Presidential politics of constitutional amendment in Francophone Africa: The case of Senegal

The paper is devoted to the role of the head of state in initiating and implementing constitutional reforms in Senegal. This country can legitimately be regarded as one of the few examples of a relatively successful democratization process in Africa, as evidenced, among other things, by the lack of military coups leading to the loss of power by civilian governments, as well as by two democratic transfers of power (in 2000–2001 and 2012), after which the main opposition parties gained the presidency and the majority of parliamentary seats. Both these fundamental political transformations generated important constitutional changes (for example, the adoption of the current Constitution of 2001, or the constitutional modifications of 2016 and 2019) that have influenced, to a greater or lesser extent, the position of the presidency in Senegalese systems of government. The author analyses their significance for the functioning of contemporary political institutions in the broader context set by the politics of constitutional amendment which was conducted by previous presidents of this country. The main goal of the paper is to examine to what extent the constitutional modifications introduced before and after the adoption of the 2001 Constitution were designed to contribute to the beginning or consolidation of pro-democratic trends, and to what extent they were created to strengthen the position of an incumbent president himself, leading to a political imbalance and regress in the democratization process. The author argues that the constitutional modifications adopted over the years have often gone in two opposite directions, influencing the efficiency and durability of Senegalese institutional structures.

Legislative Discourses on Contemporary Slavery in Brazil

This article aims to analyze the perceptions of parliamentarians about contemporary slave labour in Brazil. We examined the opposition speeches to the Constitutional Amendment Proposal (PEC) nº 438/2001, processed between 1999 and 2014. That proposal aimed to establish the expropriation of properties where such a form of work was found. From a methodological point of view, we use Critical Discourse Analysis. Several discursive strategies were identified in order to avoid the approval of the referred PEC. Among them, we chose to analyze the categories that we call ‘inversion of guilt’, ‘fantasy’, and ‘exceptionality’. The study of the speeches showed the inexistence of proposals of policies to confront the issue, policies that were pushed aside in the name of an evasive, conservative and even reactionary debate. We observed an evident concern of parliamentarians with agribusiness but a lesser concern in addressing the conditions in which the enslaved workers rescued by state inspection were found.

A Motivação de Serviço Público e a satisfação no trabalho: Pesquisa em uma Universidade Federal ## Public Service Motivation and job satisfaction: Research at the Federal University

Desde o advento da Emenda Constitucional 19 tem-se implantado no país uma Administração Pública Gerencial, sendo que esta demanda por pessoal qualificado e com altos níveis de desempenho. Entender a motivação de servidores bem como níveis de satisfação pode ajudar os gestores na melhoria de desempenho. Este estudo teve como objetivo analisar os níveis de Motivação de Serviço Público e a satisfação no trabalho em servidores públicos, tendo como grupo alvo os servidores ativos de uma Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Foi realizada uma pesquisa descritiva e quantitativa utilizando os modelos satisfação no trabalho (Siqueira, 2008) e a Motivação de Serviço Público (Perry & Wise, 1990). Os resultados apontam níveis medianos de motivação e satisfação no trabalho o que pode indicar uma necessidade de revisão das políticas de RH da instituição. Verificou-se diferença significativa entre docentes e técnicos da organização em relação a motivação e satisfação. A análise das dimensões mostrou-se favorável a um diagnóstico mais detalhado dos dois construtos visto que os estudos internacionais aqui utilizados falharam nesse ponto, não mostrando um panorama completo de cada uma das dimensões, sendo essa uma contribuição deste estudo. Ao identificar níveis de motivação e satisfação diferentes, estes resultados podem auxiliar numa melhoria das funções gerenciais e administrativas da instituição, e possivelmente replicadas em instituições federais de ensino superior. Visto que a organização pode implementar políticas de RH, da base para o topo da organização, diferenciadas para cada categoria profissional e com maior possibilidade de assertividade.ABSTRACTSince the advent of Constitutional Amendment 19, a Public Management Administration has been implemented in the country, with this demand for qualified personnel with high levels of performance. Understanding the motivation of employees as well as satisfaction levels can help managers improve performance.

PEOPLES PERCEPTION ON WORKING OF PANCHAYATI RAJ SYSTEM -A CASE STUDY OF KARIMNAGAR DISTRICTIN THE TELANGANA STATE OF INDIA

My study is intended to analyse how Peoples perception is very important because of the 73rd constitutional amendment act that was introduced to ensure political participation of underprivileged groups like Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes and Women through the reservation of provisions in Panchayati Raj System at grassroots level democracy. In this context, the peoples perception of working of Panchayati Raj institutions in Karimnagar district plays a very crucial role to reveal the actual ground realities thereof and to what extent they accomplished the above-mentioned objectives. several policy initiatives have been taken for effective implementation of reservation policy in Panchayati Raj in the district. The present research work also focussed on the political backwardness of scheduled castes, scheduled Tribe leadership in Panchayati Raj Institutions at the Panchayati level. It also reveals peoples perception to the conscious understanding that people have of public functionaries and official issues in the society and realistically based on their understanding level in the given context on a particular aspect.

Trends in rural fiscal decentralisation in India’s Karnataka state: a focus on public health

For decades, decentralisation reforms have been seen as a powerful instrument by health policy advocates to improve health sector performance in developing countries. In India, the 73rd Constitutional Amendment introduced in 1992 called for strengthening the fiscal autonomy and service delivery capacity of rural local governments. This paper explores how decentralised governance influences public health sector resource allocation, equity and efficiency in rural Karnataka. For this, the authors analysed administrative data published by the Karnataka state government to create tailored standardised performance measures that capture the degree of local governments’ fiscal discretion in implementing public health programmes from 2011–18 at the district level. The findings highlight sector-specific differences in fiscal autonomy, ranging from high local discretion over funds in the nutrition sector to very limited discretion in the medical and public health sector. They also show that decentralised public health funding is not well-targeted to areas of greatest need in Karnataka

Three Decades of Working Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in Andaman and Nicobar Islands: Issues and Challenges

Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) are the cornerstone of local self government and it provides democratic platform for people's participation at various levels of governance in India. PRIs have been given constitutional status through 73rd Constitutional Amendment in 1992 to make democracy more functional at the local level and driven by citizens needs in addition to with their participation to ensure economic development, strengthen social justice and implementing Central as well as State government welfare schemes including those 29 subjects listed in the Eleventh schedule. In its present form and structure, the PRIs in Andaman and Nicobar Islands have completed three decades of existence and well entrenched with the rural life and have brought about major development in Andaman and Nicobar Islands. However, a lot remains to be done in order to further deepen decentralization and strengthen democracy at the grass root level in the absence of legislature at Union Territory level. Given the general conceptual implication, the present paper seeks to make an in-depth study of issues and challenges encounter by PRIs in Andaman and Nicobar Islands in particular. Keywords: Governance, Participation, Gram Sabha, Zilla Parishad.

Quantification of Gender Bias and Sentiment Toward Political Leaders Over 20 Years of Kenyan News Using Natural Language Processing

Background: Despite a 2010 Kenyan constitutional amendment limiting members of elected public bodies to < two-thirds of the same gender, only 22 percent of the 12th Parliament members inaugurated in 2017 were women. Investigating gender bias in the media is a useful tool for understanding socio-cultural barriers to implementing legislation for gender equality. Natural language processing (NLP) methods, such as word embedding and sentiment analysis, can efficiently quantify media biases at a scope previously unavailable in the social sciences.Methods: We trained GloVe and word2vec word embeddings on text from 1998 to 2019 from Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper. We measured gender bias in these embeddings and used sentiment analysis to predict quantitative sentiment scores for sentences surrounding female leader names compared to male leader names.Results: Bias in leadership words for men and women measured from Daily Nation word embeddings corresponded to temporal trends in men and women’s participation in political leadership (i.e., parliamentary seats) using GloVe (correlation 0.8936, p = 0.0067, r2 = 0.799) and word2vec (correlation 0.844, p = 0.0169, r2 = 0.712) algorithms. Women continue to be associated with domestic terms while men continue to be associated with influence terms, for both regular gender words and female and male political leaders’ names. Male words (e.g., he, him, man) were mentioned 1.84 million more times than female words from 1998 to 2019. Sentiment analysis showed an increase in relative negative sentiment associated with female leaders (p = 0.0152) and an increase in positive sentiment associated with male leaders over time (p = 0.0216).Conclusion: Natural language processing is a powerful method for gaining insights into and quantifying trends in gender biases and sentiment in news media. We found evidence of improvement in gender equality but also a backlash from increased female representation in high-level governmental leadership.

Comparing Experiences of Constitutional Reforms to Enshrine the Right to Water in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru: Opportunities and Limitations

In this paper we compare recent efforts towards the constitutionalization of the right to water in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru to understand the opportunities and limitations related to the attempts to enhance access to piped water to the highest normative level. Peru passed a constitutional amendment in 2017 while Brazil and Colombia have seen much right-to-water activism but have not succeeded in passing such reforms. We explore the role of the existing domestic legal frameworks on drinkable water provision and water management towards the approval of constitutional amendments. We find that all three countries have specialized laws, water governing institutions, and constitutional jurisprudence connecting access to water with rights, but the legal opportunity structures to enforce socio-economic rights vary; they are stronger in Colombia and Brazil, and weaker in Peru. We argue that legal opportunity structures build legal environments that influence constitutional reform success. Legal opportunity structures act as incentives both for social movements to push for reforms and for actors with legislative power to accept or reject them. Our findings also show that in some contexts political cost is a key element of constitutional reforms that enshrine the right to water; therefore, this is an element that should be considered when analyzing these processes.