Suchergebnisse

Do foreign investors have subnational political preferences? The political economy of foreign direct investment (FDI) involves not only choosing among host countries, but also the subnational location of the assets. However, factors affecting investors' decisions about subnational location likely differ from the ones affecting international investment. This paper studies the effect of state-level partisanship on new FDI inflows to Mexican states. I argue that investors prefer states ruled by left-wing governors because they are more likely to invest in human capital. Statistical analyses using new data on subnational allocation of FDI in Mexican states between 1999 and 2017 support the main hypothesis. Given the persistence of authoritarian enclaves in Mexico, I also disentangle the effects of partisanship from subnational democratization. The partisan effect is independent from party turnover and political competition at the subnational level, and it is robust to different model specifications and estimation strategies. Additional evidence supports the plausibility of the argued mechanism.

Civil identity is one of the most significant factors in modern political practice. Today's identity formation and development of large national groups is less based on a cultural and historical foundation and increasingly depends on political technologies. Among them, the construction of new languages plays an important role. The article studies the Bosnian language policy, which, contrary to forming a common civil identity, as a result of the politicization of linguistic norms becomes a factor in creating a "forge of hatred". Drawing on constructivist social theories, the author summarizes Bosnian linguistic practices and examines them through the prism of symbolic interactionism and negative feedback systems. Particular attention is paid to situations when the desire for effective communication motivates speakers to abandon ethnically colored linguistic markers and situations in which the language acts as a defense against the internal "other." Applying the criteria for distinguishing between language and dialects, the author concludes that the phonetic principle of the Serbo-Croatian language formation made it possible, after the destruction of Yugoslavia, to turn this linguistic continuum into an identification weapon to delimit the citizens of one country. This experience helps analyze the politicization of literary interpretations and linguistic norms in other regions of the world, where there are also examples of the growth of xenophobia, nationalism, and intolerance resulting from a differentiating language policy.

Faced with the non-optional acceptance of toxic chemical artifacts, the ubiquitous interweaving of chemicals in our social fabric oft en exists out of sight and out of mind. Yet, for many, toxic exposures signal life-changing or life-ending events, phantom threats that fail to appear as such until they become too late to mitigate. Assessments of toxicological risk consist of what Sheila Jasanoff calls "sociotechnical imaginaries," arbitrations between calculated costs and benefits, known risks and scientifically wrought justifications of safety. Prevalent financial conflicts of interest and the socially determined hazards posed by chemical exposure suggest that chemical safety assessments and regulations are a form of postnormal science. Focusing on the histories of risk assessments of pesticides such as DDT, atrazine, PFAS, and glyphosate, this article critically reviews Michel Serres's notion of "appropriation by contamination."

O presente estudo interroga a eleição para governador no estado de Ekiti em 2018 como uma janela para espreitar o partido governante/oposição em uma dura disputa política e nos bastidores de alguns participantes passivos na política eleitoral da Nigéria. Ele examina como a dinâmica do poder eleitoral e as relações entre os eleitores de Ekiti e os gladiadores políticos (elites) se desenvolveram durante a eleição. O estudo também explora a potência, ou não, de alguns stakeholders passivos identificados como motivadores da mudança de regime eleitoral e a estrutura de poder subjacente e fatores sócio-políticos que determinam os resultados eleitorais em Ekiti. Os dados foram obtidos principalmente de diferentes informantes, incluindo eleitores, políticos, correspondentes de mídia, acadêmicos, agentes de segurança, membros de grupos da sociedade civil e observadores eleitorais. Através do uso de uma narrativa analítica e com a compreensão do "modelo eleitoral" de democratização como uma técnica de mudança de regime contemporânea, este trabalho revela que o eleitorado de Ekiti é frequentemente influenciado pelas escolhas e estratégias de diferentes atores políticos significativos. Assim, as vigorosas atividades eleitorais desses atores que aproveitam o período eleitoral para explorar a vulnerabilidade dos eleitores para mobilização e votação constituem uma característica dominante do comportamento político em Ekiti.

AbstractThis article will explore the ways in which the 'new dailies', the Mail, Express and Mirror, used visual content to report on the four general elections that occurred between their emergence during the early 20th century and the outbreak of global war in 1914. Existing scholarship has explored how these founders of the 'tabloid century' became prominent components of British culture, but little exists of their pre‐Great War political significance. The article contends that the visual content of these newspapers represented a vibrant and important new form of mass political communication and an important part of the broader mass political culture of the period. Their coverage of election light shows, and cartoon election 'races', evoked much of their better‐known 'human‐interest' news content which had made them so commercially successful. Drawing on recent work of the popular political culture of the period, the article further contends that these newspapers' visual political news also contributed to, and drew influence from, the wider mass culture of pre‐Great War Britain in order to articulate political news in ways which were exciting and accessible to their millions of readers. The new dailies therefore helped to democratise political news through entertaining visual connections to British popular culture, which appealed successfully to mass lower‐class readerships historically overlooked by traditional methods of political newspaper reporting and better included them within the vibrant, visual political culture of pre‐war Britain.

Abstract
In this article, I develop a political ecology analysis of Vanuatu's grid electricity policies, with a specific focus on Espiritu Santo Island. I show how the global political economy looms large in shaping the island's energy geographies. Colonial legacies, ideologically conflictive donor aid programmes, multinational corporate legal discords, parliamentary political caprices and the vicissitudes of the local environment all intersect to shape the spatial dynamics of electricity access that raises numerous energy justice concerns. The development of the island's electricity infrastructure is not neutral; rather, it is a socio-technical product of these political economy mediations.