DREAMS REALIZED AND DREAMS DEFERRED: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND PUBLIC POLICY IN PITTSBURGH, 1960-1980

This dissertation analyzes the impact of civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights activists on public policy in Pittsburgh during the 1960s and 1970s. It challenges several of the interpretations which other scholars have made about the history and impact of the New Left and social movements in the United States since 1960. This study applies social network analysis to politics to explain the successes and failures these social movements had in the city in winning the reforms that they sought for their communities. As the activists grew in their political sophistication, so their political networks matured. Pittsburgh activists did not ignore the means of power that social movement scholars traditionally study, power at the polls and in the streets. But in addition to such tools, activists built a base of trust, respect, and mutual support between themselves and local politicians. By gathering and disseminating information about the problems afflicting their communities, African-Americans in the 1960s and feminists and gays in the 1970s won converts to their cause among the city's political elite. Leaders within the three movements leveraged their growing rapport with political leaders to win appointments to government commissions for community members and appropriations for programs aiding their communities. These positions brought activists further contacts and alliances with leaders at other levels of government. Using their political networks, these Pittsburgh activists in the 1970s protected and sometimes advanced their cause even in the face of federal budget cuts and growing organized opposition to school desegregation, abortion, and gay rights

Who qualifies for citizenship: The political and legal mobilization of Muslims in France

This article aims to deconstruct the monolithic image of Muslims that is often presented in the media, politics, and academia today. Based on interview work completed in 2008 in France with Muslim activists and non-activists, as well as non-Muslim activists on diversity issues, the article explores the complex group affiliations and varying interest formation of Muslims in France. Instead of assuming that being Muslim is simply a religious affiliation that drives political interest formation, I explore the social situatedness of Muslims in France, and how that specific situation produces a multiplicity of group affiliations, all with their own spectrum of political interests, as well as resources and methods for mobilizing on those interests. The article also explores French legal consciousness – what do these Muslim activists and non-activists think of law and courts? I show that some preexisting American political science literature on French legal consciousness may have misunderstood the complex and intense relationship the French have with law

RETRIEVING THE SOCIO-POLITICAL HISTORY OF INDONESIAN

This paper deals with historical facts on the use of Malay before it was renamed as Bahasa Indonesia. Its early development reflects the successful attempt of language planning activities done by some socio-political activists. Its socio-political history proves that the activities of language planning cannot escape from policies made by socio-political activists. The case is the same as any attempt of language maintenance. It is not a matter of linguistics alone. To make language maintenance successful, sociolinguists should seriously make good policies to be politically carried out in appropriate linguistic domains

Global Dialogue Report - Freedom and Well-Being: Cairo

The Global Dialogue on Freedom and Wellbeing was held in Cairo on 3 October 2011, co-organised by IDS and Al Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS), Egypt's leading think tank. The meeting was attended by actors from different political and social backgrounds with substantial representation from youth activists affiliated to different political parties and forces, and representation from civil society activists involved in development work as well as gender and workers' movements

Righteous patriots, corrupted élites, undeserving poors. The construction of multiple social boundaries in the National Front

Based on life histories of National Front activists, this article analyses how multiple boundaries - pertaining to ethnic and political, but also class and spatial divides - are constructed and negotiated in the party. Ethnicity and class shape the ways in which the activists identify with the party and accommodate the construction of political outsiders and ethnic Others forged by the party populist propaganda. The article thus contributes to the study of radical right-wing populist parties by considering the impact of ethnicity and class on activism and party membership

Scholar-activists in an expanding European food sovereignty movement

This article analyzes the roles, relations, and positions of scholar-activists in the European food sovereignty movement. In doing so, we document, make visible and question the political dimensions of researchers' participation in the movement. We argue that scholar-activists are part of the movement, but are distinct from the affected constituencies, put in place to ensure adequate representation of key movement actors. This is because scholar-activists lack a collective identity, have no processes to formulate collective demands, and no mechanisms for inter-researcher and researchers-movement communication. We reflect on whether and how scholar-activists could organize, and discuss possible pathways for a more cohesive and stronger researcher engagement in the movement.</p

Party Activists, Campaign Funding and the Quality of Government

We study the formation of government policy in democracies when turnout depends on party activists and campaign spending ‐ parties’ ‘political capital’. The functional importance of political capital determines equilibrium rent-seeking in government. Often the more potent political capital is the greater the extent of rent-seeking. Limiting the level of political capital is distinct from reducing its potency, and whereas we find a strong case for reducing potency we find that placing limits on campaign spending are rarely optimal, and in particular that weak limits are never optimal. A limit on total campaign spending can increase government quality under certain conditions and if so then strong limits are always better than weak limits. However, finite limits on either national or local campaign spending alone, as often seen in practice, are never optimal.Party activists, campaign funding, rent-seeking, political finance

Internet Media in Technological Risk Amplification: Plutonium on Board the Cassini-Huygens Spacecraft

The author discusses how the Cassini controversy demonstrates the power of the Internet, particularly listservs and Usenet groups, and how this resource offers political activists an opportunity to affect the agendas of risk management policy decision-makers

A quantum of solace? European peace movements during the Cold War and their elective affinities

The article discusses the European dimension of antinuclear protests in Europe during the Cold War. In conceptual terms, explanations of peace movement mobilisation during the early 1980s as result of a value change to post-materialist values are criticised. Contrary to this interpretation, peace activists, in particular women’s peace protests, stressed the material shortcomings they faced as a results of expenditure on nuclear armaments. In terms of their European character, antinuclear activists during the first mobilisation wave until 1963 developed substantial transnational contacts, but kept an orientation towards their nation as an identity space. During the campaign against the Euromissiles in the early 1980s, an increasingly dense network of elective affinities according to – for instance – denomination or professional expertise emerged. Attempts to connect peace activists on both sides of the Iron Curtain in a ›détente from below‹, however, eere hampered by practical problems and divergent perceptions of the political situation. Even while movement activists interacted and coordinated their efforts across national borders, they did not simply merge into a European civil society. Antinuclear peace movement activists, the article argues, did not constitute a European subject

The logic of party coalitions with political activism and public financing

This paper presents a model of party coalition formation between policy- motivated activists and office-seeking opportunists. In this framework, I con- sider how changes in party valence and public financing of political parties shape the equilibrium inside coalitions. Results show that, in equilibrium, op- portunists and activists have the same marginal rate of substitution between policy position and activists'contribution. An asymmetric worsening of one party's valence leads to divergence of its policy platform and a higher degree of activism. Furthermore, public financing of political parties drives activism or idealism out of politics. As a consequence, public financing is an important policy instrument to regulate the trade-o¤ between the degree of activism in politics and the independence of political parties from lobbying.activists, idealism, lobbyists, coalition formation, Nash bargaining, party valence, polarization.