scholarly journals Engendering Justice: Constructing Institutions to Address Violence Against Women

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Drysdale Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The State ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Specialized Institutions ◽  
Legal Frameworks ◽  
Do So

This paper addresses how states improve their responsiveness to violence against women in developing countries with little political will and few resources to do so. One key to engendering justice and improving responsiveness is building specialized institutions within the state that facilitate the implementation of laws addressing violence against women. Why and how do states engage in institution-building to protect marginalized populations in these contexts? I propose that developing countries are more likely to create and maintain specialized institutions when domestic and international political and legal frameworks make the state more vulnerable to women’s demands, and when civil society coordinates with the state and/or international organizations to take advantage of this political opportunity. This coordination brings necessary pressure and resources that would be difficult, if not impossible, to deliver otherwise. This inter-institutional coordination is necessary for building and maintaining new state institutions and programs that help to monitor the implementation of laws, develop public policies, provide services for victims, and improve responsiveness of the justice system. This fills an important lacuna in the literature, which focuses on women’s state institutions as an important catalyst for responsiveness to violence against women, but does not explain how these institutions are initially constructed.

Protecting women, protecting the state: Militarism, security threats, and government action on violence against women in Jordan

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 475-492
Author(s):  
Summer Forester
Keyword(s):  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
The State ◽  
Security Threats ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
Internal Security ◽  
Government Action ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Security Issues

Contrary to our understanding of when states act on women’s rights, Jordan adopted a policy on violence against women at the same time as it faced a number of external and internal security threats. In this article, I query the relationship between militarism and the gender policymaking process in Jordan to make sense of this puzzle. I specifically consider the ways in which a feminist conceptualization of militarism offers a more fruitful understanding of government action on violence against women in Jordan than studying this policy development through the lens of patriarchy, state institutions, and/or feminist activism alone. Indeed, evaluating the development of Jordan’s Family Protection Law through the lens of militarism and related security practices reveals the depth and breadth of these phenomena: the martial values and priorities of the Jordanian regime extend beyond the realm of traditional, ‘high politics’ security issues and impact civil, social, and even interpersonal relations – relations that are always already gendered – that are seemingly far removed from military concerns. I argue that the Jordanian government adopted its policy on violence against women because this enhanced the state’s image in the international arena and appeased domestic audiences by adhering to a gendered logic of protection that maintains the state as the ultimate protector of women. Overall, the article deepens our understanding of how militarism and the security climate influence the gender policymaking process, particularly in semi-authoritarian regimes.

Young Russians are increasingly prepared to protest

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Due Process ◽  
The State ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Content Type ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Speaking Out ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Younger Age ◽  
Do So

Significance Although Ustinov, 23, says he was not even part of the demonstration, his case became a cause celebre pointing to a gulf between the Kremlin and the people, particularly a younger generation that seems less fearful of speaking out. The court's unusual step reflects concerns that the case against Ustinov is fabricated, and that tough action against protesters compounded with indifference to due process risks a loss of legitimacy for the state. Impacts Russians, including the young, are losing trust in state institutions across the board. Many in the younger age-group are considering emigration, and have the personal and other resources to do so. Environmental protests are more likely to be given official authorisation than political events.

Extending State Authority

2020 ◽  
pp. 60-97
Author(s):  
Matthew Rendle
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The State ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
Central State ◽  
State Authority ◽  
Party Members ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Military

Chapter 2 examines how the creation of a justice system, like other institution-building exercises, formed an important part of re-establishing central state authority during this period. The Bolsheviks inherited a shattered state and their weaknesses, alongside widespread opposition, exacerbated the problem initially. As political courts targeting a wide variety of counter-revolutionary crimes, staffed by party members who proactively targeted criminals, tribunals were better placed to convey the authority and objectives of the state than other courts. Law became the ‘emissary of the state’, extending the state’s reach across Russia. This chapter explores the steady expansion of tribunals, including the establishment of military tribunals, transport tribunals, and travelling sessions of tribunals, as a means of exerting state authority from the end of 1918. Gradual unification of the system followed, but the Bolsheviks had re-established the state by 1922, and this achievement, the end of the civil war, and the publication of new law codes rendered many tribunals obsolete. Law’s purpose changed in a more stable Soviet Union, moving from revolutionary consciousness to revolutionary legality, although this chapter finishes by exploring the legacy of exceptional forms of justice and its continuance in the military and in the form of show trials.

State, institutions and reform in Turkey after July 15

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 135-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bülent Aras ◽  
Emirhan Yorulmazlar
Keyword(s):  
Transition Process ◽  
The State ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
Constitutional Amendments ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Current State ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
Restructuring Process ◽  
The Government ◽  
Level Of Understanding

AbstractThe failed coup of July 15 has shocked the current state apparatus in Turkey. This shock has culminated in the public demand for administrative reform, which would make previous public designs and policy failures a matter of the past. The state crisis has transpired in the middle of a political transition process whereby the ruling party envisioned systemic change in the political system from the parliamentary to a presidential system. The constitutional amendments also imply changes in the administrative order, with further political hold on bureaucratic cadres. The coup attempt and the massive purges in its aftermath brought the state to its breaking point. In light of such deficits and challenges, this paper discusses the ways, means, and prospects for capacity development and institution-building to overcome the state crisis in Turkey. The reform and restructuring process entails cooperation and a level of understanding between the government, opposition, and bureaucracy. Polarization and disenfranchisement are recipes for further fragmentation in Turkish politics. A cooperative model based on a working relationship between the government, opposition, and bureaucracy would facilitate a return to normalcy.

Conjuring the Criminal State: The “State-Idea” in Post-Conflict Reconstruction and International Statebuilding

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel A Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Critical Dimension ◽  
Criminal Organization ◽  
The State ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Alternative Vision ◽  
International Peacebuilding ◽  
International Statebuilding

Abstract A central challenge of post-conflict recovery is the reconstruction of state institutions, which often emerge from war destroyed or otherwise unable to carry out core administrative activities. But scholarship on international peacebuilding and post-conflict politics tends to focus narrowly on the functional aspects of the state, the state-system, to the neglect of another critical dimension: the state-idea, or its symbolic and normative authority. How do internationally backed institution-building efforts shape the ideational foundations of the state following conflict? Drawing on original interviews and archival research from postwar Guatemala, this article illustrates how, paradoxically, postwar peacebuilding and rule of law initiatives that sought to strengthen the capacity of state institutions simultaneously contributed to the discursive construction of the state as a criminal organization. Specifically, the United Nations’ International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), in seeking to combat state-based criminal structures and bolster institutions, transformed long-held conceptions of Guatemala's “weak” or “failed” state into an alternative vision of the state as a powerful complex of clandestine, predatory networks, and practices. In conjuring the state as a criminal organization that appropriates the formal organs of political power for illicit ends, this international statebuilding initiative generated a coherent and durable state-idea that belies key advances in institutional capacity and the rule of law. Overall, this article contributes to growing debates about the unintended, deleterious effects of international statebuilding efforts by demonstrating how distinct ideas of state power come to fill the void between state capacity and legitimacy.

scholarly journals “What Guarantees Do We Have?” Legal Tolls and Persistent Impunity for Feminicide in Guatemala

2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 31-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Drysdale Walsh ◽  
Cecilia Menjívar
Keyword(s):  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
The World ◽  
Sociopolitical Context ◽  
Fear Of Retaliation ◽  
Do So

AbstractGuatemala has one of the highest levels of killings of women and impunity for violence against women in the world. Despite laws created to protect women, Guatemala, like other countries, generally fails at implementation. This article examines justice system obstacles in contemporary Guatemala to processing cases of feminicide—killings of women because they are women in a context of impunity—comparing two recent feminicide cases. It argues that the sociopolitical context in Guatemala, including structural violence, widespread poverty, inequality, corruption, and normalization of gender violence against women, generates penalties, or “legal tolls,” that are imposed on victims' families and contribute to impunity through undermining victims' attempts to navigate the justice system. The analysis focuses on the tolls of fear and time: the need to overcome fear of retaliation and the extraordinary time and effort it takes to do so in a corrupt and broken system.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Arzoo Osanloo
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The State ◽  
Penal Code ◽  
Moral Duty ◽  
Cottage Industry ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Do So

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the work of forbearance in Iran's criminal justice system. In Iran, the codification of forbearance emerges from a hybrid crimtort justice system, complete with its own conditions of possibility. Iran's criminal laws are clear in defining certain categories of punishment as a consequence of specific injuries. The laws also stipulate the conditions for forbearance. However, the penal code is silent with respect to how parties should arrive at reconciliation. That is, the state encourages settlement, but for all intents and purposes, leaves to the parties themselves to determine what the substance and process of that settlement might be. The conjuncture of a clear legal and moral duty to seek reconciliation alongside the absence of specific guidelines on how to do so has a generative quality and produces an arena outside of the state's judicial apparatus, yet still of it, for bringing about a settlement short of retribution or for forgiveness work. Thus, the manifest moral and legal compulsion to forgive without meaningful guidelines on how to do so has produced an informal cottage industry of advocacy, one that is populated by diverse actors and which produces numerous avenues for negotiating forbearance by forging reconciliation and settlement.

Punishing the Guilty, Not Punishing the Innocent

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 462-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Lippke
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The State ◽  
Reasonable Doubt ◽  
Presumption Of Innocence ◽  
Harsh Punishment ◽  
Legal Punishment ◽  
Criminal Justice Systems ◽  
Do So

AbstractDiscussion in this paper focuses on how strongly we should prefer non-punishment of persons guilty of serious crimes to punishment of persons innocent of them. William Blackstone's version of that preference, expressed as a ten to one ratio, is first shown to be untenable on standard accounts of legal punishment's justifying aims. Somewhat weaker versions of that ratio also appear suspect. More to the point, Blackstone's adage obscures the crucial way in which there are risks to be assessed in setting up a criminal justice system – the risk that it will not be eff ective enough at apprehending and punishing serious off enders, as well as the risk that it will expose innocent persons to harsh punishment. I urge a balancing of such risks, and argue that the salient features of many contemporary criminal justice systems can be plausibly interpreted as attempting to achieve and maintain such a balance. We do not grant criminal defendants a presumption of innocence that the state must overcome with proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in order to institutionally express a strong degree of preference for non-punishment of the guilty to punishment of the innocent. Instead, we do so in order to ensure that institutions of legal punishment have suffi cient scope while preserving their ability to accurately sort the guilty from the innocent.

scholarly journals Independence of Justice and State Domestic Policy

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-52
Author(s):  
Karin Beshe-Golovko
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
The State ◽  
Domestic Policy ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Lack Of Control ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
The Relationship

In the article, based on the analysis of the main ideas of the liberal and conservative ideologies of building the relationship between society and the state, the problem of the independence of the justice system is considered. It is presumed that a judge cannot be completely independent from state institutions and, in particular, from the bodies (officials) that are key in his appointment. Under these conditions, it is necessary to state that the task of further scientific research on the issues under consideration is not so much the substantiation of the absolute lack of control of judges as the creation of a theoretical model to minimize the predicted impact on them, taking into account the objective institutional patterns that are not always taken into account today when discussing various reforms.

Health Informatics Education in the Third World

1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (04) ◽  
pp. 270-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Rienhoff
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Health Informatics ◽  
Third World ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Collaboration Network ◽  
Educational Tools ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third World

Abstract:The state of the art is summarized showing many efforts but only few results which can serve as demonstration examples for developing countries. Education in health informatics in developing countries is still mainly dealing with the type of health informatics known from the industrialized world. Educational tools or curricula geared to the matter of development are rarely to be found. Some WHO activities suggest that it is time for a collaboration network to derive tools and curricula within the next decade.

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