6
GetUp! (Vromen & Coleman, 2013) |
Environmental Protest and the Changing Landscape of Popular Contention in China (Steinhardt & Wu, 2016) |
- GetUp! uses storytelling to contrast their campaigning approach with traditional, party based politics (96) |
- Combing through and comparing these episodes, the study identifies substantial deviations from the earlier protest repertoire in four dimensions—broadened protest constituencies, mobilization for public goods, a proactive and preventive strategy, and a mutual rein- forcement of street mobilization and policy advocacy (63) |
- Rather than conceive of themselves as disruptive protestors or insider lobbyists, GetUp!’s autobiographical sorry aligns their causes with independent will of the people, whose personal stories justify GetUp!’s mission to bring “power to the people” on progressive issues |
- What unites these changes in the very nature of protests is that the scope of participants and sphere of ac- tion have been substantially expanded. From a watershed event in Xiamen, where social elites and large numbers of citizens joined forces on a one-off basis, the new action repertoire has evolved to incorporate more substantial involvement and sustained policy advocacy by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) |
- Storytelling, then, underpins multi-issue campaigns in an online environment by linking personal stories to campaigning organizations and broader movements for change. |
- After the forceful repression of the Tian’anmen movement, the intellectual-led and idealistic repertoire of contention of the 1980s came to an end.12 A form of collective resistance that centered on everyday grievances came to the foreground in the early 1990s and ushered in a new stage of contention in China (64) |
- The use of individual stories and concerns attempts to legitimize rapid organizational shifts from one issue to another as being the basis of member demands. |
- First, narrow protest constituencies: until the new protest repertoire emerged, almost all of the protests in China have been “cellular” and relatively small, staged in the name of separate and narrow constituencies that are linked through pre- existing social ties in villages, factories, and residential compounds or ethnic identity |
- As opposed to the reality which is that GetUp!’s campaign decision making is predominantly top-down and based on strategic assessments of likely policy influence. |
- Second, exclusive mobilizing grievances: before the new repertoire arose, the shared discontent that propelled people into collective action almost always hinged predominantly on factors bearing on protesters’ immediate—frequently monetary—interests. The outcomes of successful cases of this type of resistance, such as compensation for requisitioned or polluted farmland or damaged health, restoration of residential and property rights, or better pay or better working conditions in a factory, have usually been restricted to the members of the protest constituencies (64-65) |
- That analogous storytelling strategies are shared across all of these online campaigning organizations, and are used to engage citizens in online actions, raise money, and foster mobilization for community campaigning, suggests further study is needed to understand the networks in which online campaigning organizations are now operating… (95) |
- Third, ex post facto resistance: protests since the 1990s have typically sought compensation, or nominal retrospective justice, for a controversial act that had not only already occurred but often also had resulted in significant personal harm (65) |
- Despite a policy outcome similar to the one they had advocated, GetUp!’s climate campaign did not achieve the level of member or public mobilization achieved by the mental health campaign. The adversarial tactics they used can be partly attributed to climate change having become an increasingly polarized issue in Australian political debate and public opinion, in a way that mental heath has not. |
- Fourth, the separation of protest and policy advocacyinst: paralleling the increase of “mass incidents,” policy advocacy efforts to change state behavior have also been on the rise, led by elites such as journalists, academics, NGO officials, en- trepreneurs, and even reform-minded government officials. |
Environmental Protest and the Changing Landscape of Popular Contention in China (Steinhardt & Wu, 2016) |
- In addition to the large protest turnout, the preventive nature of resistance, and the unusual outcome, what most distinguished this from the majority of protests at the time was its broad constituency. Protesters claimed to speak not for a nar- row subset of citizens, but for the general public of this major city (67) |
- “Nanjing Wutong Tree Salvation” - The incident stood out precisely because the trees had no significant material impact on their private lives or possessions. The phoenix trees were perceived as being a symbol of Nanjing with an intangible value that belonged to the public (70) |
- Thus, while mo- bilizing grievances were obviously mixed, it is evident that what spurred thou- sands of people to the streets went substantially beyond exclusive concerns of a narrow subset of the population. Those who took part in the protest did so for issues that could affect not only themselves and the people they knew person- ally but also millions of unknown fellow Xiamen citizens and the future of the entire city (68) |
9
The Welfare State and Gender Equality (Bergqvist, 2015) |
- The Swedish welfare state has explicitly been designed with the goal to increase gender equality. In this individual earner-carer model women as well as men are encouraged and expected to be breadwinners as well as caregivers (1) |
- Sweden has introduced policies such as an income-related parental leave benefit and publicly funded child care services available for all children. The parental leave lasts for more than a year and can be shared by the parents as they like, but at least two of the months have to be taken by the father and two by the mother otherwise they are lost (2) |
- Women are still doing the major part of unpaid care work, take up most of the parental leave, and have fewer opportunities to pursue a career. In addition, the labor market is gender-segregated, and women, especially mothers of small children, work part-time to ease the burden they have of taking care of the family. An example of gender segregation in the labor market is that hardly any men work in the child care and elderly care sectors. Men also dominate in leadership positions in business, in universities, and in society in general (Statistics Sweden 2012) |
-In the Riksdag (the parliament) and in the government we find roughly the same number of women and men. Hard work from, among others, the political parties’ women’s sections as well as recom mendations from the parties to nominate more women explain the comparatively high share of women in politics (Sainsbury 2005; Bergqvist, Olsson Blandy, and Sainsbury 2007). |
- Some critics of the persisting inequalities, however, claim that they are the result of the expansion of a generous welfare state of the Swedish type, as women will mainly work in public sector jobs that pay less than jobs in the private sector. The long parental leaves encourage mothers to abstain from the labor market for a long time and thereby hurt women’s career opportunities. This has been referred to as the “welfare state paradox” (Mandel and Semyonov 2006) |
- Others claim that this critique ignores the gen der-equalizing effects of having most women participate in the labor market and point out that the women-dominated public sector employment in general offers very good working conditions and that the gender wage gap is lower than in other welfare state regimes. Ac cording to this claim, the persisting gender inequalities cannot be explained by the poli cies as such; on the contrary, the Swedish welfare state has increased class as well as gender equality (Korpi 2000; Korpi, Ferrarini, and Englund 2013) |
- A fundamental question for gender analysts of welfare states is whether welfare states can promote gender equality. In 1987 Helga Maria Hernes coined the concept of the woman-friendly welfare state and claimed that the Scandinavian social democratic wel fare state has come further than other welfare states in making equality between the sex es possible. Her vision was that:
"A woman-friendly state would not force harder choices on women than on men, or permit unjust treatment on the basis of sex. In a woman-friendly state women will continue to have children, yet there will also be other roads to self-realization open to them. In such a state women will not have to choose futures that demand greater sacrifices from them than are expected of men. It would be, in short, a state where injustice on the basis of gender would be largely eliminated without an increase in other forms of inequality, such as among groups of women." (Hernes 1987: 15) (3) |
- Much of the recent feminist literature on the welfare state employs a framework in which social and labor market policies are considered in terms of their support for the male breadwinner model versus the individual model (also referred to as the individual earner-carer model) (Sainsbury 1994, 1996). These models are premised on the idea that gender relations are embedded in tax, social, labor, and family policies (4) |
- In all welfare states, as we know them today, there is a general pattern where women have more substantial care obligations than men. Women do un paid work in the household and take care of children and the elderly to a higher degree than men. However, the pattern takes different shapes in different welfare states accord ing to how social arrangements and policies are constructed. For example the design of social policies, especially family policies, has an impact on the material situation of fami lies with children, and family policies also influence women and men’s decisions about how to reconcile work and family. To exemplify, public support for good, affordable, and generally available child care for small children enables mothers to participate in the la bor market, while a care allowance paid to stay-at-home mothers encourages mothers to abstain from the labor market |
- The development of social policies in Sweden fits in with theories about postmodern values and individualization processes showing that traditional social structures of class, gender, religion, and family are changing and even withering away (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2001; Inglehart and Norris 2003). These theories predict that gender equality and the relationship between fathers and their children will become more important in the postindustrial world (Gid dens 1998; Ahlberg, Roman, and Duncan 2008) (5) |
- The issue of working mothers/married women is an illustrative case of how different ideologies about gender shaped legislation in the early phase of welfare state development. During the 1920s and 1930s, many countries simply imposed bans, prohibiting married women from working (Frangeur 1999). The reason for the ban was that married women should be financially provided for by their husbands. If they participated in the labor mar ket they were seen as bad wives/mothers who took jobs from male breadwinners. (5) |
- In contrast to Sweden’s neighbor country Norway, Sweden did not take that path. When Sweden in 1925 introduced a law that granted women (almost) the same rights as men to employment in the civil service, Norway introduced a curtail decision on married women’s employment opportunities. |
- The effect of the curtail decision on married women’s employment opportunities, in terms of dismissal rate, or not being hired, does not appear to have been great overall, but it was of great symbolic and ideological significance in terms of supporting and maintaining a male breadwinner ideology in Norway (Leira 1992) |
- The increase of fathers’ share of parental leave has been rather slow and in 1990 only 7 percent of the days were taken by men.4 After the introduction of ear marked months, fathers’ leave has increased from 12 percent in 2000 to 24 percent in 2011 (Statistics Sweden 2012). Thus, there is still a large gap between mothers’ and fa thers’ take up of the leave. However, it is worth pointing out that almost all fathers take some leave. Sweden’s position is rather unique: outside the Nordic countries it is still somewhat unusual to find such a high proportion of children being looked after by fathers on parental leave (10) |
- The development in the child care sector has to a large extent facilitated the possibility for mothers to recon cile care and work obligations. It has also evened out class differences between children from different socioeconomic groups. According to international comparisons, the standard of early childhood care and education is very high in Sweden with university-trained staff and rather small groups of children (10-11) |
- Many feminists (women as well as men) see individu alized parental leave policies as very important in promoting gender equality. In contrast to most other gender equality policies this kind of policy put the pressure on men to change. Sweden has taken a step toward individualization by earmarking two months for the father and two for the mother, while the remaining eleven months can be shared as the couple like (11) |
- The basic idea underlying shared parental leave can be viewed as that of evening out the consequences that unequal gender relationships have for women’s and men’s op portunities, e.g. advancing at work. If an employer, for example, had to assume there was an equal probability that a father of young children would take as much leave as a moth er, it would likely have consequences for workplace organization and perceptions of gender (12) |
- On the whole, job security is strong in Sweden, but even so the long periods of absence affect women’s careers, wages, pensions, etc. It is therefore something of a paradox that the Social Democrats, known for their egalitarian ideals and women-friendly welfare state, have been so reluctant to individualize parental leave |
10
The Deconsolidation of Democracy (Corbett, 2020) |
he upshot then, if we are to take the lessons of these recent books seriously, is that democracy is a far more contingent regime type than previously presumed. (186) |
In making this claim, Mounk sounds a lot like one of the most avid chroniclers of democ- racy, John Keane (2010; cf. Chou, 2013), who observed that when faced with crisis, democ- racies are just as likely to commit ‘democide’ as they are to innovate and adapt (for discussion, see Chou, 2011). There are no pre-conditions for ‘democide’ because existing paradigms, tied as they are to the normative democracy promotion agenda, cannot conceive of democracy as anything other than the ‘end of history’ |
Indeed, the pre-conditions paradigm may have made us overly confident that ‘real’ democracy – the type found in the United States, Europe and parts of the antipodes – is unas- sailable because it meets all of the necessary requirements: these democracies are rich, have high levels of education, a cultural and historical legacy of respecting democratic institutions and the rule of law, stable party systems and are located in regions of democracies (for review, see Haggard and Kaufman, 2016). If the pre-conditions argument is correct, then the presence of these factors alone should ensure that democracy could not fail. |
The importance of these ‘pre-conditions’ was confirmed in studies that charted the rise of ‘illiberal’ democracies (Zakaria, 1997) and ‘competitive authoritarians’ (Levitsky and Way, 2002) over the last two decades. Put simply, democratisation had stalled in develop- ing countries, because not enough of the pre-conditions had been met. (185) |
Elsewhere, including Central and Eastern Europe or Asia, the claim is that populist leaders like Erdoğan, Orbán or Duterte have taken advantage of contexts in which democratic norms and values were weak to begin with (e.g. Dawson and Hanley, 2016). In which case, the trend towards a global crisis is much less compelling than it first appears and we should be more cautious in our assessments. (184) |
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7
Populism & 2 faces of democracy (Canovan, 1999) |
- Populists see themselves as true democrats, voicing popular grievances and opinions systematically ignored by governments, mainstream parties and the media. Many of them favour `direct democracy' ± political decision making by referendum and popular initiative. Their professed aim is to cash in democracy's promise of power to the people (2) |
- ...that democracy as we know it has two faces a redemptive' and a
pragmatic' face ± and that their coexistence is a constant spur to populist mobilization. My conclusion will be that instead of being a symptom of `backwardness' that might be outgrown,2 populism is a shadow cast by democracy itself (2-3) |
- Populism in modern democratic societies is best seen as an appeal to `the people' against both the established structure of power and the dominant ideas and values of the society. This structural feature in turn dictates popul- ism's characteristic legitimating framework, political style and mood. Each of these points needs some elaboration before we take up the paper's central theme (3) |
- It is generally agreed that populist movements are (as Paul Taggart puts it) `of the people but not of the system'.4 They involve some kind of revolt against the established structure of power in the name of the people. Within democratic systems that often means an attack on the established parties |
- But anti-system mobilization is not enough by itself to identify populist politics, for that description would also take in the `new social movements', generally acknowl- edged to be something else.6 The crucial dierence is that while both are anti- system, populism challenges not only established power-holders but also elite values |
- ...merely that what makes them populist is their reaction to the structure of power. The values that are populist also vary according to context, depending upon the nature of the elite and the dominant political discourse (4) |
- It was only in the 1940s that American populist discourse began a migration from Left to Right'10 that pitted
the people' against a new liberal elite. In both cases, what was involved was the mobilization of interests and opinions that were perceived by their adherents as being neglected by those in power despite being the concerns of the mainstream |
- Populism is not just a reaction against power structures but an appeal to a recognized authority. Populists claim legitimacy on the grounds that they speak for the people: that is to say, they claim to represent the democratic sovereign, not a sectional interest such as an economic class |
3 different senses in populist discourse (5) |
- ...the united people, the nation or country, as against the parties and factions that divide it. A typical example is the slogan, "United We Stand", used by Ross Perot in campaigning for the US presidency. A vision of `the people' as a united body implies impatience with party strife, and can encourage support for strong leadership where a charismatic individual is available to personify the interests of the nation. |
- ...the appeal to our people, often in the sense of our ethnic kith and kin. Where the previous appeal is integrative (at any rate in form), this one is divisive, distinguishing our people from those who do not belong - alien immigrants, for example |
- ...mobilization of ..."ordinary people" against the privileged, highly educated, cosmopolitan elite. Populists in established democracies claim that they speak for the "silent majority" of "ordinary, decent people", whose interests and opinions are (they claim) regularly overridden by arrogant elites, corrupt politicians and strident minorities |
Populist style of politics |
- Populist appeals to the people are characteristically couched in a style that is "democratic" in the sense of being aimed at ordinary people |
- Populists love transparency and distrust mystification: they denounce backroom deals, shady compromises, complicated procedures, secret treaties, and technicalities that only experts can understand. The politics of coalition-building is evidently open to populist attack on these sorts of grounds, while European Union politics is a sitting duck. Populists claim that all this complexity is a self-serving racket perpetuated by professional politicians, and that the solutions to the problems ordinary people care about are essentially simple (6) |
- ....democracy as we know it is liberal democracy and that populism is dangerous because it is illiberal (7) |
8
The Politics of European Union Migration Governance (Geddes, 2018) |
COVID-19 response in unitary state (Hartley et al., n.d.) |
- Four dimensions of potential change in EU migration governance were identified. First, was change in understanding of the underlying drivers of migration. Here we saw the con- tinuation in 2017 of longer standing concern about large-scale migration flows to the EU dating back to the end of the Cold War and its impact at that time on the development of the Maastricht Treaty (128) |
- It is difficult to assess effectiveness on the political dimension given the absence of electoral competition in Vietnam. However, there is some evi- dence of general trust in government and public support for measures introduced,7 sustained in part by consistent, targeted, and credible communication throughout the pandemic (163) |
- Second, policy change is marked either by the density of outputs or their focus. On the former count, it is the case that there is an increasingly more complex web of EU outputs interacting with the immi- gration and asylum systems of the member states. On the latter count, there has been a consistent focus on external borders and measures on irregular migration and asylum that dates back to at least the late 1990s |
- It is appropriate to note where Vietnam’s COVID-19 response challenges and other shortcomings still exist. First, hospitals and healthcare providers should continue to be incentivized to maintain diligence and observe protocols and procedures, a challenging task to maintain over time given the resources needed and the pressure to relax amidst extended periods of successful containment (163-164) |
- Third, change in the participants in EU migration governance. Again, we can see a much more densely populated field with, for example, almost all Di- rectorate Generals within the European Commission now devoting staff and resources to migration issues |
- Second, the type of weak governance capacities characterizing many middle-income countries (Rani, Nusrat, and Hawken 2012; Block and Mills 2003) may surface in the course of Vietnam’s response to future outbreaks; an example is a case, already mentioned, in which two dozen people were able to evade quarantine when crossing the land border (164) |
- Finally, and an area where change has been particularly profound, are the politics of migration governance. Migration has been a high salience issue in many EU member states and seems likely to remain a key concern. The Visegrad group of member states (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) has found a new ally in an Austrian government contain- ing the far-right Freedom Party. Attitudes to immigration and European integration are also seen to have coalesced into a new ‘transnational’ cleavage with potentially powerful structuring effects on European party politics. (128-129) |
- Third, while sustained economic growth and low infection count have helped strengthen the government’s legitimacy, it is uncertain how long personally restrictive and economically burdensome measures will be perceived by the public as reasonable and fair- Third, while sustained economic growth and low infection count have helped strengthen the government’s legitimacy, it is uncertain how long personally restrictive and economically burdensome measures will be perceived by the public as reasonable and fair |
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- Finally, there is the possibility that hospitals are not thorough in ordering testing for patients with possible COVID- 19 symptoms. This is one of the factors that led to the aforementioned Da Nang out- break, as some early cases exhibited symptoms but doctors were unduly optimistic about the country’s containment and thus did not order tests. These challenges range from the high-level and broad to the micro-level and managerial. Despite Vietnam’s success, it is crucial for the country not to lose focus – even as containment and mitiga- tion efforts grow more costly and inconvenient and measures are undertaken to re-start the economy (e.g. relaxing mask mandates and allowing international travel). |
9
Cashless Debit Card in the East Kimberley (Klein & Razi, 2018) |
- The logic of the Cashless Debit Card, and income management more broadly, has developed in conjunction with other policy initiatives. It is connected with the rise of paternalism as part of the neoliberal turn of Australian social and economic policy (102) |
- the Cashless Debit Card individualises and depoliticises unemployment and poverty as it is based on fraught assumptions about First Nations employment and unemployment that blame low employment rates on ‘bad behaviour’. It thereby increases hardship on the lives of those subjected to the card, and is a mechanism to empower Australian capitalism and settler colonialism. (84) |
- New Income Management (NIM) was introduced across the Northern Territory in 2010, replacing the initial NTER income management program and to reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act. The NIM also broadened from the racially targeted regime to include non- First Nations people. Regardless, 90.2% on NIM in the Northern Territory in 2013 were First Nations people (85) |
- In 2014, the final results of an Australian government commissioned evaluation of NIM in the Northern Territory were released. This evaluation showed that despite the $AU410.5 million dollars spent on NIM, the results revealed no difference in achieving the desired outcomes |
- Both of the initial trial sites impact First Nations people disproportionately – this is despite government rhetoric that the CDC is not a specific racialised measure. Specifically, 75% of participants in the Ceduna trial, and 80% in the East Kimberley trial are First Nations peoples (ORIMA Research 2017).1 Through compulsorily including people in the trial, the government denied a choice for people to refrain from involvement. (86) |
-These aims suggest four assumptions underpinning the Cashless Debit Card. First, that there is an implicit nexus between unemployment and excessive use of alcohol, illegal drugs or gambling. Second, that behaviours, norms and aspirations of all people receiving welfare (other than the Age Pension and Veteran Payment) are currently problematic and need to change. Third, that a community panel presiding over trial participants would be effective (in practice, this panel allowed people who were put on the card to present a case to government-selected community representatives to reduce the amount quarantined from 80% down to 50%, but not take people off the card). Fourth, that the punitive approach of the CDC will be able to address addictions to illegal drugs, gambling (even though there are no poker machines in East Kimberley) and alcohol and create the behaviour change government desires. (87-88) |
- These assumptions also suggest that any dysfunction that may be present is primarily a behavioural problem of the individual, rather than a result of various complexities such as the lack of formal employment in the East Kimberley and other sites (88) |
- It suggests that by getting the economic incentive/disincentive structure right, these people’s behaviour will ‘improve’ to be at a level consistent with and acceptable to neoliberal norms |
- The perception that the overuse of alcohol, illegal drugs and gambling are caused by excessive access to cash is conceptually flawed. People in our study report that, before being forced onto the card, they were able to manage their money (90) |
- Of the 51 people on the card interviewed, most people reported that their biggest cause of poverty was not behavioural or the mismanagement of funds, but simply not having enough money. Further, from the 35 interviews of people on the card, 31 people said the CDC trial had made the management of their money harder |
- Hunt noted that people subjected to the card found it hard to know how much money was in their account, making it hard for them to budget. For example, ‘55% of transactions on the cards failed due to insufficient funds...that is nearly 21,000 transactions where people were unable to purchase what they wanted’ (Hunt 2017: 5). |
- ... less than 1% of failed transactions were because people were trying to use the card for prohibited items (Hunt 2017). (91 |
- The first way is that the CDC signals ongoing settler colonialism in Australia. Settler colonialism is primarily concerned with the elimination of First Nations peoples off their land (Coulthard 2014; Veracini 2010; Wolfe 2006). Assimilation is a long-term strategy of elimination as those staying on country and resisting integration are a threat to liberal capitalism’s need for unfettered access to land and territorialisation (100) |
- Continued territorialisation in the Kimberley is planned; the Kimberley Development Commission, Western Australian government and Australian government all declaring vast economic development plans which involve use of First Nations land, such as for mining, agricultural and pastoral industries. |
- Accumulation by dispossession has been a fundamental aspect in settler colonialism – the removal of First Nations peoples off their land was essential to establish and maintain the nation and economy (Wolfe 2006). In the case of the Cashless Debit Card, this accumulation by dispossession is not always through active removal from land, but through punitive welfare which aims to shape the subjectivities of people in a way which is conducive to settler norms (and capitalist expansion) (101) |
- It works in conjunction with other processes of accumulation by dispossession that are simultaneously underway including Native Title laws that facilitate the watering down of land rights (Golder 2014; Watson 2009a), the pauperising and vilification of First Nations agency and productive labour (Altman 2014), the defunding of remote communities to effectively encourage people off the land (Howitt and McLean 2015), the underfunding of culturally- appropriate services and education to support language, kinship and healing (Moreton-Robinson 2007; Watson 2009b), and the denial of sovereignty and the freedom to self-determine (Moreton-Robinson 2007). |
- The second way in which the CDC empowers capital is that the card shows how subjectivities are also the territory of accumulation by dispossession. Indue, the private company that has been contracted by both the Department of Social Services and Department of Human Services to build the technology and administer the CDC, is at the forefront of a new industry accumulating wealth on the basis of trying to engineer people's minds and behaviours (101-02) |
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