Flight and fortitude: the decline of the middle class in Zimbabwe

Africa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 529-547
Author(s):  
Roger Southall
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Black Middle Class ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
National Union ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis article focuses on the impact of the policies of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) government on Zimbabwe's black middle class. It does so by exploring three propositions emerging from the academic literature. The first is that during the early years of independence, the middle class transformed into a party-aligned bourgeoisie. The second is that, to the extent that the middle class has not left the country as a result of the economic plunge from the 1990s, it played a formative role in opposition to ZANU-PF and the political elite. The third is that, in the face of ZANU-PF's authoritarianism and economic hardship, the middle class has largely withdrawn from the political arena.

scholarly journals Rijeka as a socialist port: Insights from Jugolinija's early years, 1947-1960

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-208
Author(s):  
Brigitte Le Normand
Keyword(s):  
Rapid Growth ◽  
Foreign Currency ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Shipping Line ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact

To understand the distinctiveness of ports under state socialism, it is necessary to shift the focus from the built environment to flows of people, goods, knowledge and capital. In so doing, this article examines the operation of Yugoslavia's main shipping line, Jugolinija, from its inception in 1947 until 1960. This enterprise was based in the port of Rijeka, with both firm and port experiencing rapid growth during this period. The impact of state socialism can be seen in the primacy of the political over the profitability of the firm, with Jugolinija used to advance Yugoslavia's foreign trade and foreign policy, its interests being subordinated to the project of building self-managed socialism. It can also be seen in the unique challenges posed by having to operate at the intersection of the global market and a highly regulated economy – a situation that also created opportunities for the firm as a whole, as well as for its employees, who had access to foreign currency, travel and knowledge of the world. Jugolinija's privileged access to the world in what was still very much a closed society also created opportunities for ‘leaks’ of personnel and goods. Finally, socialist ideology left its imprint on Jugolinija's operations and shaped the ways in which its employees understood their work and the place of the firm within the Yugoslav economy. While it is tempting to see state socialism as ‘getting in the way’ of Jugolinija's business, in actuality the firm was remarkably successful both at operating within the Yugoslav socialist state framework, and capitalizing on the opportunities provided by access to the global market. Jugolinija's employees, in turn, profited from the mobility that came with working for the firm, sometimes at the expense of the enterprise and the state.

Popular Representation and Political Dissatisfaction in Chile's New Democracy

1999 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul W. Posner
Keyword(s):  
Structural Reform ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Democratic Reform ◽  
Political Dissatisfaction ◽  
Dominant Parties ◽  
New Democracy ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Impact

The constraints imposed on Chile’s democratic transition by the military regime, plus the impact of structural reform and the political renovation of the dominant parties of the center and left, have made the traditional party allies of the popular sectors unable or unwiIIing to represent those constituents in the political arena. This argument is substantiated through an overview of pacted democratic transitions, an analysis of the evolution of party-base relations in Chile, and a consideration of the institutional impediments to further democratic reform.

Czechoslovakia’s Discreet Behavioral Revolution in the 1960s

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 196-212
Author(s):  
Martin Štefek
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
The Political ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Prague Spring ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Industrial Societies ◽  
Behavioral Reasoning

This article deals with the thus far unnoticed “intellectual origin” of the so-called Prague Spring. It summarizes tenets of behavioral revolution in the field of social sciences and documents its considerable influence on Czechoslovak scholars. From the mid-1960s, behavioral reasoning coexisted with other (mutually conflicting) perspectives. Literature on Czechoslovak reform has given evidence of the impact of Marxian revisionism, the Frankfurt school, and theories of industrial societies. This article stresses the significance of behavioral meta-theory not only in academia but also in the political arena. However, the process of normalization after 1968/1969 signified the inevitable end for this paradigm.

The Making and Unmaking of a Medieval Library

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konrad Hirschler
Keyword(s):  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Local Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regional Context ◽  
Regional Sources ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Book Circulation

This chapter firstly traces the foundation of the Ashrafiya in late Ayyubid Damascus. It argues that the library was set up by two principal patrons one belonging to the political elite (the city’s ruler al-Ashraf) and one belonging to the civilian elite (the prominent secretary and son of al-Qadi al-Fadil). Consequently, it is possible to identify three main regional sources from which the books originated: Rather surprisingly, the plundered former Fatimid palace library in Cairo, Northern Mesopotamia where al-Ashraf had spent his early years and the local context of Damascus. The chapter traces in a second part the subsequent development of the library until its dispersal in the early Ottoman period. This chapter is completed by a brief outline of the subsequent fate of some manuscripts originally held in this library, many of which were taken to Istanbul. The two main arguments of this chapter are thus a) thematic, to see this ‘Islamic’ book collection in its specific regional context and b) methodological, to show in what ways the study of individual manuscript notes can give insights into book circulation.

Why Ukraine Is Not Russia

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 813-833 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yitzhak M. Brudny ◽  
Evgeny Finkel
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Significant Extent ◽  
Considerable Part ◽  
The Public ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Impact

The article discusses the impact of national identity on democratization and market reforms in Russia and Ukraine. We develop a concept of hegemonic national identity and demonstrate its role in Russian and Ukrainian post-communist political development. The article argues that Russia’s slide toward authoritarianism was to an important degree an outcome of the notions of national identity adopted by the main political players and society at large. In Ukraine, on the other hand, a hegemonic identity failed to emerge and the public discussion of issues of national identity led to the adoption of much more liberal and democratic notions of identity by a considerable part of the political elite. Adoption of this more liberal identity, in turn, was one of the main reasons for the Orange Revolution. The main theoretical implications of this argument are as follows: (a) choices of national identity profoundly affect the prospects for democracy in the newly democratizing states; (b) institutions do shape identities; (c) elites’ preference for (or opposition to) liberal democracy is not simply a consequence of their understanding of their self-interest in gaining and preserving power but also is dependent to a significant extent on their choices of political identity.

The Impact of African States on the United Nations

1969 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Kay
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Stable Pattern ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
The Face ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Impact

The United Nations at its present stage of development is a political system of formally coordinate Members, each able to place before the Organization the demands that flow from its own environment. One can hypothesize that a stable environment will yield a stable pattern of demands on the United Nations political system. Similarly it can be hypothesized that a change in the environment—the major components of which are the Member States—will change the pattern of demands made on the political system of the Organization. It is on just such a change that this article proposes to focus. In the period between 1955 and the end of 1968, 37 African states, largely devoid of experience in the contemporary international arena and struggling with the multitudinous problems of fashioning coherent national entities in the face of both internal and external pressures, joined the United Nations. The admission of these states substantially altered the Organization's environment and the demands being made upon it. It is suggested here that these changes have been so substantial as to alter the nature of the political process of the Organization. Concern will be focused successively upon the nature of the entry of the African states into the United Nations, a determination of the areas in which the African states have made demands upon the system, the constitutional structure of the Organization as it has evolved under the impact of the African states, the impact of the African states on the handling of major issues, and finally on trends and implications of the role of African states in the United Nations.

‘Like amphibious animals’: Irish protestants, ancient Britons, 1691–1707

1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 785-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Smyth
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
Parliamentary Sovereignty ◽  
Inferior Status ◽  
The Face ◽  
Religion And Ethnicity ◽  
Two Kingdoms

ABSTRACTIreland in the 1690s was a protestant state with a majority catholic population. These protestants sometimes described themselves as ‘the king's Irish subjects’ or ‘the people of Ireland’, but rarely as ‘the Irish’, a label which they usually reserved for the catholics. In constitutional and political terms their still evolving sense of identity expressed itself in the assertion of Irish parliamentary sovereignty, most notably in William Molyneux's 1698 pamphlet, The case of Ireland's being bound by acts of parliament in England, stated. In practice, however, the Irish parliament did not enjoy legislative independence, and the political elite was powerless in the face of laws promulgated at Westminster, such as the i6gg woollen act, which were detrimental to its interests. One possible solution to the problem of inferior status lay in legislative union with England or Great Britain. Increasingly in the years before 1707 certain Irish protestant politicians elaborated the economic, constitutional and practical advantages to be gained from a union, but they also based their case upon an appeal to the shared religion and ethnicity of the sovereign's loyal subjects in the two kingdoms. In short the protestants insisted that they were English. This unionist episode thus illustrates the profoundly ambivalent character of protestant identity in late seventeenthand early eighteenth-century Ireland.

scholarly journals The Global Green Bond Market in the Face of the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-60
Author(s):  
Greta Keliuotytė-Staniulėnienė ◽  
Kamilė Daunaravičiūtė
Keyword(s):  
Negative Impact ◽  
Research Problem ◽  
Bond Market ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Bond Markets ◽  
Upward Trend ◽  
Bond Index ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Impact

This paper summarizes the relevant researches in the area of the green bond market within the perspective of the performance of the global green bond market in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the rapid expansion of the green bond market during the last decade, this market has also experienced the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The researches on the effect of COVID-19 and its induced crisis on the green bond markets are still fragmentary; therefore, the main purpose of this research is to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global green bond market. To reach the purpose, the methods of literature analysis, and correlation-regression analysis are used. In the first section of the paper, the research problem is presented; in the second part the analysis of academic literature is conducted; in the third part the design of the research is described, and in the fourth part the results of the assessment of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the global green bond market are discussed. The results of the research revealed that the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to have a negative impact on the performance of the S&P Green Bond Index. The market reaction to deaths caused by COVID-19 infection proved to be stronger than the reaction to confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection. However, after a sufficiently significant negative shift, which was observed in the first quarter of 2020, the S&P Green Bond Index regained its upward trend, which continued for the rest of the year.

scholarly journals Multifaceted Islam: Malaysia

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 68-87
Author(s):  
Ju. V. Roknifard
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Islamic Identity ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Malaysian Politics

This paper analyzes the Islam’s impact on the Malaysian politics. Islam as an instrument of Malaysia’s foreign policy has been used by the political elite of the state for decades. Observers note the Islamization of the country’s foreign policy, especially during the premiership of Najib Razak (2008– 2018). However, the trend towards Islamization can be traced back to the moment Malaysia gained independence from Great Britain in 1957 and especially during the premiership of Mahathir Mohamad (1981–2003). The formation of such a foreign policy of Malaysia took place against the background of the Islamization of the political and social environment within the country, which, in turn, was the result of an internal political struggle. Thus, the projection of Malaysia’s identity into the outside world and the foreign policy corresponding to this identity was often motivated by the need to retain or attract the support of the malay-muslim majority in the domestic political arena. Since many of the issues raised in the article relate to identity both at the national and global level, a constructivist paradigm is used to conceptualize Malaysia’s foreign policy with a special emphasis on the identity of states. Particularly important in this process is the formation of domestic and foreign policy discourse. Malaysia’s Islamic identity is viewed externally in three dimensions: the Sunni state, the activist state in the Islamic world and the standard of moderate Islam. Consideration of these dimensions reveals quite obvious contradictions between them, as well as between rhetoric and real politics.

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