The Social Structure of the National Assembly in Kenya, 1963–83

1989 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Hornsby
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Period ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Background ◽  
Party State

The study of elections and parliamentary behaviour in Africa has become a neglected topic. Whilst the emergence of political élites during and after the colonial period has been examined carefully, little attention has been paid to the structure and functioning of the modern one-party state. Emphasis has tended to shift towards the analysis of political economy and of the nature of class relations, partly as a consequence of the close linkages between economic and political relations within developing states. However, studies of post-1969 politics in Kenya are now scarce, and basic knowledge of the operation of the political system is often absent. In order to help redress the balance, this article presents and analyses data about the socio-economic background of the Members of Parliament.

Characterizing QAnon: Analysis of YouTube comments presents new conclusions about a popular conservative conspiracy

First Monday ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Taninecz Miller
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Computational Social Science ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Science Methods ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global Affairs ◽  
Party State

QAnon has become an important phenomenon in American politics due to both its relative popularity as well as its adoption/endorsement by political elites. However, this conspiracy theory/social movement has received sparse investigation in the social sciences. This gap is particularly noticeable in regards to the QAnon movement’s overall beliefs and perceptions of global affairs. This piece addresses these research gaps by using repeatable inductive computational social science methods to analyze a sample of comments from YouTube, a platform popular with QAnon followers. This investigation affirms previous observations regarding QAnon’s narratives connecting the U.S. government (particularly prominent Democrats) and alleged sexual violence against children, anti-semitism/fundamentalist Christian theology, and pro-Trump sentiments, and also reaveals several novel conclusions regarding QAnon. These novel observations include: [1] that the QAnon community sustains substantial discussion of international affairs, largely revolving around China, Russia and Israel (in order of prominence); [2] that discussion of China in QAnon comments received more “likes” than other international topics; and [3] that a nexus of conjectures tying former presidential candidate, Senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the Chinese party-state dominate these China-centric comments. Aside from these novel conclusions regarding QAnon, this paper also seeks to make a contribution to repeatable social science analysis of YouTube comments more generally.

Parlamentarier als Beruf

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Reiher
Keyword(s):  
Career Paths ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Institutional Framework ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Political Careers ◽  
Extensive Data ◽  
Theoretical Part ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recruitment Patterns

The fact that politics has become a profession is inferred in the theoretical part of this work and substantiated in the empirical part with extensive data. Within its institutional framework, political professionalisation has led to the social figure of the professional politician. From the author's point of view, it is remarkable that the trend towards this professionalisation has not led to significant changes in the recruitment patterns and career paths of members of parliament. On the contrary, Herzog’s career types still prove valid today and have only had to be moderately refined. This shows an astonishing continuity in the formation of political elites. Germany’s very stable institutional framework, which determines access to and the attractiveness of political careers, has obviously also led to the stabilisation of career types.

The Erosion of Patron-Client Bonds and Social Change in Rural Southeast Asia

1972 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
James C. Scott
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Bargaining Power ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
The Social ◽  
Client Relationships ◽  
Demographic Impact ◽  
The Relationship

This paper attempts to explain how, in Southeast Asia, the strong patron-client bonds which joined peasants to local elites tended to break down during the colonial period—particularly in directly-ruled low-land areas. By examining the effects of social differentiation, the commercialization of subsistence agriculture, and the growth of colonial administration on day-to-day class relations in the countryside, it is possible to show how a relationship the peasant once viewed as collaborative and legitimate came increasingly to be seen as one of simple, if unequal, bargaining or of outright exploitation.Patron-client relationships are seen as a pattern of exchange of goods and services in which the balance of exchange is related to the legitimacy of the relationship. In particular, physical security and subsistence insurance are minimal services the peasant anticipates in exchange for his deference. In the pre-colonial period the greater availability of alternative social mechanisms such as the kindred and village, the existence of unclaimed land, and the absence of strong outside backing of local powerholders served to provide minimal guarantees for clients, with the social and demographic impact of colonialism strengthened, the bargaining power of elites and moved the balances of reciprocity to their advantage the protective power and coverage of deference relations eroded. The result was a loss of legitimacy by agrarian elites.

Turning Digitised Newspapers into Networks of Political Elites

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 567-587
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Hicks ◽  
Vincent A. Traag ◽  
Ridho Reinanda
Keyword(s):  
Computational Techniques ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Computational Sciences ◽  
Computational Identification

This paper introduces the Elite Network Shifts (ENS) project to the Asian Studies community where computational techniques are used with digitised newspaper articles to describe changes in relations among Indonesian political elites. Reflecting on how “political elites” and “political relations” are understood by the elites, as well as across the disciplinary boundaries of the social and computational sciences, it suggests ways to operationalise these concepts for digital research. It then presents the results of a field trip where six Indonesian political elites were asked to evaluate the accuracy of their own computational networks generated by the project. The main findings of the paper are: (1) The computational identification of political elites is relatively successful, while much work remains on categorising their relations, (2) social scientists should focus on capturing single dimensions of complex social phenomena when using computational techniques, and (3) computational techniques are not able to capture multiple understandings of social concepts.

The Colonial Period in the Maghrib and its Aftermath: The Present State of Historical Writing

1976 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Brett
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Background ◽  
Current Concern ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Satisfactory Account ◽  
Historical Investigation

The post mortem examination of the French regime in North Africa has tried to establish what went wrong, and when. It has described in detail the adverse effects of the regime upon the indigène, especially in Algeria. Rather less attention has been paid to the minority of those who, under the circumstances, prospered in various ways. The fortunes of the 25,000 Muslim Algerian landowners, for example, each with anything from 50 to 500 or more hectares, deserve to be studied. They are relevant to the current concern with the origins and growth of nationalist movements for independence. Explanations of a conflict arising inevitably out of the inequality and incompatibility of the two communities have difficulty in explaining the connexion between the nationalist leaders and the population at large. A satisfactory account should be able to identify the support for these leaders and their activities at any given time. The problem has attracted most attention in Morocco, where the success of the monarchy at the expense of the Istiqlal has called for an explanation. The well-known connexion of the Istiqlal with the Fassi community has been the starting-point of attempts to describe a political society in relation to the social and economic background of the groups and interests which it comprises. The historical investigation of this background throughout the Maghrib should provide a firm context for descriptions of political activity before and after independence.

The legislature as political control: change and continuity in Cameroon's National Assembly (1973–2019)

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-506
Author(s):  
Yonatan L. Morse
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Analysis ◽  
Political Control ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Control Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Multiparty Politics

abstractA growing literature has begun to more closely examine African legislatures. However, most of this research has been attentive to emerging democratic settings, and particularly the experiences of a select number of English-speaking countries. By contrast, Cameroon is a Francophone majority country that reintroduced multiparty politics in the early 1990s but continues to exhibit significant authoritarian tendencies. This article provides a longitudinal analysis of Cameroon's National Assembly and builds on a unique biographical dataset of over 900 members of parliament between 1973 and 2019. The article describes changes in the structure and orientation of the legislature as well as the social profile of its members, in particular following the transition to multipartyism. While the legislature in Cameroon remains primarily a tool of political control, it is more dynamic, and the mechanisms used to manage elites within the context of complex multiethnic politics have evolved.

The Effect of the Political Situation in the City of Jerusalem on the Rights of the Jerusalem Women

1970 ◽  
pp. 36-47
Author(s):  
Fadwa Al-Labadi
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Sexual Life ◽  
Family Status ◽  
Colonial Legacy ◽  
Legal Principle ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City ◽  
Legislative Processes

The concept of citizenship was introduced to the Arab and Islamic region duringthe colonial period. The law of citizenship, like all other laws and regulations inthe Middle East, was influenced by the colonial legacy that impacted the tribal and paternalistic systems in all aspects of life. In addition to the colonial legacy, most constitutions in the Middle East draw on the Islamic shari’a (law) as a major source of legislation, which in turn enhances the paternalistic system in the social sector in all its dimensions, as manifested in many individual laws and the legislative processes with respect to family status issues. Family is considered the nucleus of society in most Middle Eastern countries, and this is specifically reflected in the personal status codes. In the name of this legal principle, women’s submission is being entrenched, along with censorship over her body, control of her reproductive role, sexual life, and fertility.

Realism and the Middle-Class Balancing Act

2019 ◽  
pp. 463-483
Author(s):  
Patrick Chura
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
William Dean Howells ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Literary Responses ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Social Scale ◽  
The Social ◽  
Realist Novels ◽  
The Subject

This chapter looks at the effects of capitalism and social stratification on notions of class identity in two groups of American realist novels. First, it analyzes a pair of literary responses by William Dean Howells to the 1886 Chicago Haymarket bombing as the lead-in to a discussion of realist works about voluntary downward class mobility or “vital contact.” With Howells’s A Hazard of New Fortunes as a reference point and paradigm, the chapter also explores the ideologies implicit in several novels about upward social mobility, noting how both groups of texts are ultimately guided by a genteel perspective positioned between dominant and subordinate classes. In similar ways, the novels treated in the chapter balance middle-class loyalties against identities from higher and lower on the social scale while sending messages of both complicity and subversion on the subject of capitalist class relations.

scholarly journals Returning urban political elites to the research agenda: the case of the Southern Low Countries (c. 1350 – c. 1550)

Urban History ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 568-588
Author(s):  
Frederik Buylaert ◽  
Jelten Baguet ◽  
Janna Everaert
Keyword(s):  
Special Section ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
High Turnover ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis article provides a comparative analysis of four large towns in the Southern Low Countries between c. 1350 and c. 1550. Combining the data on Ghent, Bruges and Antwerp – each of which is discussed in greater detail in the articles in this special section – with recent research on Bruges, the authors argue against the historiographical trend in which the political history of late medieval towns is supposedly dominated by a trend towards oligarchy. Rather than a closure of the ruling class, the four towns show a high turnover in the social composition of the political elite, and a consistent trend towards aristocracy, in which an increasingly large number of aldermen enjoyed noble status. The intensity of these trends differed from town to town, and was tied to different institutional configurations as well as different economic and political developments in each of the four towns.

How to Get Information Out of Members of Parliament (Without Being Told Off by the Speaker)

2021 ◽  
pp. 147892992110421
Author(s):  
Philip Cowley
Keyword(s):  
Golden Rule ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Gain Access

Based on experience of over 1000 interviews with British members of parliament, this article explains why members of parliament are difficult to get access to; offers tips to gain access to them, as well as ideas for how to get the most of out of them once they have agreed. It sets out one Golden Rule of dealing with political elites and also discusses the problems of attempting surveys.

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