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This study employs a network analysis with centrality measures to trace China's evolving position within the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) governance network. The analysis spans from 2001 to 2021, revealing the shifts in China's position from a marginal to a more central one in the IFRS governance network. The benefit of information and control across the network empowers China to emerge as an important force influencing the operations of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and IFRS development. The findings contribute to our understanding of the political dynamics in international accounting regulations. Insights gleaned from China's experience offer implications for other jurisdictional constituents aspiring to amplify their influence in IFRS development. While acknowledging certain limitations in the study, this research concludes by advocating for a deeper exploration of China's representation role in the IASB's decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical to the trajectory and outcome of urban sustainable energy transitions is the ability of government institutions to foster conditions for change and innovation. In this paper, a theoretical perspective combining state power and local governance capability is used as a lens to examine the transition of the energy system in South Africa based on semi-structured interviews with a range of relevant stakeholders, supplemented by analysis of published academic and policy literature. The discussion highlights uneven transitional pathways across the country caused by variations in 'capability', together with continuing conflicting interests within the system which require more politically-informed policy processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the political power exerted by Italian rectors by investigating the preferential treatment received by the organisational subunits they belong to in terms of personnel resource allocation. During the rectors' mandate, their organisational subunits tend to grow significantly more (by ∼9%) than the others. The effect persists even after the implementation of the New public management-inspired policy – the Gelmini reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the years, policy learning has emerged as a theoretical lens to provide an alternative understanding of powering-based approaches to the policy process and policy outcomes. This has been a success story, with policy learning gaining presence among theoretical frameworks on the policy process. However, the puzzling-powering dichotomy is reductive. In real-world policy processes, we find both puzzling and powering. Also, we cannot reduce the value of learning to what is not explained by power alone. This Introduction shows how puzzling and powering interact and with what consequences on policy processes, moving beyond the dichotomy. We present how the four contributions of this Special Issue explore this territory and suggest how to approach the design of governance architectures for learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the role of the French empire in the emergence of political disenchantment in the early post-independance Francophone African society, this paper draws from Aminata Sow Fall's literary texts La Grève des bàttu (1979) and L'ex-Père de la nation (1987) to examine the political history of Senegal. Analysing these texts, we highlight two key aspects in this political history: the continuous external influence and contemptuous complicity of the former colonial power in various aspects of governance in post-independent Francophone African countries, and the complicity of the post-colonial leaders whose limited conceptualisation and interpretation of independence create conducive conditions for disenchantment. I argue that these dynamic influences which impact the validity of independence in Senegal, also represent the reality of many francophone African societies. To foreground the arguments in this article, I shall employ the post-colonial theory which facilitates the understanding of the impact of imperialism on ex-colonies, and sociological criticism which articulates the relationship between these texts and the social realities of the society from whence they emanate, drawing out specific insights about how they align with the interpretation of the chosen literary sources. In conclusion, I proposed that a re-evaluation of the role of internal and external political players is needed for the advancement and genuine emancipation of post-colonial African societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides empirical evidence that firms with a higher proportion of board directors who are politically more powerful than their CEOs can significantly reduce stock performance variability, but not on accounting performance variability. Our findings show that among independent (female, non-coopted) directors, only those who are politically more powerful than CEOs are effective in their monitoring role. In our additional tests, we show that our findings are not driven by an endogeneity bias. We find some mechanisms through which politically superior boards can mitigate stock performance variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the outcomes of an empirical study of power and leadership in three small Russian monotowns, conducted in 2011–2015 and 2018–2020. The study demonstrates the variability of power relations in Russian towns, despite the policy of centralization and the strengthening of authoritarian tendencies in Russian politics. The political process in monotowns retains its specificity due to the presence of town-forming enterprises, which largely determine the life of urban communities. Town-forming enterprises retain a high potential for influence in the political space of small towns, especially those enterprises that have solid economic resources and are successfully developing; their presence creates additional opportunities for the formation of an urban regime. The role of these enterprises in local politics varies significantly—from active participation to actual withdrawal. The differences largely depend on their economic potential and development prospects, as well as on a personal factor—the position of enterprise owners and the readiness of the leaders of municipal authorities and enterprises to cooperate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working within the framework of the "city-as-archive," this article investigates recent place-making processes that have occurred in Seoul, South Korea—debates over the function and symbolism of Gwanghwamun Square. The nature of the dynamics in who archives a city is determined by which actors hold power in place-making. In turn, archiving a city is a vigorously political process. In order to understand how the actors of Gwanghwamun Square's place-making affect the visualization and formation of shared city stories and memories, three significant stages of development at Gwangwmun Square will be examined: 1) the construction of a historical site that archives political ambition and nation-building, 2) the creation of an icon for global brand-building, and 3) as the archival site of conflicts between political leaders' ambitions and their citizens' priorities. By analyzing three phases of re-development, it becomes clear how power shifts, and how the scope of stakeholders expands and changes. It reveals the city as an archive, how a public space has been (re)collected, revised, retrieved, and erased by different stakeholders during different political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on labour disputes in China has primarily adopted a political economy perspective to focus on state-owned enterprises inland and foreign-invested plants in economically developed zones. Research has neglected community-based protests in small private firms in urbanising areas and their implications for human resource management and employment relations. This paper addresses this gap through an in-depth case study of a community-based, village cadres and clan leaders-led protest (including strike actions) against a privately-owned metal work factory located in a local community. Deploying the notion of community politics and 'acquaintance society', the study enriches our knowledge of industrial actions in China by extending the analytical scope of the context to understand the motive and choice of actions of individuals in participating in the disputes, and modes of dispute resolution. The study reveals the important role of social institutions and cultural norms, as well as the significance of discrete interventions of bureaucrats in the outcome of the dispute. We find that the settlement of community-based (labour) disputes may not officially involve key formal institutional actors, such as the trade union and legal/government authority. Rather, these institutional actors may be involved in an unofficial capacity, though drawing on power derived from their bureaucratic position in the intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to provide a better understanding of how the Iranian parliament building, as an assemblage of buildings, urban spaces, narratives and similar symbols, shapes, reshapes and negotiates the Iranian concept of its political self since the establishment of the parliamentary structure in 1906. It examines the political practices, ideologies and consciousness of people affected by different political concepts embedded in each regime. This article discusses the involvement of spaces in creating historical events. Despite similar historical studies, it focuses on where the history of constituting the Iranian Parliament happened. It does so by reviewing and analysing the archives, documents and new urban plans for the Iranian Parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As older individuals are more vulnerable to the virus and are more likely to vote than younger individuals, a state with a higher share of the older population is expected to impose a more stringent measure. However, the analysis shows that political alignment between policymakers and older voters plays an important role in determining the stringency of a measure. Using data on statewide stay-at-home orders across 50 U.S. states, the analysis shows that political alignment affects the duration of orders for Republican-controlled states in a significant manner, but not for Democrat-controlled states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For several decades now, a steady flow of scholarly contributions from both intellectual history and political theory has been reasserting Benjamin Constant as a theorist of liberal democracy. Constant's visionary understanding of liberal democracy is usually conflated with his understanding of limited popular sovereignty. In this article, I reconstruct Constant's positive conception of popular sovereignty, i.e. his conception of what popular sovereignty means within its limits and take it as the starting point of an analysis of Constant's understanding of democracy. I argue that Constant's understanding of popular sovereignty as 'the assent of all' leads to a distinction between 'governmental authority' and 'sovereign power'. The latter is exercised by the individual members of the political community and has features that align with contemporary aggregative and contestatory approaches to democracy. Even though according to this analysis, Constant's conception of democracy allows for both pluralism and dynamism, those are operative against the background of a more fundamental conservatism: Constant's understanding of sovereign power is predicated on an institutional status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is reasonable to argue that the institutions in the United States have historically been geared toward benefiting adherents of traditional Christianity. Thus, Christianity is perceived as the dominant religion in the US. While Christians have held a dominant religious position in the past, it is unwise to assume that their level of power in society remains at such high levels. I explore that question by assessing what it means to be a dominant group and then examining whether contemporary US Christianity meets that requirement. Christians appear to have no real financial advantage, are at a disadvantage culturally, but perhaps have some political resources, although that advantage may disappear over time. Whether Christians experience dominant status is not merely dependent upon the dimension (economic, cultural or political) being assessed, but also upon the Christian sub-groups to which they belong. In exploring whether Christians generally enjoy dominant group status in the United States, these complexities make it difficult to settle on a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer. This analysis is valuable in challenging simplistic assertions about the place of Christianity in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines how the discourse of sexuality was employed to gain political legitimacy by the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) to out-manoeuvre their political rivals Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai Faction (MDC-T) in the Zimbabwean elections of 2013. In the context of Zimbabwe politics, the nexus between sexual discourse and political contests presents a conspicuous shift from dominant day-to-day mundane political debates centred on policy to debates of personal (mis)conduct and morality. The nexus between sexuality and political legitimacy is analysed using Michel Foucault's ideas on sexuality: repressive hypothesis and biopower. The paper maintains that the media have been used to disseminate the discourse of sexuality to the electorate. Importantly, the influence of media is scrutinised using the theory of mass communication and media politics as articulated by Castells, and the Propaganda Model postulated by Herman and Chomsky. Through Critical Discourse Analysis and results from unstructured interviews the paper observes that the discourse of sexuality had a considerable bearing on gaining political power. Lastly, the paper observes that, although the discourse of sexuality has a symbiotic relationship with amassing political power, there were other factors that influenced the electoral outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In traditional Marxism, domination and exploitation constitute two distinct processes that, in turn, belong to two different spheres of social reality. This essay attempts to show that within the capitalist mode of production, like those modes that preceded it, domination is in fact the primary relation and is located at the very base of relations of exploitation. Indeed, exploitation only occurs when a minority determines the use of surplus labor. Moreover, the degree of exploitation depends on the level of mastery over the labor force, which is in turn an effect of the balance of forces between the worker and the owner of the means of production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of feminist geography in Hungary coincides with the 25 year-long history of Gender, Place and Culture. Authorities denied the existence of gender inequality in the era of state socialism, which was the primary obstacle to the spread of gender studies. The political changes that had occurred after 1989 had removed most obstacles, but feminist geography emerged with a delay relative to other disciplines. Its first two decades was characterised by struggles and compromises within and against the geographical discipline in order for it to win recognition. The 25 year-long history of feminist studies has, however, been completely broken by legislation proposed by the current government suggesting a ban on masters programs in gender studies. In this article, I trace the situation of feminist geography in Hungary by applying the concept ʻcurved spaceʼ. This concept adapted from modern physics claims that mass creates a gravitational field, i.e. it bends 4-dimensional ʻspacetimeʼ. My argument is that the situation of feminist geography in Hungary can be interpreted as an embodiment of ʻcurved spaceʼ. Using this analogy, I argue that the current Hungarian government has amassed such a huge amount of power that has enabled it to curve the space of feminist geographical knowledge production. It has established a quasi-dictatorship that resembles the one that impeded the evolution of gender/feminist geography in the state socialist era. Therefore, only broad-based solidarity can help create opposition to the current government's attacks against gender studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to political power – a generalised capacity for modifying the behaviour of other actors – the article conceptualises political agency as the actions of political actors which actually cause other actors to behave in a certain way. Analysing agency consists of identifying agents, actual veto players whose (in)actions lead to the outcomes in question, and explaining the causal relation between their (in)actions and the behaviour of other actors. Thus conceptualised, agency becomes an empirically grounded, value-free synonym for the more emotionally charged notions of political or moral responsibility. This model of political agency is then applied to an empirical analysis of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a mass murder of emigrants in Utah committed by Mormons and Native Americans in 1857. Three categories of factors are invoked – cultural, institutional and behavioural – to recreate the chain of necessary, sufficient, SUIN and INUS causes which led up to the event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the communist reconstruction project that transformed the famous Shanghai Racecourse into the complex of public space that now includes the Avenue of the People, People's Square, and the People's Park. It examines the case of the Shanghai horse racing track as an example of the larger Chinese Communist effort to embed political power into Shanghai's physical space. By demolishing colonial-era landmarks and refashioning them into public space, the CCP hoped to establish legitimacy and win the hearts and minds of the Shanghainese. By inscribing political promises into concrete structures in the center of Shanghai, the CCP attempted to infuse the daily activities of city dwellers with the new rhetoric of nationalism, patriotism, and internationalism. We argue that the racecourse reconstruction did contribute to the realization of these goals, as the urban corollary to land reform, which ostensibly transferred land and the built environment from the clutches of "old-society" rulers into the hands of the ordinary Chinese people. Ironically, however, the project still maintained and re-affirmed the spatial layout of the colonial city, highlighting how deeply the layered etchings of power are carved into the physical spaces of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Allison Coffelt delves into the kitschy world of Donald Trump: It starts with the skin, trying so hard for gold it becomes orange; the hair—that goldilocks swoop; the dark suits and shiny ties; the golden letters on buildings named after him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between Buddha images and the legitimization of political power over space? What understandings exist amongst royals concerning regaining spatial power associated with Buddha images? This article considers these questions with a particular focus on the Champassak Royal House, a royal family that was originally spatially constituted through the territorial control it had over present-day southern Laos and some neighbouring areas. To do this, the article draws upon two case studies, one centred on an important Buddha image in the 18th century, the other more contemporary and linked to Buddha images and exiled members of the Champassak Royal House. Buddha images have long played an important role in constituting and defining sacred geographies, and thus political power, in Champassak, as has similarly been the case in other parts of mainland Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politics in time has recently gained in scholarly attention, particularly in the area of EU studies. This article adds to this literature by arguing that differences in administrative and political actors’ time horizon are particularly pronounced in the EU multilevel system and showinghowthis can be used strategically by actors. This matters because unlike national administrations with long-term perspectives, the EU Commission is endowed with powers in policy-making. This combination allows it to turn time into power by opting for strategies that yield benefits after a couple of years. The argument is illustrated with two long-term strategies employed by the Commission in controversial EU equal treatment policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the hegemony of political power on the discipline of human geography in Turkey. Throughout the history of the country, human geography curricula have been aligned with the nationalist and hegemonic power politics of state authorities instead of being guided by universal norms, thus ignoring Turkey’s sociopolitical and cultural geography. This is reflected in the contents of human geography text books at the high school and college level. Similarly, the subjects of articles that have appeared in the 12 academic geography journals published in Turkey within the last 71 years also support this claim. The intervention of political power in the academic identity of human geography and the efforts to align human geography curricula with a certain ideological view have resulted in the emergence of apolitical geographers, who remain deaf and blind to social issues. This study analyzes the negative features of human geography education curricula and their political implications in Turkey, and proposes several recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

InThe Winter's Tale, the theme of jealousy is encoded in terms of word/image dynamics: men speak at and about women, who are treated as passive images. The character of Hermione, who appears to die before being magically restored to life, greatly complicates this normative binary. This article thinks through the implications of Hermione's representation by applying W.J.T. Mitchell's observations about the ideological motivations present within the relationship between spoken discourse and visual representation. For Mitchell, the word/image distinction functions to naturalise social inequalities, such as gender binaries. This is especially true in the Renaissance, when women were expected to be “chaste, silent, and obedient.” But as Mitchell demonstrates, the word/image binary is inherently unstable and therefore susceptible to destabilisation. The article looks specifically at how Hermione's status as a living statue, or speaking image, challenges the discursive assumptions of male power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The capital city of Cyprus, Nicosia, has been the seat of government and administrative authority throughout the island's history. The Lusignan reign in the twelfth century (1192-1489) was followed by Venetian (1489-1571), Ottoman (1571-1878) and British (1878-1960) rule until the establishment of the independent state of Cyprus (1960-1963). Today, Nicosia is the last divided capital city in Europe, serving the Turkish Cypriots in the north and the Greek Cypriots in the south of the island. The palaces, monuments and governmental centres illustrate how territorial belonging and power were defined and reflected in the buildings of the city itself. The way in which the power of individuals, communities and nations is organized can be traced through the organization of space and the architectural forms of administrative buildings. This paper elaborates on the ideas and experiences of architects with regard to the ideational background, symbolic significance and relationship between art form and political power put forth in these buildings. Within this context, the paper reflects on the impact of divisiveness in architectural forms and aesthetics, the political use of urban space, the constructional aim of official buildings, the architectural styles that affected their design and the extent of the political authority's involvement in planning and design. Drawing on the oral testimonies of architects and archival materials, the paper highlights the connection between political power and the architectural processes that allowed for the contextualization of divisiveness that has dominated the architectural forms on the island particularly in the contemporary history of the island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The privado or favourite is a frequently recurring character in a large number of Golden-Age dramas which, concerned with matters of political power and authority, reflect, of course, the political context and circumstances in Spain during this period. Most studies to date have focused on the figure of the favourite as treated in the subgenre known as the comedia de privanza. But there are many plays outwith this specific category in which the privado, or political favourite, plays a significant role. The principal aim of this article, therefore, is to study the conduct and function of certain political favourites and advisers in plays in which, though they take only secondary parts in the main plot, do contribute relevantly and significantly to the dramatic action. Two such plays are Los cabellos de Absalón and La hija del aire, in which Calderón presents us with a number of good and bad agents of political power, enabling us to appreciate them either as examples of or as opposites to the perfect minister of state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a detailed analysis of the Australian Labor government's mining tax, building on recent debates that critique Lindblom's Politics and markets. We argued that the case illustrates the power of big business, in particular the importance of the relative flexibility of large companies, especially in the form of 'investment strikes', although such a strategy is more constrained in the resource sector. We also explore two other key factors. First, we analyse Lindblom's argument that government has resources which big business needs, and suggest that this argument depends on governments being competent in negotiations with large companies. We find that the claim did not apply to the case of the mining tax. Second, we analyse his view that business power owes a great deal to the manipulation of citizens' 'volitions'. We find some evidence to support this claim, but again suggest that the failure of the government to effectively make the case for a mining tax helped business. 本文就最近有关林德·布罗姆《政治与市场》一书的辩论，对澳大利亚工党政府的矿业税做了详尽的分析。笔者指出，矿业税说明了大企业的力量，尤其是大公司的相对灵活性，特别是他们的"投资罢工"，尽管在资源部门这种策略受到了扼制。笔者还探讨了另外两个关键因素。第一个是林德·布罗姆观点，即政府有大企业所需的资源。此论的根据是政府有能力与大公司讨价还价。笔者认为，这种说法并不适用于矿业税。第二个是，林德·布罗姆认为企业力量很大程度要受公民"意志"的左右。此说有一定根据，但政府未能搞定矿业税则帮了企业。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between political power and the various pathways to health inequalities in Vieques, Puerto Rico, is explored. The U.S. Navy used the island for 62 years for bombing and other military exercises. The article focuses on the resulting changes to the island's socioeconomic positioning and the health inequalities over six decades. Secondary data analysis of census data using a revised World Health Organization model is used to examine the relationships of political power, labor markets, employment, material deprivation, social and family networks, and health inequalities. Findings are interpreted through a social justice lens and implications suggest the use of political advocacy for social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Networks are both imagined and directly experienced. While most people have trouble concretely explaining what networks are and how they structure our world, very few doubt their prominence in an increasingly globalized world where information moves at a dizzying pace. Networks speak to the link between the local and global—linking an event in a small village in Tunisia to the evening news in London. Yet they bind peoples and ideas not only across distance, but also in proximity. How are such networks imagined by peoples across dimensions of class, religion, gender, and generation in the dynamic environment that is revolutionary Egypt today? This article presents initial findings from initial ethnographic and interview-focused fieldwork conducted with Egyptians across a range of demographics. It presents insights around how technological, institutional, and human networks coordinate to present convergent and divergent actions, insights that shape an ever-changing Egyptian political reality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on the internal organisation of the societies of the Middle East and how that may have influenced the economic institutions to explain the economic trajectory of the region since the medieval era. Societies of the Middle East experienced a good deal of institutional change since the rise of Islam. While many of these changes were in response to the changing circumstances, they also reflected the social structure and prevailing power balances. Beginning in the medieval era and continuing with the Ottomans in the early modern period, political power was concentrated in the hands of the sovereign and the state elites around him. In contrast, the influence of various social groups, not only of landowners but also of merchants, manufacturers and moneychangers, over economic matters, and more generally over the policies of the central government remained limited. As a result, societies in the Middle East did not develop institutions more independent of the state and the state elites and more in favour of the private sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The counselling and psychotherapy profession is undergoing considerable change as a result of government intervention in the form of regulation, funding and efficacy research. In this paper we argue that these changes, even though they challenge some of the basic ways of thinking which have come to underpin the profession since its inception, also offer an opportunity to stimulate debate and thought in regard to how the profession might contribute to the development of healthcare systems in the future. We argue that this could be enhanced if therapists can learn from the experience of practitioners in the field of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), which has been experiencing similar changes in recent years. Indeed, both fields of clinical activity adopt many similar underlying clinical principles and, according to Samuels (2001), have similar political outlooks. With reference to anthroposophic psychotherapy which, as well as being a form of psychotherapy, is also part of a ‘whole systems’ approach to CAM, we will examine those characteristics of psychotherapy and CAM that can inform the thinking of healthcare systems as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article addresses problems associated with the political operationalization of the sustainability agenda and the design of new development goals based on the case of Western Australia (WA). In this state, rapid economic development, long the key objective of successive governments, has caused serious environmental problems and brought into question the sustainability of the state's development path. In the 2001 WA state election, the Labor Party came into office in part because of its overt commitment to sustainable development, departing from past progrowth philosophies. This article analyzes the extent to which the WA Labor government was able to operationalize politically its sustainability agenda during its time in office between 2001 and 2008. It finds that despite a strong commitment to its sustainability agenda in the early years of holding office, the Labor government failed to institutionalize policy changes, which, following a 2006 leadership change, allowed for a reversal of progress. We then discuss the WA experience within the global policy context and place it within the larger debates on the operationalization of sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I discuss the location of the sources of global poverty and injustice. I take it as granted that the members of the globally lowest income group live in unacceptable conditions and suffer from injustice. Yet the source of this injustice is a debatable question. Often the existing global institutions are seen as major causes behind this injustice. By taking the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations as a practical example, I aim to show that blaming the institutions as such can lead to misguided conclusions. The WTO, in fact, is quite just if one merely analyses its institutional structure. I argue that the major source of injustice are rather the prevailing power structures and the conduct of individual governments within this institutional framework, in other words the metaprocedural unfairness in the trade negotiations. I further argue that applications of Rawlsian theory of justice tend to be misleading at the global institutional level, as they focus disproportionately on the institutional structure, and tend to underestimate the relevance of the conduct of governments and the existing power structures, which allow powerful countries to use the institutional framework unjustly in their favour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a quick overview of the Chicano Movement (CM) with specific analyses of the five major strategies employed by its adherents to effect social change. The CM was a social movement that occurred in the United States with increased activity in the southwest and midwest during a time frame: 1950s to 1980s. Persons of Mexican ancestry residing in the U.S. were its participants and self-identified as Chicanos. The term Chicano stems from the ancient Nahuatl language of the Meshica (Meh Shee Ka) peoples, also known as the Aztecs. Shicano is a shortened version of Meshicano; later pronunciation changed to Chicano and, for some in spelling, Xicano. As a social movement, the CM had as its ultimate goals the acquisition of political power with which to change the power relations between them and the Euro-Americans, also known as the Anglos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper's focus is a critical moment in the trajectory of the Islamic state in Iran, the trace of which was still discernible in the presidential election of 2009. It draws on ethnographic research among the Lurs of south-western Iran between 1979-1982 to examine the impact of the abolition of politics as contested representations at the centre on a 'remote' periphery. The end of a short-lived political activity, as a distinct form of power, in Iran in 1981 was earmarked by mass executions of which only 1600 had been officially counted for the period of 20 June to September 1981 (Amnesty International). The executed were guilty of expressing dissent against divine rule of which the Islamic state was an embodiment. Although the Lurs paid a less heavy penalty for this 'crime' than elsewhere in the country the survivors' response to the loss of a young relative in the hands of Islamic executioners was noticeably muted. The response is looked at as the restoration of the status of the dead to the executed relative whose body had been 'rubbished' - wrapped in an American flag and abandoned unburied in a desolate place by the Muslim executioners. The paper argues 'rubbishing' signified the annihilation of citizenship under the Islamic rule in which the body of the citizen is seen as harbouring 'the most corrupt' subject, the sinner who could not even be 'rectified' through a less destructive use of force - flogging and mutilation. It, therefore, had to be disposed of - 'rubbished'. The survivors, on the other hand, by confining themselves to the symbolic return of the executed relative to the community left unacknowledged his quest for equality and liberty. By their reluctance to remember and recount the executed's words and deeds the survivors refused to grant him the 'immortality' of a citizen whose death outlived his destruction. The brutal suppression of political agency at the centre and its muted recognition in the periphery are explained as a negation of political power. The power entails postponing the use of force to the last resort thus allowing plurality as a human condition to be realised. Consequent on this realisation is the publicly contested opinions by many who would inevitably challenge the truths guarded by few both at the centre and periphery. It was this challenge that led the ruling mullahs to invoke the Koranic Truths to annihilate the disseminators of opinions. The unspoken citizenship of the annihilated dissidents in the periphery served in turn to reassert the Lurs' historically cherished otherness geared to the use of force. The citizenship called for a discursive inclusion of Lurs, through the use of 'the pen', in a wider world, by postponing the use of force. In contrast, the traditional Luri rebels relied heavily on an immediate use of force, through the celebrated 'rifle', to perpetuate their perceived inaccessibility. Resistance leads to emancipation, the paper argues, when the particularised subjectivity of local actors is superseded in the universal - objectified - political space in which the agent, i.e. the citizen, overrides the boundaries within which localness is reproduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the nature of the political, rather than technical, rationality that lies at the heart of most public policymaking. There is a strong tendency in liberal democracies to fudge the realities of political power and disguise them behind technocratic approaches to policymaking which appear to be politically neutral. The study and teaching of public policymaking is enlivened and made more relevant by a full and open recognition of its political dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to contribute to current debates about political power and agency relationships in education and other public sectors. In a recent clarion call for a major redirection of political principal-agent theories (PAT), Terry Moe has argued that standard information asymmetries ought no longer to be regarded as the sole foundation of bureaucrat power. According to Moe, current theories largely overlook the direct electoral power of agents and their unions (EPA) in voting for their own bureaucratic principals. Therefore, they are biased systematically towards underestimating agent power. We critically address both Moe's theoretical arguments, and his empirical applications to Californian school board elections. We conclude that Moe overestimates the power consequences of EPA on both counts. We outline a more balanced version of 'multiple-role' PAT and of its potential implications for our understanding of the political power of public school teachers and bureaucrats more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a conceptual model that can be utilized to examine the political and bureaucratic natures of the mechanism of the making of tourism policies in the Chinese context. Following the paradigm of stakeholder theories, the constructs of the model can be categorized into two groups. The first group is the political system, encompassing the constructs of political power, political ideology, and interest groups. The second group of components of the framework is the government as the bureaucratic system, consisting of both the institutions and the institutional arrangements. Meanwhile, existing discussions on the applications of the respective components in tourism studies are also undertaken. The conceptual model as proposed in this article, with methodological issues addressed in the literature review, can serve as a holistic framework based upon which further empirical studies can be carried out to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the mechanism of tourism policy making, particularly in the contemporary Chinese context, taking cognizance of both the significant influences of government policies on tourism development in China and the unique Chinese political and bureaucratic factors. At the same time, the particular areas where this framework can be applied in Chinese tourism policy studies are also explored. 本文旨在建构概念模型，用以分析制定中国旅游政策机制中的政治和官僚性质。根据利益相关者理论范式，模型的结构可分为两个部分。第一个部分是政治体系，当中包括政治权力、政治意识形态和利益团体。模型框架的第二个组成部分是官僚制度，亦即政府。这个部分由公共机构和制度安排组成。本文同时讨论旅游研究中各组成部分的应用。文献回顾部分解决了建模的问题，而概念模型可作为一个完整的框架，为进行更深入的实证研究提供依据，达到充分理解现代中国制定旅游政策的机制的目的，并认识政府政策对中国旅游发展的重大影响力及中国独特的官僚政治因素。与此同时，本文探讨中国旅游政策研究中可应用此框架的范畴。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports data from two qualitative studies with child welfare lowyers, judges, masters, and social workers (N = 59). Two themes emerged: the first is that child welfare involvement occurs within a broader societal context, and that child protective services and courts are called to address a broad range of concerns with severely inadequate resources. Participants saw that the paucity of resources as evidence of lack of societal concern for poor children and their families. They attribute lack of concern to ignorance of the circumstances faced by these vulnerable populations and to disregard due to their lack of political power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For liberal political philosophers the notion of 'reasonableness' has provided a moral and legal standard for judging the acceptability and, by extension, legitimacy of government behaviour. In order for a government directive to constitute a legitimate obligation on citizens, it must be compatible with the dictates of reason and treat all citizens in a reasonable manner. Arguably, such an approach achieves its most powerful presentation (to date, at least) in the theories of 'political' liberals, who typically assert that reasonableness must be the 'final court of appeal' in relation to decisions concerning matters of public import - i.e., those that place demands upon all citizens of the polity. According to political liberals, only by adopting and maintaining a governance framework that assigns primacy to reasonableness is it possible to obtain and preserve the desired protection against the abuse of political power. The purpose of this essay is to offer a brief review of the 'reasonableness' paradigm promoted by political liberals (in particular), and in the course of doing so, identify and assess a number of difficulties that would seem to undermine its ability to achieve its stated goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper's focus is the concurrence in the Islamic Republic of Iran between the state's enrichment of uranium, internationally feared as a potential Islamic atomic bomb, and the identification of the radio-active material by many Iranians as a national cultural object. In contrast to the Islamic virtues imposed by the state that had created an autarkic image of Iranians in the global context, nuclear technology offered them the opportunity to become cosmopolitan consumers of nuclear energy, a global product that also represented the 'excellence' of Iranian scientists' and engineers' competence. Instrumental in this re-invention of national identity outside the political space was a reified (fetishised) conception of the nuclear object as a utility - nuclear energy. The enhanced utilitarian use of nuclear material mystified (metamorphosed) both the oppressive relation of Iranian people with their Muslim rulers and their incongruous relation with the rest of the world. The mystifying impact of nuclear production on their national and international relations served Iranians to draw on their role as internationally recognised bourgeois agents (burghers) by subsuming (neutralising) their brutalised relation with the Muslim rulers within the instrumental relation of producers/consumers of the nuclear product. Thus, in their exclusive demand for the right to emulate the non-Iranian producers/consumers of nuclear energy as a global product, Iranians acted in their capacity as burghers. A burgher is defined here, following Hegel, as the agent of civil society whose primary concern is to pursue his/her own interest by using the needs of others as the means to satisfy his/her own. The rationality that governs the action by burghers is 'the suitability of means to their ends'. By adopting the rationality of a burgher, Iranians abandoned their quest for citizenship. The rights of citizen, in contrast with the cosmopolitan right of burgher to emulate producers/consumers, were geared to the exercise of individual autonomy within the political space, as a domain of contested representations. The paper examines the inadequate mediation of modern institutions that has historically postponed the nationalisation of Iranian society and has delayed the emergence of the Iranian nation as a political community. Looked at from this standpoint, nuclear production offered to Iranians the opportunity to avoid a hazardous route of taking part in a political construction of Iranian identity by acting as citizens and instead draw on their fragmented bourgeois identity to define the nuclear product as 'national'. This identification matched their Muslim rulers' interest to represent the enriched uranium internationally as a national, as opposed to Islamic, achievement without having to face the Iranian nation as a political community. The consequence was the Iranians' failure to deal with nuclear technology and the question of public safety both as a national and international issue which could only be addressed if Iranians had acted in their capacity as citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a critical discussion of the literature on 'patrimonialism' and 'neopatrimonialism' in Development Studies in general and African Studies in particular. Based on Max Weber's concept of patrimonialism and legal-rational bureaucracy the authors present their own definition of 'neopatrimonialism'. Three key conceptual questions are addressed. These are related to the operationalisation of the concept in empirical research: (1) how can neopatrimonialism be delimited vis-à-vis the concepts 'clientelism' and 'patronage'?; (2) how can neopatrimonialism be 'measured'?; and (3) how does neopatrimonialism relate to classical typologies of political regimes? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To introduce the concept of torture, its forms, its sequele, and its treatment. Findings: Torture involves pain and suffering intentionally inflicted upon a person for the purpose of coercing a confession, collecting information, punishing an action, or intimidation. Typically, it is perpetrated with the consent of a public official. Its aim is to destroy the person's individuality by beating, hanging, burning, and/or psychological assault. Long-term physical and psychological sequelae require treatment whose cornerstone is trust. Conclusions: Torture is the worst violation of human rights known to man. It persists because of its political power. Research is needed to prevent torture and to help its victims. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that Adam Smith is a/the "founding father figure" of modern social/political economy as well as economics. Smith wrote extensively and insightfully on the subject of power, and thereby class and stratafication in society. This paper explicates four main types of power relations in Smith's analysis, notably drawing on the Wealth of Nations: wealth power, monopoly power, employer power, and political power. Smith's focus on power helps to differentiate his broader vision and rich discourse from that of many contemporary neoclassical writers and sharpens our appreciation for his contributions to social and political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various prospects and scenarios regarding the evolution of the nation state in conditions of increasing globalization are considered. Current views according to which the nation state will disappear are seen as exaggerated; although a simple continuation of the present role of nation states is also unlikely. It is concluded that nation states will not become extinct in the near future as they are needed as a decisive factor in organizing life within nations and conducting international relations as well as controlling spontaneous actions in the global economy. However, it is necessary to study the limits and consequences of the transfer of nation state sovereignty both upward toward regional and international bodies, and downward, in the direction of decentralization, as the interpretation of sovereignty is different today from even a few decades ago. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the past decade, there has been active effort to reform America's educational system. Much of the drive for this change has come from reports on the declining performance of American students on standardized tests. In California, this educational reform has been stimulated by the election of a new Superintendent of Public Instruction and the passage of a major education reform bill. This bill, S. 813, has not only directed a full review of the California precollegiate curriculum, but it has required the inclusion of geography in two year-long history-social science courses in grades 9–12. This article chronicles the role of one organization. The California Geographic Alliance, in writing the curriculum that encompasses this new call for geography. It also outlines an action plan by which geographers in others states and regions might be able to organize a local professional group that can play a similar role in the expansion of geographic education in the precollegiate curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]