The African Crowd in Nairobi: Popular Movements and Élite Politics

1973 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Furedi

The absence of popular participation in the political process of post-independent Kenya should be seen as the outcome of a political tension, which has its roots in the colonial period. The growth of Nairobi, a colonial urban centre par excellence, provided unequal opportunities for its African population. The majority of the Nairobi Africans came to constitute the African crowd—domestic servants, the majority of workers in private and public employment, and petty traders. This group should be distinguished from the Nairobi African middle class which formed the ‘political élite’. The African middle class possessed a fairly high level of education and had remunerative positions with government or were wealthy traders. By the mid-'forties, this group had become well integrated within the colonial system.The different, and often contradictory, interests of these two groups of people was strikingly manifested on the level of political action. The ‘popular movements’ of the African crowd were direct and often extra-constitutional. Their organizations, e.g. the 40 Group, were characteristically militant, and were often based on mass support. The ‘élite politics’ of the African middle class were strictly constitutional and moderate. Their goal—to consolidate their position within the colonial system—had obviously only limited appeal. The conflict between these two social groups was resolved by the elimination of the African crowd as a political force.

2021 ◽  
pp. 174165902110224
Author(s):  
Mthokozisi Phathisani Ndhlovu ◽  
Phillip Santos

Even though corruption by politicians and in politics is widespread worldwide, it is more pronounced in developing countries, such as Zimbabwe, where members of the political elite overtly abuse power for personal accumulation of wealth. Ideally, the news media, as watchdogs, are expected to investigate and report such abuses of power. However, previous studies in Zimbabwe highlight the news media’s polarised and normative inefficacies. Informed by the theoretical notion of deliberative democracy developed via Habermas and Dahlgren’s work and Hall’s Encoding, Decoding Model, this article uses qualitative content analysis to examine how online readers of Zimbabwe’s two leading daily publications, The Herald and NewsDay, interpreted and evaluated allegations of corruption leveled against ministers and deputy ministers during the height of factionalism in the ruling party (ZANU PF). The article argues that interaction between mainstream media and their audiences online shows the latter’s resourcefulness and, at least, discursive agency in their engagement with narratives about political corruption, itself an imperative premise for future political action.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shamall Ahmad

The flaws and major flaws in the political systems represent one of the main motives that push the political elite towards making fundamental reforms, especially if those reforms have become necessary matters so that: Postponing them or achieving them affects the survival of the system and the political entity. Thus, repair is an internal cumulative process. It is cumulative based on the accumulated experience of the historical experience of the same political elite that decided to carry out reforms, and it is also an internal process because the decision to reform comes from the political elite that run the political process. There is no doubt that one means of political reform is to push the masses towards participation in political life. Changing the electoral system, through electoral laws issued by the legislative establishment, may be the beginning of political reform (or vice versa), taking into account the uncertainty of the political process, especially in societies that suffer from the decline of democratic values, represented by the processes of election from one cycle to another. Based on the foregoing, this paper seeks to analyze the relationship between the Electoral and political system, in particular, tracking and studying the Iraqi experience from the first parliamentary session until the issuance of the Election Law No. (9) for the year (2020).


Africa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 529-547
Author(s):  
Roger Southall

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.


2010 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 63-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emin Alper

AbstractThe years between 1968 and 1971 in Turkey were unprecedented in terms of rising social protests instigated by students, workers, peasants, teachers and white-collar workers. However, these social movements have received very limited scholarly attention, and the existing literature is marred by many flaws. The scarce literature has mainly provided an economic determinist framework for understanding the massive mobilizations of the period, by stressing the worsening economic conditions of the masses. However, these explanations cannot be verified by data. This article tries to provide an alternative, mainly political explanation for the protest cycle of 1968-71, relying on the “political process” model of social movement studies. It suggests that the change in the power balance of organized groups in politics, which was spearheaded by a prolonged elite conflict between the Kemalist bureaucracy and the political elite of the center-right, provided significant opportunities to under-represented groups to organize and raise their voices.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 210
Author(s):  
Didi Febriyandi

This paper looks at how the political dynamics that occurred in the Sebatik City expansion process in 2006-2012. The process of regional expansion can be understood as a political phenomenon by involving long administrative and political processes. This paper focuses on looking at political aspects so that it discusses in detail the interests of actors and how these actors articulate their interests. The research method used is descriptive qualitative. Primary data collection techniques are done through observation, structured interviews. For secondary data collection is done by documentation and library techniques.The results showed that the political process is complicated because it involves many interests of political actors making the Sebatik City expansion not realized until now. Although academic studies declared eligible and supported by the majority of Sebatik Island, high-level negotiations-negotiations have failed to realize Sebatik as Daera h Autonomy New (DOB). The political process that occurred did not create a consensus so that there was a conflict of interests that ultimately made the Sebatik City Expansion process hampered. Key Words: decentralization, regional autonomy, outer islands, division


2021 ◽  
Vol V (4) ◽  
pp. 44-56
Author(s):  
Evgeny Maslanov

The article is an attempt to answer the question on the political subjectivity of modern science. It is hardly possible to speak of the specific political subjectivity of science and scientists as a conscious participation in the struggle for power. First, the race for power itself is not a major purpose for them: scientists concentrate on studying the world and creating new technologies. Second, even if they participate in such a race, they are not different from other social groups which protect their interests in political process. Changing the point of view on the political subjectivity of science enables to see its specific position in the space of the political. During discipline power and biopower formation and governmentality development, science became a basic element of public administration and politics. It forms the ideas of the objects managed, possible ways of interaction with them and creates the space of the political and management decisions implemented. In this case, social sciences and humanities obtain special political subjectivity. This also applies in a specific way to natural science and technical sciences. New scientific theories and technological solutions become representatives of non-human actors in the human world. They result in changing our ideas on “Nature”, a “scene” for history and political actions. The emergence of new non-human actors can cause the technological revolution which can influence the ways of political action implementation and provide new opportunities to execute political projects. This is an important element of the political subjectivity of science.


Author(s):  
Kenneth D. Wald

Lacking sovereignty, a well-developed theology of politics, and a central organizing mechanism, the Jewish political experience is unique among the three Abrahamic faiths. Apart from research on the political content implicit in Jewish scriptures, there has been little scholarship on what Jews do when they engage in political action. Using a contextual framework, this article examines the politics of Jews by reviewing both single-country studies and the few extant cross-national analyses. In considering why Jewish political behavior differs from one place to another, political process theory and Medding’s theory of Jewish interests guide the analysis. Medding argued that Jewish politics is primarily a response to threats perceived in the political environment. The ability of Jewish communities to resist such threats depends largely on the rules governing the political environment, the political opportunity structure. Where Jews are a majority and control the rules, as in the state of Israel, they have adopted a regime that prioritizes the Jewish character of the state against perceived threats from the country’s Arab citizens. Where Jews are a minority, as in the United States, their ability to control the political environment is limited. However, the political rules of the game embodied in the U.S. Constitution have levelled the playing field to the advantage of religious minorities like Jews. Specifically, by rejecting “blood and soil” citizenship and denying the religious character of the state, those rules provide Jews and other minorities a valuable resource and access to sympathetic allies in the political system. Hence American Jews have been able to counter what they perceive as the major threat to their political interests—a replacement of the secular state by a confessional regime. Focusing on threats, the political opportunity structure, and political context helps to anchor Jewish political studies in research on ethnic political cohesion and to bring such research into the scholarly mainstream.


Author(s):  
Hamsa Qahtan Khalaf

The research has been tackled about the emerging democratic political process in Iraq since 2003 , especially it has not received much attention from specialists in political, social and legal reform. So the Iraq’s situation has been subjected to various  successive crises which matched with too much differences as well as the continuation of the administration of governance in accordance with the theory of power-sharing between the three presidencies, had brought it to all positions by the responsibility which witnessed a big  suspicions;  because of the political corruption in both administrative and financial sides .The invitations for procuring the comprehensive reform and empowerment within democracy needed to be the latest phenomena as a part of the policy that declined in previous period, which took place the democratic political process until we found it unable to renew itself and revive its contents from inside owing to the condition of the reliance on the consensus and political quotas by their sectarian, national, ethnic components in the political society . Furthermore , the process of re-revision in order to implement the  reform and empowerment in democracy’s process became an urgent need to re - model the experience with a real and effective measures for the experience that can overcome the past and present to looking forward the future, and among these requirements and needs of several trying to be consistent with them according to the requirements of this stage in light of the trend to assess the overall political situation , and others to achieve a specific comprehensive review that does not harm the democratic political process consequently . So that , every country couldn’t get into the political reform without a hierarchical way to re-build the condition of democratic empowerment , although the power-holders make the right choices to secure their presence in the authority by ensuring their electoral supremacy in the democratic political process constitutionally and legally alike .The rules of participatory democratic political action; and the continuation of formal political reforms are considered  a cause of crisis with the option of stumbling path reform in the final outcome and this does not serve the whole political experience in Iraq . In spite of the effectiveness of the Iraqi society, which is characterized by effective social mobility and even political at the popular levels, especially in the levels of The middle class itself and others, which began to do so in general, by stimulating  the choice between the alternatives offered , to overcome this general problems by the political reform movement that is going on at the level of the ruling political class (National settlement options) or so – called The  National Historic distressed under a state of political stagnation which suffered by the most of the partisan forces that relied just on their method visions . That change does not happen on its own, but through the behavior of individuals and their actions that based on the condition of a admixture between the theory of change and actual practice overlapping ultimately the incentives , to move effectively toward the transition into the best , and between the various structural factors contribute to the conditions of overall revision , which requires attaching aspirations to fulfillment action through reformist movements and to rebuild the national peace , stable and continuous pattern of change that starts from the bottom up to the top and not vice versa. Because the recent (reverse) reform structure may lead to abrupt and unexpected results as well as the state of decline in the institutional structure of society .   Finally, The previous scenes we found were working in accordance with the current consensuses and alliances based on the profits and rewards, by exercising the authority without relying on the legitimacy of achievement and containment the whole components together. So in the next stage will be confronted a full of crises and with new challenges, which will undoubtedly be affected by failures of traditional parties or otherwise as long as they are part of the democratic political process, because the previous election experiences could not break the barriers and penetrate the equations of the reality within the current political assumptions, So that the limits of the authority itself would not have willing to seek the mission of rebuilding the nation-state or re-building into maintain its existence in a stable, orderly and balanced systematically , despite of the attempts of some leaders and renewal (senior) leaders to move somewhat away from the symbolic model of leadership and management alike . All of that , it depends on the quality of reform and review to accomplish the empowerment in political democracy , and to overcome all the differences among political governing elites presently and for the future , by procuring an active democratic process consequently .


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
О. В. Лагутин

The paper considers the problem of empirical search for models of online mobilization of the youth protest movement in the modern Russian metropolis. In the political practice of many countries, young people have become one of the most important objects of influence of various political actors, both internal and external. Also, in Russian political protest, young people are traditionally the driving force. In the last decade, the online environment has become the most effective and operational communication field for the construction of the political process. The greatest political impact was achieved by the online organization of protest actions, the key element of the strategy of which was the mobilization of the masses. The objectives of the study are to use multidimensional methods of analysis to identify the features that influence the formation of online mobilization models, and to give a descriptive description of each of the models. To study the problem, an online survey of representatives of the younger generation in all megacities of the Russian Federation was conducted, during which latent factors of political action in the online environment, online mechanisms for attracting the attention of users of social networks to political problems that play the role of a protest trigger, and types of political participation were identified. With the help of classification methods, the obtained factors were obtained four models of online mobilization of the political prosthesis of the youth of modern Russia.


Author(s):  
ELAINE DE ALMEIDA BORTONE

O artigo analisa dois documentários produzidos pelo Instituo de Pesquisas e Estudos Sociais (IPES), ”O que é os IPáŠS” e ”História de um maquinista”. Os curtas foram criados para serem utilizados como instrumentos de ação polá­tica, com os objetivos de interferir no processo polá­tico e doutrinar a opinião pública contra João Goulart. Palavras chave: IPES. Ditadura civil-militar. Propaganda ideológica.  ACTION POLICY INSTITUO DE PESQUISAS E ESTUDOS SOCIAIS (IPES) THROUGH DOCUMENTARY Abstract: The article analyzes two documentary produced by the Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Sociais (IPES), "O que é o IPES" and "História de um maquinista". The shorts films are designed to be used as instruments of political action, with the objective of interfering in the political process and indoctrinate the public against João Goulart. Keywords: IPES. Civil-military dictatorship. Ideological propaganda.  LA ACCIÓN POLITICA DEL INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIÓN Y ESTUDIOS SOCIALES (IPES) A TRAVES DE DOCUMENTARIOSResumen: El articulo analiza dos documentarios producidos por el Instituto de Investigaciones y Estudios Sociales (IPES), "O que é os IPES" y "Historia de um maquinista ". Los curtas fueron creados para ser utilizado como instrumentos de acción polá­tica, con objetivos de interferir en el proceso polá­tico y doctrinar la opinión pública contra Joao Goulart. Palabras clave: IPES. Dictadura civil militar. Propaganda ideológica.


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