Coalitional Clash, Export Mobilization, and Executive Agency

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth C. Shadlen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Pharmaceutical Sector ◽  
Pharmaceutical Patents ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
Trade Sanctions ◽  
Executive Agency

This chapter analyzes over-compliance in Brazil’s introduction of pharmaceutical patents in the 1990s. Extensive legislative deliberation and societal mobilization delayed and diluted this outcome, but could not prevent it. Brazil’s national pharmaceutical sector was able to tap into a network of social movements around the environmental and ethical dimensions of patenting to resist over-compliance. Yet, ultimately, the Executive secured over-compliance by using the country’s vulnerability to trade sanctions to mobilize exporters in support of this campaign. Comparative perspective reveals the conditional importance of external pressures and Executive preferences. Like Argentina, Brazil was subject to threats of trade sanctions and considerable intervention by the United States, and by mid-1990s both countries had Presidents that were committed to satisfying these external demands. What sets Brazil apart, however, was a different social structure that allowed the Executive and its societal allies to use these external pressures to build a broad coalition for over-compliance.

Assemblies and the struggle to diffuse power

Focaal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (72) ◽  
pp. 9-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Boni
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Consensus Building ◽  
East African ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The One

The article is focused on the practical mechanisms of assembly management in egalitarian settings in a comparative perspective: on the one hand, I examine assemblies in what may be termed classic ethnographic settings (principally East African pastoralists); on the other hand, I turn to meetings in recent social movements (the Occupy movement in the United States and Slovenia; the 15M in Spain; Greece and Bosnia). I have two principal aims. First, I wish to identify and evaluate similarities and differences in the running of meetings with regard to processes of consensus building; the coordination of assemblies through the creation of roles and the menace of leadership; and the management of place, time, and speech. Second, I aim to evaluate current social movements' use of alterpolitics, intended as the practical and imaginary reference to group meetings of the historical, sectarian, or ethnic other.

Not If but How

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth C. Shadlen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Bilateral Trade ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Pharmaceutical Patents ◽  
The North ◽  
Bilateral Trade Agreement ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
The Will

This chapter explains early and extreme over-compliance in Mexico. In the 1980s, even while transforming much of the country’s economic strategy, the Executive remained cautious with regard to pharmaceutical patenting. Yet by the end of the decade, external pressures and the promise of a bilateral trade agreement with the United States transformed the Executive’s preferences. The analysis reveals how economic liberalization in the late 1980s and the process of negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement weakened the national pharmaceutical sector both economically and politically, and how Mexico’s export profile and the opportunities presented by a new trade agreement with the United States helped the transnational sector widen the coalition for over-compliance. Examination of the legislative process by which Mexico adopted pharmaceutical patents in 1991 illustrates these stark coalitional asymmetries; we observe a defensive coalition stripped of the will to fight and an expansive and energized coalition for over-compliance.

Violence, Social Movements, and Black Freedom Struggles

Contention ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
AK Thompson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Today ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Research Agendas ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Freedom Struggles

George Floyd’s murder by police on 26 May 2020 set off a cycle of struggle that was notable for its size, intensity, and rate of diffusion. Starting in Minneapolis, the uprising quickly spread to dozens of other major cities and brought with it a repertoire that included riots, arson, and looting. In many places, these tactics coexisted with more familiar actions like public assemblies and mass marches; however, the inflection these tactics gave to the cycle of contention is not easily reconciled with the protest repertoire most frequently mobilized during movement campaigns in the United States today. This discrepancy has led to extensive commentary by scholars and movement participants, who have often weighed in by considering the moral and strategic efficacy of the chosen tactics. Such considerations should not be discounted. Nevertheless, I argue that both the dynamics of contention witnessed during the uprising and their ambivalent relationship to the established protest repertoire must first be understood in historical terms. By considering the relationship between violence, social movements, and Black freedom struggles in this way, I argue that scholars can develop a better understanding of current events while anticipating how the dynamics of contention are likely to develop going forward. Being attentive to these dynamics should in turn inform our research agendas, and it is with this aim in mind that I offer the following ten theses.

scholarly journals Cultural Influences on the Regulation of Energy Intake and Obesity: A Qualitative Study Comparing Food Customs and Attitudes to Eating in Adults from France and the United States

Nutrients ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Maria Carlota Dao ◽  
Sophie Thiron ◽  
Ellen Messer ◽  
Camille Sergeant ◽  
Anne Sévigné ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Weight Management ◽  
Food Consumption ◽  
Eating Behavior ◽  
The United States ◽  
Food Culture ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
The U.S

(1) Background: The influence of food culture on eating behavior and obesity risk is poorly understood. (2) Methods: In this qualitative study, 25 adults in France with or without overweight/obesity participated in semi-structured interviews (n = 10) or focus groups (n = 15) to examine attitudes to food consumption and external pressures that influence eating behavior and weight management. Results were compared to an equivalent study conducted in the United States, thereby contrasting two countries with markedly different rates of obesity. Emerging key themes in the French data were identified through coding using a reflexive approach. (3) Results: The main themes identified were: (1) influence of commensality, social interactions, and pleasure from eating on eating behavior, (2) having a balanced and holistic approach to nutrition, (3) the role of environmental concerns in food consumption, (4) relationship with “natural” products (idealized) and food processing (demonized), (5) perceptions of weight status and management. Stress and difficulties in hunger cue discernment were viewed as important obstacles to weight management in both countries. External pressures were described as a major factor that explicitly influences food consumption in the U.S., while there was an implicit influence of external pressures through eating-related social interactions in France. In France, products considered “natural” where idealized and juxtaposed against processed and “industrial” products, whereas this was not a salient aspect in the U.S. (4) Conclusions: This first comparative qualitative study assessing aspects of food culture and eating behaviors across countries identifies both common and divergent attitudes to food and eating behavior. Further studies are needed to inform the development of effective behavioral interventions to address obesity in different populations.

Social Structure and Self-Direction: A Comparative Analysis of the United States and Poland

1993 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 347
Author(s):  
Geoff Evans ◽  
Melvin L. Kohn ◽  
Kazimierz M. Slomcynski
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
The United States

Dynamics of Pakhtun Social Structure: Implications for Economic Development

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-42
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
United States ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
The United States ◽  
Protestant Work Ethic ◽  
Social Character ◽  
Capitalist Economy ◽  
The Social

Every region and people has peculiar economic characteristics and these features largely have roots in that region‟s social structure, social psychology and its dynamics. The capitalist economy of the United States has roots in individualismand Protestant Work Ethic, influenced both by Protestant religion and the social character of the Americans; the Client Economy of Saudi Arabia has deep linkages to its tribal social structure and the so-called Bazaar Economy of Afghanistan is profoundly embedded in the Pakhtun social structure of the country. The Pakhtuns of Pakistan have a peculiar social structure and social psychology thereof having profound and extensive influence on the region‟s economy particularly its largely underdevelopedcondition. The paper explores the characteristics of Pakhtun social structure and the interactive linkages between the social edifice and economic development or lack of it.

Domestic Politics and International Negotiations: the Politics of Global Warming in the United States

1993 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael T. Hatch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Negotiations ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
International Commitments ◽  
External Pressures

The United States chose an approach to global warming that came to be viewed by much of the international community as a barrier to effective action. In explaining why, this article analyzes the interaction of the domestic political process and international negotiations. It argues that—while external pressures brought to bear through the negotiations leading up to UNCED pushed the domestic agenda on global warming—the nature of the political process, in combination with the nature of the global warming issue itself, set the general limits for U.S. participation in cooperative international arrangements to manage global warming. That is, given the broad set of interests activated by global warming concerns and the ready access those interests had to decision-making bodies through a pluralist policy process, consensus on an approach to global warming proved impossible. The U.S., unwilling to accept international commitments that obligated it to domestic actions, thwarted efforts to get an international treaty containing firm targets and timetables.

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