Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
One of the burning issues of recent times is the domestic violence in forms of psychological tortures, physical assault, marital rape, etc., which are more or less visible in every society. This is the concern that leads this article to negotiate how individual identities get reshaped by the socio-cultural and political practices of the given systems of a society. Within this framework, this article analyses how ‘reclaiming the body’ helps ‘self’-sustenance of the female narrator while still contesting with the violated domestic life under the threat of patriarchal society in Meena Kandasamy’s When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife (2017). In the novel, Kandasamy not only portrays her protagonist as a mere object subjected to patriarchy but also shows the ways of her constructing own ‘self’, more explicitly female subjectivity which this article intends to explore through the theoretical framework of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler’s vision about construction of gender as mere rehearsed performative acts constructed to implement and cherish self-proclaimed supreme patriarchal ‘self’ of the society.
The State and the Madheshi Dalit Women’s Access to Citizenship in Nepal
Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Volume 15, Issue 1_suppl, Page S86-S99, August 2023.
The relationship between the state and Madheshi Dalit Womans (MDWs) with reference to the latter’s exercise of citizenship right has long been a contested issue in Nepal due to the latter’s alleged immigrant history and cultural and familial connection with the Dalits of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh of India. The MDWs who are at the lowest social order in Nepal because of their intersecting subordinate identities based on gender, caste, ethnic and class have been systematically excluded from the domain of Nepali citizenship during due course of hill-based national identity formation. Consequently, large number of the MDWs, their spouses and children have remained stateless or struggled hard to obtain citizenship owing to ethnic, caste, gender and class-based exclusion even after insertion of jus soli provisos for a brief period in the 2006 Citizenship Act. On this backdrop, this article, based on qualitative field study in the eastern Tarai, is an effort to explore the intricacies of the citizenshiplessness of the MDWs of Nepal’s eastern Tarai from their subjective experiences. The findings reveal a disappointing picture of citizenshiplessness of the MDW families by virtue of multiple forms of exclusion and also a sustained hierarchy within themselves based on access to different types of citizenship.
The relationship between the state and Madheshi Dalit Womans (MDWs) with reference to the latter’s exercise of citizenship right has long been a contested issue in Nepal due to the latter’s alleged immigrant history and cultural and familial connection with the Dalits of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh of India. The MDWs who are at the lowest social order in Nepal because of their intersecting subordinate identities based on gender, caste, ethnic and class have been systematically excluded from the domain of Nepali citizenship during due course of hill-based national identity formation. Consequently, large number of the MDWs, their spouses and children have remained stateless or struggled hard to obtain citizenship owing to ethnic, caste, gender and class-based exclusion even after insertion of jus soli provisos for a brief period in the 2006 Citizenship Act. On this backdrop, this article, based on qualitative field study in the eastern Tarai, is an effort to explore the intricacies of the citizenshiplessness of the MDWs of Nepal’s eastern Tarai from their subjective experiences. The findings reveal a disappointing picture of citizenshiplessness of the MDW families by virtue of multiple forms of exclusion and also a sustained hierarchy within themselves based on access to different types of citizenship.
Erratum to Explaining the migrant–native vote gap under open-list proportional representation
Party Politics, Ahead of Print.
Non-linear agenda-building: The impacts of media storms during the 2015 Canadian election
Party Politics, Ahead of Print.
A common limitation of most analyses of electoral agenda-building dynamics is that they tend to operate under the assumption that the underlying dynamics between the political actors’ and the media’s agendas are more or less stable across time. Drawing upon recent work on media storms, I theorize that political parties have considerably less influence in periods that are characterized by sudden and explosive increases in media coverage of a particular issue. Using an automated content analysis built around a custom-made dictionary, I examine how parties’ electoral agenda-building efficiency was affected by media storms during the 2015 Canadian federal election. My results support the idea that storm periods diminish parties’ influence on the following day’s media agenda, as the impact of parties’ daily issue attention tend to be weaker. These findings demonstrate the non-linearity of electoral agenda-building dynamics and imply that some electoral contexts are less conducive to political actors’ influence.
A common limitation of most analyses of electoral agenda-building dynamics is that they tend to operate under the assumption that the underlying dynamics between the political actors’ and the media’s agendas are more or less stable across time. Drawing upon recent work on media storms, I theorize that political parties have considerably less influence in periods that are characterized by sudden and explosive increases in media coverage of a particular issue. Using an automated content analysis built around a custom-made dictionary, I examine how parties’ electoral agenda-building efficiency was affected by media storms during the 2015 Canadian federal election. My results support the idea that storm periods diminish parties’ influence on the following day’s media agenda, as the impact of parties’ daily issue attention tend to be weaker. These findings demonstrate the non-linearity of electoral agenda-building dynamics and imply that some electoral contexts are less conducive to political actors’ influence.
Do parties still shape policies in times of crisis? The impact of financial constraints on partisan policymaking in Italy (1996–2018)
Party Politics, Ahead of Print.
This paper investigates the effect of macro-economic conditions on partisan policymaking through an analysis of novel data on the fulfilment of 2412 Italian pledges. Are parties able to produce ideologically driven policies even during economic downturns? And how does the economic context affect parties’ capacity to fulfil their pledges? In this paper, I contend that the interaction between macroeconomic conditions and the policymaking process is more complex than it is usually depicted and cannot be restricted to the constraints, financial above all, engendered by a recession period. Results from binary logistic regressions indeed suggest that parties do maintain a certain room for manoeuvre to influence the governing agenda in times of crisis. Even though in some cases pledge fulfilment is severely affected by deteriorations of economic conditions, parties are still able to carry out a large share of their programmatic priorities. Moreover, the economic situation mostly challenges left-leaning governments.
This paper investigates the effect of macro-economic conditions on partisan policymaking through an analysis of novel data on the fulfilment of 2412 Italian pledges. Are parties able to produce ideologically driven policies even during economic downturns? And how does the economic context affect parties’ capacity to fulfil their pledges? In this paper, I contend that the interaction between macroeconomic conditions and the policymaking process is more complex than it is usually depicted and cannot be restricted to the constraints, financial above all, engendered by a recession period. Results from binary logistic regressions indeed suggest that parties do maintain a certain room for manoeuvre to influence the governing agenda in times of crisis. Even though in some cases pledge fulfilment is severely affected by deteriorations of economic conditions, parties are still able to carry out a large share of their programmatic priorities. Moreover, the economic situation mostly challenges left-leaning governments.
Within-party mobility and economic performance in authoritarian regimes: Evidence from China
Party Politics, Ahead of Print.
This study analyses a mechanism to explain how internal mobility in the dominant party enhances economic performance. We argue that authoritarian leaders incentivize their political agents to advance economic development by using age-based promotion and retirement rules. We empirically examine our theoretical claim using China’s cadre rejuvenation policy, which rewards younger leaders with more opportunities for career advancement. Drawing on panel data for prefectural party secretaries who were in office at some point between 2000 and 2012, we show that the principle of youthful rejuvenation leads the Communist Party of China to grant more promotions to party leaders who enter office at a younger age than to their older counterparts. Under such an incentive scheme, the regions served by younger entrants into the officialdom have better economic performance than those served by older entrants, holding ability and other regional characteristics constant.
This study analyses a mechanism to explain how internal mobility in the dominant party enhances economic performance. We argue that authoritarian leaders incentivize their political agents to advance economic development by using age-based promotion and retirement rules. We empirically examine our theoretical claim using China’s cadre rejuvenation policy, which rewards younger leaders with more opportunities for career advancement. Drawing on panel data for prefectural party secretaries who were in office at some point between 2000 and 2012, we show that the principle of youthful rejuvenation leads the Communist Party of China to grant more promotions to party leaders who enter office at a younger age than to their older counterparts. Under such an incentive scheme, the regions served by younger entrants into the officialdom have better economic performance than those served by older entrants, holding ability and other regional characteristics constant.
Learning Styles and Academic Achievement of Tribal Students
Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
Access to education for all is a hurdle task for a vast country like India. It is extra difficult when we consider the remote hamlets of tribal people. Tribal education was given prime importance by the different educational policies throughout the time. There are different issues like language, culture, lack of awareness, and so on, which are threat to achieving the goal. The educational goals mostly would not get fulfilled in the schools of tribal area. This may be related to the learning styles of tribal students as there is a close association between the learning styles of students and their academic achievement. In this context, the researcher studied the learning styles used by the tribal students in Alluri Sitarama Raju (ASR) district of Andhra Pradesh state, to identify the predominant learning style of tribal students. This article also discusses about the relation between learning styles and academic achievement of the students. If the student identifies their learning styles, it will help them to plan their way of learning. Similarly, if the teachers identify the learning styles of students, teaching learning activities could be planned accordingly.
Access to education for all is a hurdle task for a vast country like India. It is extra difficult when we consider the remote hamlets of tribal people. Tribal education was given prime importance by the different educational policies throughout the time. There are different issues like language, culture, lack of awareness, and so on, which are threat to achieving the goal. The educational goals mostly would not get fulfilled in the schools of tribal area. This may be related to the learning styles of tribal students as there is a close association between the learning styles of students and their academic achievement. In this context, the researcher studied the learning styles used by the tribal students in Alluri Sitarama Raju (ASR) district of Andhra Pradesh state, to identify the predominant learning style of tribal students. This article also discusses about the relation between learning styles and academic achievement of the students. If the student identifies their learning styles, it will help them to plan their way of learning. Similarly, if the teachers identify the learning styles of students, teaching learning activities could be planned accordingly.
The second-order election model and the performance of political parties in municipal elections
Party Politics, Ahead of Print.
Elections at the municipal level are often treated as second-order elections (SOE), subordinate to the national electoral arena in a manner similar to the European elections. The original SOE model expects incumbent national parties to perform worse, while predicting smaller and ideologically extreme parties to perform better at the second-order electoral arena compared to the first-order (national) one. Based on a dataset covering aggregate election results in three Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway and Finland) with party-dominated local governments and a time span of more than three decades, we find that the performance of parties in municipal elections only to some degree conforms to the expectations of the model. Parties in national government usually suffer losses in municipal elections, but the effect of incumbency is contingent upon the party size: only large incumbent parties are punished in local elections. We find very weak support for the hypothesis that extreme parties perform better than moderates and suggests that this can be explained by the organisational effort required to field the candidates and campaign in multiple jurisdictions. We conclude that the SOE model should not be applied as a default to municipal elections when explaining political parties’ electoral performance.
Elections at the municipal level are often treated as second-order elections (SOE), subordinate to the national electoral arena in a manner similar to the European elections. The original SOE model expects incumbent national parties to perform worse, while predicting smaller and ideologically extreme parties to perform better at the second-order electoral arena compared to the first-order (national) one. Based on a dataset covering aggregate election results in three Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway and Finland) with party-dominated local governments and a time span of more than three decades, we find that the performance of parties in municipal elections only to some degree conforms to the expectations of the model. Parties in national government usually suffer losses in municipal elections, but the effect of incumbency is contingent upon the party size: only large incumbent parties are punished in local elections. We find very weak support for the hypothesis that extreme parties perform better than moderates and suggests that this can be explained by the organisational effort required to field the candidates and campaign in multiple jurisdictions. We conclude that the SOE model should not be applied as a default to municipal elections when explaining political parties’ electoral performance.
Revisiting Major Approaches to Tribal Development in India: A Brief Review of Isolationist, Integrationist and Assimilative Approaches
Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
Three approaches, namely, isolationists, integrationists and Assimilative approaches are at the centre stage of philosophical and theoretical foundations that shape the discourses pertaining to the progress of tribal communities in India. Different schemes of tribal development implemented in India find their expression in at least one of these approaches. While the isolationist approach seeks to attain tribal development by treating tribal communities as specimens in a National Park, the integrationist approach calls for integrating the tribal communities with the mainstream. Undoubtedly, the isolationist approach has turned out to be an utter failure as it emphasizes confining the tribal communities within the forest, pushing them further to darkness and miseries. Integration is the ‘respectful merger’ of the tribal communities with the mainstream, staking a claim to an equal share of power and resources. Nevertheless, thrown into the ‘net’ of modernists from the ‘lap’ of nature in the name of integration, tribal communities have become the victims of modern industrialization. This calls for the ‘selective and slow integration’ of tribal communities with the mainstream population. However, this selective and gradual integration should be accompanied by suitable ‘protectionist’ instruments to devise an enhanced strategy aiming at the progress of the tribal communities.
Three approaches, namely, isolationists, integrationists and Assimilative approaches are at the centre stage of philosophical and theoretical foundations that shape the discourses pertaining to the progress of tribal communities in India. Different schemes of tribal development implemented in India find their expression in at least one of these approaches. While the isolationist approach seeks to attain tribal development by treating tribal communities as specimens in a National Park, the integrationist approach calls for integrating the tribal communities with the mainstream. Undoubtedly, the isolationist approach has turned out to be an utter failure as it emphasizes confining the tribal communities within the forest, pushing them further to darkness and miseries. Integration is the ‘respectful merger’ of the tribal communities with the mainstream, staking a claim to an equal share of power and resources. Nevertheless, thrown into the ‘net’ of modernists from the ‘lap’ of nature in the name of integration, tribal communities have become the victims of modern industrialization. This calls for the ‘selective and slow integration’ of tribal communities with the mainstream population. However, this selective and gradual integration should be accompanied by suitable ‘protectionist’ instruments to devise an enhanced strategy aiming at the progress of the tribal communities.