Multi-Level Democracy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lori Thorlakson
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Design ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Fiscal Decentralization ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Subnational Elections ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Integrated Or

All federal systems face an internal tension between divisive and integrative political forces, striking a balance between providing local autonomy and representation on one hand and maintaining an integrated political community on the other hand. How multi-level systems strike this balance depends on the development of styles of either integrated politics, which creates a shared framework for political competition across the units of a federation, or independent politics, preserving highly autonomous arenas of political life. This book argues that the long-term development of integrated or independent styles of politics in multi-level systems can be shaped by two key elements of federal institutional design: the degree of fiscal decentralization, or how much is ‘at stake’ at each level of government, and the degree to which the allocation of policy jurisdiction creates legislative or administrative interdependence or autonomy. These elements of federal institutional design shape integrated and independent politics at the level of party organizations, party systems, and voter behaviour. This book tests these arguments using a mixed-method approach, drawing on original survey data from 250 subnational party leaders and aggregate electoral data from over 2,200 subnational elections in seven multi-level systems: Canada, the United States, Australia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Spain. It supplements this with configurational analysis and qualitative case studies.

Integrated and Independent Politics

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-44
Author(s):  
Lori Thorlakson
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Party Organizations ◽  
The Core ◽  
Shared Space ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Integrated Or

Political life in a multi-level system can be integrated or independent at the level of party organizations, party systems, and voter behaviour, either creating a shared space of political competition or separate political worlds. This chapter elaborates the concepts of integrated and independent politics in multi-level systems and discusses their possible normative consequences for the performance of federalism. The chapter presents an operationalization of the core concepts of integrated and independent politics and discusses how aspects of multi-level competition, at the level of party, party system, and voter behaviour, either generate integrative forces or preserve separate arenas of competition.

Shaping Multi-Level Democracy

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Lori Thorlakson
Keyword(s):  
Political Competition ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Institutional Structure ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Causal Process ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
Electoral Behaviour ◽  
Multi Level

Why, in some multi-level systems, does political competition preserve highly independent spheres of political life across the units and levels of a federation, while in other multi-level systems, political competition results in the emergence of a shared political space? This chapter argues that these patterns of independent or integrated politics in multi-level systems are shaped in important ways by the federal institutional structure, which shapes the incentives that parties and voters alike face. Surveying the literature that identifies how institutions impact party organization, party systems, and electoral behaviour, this chapter sets out a two-stage causal process whereby institutions shape aspects of integrated politics and aspects of integrated politics reinforce each other.

Bipartisanship as Possible Alternative of Russian Political System Evolution

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 256-265
Author(s):  
Konstantin V. Simonov ◽  
Stanislav P. Mitrakhovich
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Complex Structures ◽  
Practical Advice ◽  
Simultaneous Separation

The article examines the possibility of transfer to bipartisan system in Russia. The authors assess the benefits of the two-party system that include first of all the ensuring of actual political competition and authority alternativeness with simultaneous separation of minute non-system forces that may contribute to the country destabilization. The authors analyze the accompanying risks and show that the concept of the two-party system as the catalyst of elite schism is mostly exaggerated. The authors pay separate attention to the experience of bipartisan system implementation in other countries, including the United States. They offer detailed analysis of the generated concept of the bipartisanship crisis and show that this point of view doesn’t quite agree with the current political practice. The authors also examine the foreign experience of the single-party system. They show that the success of the said system is mostly insubstantial, besides many of such systems have altered into more complex structures, while commentators very often use not the actual information but the established myths about this or that country. The authors also offer practical advice regarding the potential technologies of transition to the bipartisan system in Russia.

Specters of Belonging

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrián Félix
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Mexican Migrant ◽  
Transnational Citizenship

In the context of research on the “thickening” of borders, Specters of Belonging raises the related question: How does transnational citizenship thicken across the political life cycle of Mexican migrants? In addressing this question, this book resembles what any good migration corrido (ballad) does—narrate the thickening of transnational citizenship from beginning, middle, to end. Specifically, Specters of Belonging traces Mexican migrant transnationalism across the migrant political life cycle, beginning with the “political baptism” (i.e., naturalization in the United States) and ending with repatriation to México after death. In doing so, the book illustrates how Mexican migrants enunciate, enact, and embody transnational citizenship in constant dialectical contestation with the state and institutions of citizenship on both sides of the U.S.-México border. Drawing on political ethnographies of citizenship classrooms, the first chapter examines how Mexican migrants enunciate transnational citizenship as they navigate the naturalization process in the United States and grapple with the contradictions of U.S. citizenship and its script of singular political loyalty. The middle chapter deploys transnational ethnography to analyze how Mexican migrants enact transnational citizenship within the clientelistic orbit of the Mexican state, focusing on a group of returned migrant politicians and transnational activists. Last, the final chapter turns to how Mexican migrants embody transnational citizenship by tracing the cross-border practice of repatriating the bodies of deceased Mexican migrants from the United States to their communities of origin in rural México.

Turnout in Multi-Level Systems

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sona N. Golder ◽  
Ignacio Lago ◽  
André Blais ◽  
Elisabeth Gidengil ◽  
Thomas Gschwend
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
European Level ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Different Levels

Voters face different incentives to turn out to vote in one electoral arena versus another. Although turnout is lowest in European elections, it is found that the turnout is only slightly lower in regional than in national elections. Standard accounts suggest that the importance of an election, in terms of the policy-making power of the body to be elected, drives variation in turnout across elections at different levels. This chapter argues that this is only part of the story, and that voter attachment to a particular level also matters. Not all voters feel connected to each electoral arena in the same way. Although for some, their identity and the issues they most care about are linked to politics at the national level, for others, the regional or European level may offer the political community and political issues that most resonate with them.

Political Community in Revolutionary Pennsylvania, 1774-1800

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Owen
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Early American ◽  
The People ◽  
Governmental Institutions ◽  
Popular Mobilization

Political Community in Revolutionary Pennsylvania challenges the ways we understand popular sovereignty in the American Revolution, demonstrating how ordinary citizens wielded significant political power. Previous histories place undue focus on either elite political thought or class analysis; on the contrary, citizens cared most about the establishment of a representative, publicly legitimate political process. Popular activism constrained leaders, creating a system through which governmental actions were made more representative of the will of the community. This book analyzes developments in Pennsylvania from 1774, and the passage of the Intolerable Acts, through to 1800 and the election of Thomas Jefferson. It examines the animating philosophy of the Pennsylvania state constitution of 1776, a “radical manifesto” espousing a vision of popular sovereignty in which government was devolved from the people only where necessary. The legitimacy of governmental institutions rested on their demonstration that they operated through popular consent, expressed in a variety of forms of popular mobilization. This book examines how early Americans interacted with the power structures shaping the world in which they lived, recasting the nature of the American Revolution and illuminating the origins of modern American political practice. It investigates how political mobilization operated inside and outside formal channels of government. Mechanisms of popular mobilization helped a diverse population mediate with governmental institutions, providing the foundation of early American power. Histories that ignore this relationship miss one of the most significant founding characteristics of the United States—the importance of popular politics and democratic practice in the establishment of American government.

The Empire of Disgust

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Change Point ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Swimming Pools ◽  
Economic Class ◽  
Group Resistance

All known societies exclude and stigmatize one or more minority groups. Frequently these exclusions are underwritten with a rhetoric of disgust: people of a certain group, it is alleged, are filthy, hyper-animal, or not fit to share such facilities as drinking water, food, and public swimming pools with the ‘clean’ and ‘fully human’ majority. But exclusions vary in their scope and also in the specific disgust-ideologies underlying them. In this volume, interdisciplinary scholars from the United States and India present a detailed comparative study of the varieties of prejudice and stigma that pervade contemporary social and political life: prejudice along the axes of caste, race, gender, age, sexual orientation, transgender, disability, religion, and economic class. In examining these forms of stigma and their intersections, the authors present theoretically pluralistic and empirically sensitive accounts that both explain group-based stigma and suggest ways forward. These forward-looking remedies, including group resistance to subordination as well as institutional and legal change, point the way towards a public culture that is informed by our diverse histories of discrimination and therefore equipped to eliminate stigma in all of its multifaceted forms.

scholarly journals Gender disparities in opioid treatment progress in methadone versus counseling

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Erick Guerrero ◽  
Hortensia Amaro ◽  
Yinfei Kong ◽  
Tenie Khachikian ◽  
Jeanne C. Marsh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Treatment Outcomes ◽  
Treatment Plan ◽  
Dropout Rate ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gender Disparities ◽  
Opioid Use ◽  
Lower Odds ◽  
Male Clients ◽  
Multi Level

Abstract Background In the United States, the high dropout rate (75%) in opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment among women and racial/ethnic minorities calls for understanding factors that contribute to making progress in treatment. Whereas counseling and medication for OUD (MOUD, e.g. methadone, buprenorphine, naltrexone) is considered the gold standard of care in substance use disorder (SUD) treatment, many individuals with OUD receive either counseling or methadone-only services. This study evaluates gender disparities in treatment plan progress in methadone- compared to counseling-based programs in one of the largest SUD treatment systems in the United States. Methods Multi-year and multi-level (treatment program and client-level) data were analyzed using the Integrated Substance Abuse Treatment to Eliminate Disparities (iSATed) dataset collected in Los Angeles County, California. The sample consisted of 4 waves: 2011 (66 SUD programs, 1035 clients), 2013 (77 SUD programs, 3686 clients), 2015 (75 SUD programs, 4626 clients), and 2017 (69 SUD programs, 4106 clients). We conducted two multi-level negative binomial regressions, one per each outcome (1) making progress towards completing treatment plan, and (2) completing treatment plan. We included outpatient clients discharged on each of the years of the study (over 95% of all clients) and accounted for demographics, wave, homelessness and prior treatment episodes, as well as clients clustered within programs. Results We detected gender differences in two treatment outcomes (progress and completion) considering two outpatient program service types (MOUD-methadone vs. counseling). Clients who received methadone vs. counseling had lower odds of completing their treatment plan (OR = 0.366; 95% CI = 0.163, 0.821). Female clients receiving methadone had lower odds of both making progress (OR = 0.668; 95% CI = 0.481, 0.929) and completing their treatment plan (OR = 0.666; 95% CI = 0.485, 0.916) compared to male clients and receiving counseling. Latina clients had lower odds of completing their treatment plan (OR = 0.617; 95% CI = 0.408, 0.934) compared with non-Latina clients. Conclusions Clients receiving methadone, the most common and highly effective MOUD in reducing opioid use, were less likely to make progress towards or complete their treatment plan than those receiving counseling. Women, and in particular those identified as Latinas, were least likely to benefit from methadone-based programs. These findings have implications for health policy and program design that consider the need for comprehensive and culturally responsive services in methadone-based programs to improve outpatient treatment outcomes among women.

What is Happening in the United States? How Social Classes Influence the Political Life of the Country and its Health and Quality of Life

2021 ◽  
pp. 002073142199484
Author(s):  
Vicente Navarro
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
United States ◽  
Access To Health Care ◽  
Universal Access ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Race And Gender

This article analyses the political changes that have been occurring in the United States (including the elections for the presidency of the country) and their consequences for the health and quality of life of the population. A major thesis of this article is that there is a need to analyse, besides race and gender, other categories of power - such as social class - in order to understand what happens in the country. While the class structure of the United States is similar to that of major Western European countries, the political context is very different. The U.S. political context has resulted in the very limited power of its working class, which explains the scarcity of labor, political and social rights in the country, such as universal access to health care.

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