Rural Employment and Rural-Urban Differences in Employment in Zaire: A Comparative Perspective1

1994 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Shapiro ◽  
Sharon Shapiro

This article provides evidence on the extent of de-agrarianization, the nature of rural employment, and rural-urban differences in employment in Zaire. The composition of employment by industry is examined using data from Zaire's 1984 Census. Increased schooling was associated with a greater propensity to be involved in nonagricultural employment. Since 1990, Zaire's chronic economic crisis has become acute and is intertwined with the political crisis resulting from President Mobutu's resistance to popular calls for democratization. In these circumstances, de-agrarianization is effectively put on hold. Nonagricultural employment opportunities have diminished considerably, and an increasing proportion of the country's population is being pushed back to subsistence agriculture.

Subject Preparations for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. Significance Despite the continuing political and economic crisis, nearly a year before the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, the schedule of works for the event remains on time. According to a recent report released by the local organising committee, 88% of the main competition sites have been completed, a level similar to that accomplished in London one year before the beginning of the 2012 games. Impacts The political crisis should not affect preparations for the Games, as most construction works are the responsibility of local authorities. However, high levels of water contamination are a concern that cannot be adequately addressed in time. Moreover, Rio's record on urban violence raises questions about visitor safety.


Author(s):  
Teresa Pullano

The economic crisis that has invested Europe since 2008 and the political crisis that peaked in the hot Greek summer of 2015 exposed the fractures and conflicts within the EU, but also within Europe at large. Arguably, this has led to a repositioning of Europe in the world, which is still ongoing. This reconfiguration of the internal European space happens in connection with the redefinition of the relations that Europe entertains with its outside (Moisio et al. 2013). Also, the crises have shown that ‘Europe’ means different things in different places. In this paper, it is argued that classical European studies need to be rethought accordingly: it is no longer possible (and perhaps never was) to conceive of Europe in hermetic categories, but European space and politics need to be re-conceptualized as heterogeneous and uneven, and this always in connection with the transformations happening beyond the artificial idea of Europe as a defined continent (Manners, 2012). Following the call of Jean and John Comaroff (J. Comaroff & J. L. Comaroff 2012), this paper argues that there is a need to look at transformations in contemporary Europe as a consequence of restructuring happening in other parts of the world. The uneven development characterizing today’s Eurozone may be read as a return of colonial relations or unfettered capitalism to Europe.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Vidyarto Nugroho, Ishak Ramli

The global economic crisis of 2008-2010 had an impact on the global economic slowdown. Plus the political crisis in the countries of the Middle East region called the Arab Spring had become the center of world attention, because it also lowers economic conditions and corporate America and in other developing countries. By using daily data price of crude oil, the price of gold and exchange rates as well Rp./USD IDX Composite Index from  the year 2010 - 2012, tested the impact of crude oil prices, global gold prices on the Stock Exchange Composite Index. The result was at the time of global economic and political crisis in oil prices and the world gold price positively affects JCI opposed  to when normal conditions. When the economic crisis plus the political crisis that led to the oil price increases, the share price (CSPI) on the Stock Exchange also increased. Funds drawn investors from investing in the United States and other developing countries is invested in Indonesia so that stock prices rise along with oil prices and gold prices. While the exchange rate negatively affects Rp./USD JCI Stock Exchange, as a stronger rupiah lead JCI Stock Exchange also increased


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-24
Author(s):  
Luiz Fernando de Paula ◽  
Fabiano Santos ◽  
Rafael Moura

An analysis of the endogenous and exogenous political and economic factors that conditioned the Partido dos Trabalhadores’s (PT) social-developmentalist project in 2003–2016 in the light of financialization and the “confidence game” conditioned by the volatility of external liquidity and commodities prices concludes that the first Lula administration faced the problem of a crisis of confidence and adopted orthodox policies but was able, with the improvement of international conditions, to launch policies of a more interventionist and distributive trend. Dilma Rousseff, facing a downright unfavorable international context, explicitly broke with the confidence game by applying the policy set of the new macroeconomic matrix. In her second term she radically reversed the policy orientation, moving toward a strong fiscal adjustment and monetary orthodoxy, and this eventually undermined her few sources of political support. The economic crisis from the second half of 2014 on undoubtedly contributed to the political crisis, which in turn made infeasible any attempt to implement policies to reverse the situation of economic crisis. Dilma’s impeachment finally interrupted the PT’s developmentalist project, allowing the emergence of new political actors. Uma análise dos fatores endógenos e exógenos, políticos e econômicos que condicionaram o projeto social-desenvolvimentista do Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) em 2003–2016 à luz da financeirização e do “confidence game” condicionado pela volatilidade dos ciclos externos de liquidez e preços de commodities conclui que o primeiro governo Lula enfrentou o problema de crise de confiança e adotou políticas ortodoxas, mas pôde, com a melhoria nas condições internacionais, adotar políticas de perfil mais intervencionista e redistributivista. Já Dilma Rousseff, embora enfrentando contexto internacional francamente desfavorável, rompe explicitamente com o “confidence game” ao assumir o conjunto de políticas da Nova Matriz Macroeconômica. Na transição do primeiro para o segundo mandato, Dilma inverteu radicalmente a orientação das políticas, partindo para um forte ajuste fiscal e a ortodoxia monetária, o que acabou minando os poucos focos de sustentação política com os quais contava na sociedade. A crise econômica a partir do segundo semestre de 2014 sem dúvida contribuiu para dar origem à crise política, e esta por sua vez inviabilizou qualquer tentativa de implementação de políticas para reverter o quadro de crise econômica. O impeachment de Dilma, por fim, interrompe o projeto desenvolvimentista do PT, permitindo a emergência de novos atores políticos.


Asian Survey ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 872-893 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kitti Prasirtsuk

Political reform and the Asian financial crisis set the pretexts for the Thai political crisis. The financial crisis spawned certain big businesses that survived the economic downturn, while the 1997 Constitution eased their ability to make political inroads. In the end, Thaksin's business-centered administration so disrupted the traditional bases of society and government that it was overthrown by a coup d'éétat in 2006.


Author(s):  
Gerardo Meil ◽  
Pedro Romero-Balsas ◽  
Jesús Rogero-García

This chapter examines how the economic crisis, and the political crisis it spawned, conditioned the evolution of leave policy in Spain during the period 2007-2017. At the outset of the period, a socialist government adopted gender equality legislation, which introduced a two week fully paid Paternity Leave, as a means to foster co-responsibility, as well as improving the terms of other leave. Whilst cuts in public spending in the wake of the economic crisis and the switch from a socialist to a conservative government neither shortened the duration of nor lowered payments for existing types of leave, they did retard further improvements. Throughout the period, developments in leave policy have been justified essentially on the grounds of protecting women's employment and furthering gender equality, with conservative parties placing more discursive emphasis on the former, with a rhetoric of freedom, choice and flexibility; and leftist parties on the latter, supported by a growing demand in public debate for equal and non-transferable leave. The doubling of the duration of Paternity Leave in early 2017 under a conservative government marked the attainment of a long-awaited goal and attested to a consensus among political parties around extending Paternity Leave.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (10) ◽  
pp. 57-71
Author(s):  
Maxim S. Tseluyko

The aim of this paper is to define the institutional difference between the aristocratic lineage ruling the service fief of the Western Zhou era and the royal dynasty, reigning over the independent state of the Eastern Zhou era. Different approaches to the genesis of the Qin State are discussed in this paper: the archaeological approach and the “Zhou fiefdom” approach. The first one lacks data directly describing the political process. The problem of the second one is its being based practically on one written source that postdates the events described by 500 years. Therefore, to escape the failures of these methods, the author developed a specific approach that would both deal with political and institutional data on the one side while using data from different sources contemporary to the events in question. Data explicated from Bu Qi gui, Qin gong zhong and Guo ji zi Bai pan – three inscriptions on the bronze vessels dating between IX and VII centuries BC was scrutinized and compared. Two of them were cast by Qin rulers and the third describes the events leading to the creation of the Qin domain. Comparing information of these sources with the data from Sima Qian’s Shi ji allows to determine the precise moment of the Qin domain being transformed into the Qin State and show the institutional innovations that went along with this process. The interior political change of this time is described (i.e. the political crisis of royal inheritance) as well as the exterior change in Qin’s place inside the hierarchy of Zhou domains, particularly the changing relations between the Qin State and the domain of Xiao Guo. This clarified the place that the process of territorial expansion had in this transformation. As a hypothesis, the author built a model presenting the properties distinguishing a service fief and an independent state.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-237
Author(s):  
Sławomir Buryła

Summary The article examines the representation in Polish fiction of the atmosphere of the political protests of March 1968. The relevant texts can be divided into two groups, those that were written about the time of the crisis and those that focused on the March events, as they came to be known, in retrospect. The former includes the anti-Semitic short stories and novels written by Stanisław Ryszard Dobrowolski and Roman Bratny - works whose profile makes them exceptional in postwar Polish fiction. The latter is made up of an assortment of fiction and memoirs.


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