Dominance in humans

Dominance captures behavioural patterns found in social hierarchies that arise from agonistic interactions in which some individuals coercively exploit their control over costs and benefits to extract deference from others, often through aggression, threats and/or intimidation. Accumulating evidence points to its importance in humans and its separation from prestige—an alternate avenue to high status in which status arises from information (e.g. knowledge, skill, etc.) or other non-rival goods. In this review, we provide an overview of the theoretical underpinnings of dominance as a concept within evolutionary biology, discuss the challenges of applying it to humans and consider alternative theoretical accounts which assert that dominance is relevant to understanding status in humans. We then review empirical evidence for its continued importance in human groups, including the effects of dominance—independently of prestige—on measurable outcomes such as social influence and reproductive fitness, evidence for specialized dominance psychology, and evidence for gender-specific effects. Finally, because human-specific factors such as norms and coalitions may place bounds on purely coercive status-attainment strategies, we end by considering key situations and contexts that increase the likelihood for dominance status to coexist alongside prestige status within the same individual, including how: (i) institutional power and authority tend to elicit dominance; (ii) dominance-enhancing traits can at times generate benefits for others (prestige); and (iii) certain dominance cues and ethology may lead to mis-attributions of prestige. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’.

Psychomedical Interventions with Transgender People in Portugal and Brazil: A Critical Approach

This study aims to analyze biopsychomedical interventions with transgender people. For this purpose, we carried out 35 semi-structured interviews with people who self-identify as transsexuals and transvestites in Brazil and Portugal. The responses of the study participants were systematized according to a thematic analysis, which led to the emergence of the following three main themes: “institutional power”, “expectations of trans-bodies”, and “experiences in health services”. This study demonstrates how some trans people perform bodily modifications to fight the transphobia they experience throughout their lives. In addition, they believe that, by making their bodies conform to each other, they may become more attractive and desirable. The process of cisnormativity is, furthermore, conveyed by the idea present in the answers of some respondents: that having “integrated” bodies means facing less discrimination and that they will, therefore, obtain more satisfactory ways of personally and socially experiencing their identities. This study contributes to a deepening critical reflection on the experiences/exclusions of trans people, especially in the psychomedical context of “normalization” devices. Hence, just as social structures produce and sustain transphobia, the same structures are responsible for combating it.

The Relationship between the Improvement of Foreign University Leadership and the Modernization of University Governance

Universities are leading, leading, basic, and monopolistic in terms of high-tech knowledge production and productivity transformation, knowledge innovation talents and high-tech research and development talents, which determine that universities have become a national economy. A productivity element with dynamic value that is indispensable for take-off, social progress and its stability and sustainable development. On the basis of discussing "why the modernization of university governance capabilities is so important" and clarifying the "relationship between university leadership and university governance capabilities", the paper starts with "ideological power", "organizational power", "Decision-making power", "institutional power", and "resource power". The 7 aspects of "cultural power" and "principal power" construct and interpret the university leadership element model.

Capacity, incentives, and mandate responsiveness

The absence of significant agenda-setting effects of party platforms in the UK, as found in all other countries, seems counterintuitive: the comparative literature would predict the greatest impact in majoritarian systems, while counter-majoritarian institutions are meant to dilute governing parties’ policymaking powers. Comparing different political and institutional configurations in each country over time, we can confirm such a moderating impact of counter-majoritarian institutions and coalition constraints. We then show that party incentives may help to disentangle the British paradox. High incentives in electoral periods are associated with strong programme-to-policy linkages, in particular in the UK. We conclude that majoritarian systems provide governing parties with extended institutional powers to implement their mandate, although this may limit their incentives: opposition parties have less opportunity to pressurize them and scrutinize any drift away from mandate priorities. Consensual systems limit governing parties’ institutional power, but the ‘tunnel’ of attention may generate strong incentives to stick to campaign priorities.

Women’s Reproductive Rights and the Legacy of Religion in Ireland: The Eighth Amendment and Its Repeal

The changing religious landscape in Ireland is the context for this analysis of the implications of the insertion of the 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution (which in 1983 inserted Article 40.3.3 into the Constitution to give the unborn an equal right to life with that of the mother) and its subsequent repeal in the 2018 referendum. It considers how women’s right to abortion (within the limits specified by the Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy Act 2018) can be vindicated in the context of claims to freedom of religion or belief and in light of the continuing institutional power of the Catholic church in the provision of healthcare. The broader political implications of the changing religious landscape are also considered, as is the question of whether and how the relationship between religion and politics in Ireland can be re-conceptualised.

Lebanon and Iraq: Two Distinct Demonstrations of Confessionalism’s Failure as a Means to Manage Ethnic and Religious Pluralism

The Iraqi and Lebanese political systems stemmed from each country’s distinctive mosaic of sub-national identities but have been deemed corrupt and incompetent, prompting ongoing protests and calls for unity in both contexts. However, this dissatisfaction is unsurprising given the challenging task of translating the ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity that characterizes each population into an overarching national identity. The Lebanese and Iraqi political systems have attempted to manage ethnic and religious pluralism through confessionalism, or a “consociational government which distributes political and institutional power proportionally among religious sub-communities.” This paper argues that Lebanon and Iraq are two specific examples of confessionalism, demonstrating its failure to manage ethnic and religious pluralism, which seems to inevitably beget sectarianism—a discriminatory structure in which each group advances its privileges at the expense of others. Nevertheless, confessional systems are challenging to transform, namely because they institutionalize different ethnic or religious groups’ identities instead of promoting a unified, national identity.

Parliament Strikes Back: Agenda-setting and Power Voids in Early Representative Assemblies

Previous research has sought to explain the emergence and predominance of early representative assemblies over monarchs. Yet, how parliamentarians behaved during the struggles for power remains largely unknown. We contend that parliamentary elites used periods of uncertainty to set the political agenda and show their strive for sovereignty. We test this claim on seventeenth century England using activities reported in the Journals of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. In addition, we implement a novel strategy of measuring institutional power based on entropy of topic shares in daily records of parliamentary activity. Our results show that elites strategically used power voids to expand their attention to a wider set of topics, increase their pressure on the monarch and present themselves as rulers which were ready to govern. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of early and contemporary representative assemblies.

Psychology’s Stewardship of Gender/Sex

Psychological theories of gender and/or sex (gender/sex) have the capacity to shape people’s self-perceptions, social judgments, and behaviors. The institutional power of psychology to affect cognition and behavior—not just to measure them—necessitates a serious consideration of our social responsibility to manage the products of our intellectual labor. Therefore, I propose that psychological research should be understood as stewardship of gender/sex (and socially relevant concepts in general). In this issue, four articles collectively serve as a demonstrative slice of the diversity of current directions in psychological research on gender/sex. I use these articles as springboards for articulating key elements of psychologists’ stewardship of gender/sex and strategies for improving our stewardship. First, I examine how psychology’s historical stewardship of gender/sex has yielded both new methods for self-understanding and harmful consequences for marginalized people. Next, I explore promising current approaches that center minoritized perspectives. I also discuss roadblocks to effective stewardship, including narrowly disciplinary approaches. Finally, I consider strategies for improving psychology’s stewardship of gender/sex, such as mitigating gender/sex essentialism and employing generative theoretical frameworks built from interdisciplinary insights.

Socioeconomic Status, Institutional Power, and Body Mass Index among Chinese Adults

Despite the vast literature on the socioeconomic status (SES) gradient of obesity among adult people, no study has investigated the relationship between institutional power and body mass index. Using national survey data from the “China Labor-force Dynamics Survey 2016” (CLDS 2016), multistage cluster-stratified probability proportional to size (PPS) sampling was employed to select cases from 29 provinces, cities, and autonomous regions in China. This study adopts an institutional approach to explore the influences of SES and institutional power on the state of being overweight or severely overweight (obese) among Chinese adults. It is shown that SES has a non-linear influence on being overweight or obese, higher education has a negative effect on being overweight or obese, income has an inverted U-shaped effect on being overweight or obese, and having a managerial or administrative job has a positive effect on being overweight but less so on obesity. These findings reveal that disparities in health outcome and risks are due to inequality in SES. The work unit is a stronger predictor of adults being overweight or obese than occupation. Working in the public sector has a positive effect on being overweight relative to working in the private sector, and only state institutions and government departments have a positive association with obesity. Our results indicate that institutional structure still has effects on individuals’ life chances in the era of China’s market transition.

Emerging Pillars for IWRM Implementation In Bangladesh

Since the early 1990s, the IWRM approach has been performing for improving the water sector through minimising the water crisis in Bangladesh. Therefore, Bangladesh has developed three pillars (e.g., enabling environment, institutional arrangement, management instruments, etc.) favouring IWRM to meet the desired goal. Despite the ability to adequately address the cross-cutting and multiple issues of the water sector of Bangladesh, the IWRM approach is getting more complex day by day because the steps taken under the pillars may not work correctly. Given above, an attempt has been made to analyse how the existing contradictions in IWRM pillars (designed by Bangladesh) affect IWRM effectiveness. Using document analysis and semi-structured interviews, this paper provides an understanding of existing inconsistencies of IWRM pillars and the necessity of enhancing IWRM pillars for increasing IWRM implementation effectiveness in Bangladesh. The implementation challenges of the policy networks (policy, plan, strategy etc.) and implementation networks (water projects) made to ensure enabling environment affect IWRM effectiveness. Institutional power and responsibility are not defined in the policy rules and regulations correctly, causing problems in the institutional arrangement, which has affected IWRM effectiveness. Database related issues about the management instruments are also responsible in this regard. Necessary strategies and measures as per network management are recommended to enhance IWRM tools by resolving irregularities and improving IWRM effectiveness in Bangladesh.