The inheritance of colonial penological practices in the postcolonial and apartheid periods: A histography of South Africa

Colonialism has had an influence on many sectors across the board in South Africa including the prison system among others. Its impact could be seen in the way prisoners were treated during the post-colonial era and apartheid era. This paper seeks to demonstrate the relationship between the colonial, post-colonial and apartheid penological practices by examining the treatment of prisoners during the said periods. Examination of this relationship may be useful in understanding what really informed the promulgation of racist policies during the post-colonial period and apartheid period. This paper contends that the legislation that was promulgated during the post-colonial and apartheid periods, which were legislative instruments on how prisoners were treated, were in fact a formalization and continuation of what had already being practiced during the colonial era. The following themes are central to this discourse: The colonial period between the 1840s and 1909; The post-colonial period between 1910 and 1948 and; The National Party era (apartheid era): 1948 – 1993.

Ruch Nowego Życia w Chinach, 1934–1948

In recent decades, there was a notable surge of interest in the history of the Republic of China (1912–1949). New Life Movement (Xin shenghuo yundong) was one of the most important en-deavours undertaken during the so-called Nanjing Decade (1927–1937) — a period of authoritarian rule of Guomindang (National Party), after the triumph of the Northern Expedition and before the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Inaugurated in 1934, this movement sought to revive Confucian virtues and create better society through the promotion of proper behaviour (especially etiquette and hygiene). Virtues, whose realisation in daily life was stated as the goal of the Move-ment, were li — propriety, yi — right action, lian — integrity, and chi — a sense of shame. Later, these goals were expanded to include promotion of militarisation (junshihua), aesthetic uplifting (yishuhua), and improving the production (shengchanhua) in peopleʼs lifestyles. Although the New Life Movement was initiated by Chiang Kai-shek on 19 February 1934 in Nanchang, in many respects it was a continuation of previous policies. To realise the New Life Movement, the Society for the Promotion of the New Life Movement (Xin shenghuo yundong cujin hui) was founded in 1934. Members of different factions in Guomindang participated in its activities. After the first two years, the New Life Movement disappeared from the spotlight, but remained active at least until 1948. During the war, the main task of the movement was participation in war efforts and, after the conflict ended, in post-war recovery. In the end, the New Life Movement failed in realisation of its stated goals. Nevertheless, it seems that its activities were still beneficial for Guomindang’s government. This article presents an outline of history and origins of the New Life Movement, as well as describe its goals and methods. In the end, there will be an evaluation of this important and controversial movement and its place in the history of Guomindang and China.

Campaign: A Content Analysis of the New Zealand-based Chinese Language Ethnic Media’s Coverage of the 2008, 2011 and 2014 New Zealand General Elections

<p>New Zealand’s ethnic Chinese population has grown significantly since the selection criteria of immigrants shifted from being defined by ethnic or national origin to personal merit in 1987. The ease with which non-citizens can vote in New Zealand, and the potential of New Zealand’s Mixed Member Proportional electoral system to amplify the political impact of minority groups means that informing this growing demographic is crucially important. Many recent migrants are prevented by language barriers from accessing English language news. Consequently, the Chinese language ethnic media constitute the key source of political information for many ethnic Chinese voters. Because of this, these media are expected to provide a civic forum for pluralistic debate enabling those with the right to vote to do so in a way that is congruent with their political and social preferences. Despite their importance, the ethnic Chinese language ethnic media in New Zealand have been the subject of few studies. In response, this thesis utilises the method of content analysis to examine civic forums provided by the Chinese Herald, Home Voice, and the New Zealand Messenger during the 2008, 2011 and 2014 general election campaigns. The findings indicate that political coverage deviated from the normative expectations of the civic forum in a number of ways, including a strong incumbency bias – particularly when the National Party was in power; high levels of favourable coverage towards the ACT Party and the consequent marginalisation of many other parties. In addition, National Party candidate Yang Jian occupied a position of unique visibility during the 2014 election campaign while New Zealand First were subject to high levels of negative coverage. These normative deviations, possibly stemming from the resource constraints that the newspapers operate within and coupled with their role as ethnic media outlets serving and advocating for minority groups, can hamper the readership’s capacity for meaningful electoral participation.</p>

Campaign: A Content Analysis of the New Zealand-based Chinese Language Ethnic Media’s Coverage of the 2008, 2011 and 2014 New Zealand General Elections

<p>New Zealand’s ethnic Chinese population has grown significantly since the selection criteria of immigrants shifted from being defined by ethnic or national origin to personal merit in 1987. The ease with which non-citizens can vote in New Zealand, and the potential of New Zealand’s Mixed Member Proportional electoral system to amplify the political impact of minority groups means that informing this growing demographic is crucially important. Many recent migrants are prevented by language barriers from accessing English language news. Consequently, the Chinese language ethnic media constitute the key source of political information for many ethnic Chinese voters. Because of this, these media are expected to provide a civic forum for pluralistic debate enabling those with the right to vote to do so in a way that is congruent with their political and social preferences. Despite their importance, the ethnic Chinese language ethnic media in New Zealand have been the subject of few studies. In response, this thesis utilises the method of content analysis to examine civic forums provided by the Chinese Herald, Home Voice, and the New Zealand Messenger during the 2008, 2011 and 2014 general election campaigns. The findings indicate that political coverage deviated from the normative expectations of the civic forum in a number of ways, including a strong incumbency bias – particularly when the National Party was in power; high levels of favourable coverage towards the ACT Party and the consequent marginalisation of many other parties. In addition, National Party candidate Yang Jian occupied a position of unique visibility during the 2014 election campaign while New Zealand First were subject to high levels of negative coverage. These normative deviations, possibly stemming from the resource constraints that the newspapers operate within and coupled with their role as ethnic media outlets serving and advocating for minority groups, can hamper the readership’s capacity for meaningful electoral participation.</p>

ANALISIS POSTER KAMPANYE LEGISLATIF PARTAI RASAMBLEMENT NATIONAL DI PERANCIS TAHUN 2017

Radical right populism is a phenomena that happens in almost every part of Europe, including France. In France, Rassamblement National Party (RN) which used to be called Front National Party (FN) steps up their campaign rhetoric using the anti-refugee agenda to mobilize their voters. Using the concept of Right Wing Populism and Critical Discourse Analysis Method, this paper seeks to analyse whether or not the campaign narrative of Rassamblement National Party meets the characters of Radical Right Populist party. This Paper uses a number of posters as a media to reveal their characteristics of Radical Right Populist Party. This paper argues that even if the use of poster is still one of the most dominant campaign media in France, the party’s characters as a radical right populist party are not being well portrayed in their campaign posters.

VOX Spain: The Organisational Challenges of a New Radical Right Party

This article examines the organisation of VOX, a new radical right party in Spain. It shows that the party has taken early and uneven steps to build a mass organisation and initially opted for open membership recruitment with participatory organisational elements. Also, the party’s rapid growth and quick entrance into political institutions at different state levels led the party leadership to establish more centralised control and limit members’ prerogatives, though recruitment continued. Centralisation in part responds to organisational needs given the party’s quickly acquired political relevance, but also to the desire of the central party leadership to forestall the articulation of territorial interests, or prevent them from escaping their control. Today, VOX exhibits elements of mass party organisation and highly centralised decision-making in the hands of national party leaders.

Leading the Way, but Also Following the Trend: The Slovak National Party

Despite spells outside parliament, with its blend of nationalist and populist appeals the Slovak National Party (SNS) has been a prominent fixture on Slovakia’s political scene for three decades. Unlike some of the newer parties in Slovakia and across the region, partly as a product of the point of its (re-)creation, SNS has a comparable organizational density to most established parties in the country and has invested in party branches and recruiting members. Although ordinary members exercised some power and influence during the fissiparous era of the early 2000s, SNS has been notable for the role played by its leader in decision-making and steering the party. Each leader placed their stamp on the projection, pitch and functioning of the party, both as a decision-making organization and an electoral vehicle. Ordinary members have been largely—but not exclusively—relegated to the role of cheerleaders and campaigners for the party’s tribunes; a situation which has not changed significantly in the era of social media. The pre-eminent position of the leader and the limited options for “voice” has led unsuccessful contenders for top posts and their supporters to opt instead for “exit.” Despite having some of the traits of the mass party and having engaged in some of the activities common for mass parties, especially in the earlier years of its existence, in more recent times in particular, SNS falls short of the mass party model both in aspiration and reality.

Public Debt in South Africa

After four decades of racial segregation, South Africa transitioned to a non-racial democracy in 1994. Inevitably for a country with segregationist labour market policies for so long, South Africa is also one of the most unequal countries in the world. In order to take an overview of government debt in South Africa, this chapter looks at macroeconomic performance but also at how the political regime characteristics and inequality have interplayed with government debt during the 1970–2016 period. The data suggest that economic growth correlates negatively with debt and that democracy correlates positively with debt. In addition, the data do not suggest that democratic maturity is already associated with lower debt nor that the outgoing apartheid-era National Party bequeathed the young democracy with high debt. Encouragingly, the data do suggest that inequality and public expenditure on education correlate positively with debt, which suggests that the democratic government has the median voter in mind when creating debt and also that part of the debt is being invested in human capital formation.

Electoral Reform and the Centralisation of the New Zealand National Party

<p>Political party organisations respond to the challenges of their environments. Different organisational structures have different capabilities and capacities and, therefore, some organisations are better suited to some environments. What happened to party organisations when New Zealand changed from a first-past-the-post to a mixed member proportional electoral system? Did all parties have the same capacities to meet the challenges raised by this new environment? This paper addresses these questions by examining the organisational responses of the New Zealand National Party to the introduction of the mixed member proportional electoral system after 1993. The National Party was constructed to operate in a first-past-the-post electoral system and it did so successfully, winning twelve of the nineteen elections it contested. In response to the challenges of the first-past-the-post environment, National decentralised both candidate selection and campaign structure. National's decentralised organisation proved to be a liability for National under the new mixed member proportional environment however. Mixed member proportional demanded the construction of a nationwide list and a coherent campaign for the nationwide party vote. With its existing organisational structure, National was unable to meet either of these demands and suffered the electoral repercussions of that failure. After four consecutive elections in which National lost vote share, the National Party centralised its organisation in 2003. This paper analyses the centralisation of the National Party's organisation and the reasons for it by examining the Party's efforts to reform candidate selection and management of campaigns. The two organisational structures which National used for selecting candidates and managing campaigns under mixed member proportional produced different results. The candidate pools for 1996, 1999 and 2002 failed to provide nationwide appeal and produced incentive for electorate candidates to ignore the party vote element. Further, the campaign structure for these three elections allowed electorate committees significant control and the ability to undermine the nationwide party vote campaign. In the 2005 election, however, candidate selection and campaign management showed significant changes. The candidate selection process provided incentives for electorate candidates to seek both electorate and party votes, although it arguably still failed to produce a nationally appealing party list. The management of the campaign was also significantly different. It demonstrated the benefit of central campaign control in a mixed member proportional electoral system. The 2003 centralisation gave National elites significant control and allowed National to almost double its 2002 result in the 2005 election. This thesis demonstrates that a mixed member proportional electoral system gave National strong incentives to centralise its party organisation.</p>

Electoral Reform and the Centralisation of the New Zealand National Party

<p>Political party organisations respond to the challenges of their environments. Different organisational structures have different capabilities and capacities and, therefore, some organisations are better suited to some environments. What happened to party organisations when New Zealand changed from a first-past-the-post to a mixed member proportional electoral system? Did all parties have the same capacities to meet the challenges raised by this new environment? This paper addresses these questions by examining the organisational responses of the New Zealand National Party to the introduction of the mixed member proportional electoral system after 1993. The National Party was constructed to operate in a first-past-the-post electoral system and it did so successfully, winning twelve of the nineteen elections it contested. In response to the challenges of the first-past-the-post environment, National decentralised both candidate selection and campaign structure. National's decentralised organisation proved to be a liability for National under the new mixed member proportional environment however. Mixed member proportional demanded the construction of a nationwide list and a coherent campaign for the nationwide party vote. With its existing organisational structure, National was unable to meet either of these demands and suffered the electoral repercussions of that failure. After four consecutive elections in which National lost vote share, the National Party centralised its organisation in 2003. This paper analyses the centralisation of the National Party's organisation and the reasons for it by examining the Party's efforts to reform candidate selection and management of campaigns. The two organisational structures which National used for selecting candidates and managing campaigns under mixed member proportional produced different results. The candidate pools for 1996, 1999 and 2002 failed to provide nationwide appeal and produced incentive for electorate candidates to ignore the party vote element. Further, the campaign structure for these three elections allowed electorate committees significant control and the ability to undermine the nationwide party vote campaign. In the 2005 election, however, candidate selection and campaign management showed significant changes. The candidate selection process provided incentives for electorate candidates to seek both electorate and party votes, although it arguably still failed to produce a nationally appealing party list. The management of the campaign was also significantly different. It demonstrated the benefit of central campaign control in a mixed member proportional electoral system. The 2003 centralisation gave National elites significant control and allowed National to almost double its 2002 result in the 2005 election. This thesis demonstrates that a mixed member proportional electoral system gave National strong incentives to centralise its party organisation.</p>