Politics and International Relations > International Relations
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Gender-based violence is a rampant problem in Latin American countries. Historically, state policy to prevent and sanction it has developed slowly, usually having limited impact because of a lack of resources and political will. While the process of policy adoption involved feminist organizations and international norms diffusion, little is known about when and why policy to address gender-based violence can become a political priority. Based on a comparative case study of Peru and Argentina, we show that sustained mass mobilization was the key variable marking a turning point in both countries in state capacity building in that domain. The latter was importantly enhanced as a consequence of the Ni Una Menos protests. Through process-tracing analysis, we show that there was a substantial increase in state resources and personnel, as well as institutional innovation. This transformation occurred in response to the unprecedented mass mobilization of various sectors of society.
Racial minority candidates have often been encouraged to deploy racially neutral rhetoric in their appeals to voters beyond their own racial group. Developed in the US with African American candidates in mind, this strategy, known as ‘deracialization’, was premised on the idea that white voters held negative stereotypes about racial minority candidates. In this article, we argue that many of the premises of the deracialization strategy do not hold when it comes to Asian American candidates. While Asian Americans are victims of racial prejudice, many stereotypes about Asian Americans are positive, sometimes collectively known as the ‘model-minority myth’. In this article, we explore how Andrew Yang, an Asian American candidate for president of the US and mayor of New York City, deployed racially coded campaign rhetoric. Rather than downplay his racial identity, Yang highlighted it, both explicitly and implicitly, in his rhetoric. Although Yang’s candidacy was primarily centred around a policy issue – universal basic income – his racial identity was an acknowledged and celebrated part of his campaign rhetoric.
Social services are an increasingly important part of the welfare state. According to existing scholarship, services should be preventative, tailored and complementary. Yet, in practice, these service delivery preconditions or goals are often found lacking. Managers in street-level organisations can influence this discrepancy, by either alleviating or further enhancing it. That is the issue we explore, by asking how the discrepancy between formal policy goals and actual service delivery is perceived and articulated by middle managers whose work includes the discretionary translation of policy on paper to their employees at the street level. To address this question, we conducted a vignette interview study among middle managers from a variety of welfare state organisations in the Netherlands. Instead of focusing on one type of service, we focus on several types of services delivered to recipients with a combination of socio-economic and health problems. The results show that the three preconditions of service delivery are perceived to be not or only partly present in service delivery practice in the Netherlands. We distinguish three ways in which middle managers articulate the ambiguous work within this discrepancy. First, they equate prevention with early identification and accessibility of services. Second, they internalise a discourse on customisation. Third, they substitute complementarity for collaboration. Given that the span of influence of the middle managers includes the individual level more than the organisational and system levels, we argue that these articulations could reinforce the existing emphasis on the service precondition tailoring at the expense of complementarity and prevention.
Populism has been a defining element of Latin American political systems during specific historical periods. Regionalism remains a defining feature of international relations practices in Latin America. Autonomy is one of the leading concepts in the study of foreign policy and regionalism in Latin America. This article analyzes the links between populism, autonomy, and regionalism. It examines whether there is a connection between populist movements and the promotion of regional initiatives that foster autonomist policies. We argue that no inherent link exists between populism and autonomist regionalism; rather, this relationship depends on the specific variety of populism that emerges in each historical context. Based on De La Torre’s framework, we identify three distinct varieties of populism in Latin America: classical, neoliberal, and radical. Our analysis examines which varieties of populism fostered connections between autonomy and regionalism, focusing on comparative case studies of Juan Domingo Perón’s government in Argentina and Juan Velasco Alvarado’s administration in Peru.
It has been well documented that the COVID-19 pandemic and policy responses in the UK had discriminatory effects on racially minoritised communities, older people and carers. While separate studies have investigated outcomes for these groups, few have brought them together. This article shares findings from a qualitative study undertaken during the pandemic that investigated impacts on the everyday lives of three racially minoritised groups in the UK: older people and unpaid and paid carers for adults. Situating the data in a wider context and viewed through a feminist lens of everyday political economy, we argue that the pandemic both reflected ongoing crises in and of care and intensified life-making practices of social reproduction. As revealed through narratives of everyday care experiences at the ‘peak’ moment of the pandemic, the crisis was characterised by depletion through care and caring, reinforcing and deepening existing racialised, gendered and class-based hierarchies of inequality.
This conceptual article examines the relational dynamic between the research field focusing on the far right and those critical scholars that endeavour to undertake these studies. It is theoretically anchored in the field of political science scholarship that recognises the key role played by gender in understanding both the ideological underpinnings and the workings of various far-right entities and by intersectionality in explaining complex systems of power and inequality. Specifically, this article addresses how the complex subjectivity of scholars of the far right shapes the demands for and experiences of emotional labour along three interconnected arenas: the fieldwork, neoliberal academia and their private lives. The conclusion highlights the need for more attention to the ways in which unequal demands for emotional labour in the academic context perpetuate existing inequalities and that institutions should improve support for scholars whose work demands a high degree of emotional labour.
This article explores the transformative potential of improvisational techniques in reshaping interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary (ITD) learning environments offering art-based exercises and tools for this work. By integrating active research with improvisational methods from theatre and music, we propose a pedagogical shift that transcends traditional academic roles and disciplinary boundaries, fostering a culture of co-creation, mutual learning and innovation. This approach aims to tackle the inherent challenges of ITD research and thus enhance ITD research groups’ ability to address complex societal ‘Grand Challenges’. We argue that improvisation within both ITD research and educational communities serves as a crucial catalyst for nurturing trust, embracing failure as a growth opportunity, and redefining success. Embodied practices based on improvisation help bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical applications, enabling academics to navigate the complexities of collaboration and engage in shared learning experiences. This article introduces techniques from improvisational theatre aimed at fostering trust and collaboration in transdisciplinary research and educational settings. Drawing on over 25 years of combined research experience, we show how these tools enhance mutual understanding and collective problem-solving among students and research teams. Ultimately, we advocate integrating conventional knowledge delivery models with a framework characterised by regenerative practices, care and explorative processes. This integrated approach would offer new opportunities for addressing the intertwined wicked problems our world faces today, promoting a more inclusive, participatory and creatively fulfilling academic community.
Right-wing populism entails discursive divisions both between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’, and between ‘the majority’ in society and ‘minorities’. In both instances, the former are attributed with positive attributes and characteristics, while the latter are invariably ascribed negative connotations and qualities, to the extent of being portrayed as inimical to ‘the people’ or ‘the majority’, and possible even a threat to national identity or security. Through such ideologically define or socially constructed binary divisions and polarities, ‘the people’ or ‘the majority’ are portrayed as being decent, hard-working, imbued with common-sense, law-abiding, loyal, and patriotic. By contrast, the ‘the elite’ is usually depicted as being corrupt, decadent, incompetent, out-of-touch, self-serving, and unpatriotic, while sundry ‘minorities’ are often accused of being deviant, disloyal, practicing unorthodox lifestyles, refusing to integrate, and subscribing to alien, or even subversive, values which are inimical to dominant or indigenous culture. Having constructed such binary divisions, the populist Right deploys discourses which perpetuates the identification of so-called ‘enemies within’ or ‘alien others’ against whom ‘the people’ and ‘the majority’ can be mobilised. Such discursive mechanisms serve simultaneously to divert popular attention from the failings or negative consequences of neoliberalism and/or right-wing policies (such as corporate greed and corruption, increasing job insecurity, inequality, and poverty), and promoted divide-and-rule, by persuading ‘the people’ and ‘the majority’ that socio-economic problems are the fault either of ‘the elite’ or sundry ‘alien’ minorities. These then serve to legitimise authoritarian policy responses, accompanied by further discourses, often entailing Biblical or military imagery and symbolism, about a Manichean battle between good and evil, or the nation-state facing a serious, even existential, threat from sundry internal or external enemies.
Introduction:
Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) is an important global health issue linked to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Adolescents in refugee settings face specific SRH needs and risks, and limited access to needed services. This research, therefore, aimed to develop an understanding of SRH needs of, and risks to, adolescent refugees, to inform adolescent sexual and reproductive health policies and programmes.
Methodology:
The study employed qualitative approaches. Seventeen in-depth interviews were conducted with adolescent refugees and nine key informant interviews with stakeholders, including representatives from NGOs, health facility workers and refugee leaders. We performed content and thematic analysis drawing on the ecological systems theory framework.
Findings:
Reproductive health issues presented by adolescent refugees included menstruation supplies, reproductive health education and contraception. Participants reported several reproductive health risk factors that include risky sexual relationships, child abuse in homes, early marriage, teenage pregnancies and forced marriage, and sexual and gender-based violence.
Conclusion:
The findings highlight significant gaps in adolescent refugees’ knowledge and access to SRH services. These gaps are shaped by cultural norms, limited service availability, and lack of targeted SRH education for young people in refugee settings.
Recommendation:
Targeted training is vital to guaranteeing efficient delivery of SRH services; with humanitarian organisations ensuring their personnel is appropriately trained to support adolescent refugees and their SRH needs. Culturally appropriate services are required to ensure greater buy-in and build trusting relationships with the population.
Diverse approaches to climate information services are emerging as impacts escalate in an urbanising globe. However, the climate information services involving cities are mainly collaborations with actors from science, multilateral, national and municipal authorities. There are limited efforts to build on knowledge from residents in local communities about risk and response options, to steer collaborations on climate information services. This article examines visual ethnography as an enabler of climate information services that connect societal and scientific objectives at local scales in cities. Based on case study findings from Kampala city in Uganda, local-level framings of climate risks and responses were grouped into exploratory and intersectional framings. The exploratory framings are risks and response options directly linked to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 11 and 13 on cities and climate change respectively, while depicting some degree of contradiction. Intersectional framings are risks and response options demonstrating the interrelatedness of climate issues across different SDGs. Local communities do take on scientific information on impacts and adaptation barriers but also connect risks and responses to experiences of tested options, which sometimes only emerge during the process of visual ethnography and are not initially identified. Visual ethnography can be an important source of information not only on stressors experienced and priority actions by local communities, but can also be a climate solutions imagery, that contains positive adaptation stories with opportunities for enriching and complementing scientific inquiry on responses.
