‘The Party’s Over’: Critical Junctures, Crises and the Politics of Housing Policy

The key argument set out in this article is that historical and comparative forms of investigation are necessary if we are to better understand the ambitions and scope of contemporary housing interventions. To demonstrate the veracity of our claim we have set out an analysis of UK housing polices enacted in the mid 1970s as a basis for comparison with those pursued forty years later. The article begins with a critical summary of some of the methodological approaches adopted by researchers used to interpret housing policy. In the main section we present our critical analysis of housing policy reforms (implemented by the Labour government between 1974 and 1979) noting both their achievements and limitations. In the concluding section, we use our interpretation of this period as a basis to judge contemporary housing policy and reflect on the methodological issues that arise from our analysis.

Alliance Politics in Hybrid Regimes : Political Stability and Instability since World War II

Cette thèse étudie la stabilité et l’instabilité politique des régimes hybrides. Elle pose la question suivante : dans quelles conditions l’autorité des élites au pouvoir est-elle reconnue ou contestée? Notre réponse s’articule en lien avec le caractère inclusif ou exclusif de la coalition dirigeante : c’est-à-dire, l’alliance stratégique des élites dirigeantes avec les groupes sociaux dominants. L’inclusion de ces derniers favorise le consentement et la stabilité; leur exclusion entraîne l’affrontement et l’instabilité politique. Sa composition dépend (i) du degré de violence organisée extra-légale et (ii) du degré de pénétration de l’État sur le territoire et dans l’économie. La première variable permet d’identifier quel groupe social au sein de l’État (militaires) ou du régime (partis d’opposition) est dominant et influence les formes de communication politique avec les élites dirigeantes. La deuxième variable permet d’identifier quel groupe social au sein de l’État (fonctionnaires) ou de la société (chefs locaux) est dominant et oriente les rapports entre les régions et le pouvoir central. L’apport de la recherche est d’approfondir notre compréhension des institutions politiques dans les régimes hybrides en mettant l’accent sur l’identité des groupes sociaux dominants dans un contexte donné. La thèse propose un modèle simple, flexible et original permettant d’appréhender des relations causales autrement contre-intuitives. En ce sens, la stabilité politique est également possible dans un pays où l’État est faible et/ou aux prises avec des mouvements de rébellion; et l’instabilité dans un contexte inverse. Tout dépend de la composition de la coalition dirigeante. Afin d’illustrer les liens logiques formulés et d’exposer les nuances de notre théorie, nous employons une analyse historique comparative de la coalition dirigeante en Malaisie (1957-2010), en Indonésie (1945-1998), au Sénégal (1960-2010) et au Paraguay (1945-2008). La principale conclusion est que les deux variables sont incontournables. L’une sans l’autre offre nécessairement une explication incomplète des alliances politiques qui forgent les conditions de stabilité et d'instabilité dans les régimes hybrides.

Mobilizing in borderline citizenship regimes : a comparative analysis of undocumented migrants’ collective actions

This article seeks to explain how and why groups and networks of undocumented migrants mobilizing in Berlin, Montréal, and Paris since the beginning of the 2000s construct different types of claims. The authors explore the relationship between undocumented migrants and state authorities at the local level through the concept of the citizenship regime and its specific application to undocumented migrants (which they describe as the “borderline citizenship regime”). Despite their common formal exclusion from citizenship, nonstatus migrants experience different degrees and forms of exclusion in their daily lives, in terms of access to certain rights and services, recognition, and belonging within the state (whether through formally or nonformally recognized means). As a result, they have an opportunity to create different, specific forms of leeway in the society in which they live. The concurrence of these different degrees of exclusion and different forms of leeway defines specific conditions of mobilization. The authors demonstrate how the content of their claims is influenced by these conditions of mobilization.

A Comparative Study on Internationalization and the Role of International Offices at Selected Middle Eastern and German Universities

Internationalization of higher education has become one of the most important policies for institutions of higher education worldwide. Though universities are international by nature, the need for intensified quality activities of international nature has promoted internationalization to be under spotlight of researchers, administrators and policy makers and to be an area for research. Each institution follows its certain way to govern its international affairs. Most Universities, especially in the 'Developed World' started to plan it strategically. This study explores the meanings and importance of internationalization especially that it means different things to different people. It also studies the rationales behind internationalizing higher education. It focuses on the four main prevailing rationales; political, cultural/social, economic/financial, and academic on both national and institutional levels. With the increasing need to strategically plan, the study explores internationalization strategies in terms of how to develop them, what are their approaches and types, and their components and dimensions. Damascus University has witnessed an overwhelming development of its international relations and activities. Therefore, it started to face a problem of how to deal with this increasing load especially that its International Office is the only unit that deals with the international issues. In order to study the internationalization phenomenon at Damascus University, the 2WH approach, which asks the what, why, and how questions, is used and in order to define the International Office's role in the internationalization process of the University, it studies it and the international offices of Kassel University, and Humboldt University in Germany, The University of Jordan, and Al Baath University in Syria using the 'SOCIAL' approach that studies and analyses the situation, organization, challenges, involvement, ambitions, and limitations of these offices. The internationalization process at the above-mentioned Universities is studied and compared in terms of its meaning, rationales for both the institution and its academic staff, challenges and strategic planning. Then a comparison is made among the international offices of the Universities to identify their approaches, what led to their success and what led to their failure in their practices. The aim is to provide Damascus University and its International Office with some good practices and, depending on the experiences of the professionals of the case-studies, a suggested guidance to the work of this Office and the University in general is given. The study uses the interviews with the different officials and stakeholders of the case-studies as the main method of collecting the information in addition to site visits, studying their official documents and their websites. The study belongs to qualitative research that has an action dimension in it since the recommendations will be applied in the International Office. The study concludes with few learned lessons for Damascus University and its International Office depending on the comparison that was done according to a set of dimensions. Finally a reflection on the relationship between internationalization of higher education and politics, the impact of politics on Middle Eastern Universities, and institutional internationalization strategies are presented.

The expenses scandal and the politics of electoral reform

The scandal over MPs' expenses that erupted in 2009 was followed by a surge in discussion of electoral reform. A range of reforms to Westminster's existing electoral system are now high on the political agenda. This article examines the extent and the nature of the scandal's impact on the electoral reform debate and draws out comparative implications for the sorts of conditions that can force politicians to accept electoral reforms that they do not want. It finds that the expenses scandal significantly changed debate about some electoral reform topics, but not about others. It proposes three factors likely to increase the impact of scandal in sparking reform: that the scandal is seen as harming ordinary people in their daily lives; that reforms can readily be understood as likely to mitigate the sources of scandal; and that those reforms do not seriously harm politicians' own perceived interests.

The Long Game: Hamas, The IRA, and the Politics of Radicalization in Palestine and Northern Ireland

The value of a comparative study of the two conflicts stems from a remarkable similarity in the structural organization of political violence by its most influential practitioners: the IRA and Hamas. At the core, I have merely tried my best to approach a beguiling question in a fresh, dynamic way. The stultifying discourse of conflict that serves as lingua franca for the Israeli‐Palestinian issue has largely reduced strategic debate to how best the conflict can be managed – not ended. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s focus on “economic peace” and unwillingness to commit to a two‐state solution – the consensus that has governed peacemaking for decades – belies such thinking. The Clinton Administration’s cadre of Mideast negotiators operated amidst the most rapid institutionalization of Palestinian democracy in history ‐ yet remained obsessed with Israeli‐Arab “confidence‐building” measures, doing little to legitimize the gains of Oslo. So long as Palestinians continue to view the creation of Israel as “al‐Nakba” – the catastrophe – whilst successive Israeli governments refuse to grant their aspirations any legitimacy, there can be no progress. Peace requires empathy, a substantial compromise in the context of internecine conflict. The “long war” both conflicts have become mandates an equally expansive, broad‐based and labor‐intensive approach – a demanding process that can only be called The Long Game.

The politics of resistance to workplace cultural diversity education for health service providers : an Australian study

This qualitative study has as its focus an exploration of health service providers' perceptions and experiences of the processes and implications of delivering workplace cultural diversity education for staff. Data were obtained from conducting in-depth individual and focus group interviews with a purposeful sample of 137 healthcare professionals, recruited from over 17 different organizational sites. Participants included cultural diversity educators, ethnic liaison officers, health service managers, nurses, health interpreters, allied health professionals, and community-based ethnic welfare organization personnel working in or with select metropolitan health services in Victoria, Australia. Analysis of the data revealed that workplace cultural diversity education in healthcare is a significant site of resistance and struggle. 'Resistance' was expressed in several forms including: the problematization of resources and staff availability to attend cultural diversity education forums; indifferent failure to recognize cultural imperatives in healthcare; deliberate refusal to recognize cultural imperatives in healthcare; selective recognition of cultural imperatives in healthcare ('facts sheets' only); and the angry rejection of cultural imperatives in healthcare. 'Struggle', in turn, largely involved cultural diversity educators having to constantly 'cajole and convince' (and even manipulate) staff to attend cultural diversity education forums and using a 'velvet glove and iron fist' approach to teaching staff who remained resolute in their resistance when participating in educational forums. An important implication of this study is that the politics of workplace cultural diversity education - and the 'politics of resistance' to such programs - need to be better recognized and understood if the status quo is to be successfully challenged and changed. The need for critical debate and further comparative research on the subject are also highlighted.

A politics of the Dreamtime : destructive and regenerative rainbows in Alexis Wright's Carpentaria

A literary criticism of the book "Carpentaria," by Alexis Wright is presented. It discusses the representation of indigenous knowledge in the novel. It outlines the characters and explores the symbolic significance of these characters. It examines the themes of the novel, including the dreamtime mythology as an alternative form of scientific discourse. An overview of the story of the novel is also given.

New scalar politics : implications for education policy

This paper argues that globalisation has implications for research and theory in the social sciences, demanding that the social no longer be seen as homologous with nation, but also linked to postnational or global fields. This situation has theoretical and methodological implications for comparative education specifically focused on education policy, which traditionally has taken the nation-state as the unit of analysis, and also worked with 'methodological nationalism'. The paper argues that globalisation has witnessed a rescaling of educational politics and policymaking and relocated some political authority to an emergent global education policy field, with implications for the functioning of national political authority and national education policy fields. This rescaling and this reworking of political authority are illustrated through two cases: the first is concerned with the impact of a globalised policy discourse of the ‘knowledge economy’ proselytised by the OECD and its impact in Australian policy developments; the second is concerned explicitly with the constitution of a global education policy field as a commensurate space of equivalence, as evidenced in the OECD’s PISA and educational indicators work and their increasing global coverage. The paper indicatively utilises Bourdieu’s ‘thinking tools’ to understand the emergent global education policy field and suggest these are very useful for doing comparative education policy analysis.

The politics of Timor-Leste : democratic consolidation after intervention

The Politics of Timor-Leste explores the critical issues facing the Asia-Pacific's youngest nation as it seeks to consolidate a democracy following years of international intervention. The authors study the challenges that have burdened the state since it broke from Indonesia amid the violence of 1999 and formally achieved full independence in 2002. They assess the notable accomplishments of Timor-Leste’s leaders and citizens, and consider the country’s future prospects as international organizations prepare to depart. A close study of Timor-Leste sheds light on ambitious state-building projects that have been initiated, with varying success, across the globe.

Contributors to this volume map the nation’s recent political evolution through studies of its constitutional debates, political parties, and foreign policy responses to powerful neighbors. They address the social and economic conditions that complicate Timor-Leste’s political development, such as gender discrimination, poverty, corruption, and security-sector volatility. The contemporary history of Timor-Leste reflects the experiences of many postcolonial and developing countries that have sought to establish a viable state following conflict and a declaration of independence. This small nation has been the subject of five consecutive UN missions with varying mandates. The Politics of Timor-Leste ought to serve as a key source for comparative postcolonial studies and a guide to future trends in international state-building and assistance.

Colonial girls' literature and the politics of archives in the digital age

In this paper we examine the politics of print and digital archives and their implications for research in the field of historical children's literature. We use the specific example of our comparative, collaborative project 'From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Australian, New Zealand and Canadian Print Cultures, 1840-1940' to contrast the strengths and limitations of print and digital archives of young people's texts from these three nations. In particular, we consider how the failure of some print archives to collect ephemeral or non-canonical colonial texts may be reproduced in current digitising projects. Similarly, we examine how gaps in the newly forged digital "canon" are especially large for colonial children's texts because of the commercial imperatives of many large-scale digitisation projects. While we acknowledge the revolutionary applications of digital repositories for research on historical children's literature, we also argue that these projects may unintentionally marginalise or erase certain kinds of children's texts from scholarly view in the future.

Animating child activism: Environmentalism and class politics in Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fox’s Fern Gully (1992)

 Informed by ecocriticism, this article conducts a comparative examination of two contemporary animated children’s films, Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fern Gully (1992). While both films advocate for the prevention of deforestation, they are, to varying degrees, antithetical to environmentalism. Both films reject the principles of deep ecology in displacing responsibility for environmental destruction on to ‘supernatural’ forces and exhibit anthropocentric concern for the survival of humans. We argue that these films constitute divergent methodological approaches for environmental consciousness-raising in children’s entertainment. The western world production demonstrates marked conservatism in its depiction of identity politics and ‘cute’ feminization of nature, while Hayao Miyazaki’s film renders nature sublime and invokes complex socio-cultural differences. Against FernGully’s ‘othering’ of working-class and queer characters, we posit that Princess Mononoke is decidedly queer, anti-binary and ideologically bi-partisan and, in accord with the underlying principle of environmental justice, asks child audiences to consider compassion for the poor in association with care for nature.