scholarly journals Political Rise or Standstill: Chinese-Indonesian Oligarchs in the 2014 National Legislative Election

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-39
Author(s):  
Yuhao Wen
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
State Level ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Minor Parties ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Political Clout ◽  
The Status ◽  
Legislative Election

Stereotype and suspicion toward certain ethnic minorities of the country has never left Indonesia’s story of social diversity. Growing participation and greater representation of Chinese-Indonesians in national and local election have demonstrated an inspiring progress of the country’s ongoing democratization which encourages the recognition of minority’s ethnic identity in wider society. Based on this context, this paper aims to introduce the general performance of Chinese-Indonesian candidates in the legislative election at the state level since 1999, with a focus on analysing media tycoon Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s (or Hary Tano) experience in the 2014 election, in which he has been credited by political scientists and Chinese-Indonesian scholars for a certain degree of break-through in the Indonesian political landscape. Such story of success, however, does not necessarily indicate any trend that Chinese-Indonesian politicians in general have obtained the same degree of equality in politics as their indigenous counterparts. The tactic that Hary Tano has adopted is to expand his political clout through buying-off minor parties. Yet, in practice the underlying social norms of the status quo means that there is a long road ahead until Chinese-Indonesian oligarchs are taken seriously as political actors rather than used for short-term political gain.

How Predatory Informal Rules Outlast State Reform: Evidence from Postauthoritarian Guatemala

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Rachel A. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Process Tracing ◽  
Military Rule ◽  
State Reform ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Face ◽  
Informal Rules ◽  
Customs Administration

ABSTRACT The coexistence of predatory informal rules alongside formal democratic institutions is a defining, if pernicious, feature of Latin America’s political landscape. How do such rules remain so resilient in the face of bureaucratic reforms? This article explicates the mechanisms underlying the persistence of such rules and challenges conventional explanations through process-tracing analysis in one arena: Guatemala’s customs administration. During Guatemala’s period of armed conflict and military rule, military intelligence officers introduced a powerful customs fraud scheme that endured for more than 20 years, despite state reforms. Its survival is best attributed to the ability of the distributional coalition underwriting the predatory rules to capture new political and economic spaces facilitated by political party and market reforms. This illustrates that distributional approaches to institutional change must attend to how those with a stake in the status quo may continue to uphold perverse institutional arrangements on the margins of state power.

Pandora's Box: Reviewing the Composition of the UN Security Council in the Light of British and French Experience 1945–1963

1997 ◽  
Vol 66 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 273-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Security Council ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Short Term ◽  
French Experience ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Foreign Ministries

AbstractThis article aims to throw a light on the problems relating to the proposed enlargement of the composition of the UN Security Council at present by studying the creation of four non-permanent seats in the Security Council in 1963 from the British and the French perspectives. The examination is based on the author's research of original documents in the archives of the British and French foreign ministries and upon information provided to the author by British, French and Finnish diplomats. The author concludes that, as between 1946 and 1963, British and French short term interests are still best served by maintaining the status quo in the Security Council. However, in a long term perspective it is not clear where the interests of these two States lie.

Shifting the Status Quo: Constitutional Reforms in Chile

2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio Fuentes
Keyword(s):  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Party Discipline ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Augusto Pinochet ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Right ◽  
Rules Of The Game

AbstractThis article outlines the factors that explain changes in the rules of the game in Chile after the restoration of democracy in 1990. It looks particularly at the reasons why the right-wing parties—strong defenders of the constitution imposed by General Augusto Pinochet in 1980—accepted reforms that eliminated many of what the literature has termed authoritarian enclaves. The article explains this shift by observing significant changes in the political context that, in turn, affected the priorities of veto players. In this context, short-term strategic calculations by the right-wing parties, aiming to achieve a new balance of power less detrimental to their interests, opened a window of opportunity that led to congressional approval of important reforms. Particular institutional features of the Chilean political system—party discipline and a balance of power in favor of the executive—also helped the political actors to reach agreement.

Pilihan Raya Kecil DUN Balakong 2018 di Malaysia: Praktik Politik Baru

Sains Insani ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-53
Author(s):  
Ariff Aizuddin Azlan ◽  
Mohammad Tawfik Yaacob ◽  
Fadhirul Hisham Aziz
Keyword(s):  
State Level ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Consociational Democracy ◽  
National Organization ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Dominant Party ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status ◽  
National Framework

Pilihan Raya Umum ke-14 (PRU14) yang diadakan pada 9 Mei 2018 telah dinobatkan sebagai “ibu segala pilihan raya” di mana ia telah menyaksikan kejatuhan rejim autoritarian Barisan Nasional (BN) di peringkat nasional dan juga di beberapa peringkat negeri. Setelah berkuasa selama lebih dari separuh abad, parti dominan yang dikenali sebagai United Malays National Organization (UMNO) dilihat gagal untuk mempertahankan benteng politik mereka yang telah terbina sekian lama melalui proses demokrasi permuafakatan. Implikasi PRU14 jelas sekali menandakan bahawa majoriti rakyat dahagakan pembaharuan politik dan demi untuk merealisasikan agenda tersebut maka satu bentuk undi protes terhadap rejim BN telah dipamerkan. Kajian ini melihat fenomena dan gelagat politik baru melalui proses demokrasi yang dikenali sebagai pilihan raya kecil (PRK) yang berlaku pada pasca-Mei 2018 di Balakong, Selangor. Implikasi PRU14 itu bukan sahaja menunjukkan bahawa proses pendemokrasian itu tidak mustahil malah kajian ini berhujah bahawa terdapat beberapa fenomena politik baru yang berbangkit pada pasca-Mei 2018 itu melalui lensa PRK Balakong dan fenomena tersebut ditafsirkan melalui kerangka nasional. Walaupun terdapat beberapa kekangan politik yang dialami oleh kerajaan baru PH namun mereka masih berjaya mengekalkan status quo mereka. Abstract: The 14th General Election (GE14) which was held on May 9, 2018 had been perceived as the “mother of all elections” in which it had witnessed the downfall of authoritarian regime of Barisan Nasional (BN) at the national and state level. After being in a power for more than half a century, the dominant party of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) failed to preserve their electoral victory throughout the ideas of consociational democracy. The implications of the GE14 was a clear-cut indicator that the majority of the people favored a new political change and in order to achieve that particular objective, a vote of protest against the BN was exhibited. This study looks at the phenomenon of new political behaviour via a democratic means known as the by-election that took place in the post-authoritarian May 2018 in Balakong, Selangor. The implications of the GE14 suggested that the democratization is not impossible and this study argues that the Balakong by-election served as a platform for the emergence of new patterns of politics and that particular phenomenon was analyzed within a national framework. Even though the new government of Pakatan Harapan (PH) encountered some of political predicaments but the status quo was successfully retained.

Party Formation and Dilemmas of Opportunity Structure: Freie Wähler in the German Political System

2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helga A. Welsh
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Local Level ◽  
State Level ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Status ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Dominant Parties

The Freie Wähler (free voters, FW) offer the rare chance to analyze parties in the making. Their long-time anchoring in local elections, centrist, middle-class political orientation, and bifurcated organizational structure distinguish them from other new political parties that aspire to participate in Land (state), national and European elections. Against the backdrop of FW success in Bavaria, where they received 10.2 percent of the vote in 2008, this article explores the FW expansion to the state level but not their national aspirations. In contrast to most studies that emphasize opportunity structures that work in favor of new political actors, this article highlights their dialectical nature. For example, the FW self-image is based on their difference from political parties, but the rules of the game push them to the status of "almost-party" at the local level and parties at the Land level. Their local roots are a source of legitimacy, but when they reach beyond, divisions among members and voters hold back their electoral fortunes. Independence and issue orientation are appealing to some voters but hamper the establishment of a clear identity and effective campaigning in state elections. Success for FW candidates is linked to the weakness of the dominant parties in the conservative camp. Spatial-temporal conditions are significant in considering the future of the FW at the Land level.

Representation, sophisticated voting, and the size of the gridlock region

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 623-646 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myunghoon Kang
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Legislative Body ◽  
Policy Making Process ◽  
The Status ◽  
Legislative Policy ◽  
Legislative Election

We propose a formal model that investigates the institutional cause of the expansion of the gridlock region in a legislative body under supermajority rule. We show that the interaction between a legislative election and the supermajority rule in the legislative policy-making process causes an expansion of the size of the gridlock region under certain circumstances. More specifically, if the position of the status quo is neither too moderate nor too extreme, then certain voters will be incentivized to elect a more extreme representative than themselves, and this sophisticated voting results in the expansion of the size of the gridlock region. As a result, our model demonstrates that the expansion of the gridlock region is caused in part by sophisticated voting independent of the voters’ ideological distribution.

scholarly journals The Rise of Indigenous (Pluri-)Nationalism: The Case of the Sámi People

Sociology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (6) ◽  
pp. 1141-1158
Author(s):  
Aslak-Antti Oksanen
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
State Level ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
International Norms ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Status ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Freedom Of Action

Indigenous peoples have found the nationalist language of peoples’ inherent right to self-determination helpful in articulating their political demands. Gerald Taiaiake Alfred’s model of indigenous nationalism explains the emergence of this form of indigenous self-assertion as a reaction to settler-colonial incursions. However, it cannot account for the timing of its recent successes in unsettling the status quo of indigenous–settler-state relations. This article addresses this limitation by incorporating Michael Keating’s concept of post-sovereignty, which highlights the supranational plane constraining states’ freedom of action, while providing indigenous peoples with laws and norms above state level to appeal to. Additionally, Keating’s concept of plurinationalism is drawn upon to capture the emerging reconfiguration of indigenous–settler-state relations. This combined conceptual framework is used to illuminate the Sámi people’s relations to the Nordic states as expressive of emergent indigenous nationalism, formed in reaction to settler-colonialism and enabled by international norms, laws and global indigenous peoples’ networks.

scholarly journals Belarus in the Wake of a Revolution: Domestic and International Factors

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aram Terzyan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The Status

This paper explores the political landscape of Belarus in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential elections, with a focus on both domestic and international factors behind the ongoing crisis. Lukashenko’s regime has a long record of sustaining its power by preserving elite unity, controlling elections, and/or using force against opponents. Therefore, massive fraud characterizing the 2020 presidential elections and brutal suppression of peaceful protests in its aftermath came as no surprise. Against this backdrop, the anti-government protests following the presidential elections raised a series of unanswered questions regarding both their domestic and foreign policy implications. The biggest question is whether the Belarusian civil society and opposition will prove powerful enough to overcome state repression and change the status quo in Europe’s “last dictatorship”. Worries remain about the Belarusian opposition’s emphasis on foreign policy continuity, meaning that Belarus is bound to remain in the orbit of the Russian authoritarian influence. The total fiasco of post-Velvet Revolution Armenian government both in terms of domestic and foreign policies, among others, further reveals the excruciating difficulties of a democratic state-building within the Russia-led socio-political order.

In or Out: The Choice for Britain

2002 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Rollo
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Adjustment Costs ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
British Government ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Policy Regimes ◽  
The Status ◽  
Timing Of Entry ◽  
Maastricht Criteria

The choice facing British government about maintaining the status quo for sterling or joining the euro is a choice between long-term policy regimes. Short-term considerations such as the relative position of business cycles or the current level of the sterling-euro exchange rate have a bearing on the adjustment costs and the timing of entry. The article therefore examines the EMU framework versus the British framework for monetary policy; the performance of economic policy in Britain and in Euroland, and especially Germany as Euroland's main precursor; the relevance to the adjustment costs of membership to the Maastricht criteria and the Chancellor of the Exchequer's five economic tests for joining the euro; and whether or not Britain can qualify for joining EMU. The analysis is broadened to include supporting policies for monetary policy, especially fiscal, labour market and other structural policies where relevant.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document