The Roots of the Sadrist Movement: Muhammad al-Sadr, Religious Authority, and Sociopolitical Practice

Based on Ba'th Party archival records, interviews, and secondary sources, this article aims to reconstruct and contextualize the story of Muhammad Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, the Shi'i cleric who led a grassroots religious movement in the 1990s that still plays a major role in Iraq. The article argues that the Sadrist movement and its project of social Islamization were a result of Sadr's enlistment of grassroots support to challenge his rivals in the Shi'i religious field during a leadership vacuum amid the decline of the clerical establishment's influence.

Female Candidates, Islamic Women’s Organisations, and Clientelism in the 2019 Indonesian Elections

This article analyses the factors leading to the success of women candidates in the 2019 elections in Central Java. Recent scholarship on women’s representation in Indonesia has highlighted the role that dynastic ties and relationships with local political elites play in getting women elected in an environment increasingly dominated by money politics and clientelism. Our case study of women candidates in Central Java belonging to the elite of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)-affiliated women’s religious organisations Muslimat and Fatayat shows that strong women candidates with grassroots support can nonetheless win office. Using the concepts of social capital and gender issue ownership, and clientelism, we argue that women candidates can gain a strategic advantage when they “run as women.” By harnessing women’s networks and focusing on gender issues to target women voters, they are able to overcome cultural, institutional, and structural barriers to achieve electoral success even though they lack resources and political connections.

Russia's CAR engagement trials hard and soft power

Significance Russia sent 300 instructors to CAR ahead of the December 27 presidential election to help maintain security and fend off a new rebellion. Paramilitary forces acting as mercenary combatants are still active. Impacts Ambassador Titorenko says the strategy is to persuade all rebels that their options are surrender or "elimination". Allegations that Russian combatants have carried out abuses against CAR civilians could damage efforts to build grassroots support. The deniability of mercenaries allows Moscow to obfuscate their role and ignore casualties, as in a recent reported helicopter crash.

Movement Recognizes the Promises and Vulnerabilities in Pastoralism

With grassroots support, the Food and Agriculture Organization is moving closer to recognizing an International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists.

Vote with Your Rabbi: The Electoral Effects of Religious Institutions in Israel

How do religious parties mobilize local support and what impact does different political strategies have on neighborhoods? Previous literature focuses on the social welfare benefits distributed by religious parties. In this paper, I analyze how religious political parties in Israel generate grassroots support among voters by allying with Jewish religious institutions. Using original data, I examine the association between the timing of entry of religious institutions into neighborhoods and local voting patterns for Israeli national elections. I find that religious institutions are associated with a 4-percentage point increase in the local vote share for religious parties, where this effect is larger for religious institutions with connections to political parties. My results suggest that the primary mechanism driving these results are that these institutions influence the vote choice of existing residents by distributing tangible goods. In contrast, changes to the composition of the neighborhood through in-migration has a more limited effect on voting patterns. These findings highlight the impact of religious institutions on the social and political fabric of local communities.

Detecting astroturf lobbying movements

Astroturf lobbying refers to the simulation of grassroots support for or against a public policy. The objective of this tactic is for private interests to pretend they have public support for their cause. However, omitting to disclose the real sponsor of a message renders the communication unauthentic and undermines democratic and pluralist values. This article seeks to develop a method to detect astroturf movements based on emphasis framing analysis. The hypothesis is that astroturf groups employ different frames than genuine grassroots movements to comply with the private interests they truly represent. The results of the case study on the shale gas exploration debate in the United States show that astroturf groups used frames that differed significantly from authentic non-governmental organizations, which allowed their detection.

The Turkish Arms Embargo

This broad-ranging study examines the complex factors leading to the US imposition of the Turkish arms embargo (1974–1978), which marked a major turning point in relations between the two NATO allies. Focusing on domestic politics, the work draws on newly available archival materials at presidential libraries and from a broad array of rarely used personal papers of key senators and congressmen to provide new details and insights into the struggle between the executive and Congress. It reveals the constant interaction and complex maneuvering required to fashion successful strategies away from the public view, giving considerable attention to the neglected yet critical role of the Republican minority in Congress. It analyzes the pervasive influence of both the drug crisis and Turkophobia in initiating and prolonging the embargo and reveals how local ethnic lobbyists across the country organized to encourage grassroots support for Cyprus and opprobrium toward Turkey. The book elaborates on the contemporary context in the eastern Mediterranean and how the governments of Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus worked to influence American policy, often with remarkable success. And it reflects on the conflicted response of Israel and its American supporters to the extended crisis. Many issues analyzed in this study still concern us today, and its insights can provide guidance for future bilateral policy.

PARTY ACTIVISTS AND PARTY PROGRAMS AT GRASSROOTS LEVEL: THE INTERTWINED EFFECT

Purpose of the study: This study explored how party activists retain their high activism with the party through their involvement with party activities. It also attempted to explore party programs at the grassroots level that helps maintain continuous grassroots support for the party. The strong symbiosis between party activists and party programs at the grassroots level was a secret formula to win elections. Methodology: Being qualitative in nature, this study conducted in-depth interviews with thirty - two party activists. The PAS and UMNO party activists in Terengganu were selected as units of analysis using the purposive sampling technique. The interview data were thematically analysed through the content analysis method. Main Findings: This study yielded that Community and Welfare programs, and Electoral Works were two impactful party programs to fish votes and maintain voters’ support at the grassroots level. On party efforts to maintain the motivation of its activists, this study found four main party programs namely internal programs, political training, involvement outside party, and joining special programs. Applications of this study: This study concludes that ensuring party activists at their highest level of motivation by designing various programs are equally important with organizing party programs with the voters at local levels. When party activists are highly motivated, party programs at local levels would be successfully run, while organizing party programs at the local level without the presence of highly motivated party activists would be worthless. Novelty/Originality of this study: Party activists are often neglected by party leaders, as much focus has been given to party manifesto, choosing winnable candidates, and encountering electoral issues. Neglecting party activists often leads to frustration, thus party programs cannot be properly organized without committed party activists.

Backtalk: Choosing integration

A new report by Harvard University researchers Eric Torres and Richard Weissbourd digs into the reasons why most privileged White parents make choices that fuel school segregation. Most important, according to their survey data, are parents’ assumptions about school safety, quality, and prestige, as well as the fear that their own children will be ignored while teachers attend to students with greater needs. Torres and Weissbourd’s policy recommendations are not convincing, argues Andrew Grant Thomas. But there are hopeful signs that grassroots support for diverse schools does lead to greater integration.

The Frontier Effect

This book challenges the notion that in Urabá, Colombia, the cause of the region's violent history and unruly contemporary condition is the absence of the state. Although the book takes this locally oft-repeated claim seriously, it demonstrates that Urabá is more than a case of Hobbesian political disorder. Through this exploration of war, paramilitary organizations, grassroots support and resistance, and drug-related violence, the book argues that Urabá, rather than existing in statelessness, has actually been an intense and persistent site of state-building projects. Indeed, these projects have thrust together an unlikely gathering of guerilla groups, drug-trafficking paramilitaries, military strategists, technocratic planners, local politicians, and development experts each seeking to give concrete coherence to the inherently unwieldy abstraction of “the state” in a space in which it supposedly does not exist. By untangling this odd mix, the book reveals how Colombia's violent conflicts have produced surprisingly coherent and resilient, if not at all benevolent, regimes of rule.