Party Politics, Ahead of Print.
Many studies have tried to identify citizens’ views about which actors should govern and how. These studies have mostly looked at support for citizens or independent experts being given a greater role. Recently, Hibbing, Theiss-Morse, Hibbing and Fortunato have proposed a new battery of 21 survey items capturing the dimensions along which citizens’ preferences for who should govern are organized. Testing their survey instrument among US respondents, they identified seven dimensions. In this study, we replicate their approach across nine European democracies, namely, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Ireland and the Netherlands. The replication allows, first, to compare citizens’ preferences for political actors between the US and Europe, and within Europe. Second, it provides suggestions for how Hibbing and colleagues’ battery might be adapted and re-used in other countries, enabling further cross-national comparative research on citizens’ preferences for who should govern.
Quality of Life and Associated Determinants among Female Tea Garden Workers of Indigenous Communities in Sub-Himalayan West Bengal, India: A Cross- Sectional Mixed Methods
Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
The purpose of this study was to examine the self-perceived quality of life (QOL) using World Health Organization quality of life (WHOQOL-BREF) instrument and associated controlling factors among socio-economically marginalized tribal female tea garden (TG) workers. A cross-sectional mixed-method research design involving both quantitative and qualitative techniques was employed on 378 study samples (18–60 years tribal female TG workers) between February and May 2022 across 10 TGs of Sub-Himalayan north Bengal, India. For the study, both summary statistics (mean, median, mode, standard deviation, and percentage distribution) and inferential statistics (Welch’s ANOVA, independent t-test, paired t-test and multivariate regression) were used to understand the dynamics of QOL and respondents narratives were facilitated to investigate the corresponding phenomenal scenario. Results: Findings indicate the QOL of the tribal female workers variably associated with different socioeconomic conditions and subjective well-being. The findings recommend that female tribal TG workers were perceived to have good ‘overall quality of life’ with a response rate of 33.1%, whereas more than 20% of participants respond that they were poor QOL on ‘overall quality of life’ and ‘general health’ items. The findings show lower summary statistics for most items in the environmental domain. Additionally, the study constructs a multivariate model that identifies several factors including socio-economy, neighbourhood, social relation, and others were significantly control the QOL of the study subjects. These outcomes may have important implications for future studies employing WHOQOL-BREF or similar instruments on different communities with distinctive sociocultural characteristics.
The purpose of this study was to examine the self-perceived quality of life (QOL) using World Health Organization quality of life (WHOQOL-BREF) instrument and associated controlling factors among socio-economically marginalized tribal female tea garden (TG) workers. A cross-sectional mixed-method research design involving both quantitative and qualitative techniques was employed on 378 study samples (18–60 years tribal female TG workers) between February and May 2022 across 10 TGs of Sub-Himalayan north Bengal, India. For the study, both summary statistics (mean, median, mode, standard deviation, and percentage distribution) and inferential statistics (Welch’s ANOVA, independent t-test, paired t-test and multivariate regression) were used to understand the dynamics of QOL and respondents narratives were facilitated to investigate the corresponding phenomenal scenario. Results: Findings indicate the QOL of the tribal female workers variably associated with different socioeconomic conditions and subjective well-being. The findings recommend that female tribal TG workers were perceived to have good ‘overall quality of life’ with a response rate of 33.1%, whereas more than 20% of participants respond that they were poor QOL on ‘overall quality of life’ and ‘general health’ items. The findings show lower summary statistics for most items in the environmental domain. Additionally, the study constructs a multivariate model that identifies several factors including socio-economy, neighbourhood, social relation, and others were significantly control the QOL of the study subjects. These outcomes may have important implications for future studies employing WHOQOL-BREF or similar instruments on different communities with distinctive sociocultural characteristics.
Defend the brutes
.
Sycophants in 280 characters: Using Twitter to measure the authoritarian sentiment of presidential advisors in Turkey
Party Politics, Ahead of Print.
Top-level presidential advisor appointments provide would-be autocrats in backsliding democracies a quick and effective means to coopt elites and assemble an authoritarian coalition. Such appointments represent a mechanism for making promises of patronage that are more credible and more directly under the executive’s control than patronage facilitated by their party. Elites who join the executive’s coalition via such appointments have incentives to maintain their privileged access and therefore are more likely to match or even surpass the authoritarian sentiment of an autocratic executive. This research uses a sentiment analysis model trained with 2 years of Twitter data—between 2019 and 2021—to compare the authoritarian sentiment of Turkey’s major political parties and to examine differences between groups within Turkey’s ruling party. The evidence shows that President Erdogan’s advisors are significantly more authoritarian than the rest of the party, and, as such, they form an authoritarian vanguard within an already authoritarian party.
Top-level presidential advisor appointments provide would-be autocrats in backsliding democracies a quick and effective means to coopt elites and assemble an authoritarian coalition. Such appointments represent a mechanism for making promises of patronage that are more credible and more directly under the executive’s control than patronage facilitated by their party. Elites who join the executive’s coalition via such appointments have incentives to maintain their privileged access and therefore are more likely to match or even surpass the authoritarian sentiment of an autocratic executive. This research uses a sentiment analysis model trained with 2 years of Twitter data—between 2019 and 2021—to compare the authoritarian sentiment of Turkey’s major political parties and to examine differences between groups within Turkey’s ruling party. The evidence shows that President Erdogan’s advisors are significantly more authoritarian than the rest of the party, and, as such, they form an authoritarian vanguard within an already authoritarian party.
Capacity Building as Intervention-Lite: Migration Management and the Global Compacts
.
Sounding Out Borderscapes: A Sonic Geography of the US–Mexico Border at Otay Mountain, California
.
Naturalising ‘Black Spaces’ in the Mediterranean: Towards a Political Ecology of Bordering Infrastructures
.
Liquid or Solid Warfare? Autocratic States, Non-State Armed Groups and the Socio-Spatial Dimension of Warfare in Yemen
.
Rock, water, life: ecology and humanities for a decolonial South Africa
.
Dalit Discrimination in Higher Education: A Malady Without Remedies
Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
Education is one of the most potential variables and relates to different indicators of socio-economic development. Going beyond the campaign for universal literacy, which is otherwise supported by constitutional and statutory provisions, the article seeks to explore the presence as well as the dominance of Scheduled Castes (SC) in Higher Education and gets into the paradoxes of social and bureaucratic structures that facilitate or impede SC entry to and continue with higher education. At this juncture, it seems to be imperative to search for an alignment between constitutional mandates on one hand and social and bureaucratic constraints on the other. Moreover, the relevant methodological framework has been adopted to put facts and figures into perspective, to identify the reason for their slow progress in higher education and to locate the reasons why the reservation policy failed to assist them as per the expectations of the founding fathers of the constitution.
Education is one of the most potential variables and relates to different indicators of socio-economic development. Going beyond the campaign for universal literacy, which is otherwise supported by constitutional and statutory provisions, the article seeks to explore the presence as well as the dominance of Scheduled Castes (SC) in Higher Education and gets into the paradoxes of social and bureaucratic structures that facilitate or impede SC entry to and continue with higher education. At this juncture, it seems to be imperative to search for an alignment between constitutional mandates on one hand and social and bureaucratic constraints on the other. Moreover, the relevant methodological framework has been adopted to put facts and figures into perspective, to identify the reason for their slow progress in higher education and to locate the reasons why the reservation policy failed to assist them as per the expectations of the founding fathers of the constitution.