monarchist propaganda. The practical significance of this research lies in its detailed analysis of the mechanisms of monarchist propaganda during the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty in Central Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos Medievales is the property of Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Pandeglang Regency is home to numerous potential tourism villages dispersed across various locations; however, their management remains fragmented and lacks comprehensive stakeholder involvement. This study examines the participation and role of local elites in tourism village development through a qualitative approach involving in-depth interviews and observations. The findings reveal that Community-Based Tourism (CBT), emphasizing community participation in organizing, managing, and developing tourism independently with self-awareness, is the most suitable concept for the region. Local elite participation manifests in two forms: mechanical participation, driven by external systemic requirements, and organic participation, arising from the elites’ intrinsic awareness and commitment. The political roles of local elites are categorized as opinion leaders generating and disseminating ideas, mediators bridging aspirations and interests among stakeholders, and decision-makers formulating and implementing policy decisions. It is recommended that tourism village development actively involves local elites to ensure shared responsibility and accountability in addressing potential challenges.

The study investigates the Habsburg (Hungarian) civil service and its relation to the Czechoslovak state on the territory of Slovakia in the immediate post-First World War years. By exploring how Czechoslovakia regulated the status of former Hungarian postal employees and civil servants working in public education until 1918, the study provides an in-depth look at how the civil service was integrated into the Czechoslovak state in its eastern Slovakian regions. The main argument is based on the analysis of 294 personal trajectories, including detailed questionnaires on social networks, language use, nationality declaration, political behaviour and the job opportunities of teachers and postal employees. On the one hand, civil servants' attitudes are discussed. How did they react to the creation of the new state? To what extent was it possible for them to stay in their position? On the other hand, the Czechoslovak state's reaction to the shortage of qualified and loyal personnel is analysed. These trajectories belie how the Hungarian civil service was more significant for Czechoslovak institutions and state-building than national historiographies have so far presented and reveal individual strategies of coping with the transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sabah's decolonization and subsequent merger with Malaysia was fraught with uncertainty. The 1962 Cobbold Commission of Enquiry in British Borneo aggravated regional tensions in Southeast Asia and sparked allegations of neo-colonialism. While Orthodox scholarship argues that the commission delivered a decisive cross-section of public opinion, fresh analysis of archival material indicates that its outcomes were compromised by logistical and functional limitations. Through recovering key local voices and disentangling commission addenda from the archive, this paper shows how the inquiry became a vehicle for local elite advancement and Anglo-Malayan geopolitical agenda, rather than transparent democratic legitimation. Furthermore, it contends that the pre-emptive (rather than post factum) nature of the inquiry laid bare its political potentiality. The inconclusiveness of its findings led many to dismiss Sabah's public as incapable of determining its own future, prompting Britain and Malaya to push ahead with Projek Malaysia [the Malaysia plan] largely irrespective of public opinion. The subsequent push to form Malaysia contributed to deteriorating relations with neighbouring states and ushered a period of marked geopolitical instability. This paper argues, however, that a key, understudied outcome of the commission was the crystallization of local elite voices. Many elites—traditional headmen and local power brokers—claimed to speak for thousands of followers and thus utilized the commission to cement political influence in the postcolonial arena. By casting light on colonial political devices amidst the end of empire, this paper offers valuable nuance and a portable methodology for understanding a range of cognate decolonization experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the concepts of secularization (Meziane, 2022) and extractivism, as structuring processes, reconfigure subjectivities and nomadic lifestyles in the northwestern Sahara, a region marked by intensified extractive activities since the mid-20th century. Based on ethnographic research conducted in 2022 and 2023, it analyzes how the exploitation of natural resources transforms local socio-political structures towards forms of governance and integration within the postcolonial state as a historical process. Engaging with the theory of extraversion (Bayart, 1999), the article demonstrates how Sahrawi elites leverage relationships with external actors to strengthen their local power while maintaining complex connections with state structures. The article illustrates the complexity of transgenerational positionalities within a family belonging to the local elite, navigating between the transmission of the northwestern Saharan nomadic heritage and adaptation to neoliberal and rentier dynamics, which transforms power relations.

Scholarship demonstrated the major role of inheritance and kinship for elite's power reproduction, particularly among noble families. In the absence of monarchic and court structures, ruling classes that enjoyed privileges and engaged in social closure could become the functional equivalent of a nobility. In this paper, we examine the evolution of the power of Swiss patrician families in the three major Swiss cities (Basel, Geneva, and Zurich) since the end of the nineteenth century and assess whether urban oligarchies endure in the twentieth century and what role kinship ties play in the reproduction of power structures. Building on a systematic database of 5,199 urban elites who hold power positions in the main economic, political, academic, and cultural institutions, we describe the evolution of Swiss patrician families between 1890 and 1957. Using social network, kinship, and sequence analysis, we provide a comprehensive investigation of the Swiss patrician elite's evolution at both the individual and the family level. Our analyses show a general decline of patrician families' presence in urban positions of power, however with significant variations according to both the cities and the spheres of activity. Furthermore, we identify distinct trajectories of families who have either lost their access to power positions, managed to access again or have remained in urban power positions according to different survival strategies. Beyond the Swiss case, we contribute to the literature on power and kinship through an interdisciplinary approach combining historical and sociological perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign companies have acquired vast land for bio-fuel crop plantations and agricultural investment in Saharan African countries, often referred to as "Land grabbing." This practice violates human rights, lacks indigenous consent, and has no social or environmental considerations. Large-scale land deals impact land rights, as investors obtain leases and clear land for industrial monoculture plantations, with limited inclusion of local land-owning families. This is a key development strategy of the Sierra Leone government. Large-scale land deals in Sierra Leone affect land rights, allowing investors to clear land for industrial monoculture plantations, limiting local land-owning families' inclusion and a key development strategy. This study aims to analyze the implications of land grabbing for local communities, focusing on issues like displacement, livelihood loss, environmental degradation, and social conflict. This study utilized a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design including both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. While existing relevant literature was synthesised into the research, data was collected from secondary data resources such as journals, research articles, and government reports on large-scale land deals in Sierra Leone via content analysis. Also, to capture in-depth local-level dynamics, key informant interviewees using purposive samples were selected, informed by the need to ensure the sample represented a cross-section of the population of interest, namely, the stakeholders involved on the different sides of civil society activism, the local elites, elders, youth, women, land-owning families, land leases and the grassroots activists. Resulting from gaps in and a sheer absence of a structured legal framework for land lease arrangement, Sierra Leone’s land governance institutions were ill-equipped to handle large-scale land deals. This further revealed the incapacity and impoverishment of the government in supplementing agricultural investments, thus, threatening the country’s food security. However, prioritising governance, regulatory structures, technical know-how, and coordination among key agencies might hold the key to identifying missed opportunities and effectively engaging with development partners, investors, donors and NGOs. Therefore, it is recommended that a structured legal framework for land lease arrangements is needed, allowing government and multinational corporations to increase coordination, inclusion, participation, and cooperation with land-owning families.

This article analyzes the origin and extinction of the Revisionist Party of State of Amazonas (PRAM), that existed from 1905 to 1910. The purpose of this work is to advance the understanding of the social composition, proposals and electoral activity of the minority parties that existed in Brazil during the First Republic. First, the electoral law instituted in 1904 (Rosa e Silva Law), which introduced the cumulative vote, was a stimulus for the formation of the PRA. Second, the majority of leaders and candidates of this party were former members of the situationism. At the time of their passage through the government field, they played little prominent roles in public administration. Third, the extinction of this party resulted from a reform that added new municipalities to the 1st electoral district of Amazonas. This expansion was unfavorable to the PRAM because its candidates did not have a relevant support base beyond the state capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the social profiles of the leaders of the Social Democratic Party and the Republican Union of Paraná in the city of Paranaguá, from 1935 to 1937. Most of the PSD leaders in that city were newcomers to the political scene. The URP, in turn, was locally commanded by veterans who had cultivated an alliance since the time of the First Republic. It is also demonstrated that in the 1930s the majority of these veterans were not electorally competitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie III, Historia Medieval is the property of Editorial UNED and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Much of the academic discussion surrounding experiences of minorities during the collapse of Soviet power in Moldova centres around Transnistria and Gagauzia. However, a significant portion of Moldova’s Russian-speaking population lived outside these regions. There is yet to be a study that addresses how Russian speakers from outside Transnistria and Gagauzia responded to the challenges of perestroika. This article 1 shows that the Russian-speakers in three towns, Bălți, Ocnița and Basarabeasca, held similar opinions to those in Transnistria and Gagauzia. However, I argue that conflict was avoided in Bălți, Ocnița, and Basarabeasca due to proactive measures taken by local elites, who worked hard to placate citizens in their respective towns.

The reforms provided space for local elites, both traditionally based (Bangsawan) and political elites (Bureaucrats-Politicians) to contest in the arena of local democracy. It is in this arena that the value of the political culture of local elites is tested whether it can strengthen democracy or on the contrary weaken democracy in the midst of the process towards its death.(Ziblatt, 2019) where democracy, which actually places the people as the main focal point, becomes "blunted" by political oligarchy and personal elite domination (Fatah & Deni, 2019).(Fatah & Deni, 2019). Using Gadamer's Phenomenological and Hermeneutic Methods, this research analyses the actions of local elites in interpreting the local values of Jou Se Ngofa Ngare in the 2020 Ternate City Regional Election Arena. This research aims to find the meaning of Jou Se Ngofa Ngare local values in strengthening the cultural values of local politics and democracy. The results of the study revealed that [1] The meaning of local values in local political culture and democratic values is interpreted by local elites through the process of history, pre-understanding (prejudice), tradition and value authority of leaders (Sultan / Kolano) and cultural symbols [2] The stronger the meaning and application of local values, the stronger the meaning and application of the relationship between leaders (Jou) and the people (Ngofa Ngare) in strengthening local political culture and democratic values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconstructs the history of a Zaydi sayyid clan, the Āl Shams al-Dīn, their rise to prominence prior to the Ottoman conquest of Yemen and their continued success in maintaining their status at the top of Yemeni socio-political hierarchies over four centuries. The article explains the reasons for the success of the family as resilient local rulers and argues that the ability of the lords of Kawkabān to build alliances with the Ottomans was a necessary step for them to keep their special status in the next state formed in Yemen—the Qasimid imamate. Their alliance with the Ottomans is placed in a broader context for comparison. Through the analysis of the position of the family in early modern Yemen continuities between three successive political regimes are demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research focuses on the power relations of the local elite and the village head candidate, namely Asep Kurniawan, where the local elite plays a role and has a stake in the life of Sukaluyu Village, both physically and politically. This study uses elite theory and the concept of power relations which will explain the form of power relations that occur between local elites and Asep Kurniawan and explain the role of local elites in mobilizing community support for Asep Kurniawan in the 2019 Village Head Election in Sukaluyu. This study uses a descriptive method with a qualitative approach. The results of the study show that the power relations that occur between the local elite and Asep Kurniawan are used as a strategic game, domination and governance where each local elite has a political agreement during the Head Election. In addition, this study reveals that the role of local elites in mobilizing community support for Asep Kurniawan has worked well because each local elite has a strong influence with power in each area of Sukaluyu Village, making it easier for Asep Kurniawan to be elected as Head of Sukaluyu Village. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When it comes to successful refugee reception, the local level matters. Research overwhelmingly examines host communities' attitudes, but endorsement from local politicians is equally important to resolving conflicts and facilitating harmonious interaction. Yet the preferences of local leaders and their willingness to support the resettlement process are understudied. We conduct the first-ever conjoint experiment on a representative sample of local elected leaders in Greece, a heavily affected country with many active host sites. We elicit elite preferences regarding refugee resettlement and find that local leaders are more likely to support it if they are involved in the process and can control the frequency and intensity of local-refugee interactions. Overall, our results suggest that processes enabling elites to control "exposure," when combined with fair-share allocations schemes, can facilitate future resettlement. Such processes, however, introduce new humanitarian concerns and debates about refugee mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In November 1682 the Dutch pirate Nicholas Van Hoorn entered the port of Santo Domingo. He left behind a path of robberies in Spain and attacks on ships of every nationality in West Africa for which English and Dutch authorities sought to prosecute him. The events that transpired during Van Hoorn's visit to Hispaniola reveal that European diplomatic alliances meant little in places where local groups had co-opted the Spanish bureaucracy under their own control and patronage. Local interests used their political influence to maneuver the Spanish administration and to serve their own goals, thus upending Spanish (and by extension, European) diplomatic arrangements. The sack of Veracruz in 1683 was in part the consequence of these actions, showing a worst-case scenario of the impact that events in the Spanish Caribbean borderlands had on the functioning of imperial systems. This article thus seeks to encourage a reevaluation of the relevance of Spanish Caribbean in the functioning of the Spanish colonial system beyond their traditional categorization as marginal enclaves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been about three decades since Mozambique transitioned from a brutal civil war and one-party rule to peace and democracy. Although Mozambique has not relapsed into another large-scale civil war, sustainable peace and democracy in the country have become ever more elusive. In 2013, military clashes between Renamo and the Frelimo-led government resumed and prompted a new peace process, whilst poverty and inequalities are rampant, authoritarianism is on the rise, and an Islamic insurgency erupted in the northern region. Accordingly, while some scholars still praise Mozambique's post-war peacebuilding as successful, others have claimed that peacebuilding failed. This article evades the binary of successful or failed liberal peacebuilding in Mozambique. Instead, it applies the concepts of friction and hybridity to offer an alternative way of reading the 30 years of peace (building) in Mozambique. The article argues that frictions in values and interests between the international/liberal peacebuilders and local (non-liberal) elites have resulted in a negative and unstable hybrid peace, that is, a precarious peace in Mozambique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of En la España Medieval is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Investigaciones Historicas is the property of Universidad de Valladolid, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper analyzes the specific occurrence of local officials from the period of the Principate who performed administrative and priestly functions in several different cities in the province of Dalmatia. According to some authors, this type of movement is called geographic mobility. Five examples from the province were analyzed, of which one is from Doclea, three from Salona and one from municipium S. They are mostly dignitaries who were in office at the end of the first and during the second century. The officials we deal with performed mostly common functions such as decurion, duovir or priest of the imperial cult. However, on their inscriptions we also come across duties that are very rare in the epigraphic corpus not only of the province of Dalmatia but of the Roman Empire in general, such as dispunctor and curator rei publicae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

C. A. Bayly es el investigador más influyente en el campo de la historia de la India de finales del siglo XX y principios del XXI. Su obra es accesible a los lectores de habla hispana gracias a El nacimiento del mundo moderno, 1780‒1914: Conexiones y comparaciones globales (2010), traducción de The Birth of the Modern World, 1780‒1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (2004). Este el libro, su único texto traducido al español, es la obra por la cual es más conocido en Latinoamérica y España. Este volumen representa, sin embargo, un solo capítulo en una larga trayectoria de contribuciones a la historiografía de la India colonial, el Imperio británico y la historia global. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar el conjunto de la producción intelectual de C. A. Bayly para un público hispanohablante y no especialista, destacando los vínculos que establece entre la India colonial, el Imperio británico y el resto del mundo.

The formalization of sharia (particularly regional regulations on sharia in Aceh) since 2001 up to 2019 had incorporated economic and political contents between local and national elites. Such condition was a result of local and national elite interests gaining political advantages wherein sharia was utilized as a tool by the elites to dominate civilians. Due to political interests, civilians became marginalized by sharia. The current article demonstrates that local and national political elites had used sharia for their political interests without considering the substantial purpose of sharia itself. Women, in particular, are disadvantaged by the various regulations (qanun) issued by wilayatul khisbah as the guardians of sharia in Aceh. The article also aims to show existing contradictions between the ideal aspirations of wilayatul khisbah and the actual practice of regional regulations pertaining to sharia on the ground, namely the involvement of political elites in advocating sharia, which has not made people become more religious but provoked them to resist in secret instead. Data in the article were acquired through literature study, field observations, and in-depth interviews with a number of informants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Insisting on the role of spectator in his travel writing, V.S. Naipaul claims he is merely the “manager of narrative”, who retells objective truths told by the people among whom he travels. Nonetheless, an examination of the ethnic trauma of post-apartheid South Africa in Naipaul’s The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief (2010) reveals that his voice dominates the narrative. Naipaul’s negative view of post-apartheid South Africa is consistent with his previous views of the “dark continent”. Contrary to other writers’ optimistic attitudes toward South Africa, Naipaul holds a negative view of the Rainbow Nation. For Naipaul, South Africa is still trapped in the mess of ethnic trauma: the ‘coloured’ population fears a lack of identity; the white people fear inverted black racism; and the black populace fear a lack of possibility. This article seeks to explore the reasons for Naipaul’s pessimistic perspective on South Africa by reading his related travelogues, African writings, interviews, authorised biography and Nobel lecture. These works reveal two main reasons for his opinion of South Africa: his Western bias against the “dark continent”, and his encounters with various local ‘elites’. A comparison with a travelogue by Bi Shumin further supports the argument that Naipaul’s view of Africa in general and South Africa in particular is selective and one-sided.

The purpose of the study is to explore the politics of beneficiaries' selection and resource distribution of social safety net (SSN) programs and how local elites and political groups establish political settlement by using it as a tool. In developing countries, formal systems are not strong enough and elites' groups use their power to create informal institutions for securing their interests. As other studies have shown, informal politics influence the processes of selection and distribution of SSN programs in Bangladesh. The study is qualitative in nature and the selected research area is Rajakhali Union in Cox's Bazar District. The study found that informal systems (e.g. clientelist politics, political affiliation, personal conflicts, and kinship) determine the selection and distribution of SSN programs. The Union Parishad (UP) members distribute the SSN programs to their ineligible clients (supporters, local elites, and political groups) by bypassing the formal systems for strengthening clientelist relations, increasing their legitimacy, stabling their power, and increasing their vote banks. They (UP members, political elites, and local elites) have allowed introducing more informal structures that better serve their interests. They have used the SSN programs as a tool for establishing the political settlement (distribution of power between UP members and local elites). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why is rebel governance more responsive in some areas than in others? In recent years, scholars have started to examine the determinants of rebel governance. Less attention has been given to explaining variation in the responsiveness of rebel governance, that is, the degree to which rebels are soliciting and acting upon civilian preferences in their governance. This article seeks to address this gap by studying local variation in rebel responsiveness. I argue that rebel responsiveness is a function of whether local elites control clientelist networks that allow them to mobilize local citizens. Strong clientelist networks are characterized by local elite control over resources and embeddedness in local authority structures. In turn, such networks shape local elites' capacity for mobilizing support for, or civil resistance against, the rebels, and hence their bargaining power in negotiations over rebel governance. Drawing on unique interview and archival data collected during eight months of fieldwork, as well as existing survey data, the study tests the argument through a systematic comparison of four areas held by the Forces Nouvelles in Côte d'Ivoire. The analysis indicates that the strength of local elites' clientelist networks shapes rebel responsiveness. Moreover, it provides support for the theorized civil resistance mechanism, and shows that this mechanism is further enhanced by ethnopolitical ties between civilians and rebels. These findings speak to the burgeoning literature on rebel governance and to research on civil resistance. In addition, the results inform policy debates on how to protect civilians in civil war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate how the political geography of local power and national-subnational alignment influences the distribution of conflict between election contests. We ask how consistently local intermediaries, such as members of parliament (MPs), can sustain their own support and that of their successful national candidate. The best measure for the ability of local elites to generate and keep support is candidate vote margins. These election results recast elites and areas as core, swing or costly regime investments, which in turn influences the streams of patronage and authority between election cycles. Based on the political geographies that result from subnational election data for 13 African countries, we find that in core areas where support for the leader is high, there is limited violence by state forces; state violence is significantly higher in areas costly to the national leader; and violence by non-state armed actors (e.g. militias) is most likely to occur in swing areas where the winning margin of the last legislative election is narrow for the local candidate. It is in these swing regions that competing political elites engage in violence to replace poorly performing local intermediaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on policy network formation has contributed to an understanding of the patterns of interaction among political actors. Belief homophily, power seeking, and opportunity structures provide explanations studied for specific policy areas. This study tests these established theories in a different environment by asking: What drives policy network formation at the local level? From a review of the literature on policy networks and local politics, the study derives nine hypotheses, which are tested for a German municipality. Information and coordination networks have been collected among its councilors through an online survey. The study identifies the drivers of their formation utilizing exponential random graph models. Findings support the effects of party membership and perceived influence. They also point to the tendency of councilors to coordinate with the mayor and they emphasize local councils as an influential opportunity structure specific to local networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia 396 is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, Instituto de Historia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article analyzes the social composition and electoral performance of three municipal parties that existed in the State of Paraná from 1905 to 1915. The objective of this study is to advance the understanding of the internal organization and the electoral action of the parties that fought the dominant parties during the First Republic. First, the emergence of local parties evidenced the difficulties of the leaders of the state opposition to control the political action of the oppositionists residing in the municipalities of Paraná. Second, a portion of the members of the municipal parties came from the major party. The municipal parties served as shelters for politicians who later returned to the ruling group. Third, evidenced is show that the short-term of the municipal parties represented the failure of the project of the local elites to counterbalance the electoral strength of the ruling party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Revista Maracanan is the property of Revista Maracanan and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article discusses the ways in which newsprint allowed local contributors and readers in colonial settings to think across gender, race, and other core colonial subject-positions. It also asks about the extent to which the central role of men in controlling local print networks has implications for how we conceptualise "publics" and "public spheres" in the colonial era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The different social representations that residents of the city of Colima held with respect to local rivers in the second half of the 19th century influenced landscape changes in that setting. To analyze this phenomenon, we adopted the posture of Serge Moscovici, a psychologist who argues that representations foster the elaboration of a social object shared by a group of people that is used to facilitate the communication process and to propose behaviors. Results identified five groups who had made the most representations and modifications of the landscape. They were classified as travelers, small businessmen, politicians, local intellectuals, and doctors. Though their representations of the landscape were diverse, several emphasized three specific dimensions: aesthetic representations; those related to progress; and those that expressed a concern for safety. These representations were incorporated into discourses that either promoted or discredited various elements of the landscape, including bridges, canals, rice crops, orchards, and public bathrooms, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the influence of globalization and the European Union membership accession process, important administrative reform initiatives have been taken in Turkey in the 2000s in the framework of economic, social, political, cultural and technological needs. In this process, central government agencies and administrations, public financial management, local governments and similar public organizations have undergone important transitions. The most important initiative taken to achieve regional governance is the establishment of Regional Development Agencies (RDAs). The present study performs a 10-year longitudinal analysis of RDAs in Turkey in the context of governance and local elites. The first phase of the study was conducted in 2010, and the second phase was conducted in 2019. The aim of the study is to evaluate whether RDAs have realized their potential in local democracy, sustainable development and decentralization, as well as to define the characteristics of policies to be pursued in line with further development of these agencies. Consequently, it has been observed that maintaining a centralized state tradition, along with institutional deficiencies, has transformed RDAs into an apparatus of the central government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an extensive study of 12 parishes in the Sundsvall region, this article, informed by studies in the economic history of education, examines changes and continuities in local school politics during the period of 1840–1900. Using the Sundsvall region in the northern part of Sweden as its point of departure, this article shows how basic political conflicts shifted when political franchise, tax regulations and the social structure of the region changed during the second half of the nineteenth century. At the end of the investigated period, the basic conflict of school politics was no longer between those who owned land and those who did not but rather between high- and low-income groups. Judging from local school politics, the local elites of the Sundsvall region, in contrast to local elites in the USA, England, Spain and Prussia, focused their attention on school funding. The main conflicts between the social groups not only concerned the distribution of school expenditures but also included issues, such as the location of schools.

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This text discusses the formation of Slovenian local elites in Trieste in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A significant part of the analysis presented here concerns the habitus of the elite and the attitudes expressed through the significance they attached to being members of the elite. Drawing on the discourses presented in the Slovenian and Croatian press published in Trieste, as well as biographical sources, this article outlines the vision of society held by the political leaders of the local community. It emphasises how the elites gave expression to their habitus in the public sphere through a variety of institutional activities. I argue that the life of the Slovenian politician and social activist Ivan Nabergoj, a figure central to this text, constitutes an ideal-type committed biography. In conclusion, I address the relationship between the elites and the surrounding community, arguing that elites were representatives of the community while also determining the forms of group belonging by their shaping of mechanisms of consolidation. In this article, I also consider the particularities of the political conditions of Slovenians living in the Slavic-Italian borderlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]