Public Interest as Concept and Legal Practice in China

Public interest law as concept and practice emerged in the US in the early 20th century and was expanded in connection with the civil rights movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The concept has to a large degree been imported from the West where it has travelled from the US to other jurisdictions and been somewhat transformed along the way. Litigation, petitioning and advocacy activities in the name of the public interest have during the last decade been used by Chinese lawyers and activists in order to strengthen the protection of the rights of Chinese citizens. This article analyzes the version of public interest law developed in China, tailored to the distinguishing features of the social and political system there. The public interest label is used as it is less politically sensitive than terms like civil society or human rights protection.

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Politics, Promises, and Partisanship? An Analysis of President Obama's Economic Stimulus Plan at the Congressional District Level

This research focuses on President Obama’s signature economic plan adopted in February 2009—the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Using data available from Recovery.gov, the analysis refines prior efforts to test the thesis that partisanship has played a central role in the distribution of funds across congressional districts by distinguishing between total spending on infrastructure and non-infrastructure programs as of the end of the second quarter of 2010.

Further, this research examines not only political and demographic factors relative to the locus of stimulus fund expenditures but also the expected and actual employment impact of ARRA by district. The analysis provides little evidence for the partisan theory of stimulus spending. Rather, the results accentuate the demographic characteristics of the districts that have thus far received stimulus money and putatively benefitted from the most jobs, in some ways counter to what the White House may have intended due to the complexities of fiscal federalism.

Equal Access to Elective Offices: A Challenge for Italian Democracy

Italy moves in that way from the 63rd to the 34th place in the women’s representation world ranking, drawn up periodically by Ipu (Inter parliamentary Union). It is a novelty of no small matter, especially considering the number of women in Parliament in past terms. In fact, in the past parliamentary term, women in the Chamber of Deputies were about 136 and 61 in the Senate, and, respectively, 21.6% and 19% of the total number of representatives.

The achievement of 20% in the national parliament represented a great result compared to the past, even fairly recent. Previous parliamentary terms experienced a female incidence significantly lower: in the XII legislature women were about 12% of the total, in the XIII and XIV parliamentary term the women representation goes further, at about 10% for then registering a small increase in the XV legislature with 109 women in the Chamber of Deputies and 45 in the Senate, respectively 17.3% and 14% of the delegates.

Political Science for whom?: Knowledge in the Online Era

If the Arab Spring taught us anything, it was that the Internet has become an important mean of the dissemination of ideas, creation of interest groups, mobilization of people, and changing public opinion. Although some will insist that the Arab Spring was not a social media phenomenon but a grassroots movement, we cannot ignore the power of unhampered information presented by the millions of users during the revolution. Images posted on Flickr or Face book and videos uploaded on YouTube were being seen by the world without the framing bias and “coloring” from traditional media outlets.

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Environmental Flows, Political Dams

In 2005, a group of water resource experts issued a statement cajoling decision-makers to privilege the needs of nature in their water management strategies. In effect, their Brisbane Declaration popularized the idea of environmental flows, a concept that focuses attention on the quantity, quality and timing of water required to sustain a dependent ecosystem.

In this essay I ask how well this concept has held up against the political pressures of popularity. To this end, I examine the various meanings inscribed on the concept of environmental flows as it has traveled across time and space. My findings uncover a few observations regarding the need for greater attentiveness to concept management. The findings also reveal a few surprising revelations about the forces at work behind conceptual alteration and the prospects of militating against these forces in our current global condition of heightened economic anxiety.

Political Elections as an Element of Democracy

The article examines electoral systems in relation to democratic theory; and it links the study of electoral systems to that of voting systems. It compares elections in various other kinds of systems, and it looks at the differences between Azerbaijan experience and that of other countries. The article tries to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

The literature regarding the formation of party systems in different transition societies, reflects that establishment of institutionalized party system where competing parties exist is an extended process and needs a long time. Also, this study accounts for different electoral system in terms of political modernization and democratic transformation. All these problems have been analyzed from both a comparative and a theoretical stand point. Today, to attain a healthy and stable political structure is one of the main problems of political science. As a result, political parties and political elections are indispensable elements of democracy.

Support for Political Leaders and Elected Representatives in Quebec

The literature on political support in advanced industrial democracies has expanded fairly steadily over the last fifty years, but the findings on people’s outlooks toward political authorities and their consequences are far from conclusive. There is also ongoing debate about what factors best account for the way people feel about their political authorities. 

In this paper we take a more focused analytical approach and employ data from the recent Comparative Provincial Election Project to examine how Quebecers feel about their different political authorities across various levels of government. We also explore some potential consequences and test some prominent explanations.

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Suggestions to improve the governance of Urban Local governments of Bangladesh

Since the re-establishment of Democracy, Bangladesh is witnessed a major political transformation as it could preserve the autonomy of the local bodies. However, the urban local bodies are not functioning well as they remained poor in adapting to the policies and norms. An exploratory descriptive research identified the central government’s control over financial regulations, dominance of political and administrative practices hampering the administrative capacity of the urban local self-government.

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