Politics

The case for ruralism over urbanism as I see it is simply that the dynamics of climate, energy, water, soil and political economy are going to propel ...

So if you post a comment that doesn’t appear and you don’t hear from me, it’s best to assume simple incompetence on my part and act accordingly (it’s probably best to assume simple incompetence on my part in a wide variety of other circumstances, but let us not digress at this late stage in the post). Also, finally, if you include more than one hyperlink in a comment it will automatically be held for moderation as an anti-spam measure. If you do post a comment that doesn’t appear, feel free to nudge me about it via the Contact Form. On the rare occasions when I actively choose not to publish a comment it will be for a reason, and I will contact you to explain what that reason is. But instead of further belabouring my take on this point, I’d be interested to see what other people make of it in the comments below (note that to be sure of getting my attention, comments should be posted under the relevant post at Small Farm Future and not at other sites where this post may be syndicated). I’ll try to formulate some further thoughts in the light of anything that comes back to me. To prevent that happening requires politics of a kind we don’t yet have – a politics where cities serve the countryside and its inhabitants at least as much as they’re served by them. We’ll get onto that in more detail when I move to discussing the final part of my book in this blog cycle. It’s from the low base of our present politics and of people trying to get by in the countryside that we need to start creating it. One of the best criticisms of my argument for this agrarian localist future that came my way in the wake of my Regenesis review was that it would be energetically costly to establish it. There are genuine grounds to worry that the outcomes of this local political brokerage won’t always be congenial. But that’s not a done deal just because of the maths of a more populated countryside. The case for ruralism over urbanism as I see it is simply that the dynamics of climate, energy, water, soil and political economy are going to propel multitudes of people to the world’s farmable regions sooner or later. George’s vision of manufactured food, like many other ecomodernist schemes, assumes there will be abundant and cheap clean energy at humanity’s command in the future. During my ride, even in the leafy rural parts, it sometimes felt as if the whole fabric of this corner of southwest England was a kind of dysfunctional, ecocidal, industrial machine, sustained by its rushing human functionaries, with only a thin green veneer here and there concealing it.

Poverty remains one of the primary struggles across the globe. Rising inequality generates anxiety, which is reflected through social behaviour, including ...

Norbert Mao, the leader of the Democratic Party (DP) , is now Uganda's Justice Minister. Credit: Chapter Four Uganda. Last month, one of the longest standing ...

Today, the NRM co-opts opponents less because of national interests or the defectors’ competencies, and more because of their symbolic value – the image of invincibility they project on the NRM. However, the need to communicate this message today has become so important precisely because of the NRM’s declining popularity. This counterproductivity could explain why Museveni has always needed to co-opt more and more opposition political figures over the years. This range of benefits is intended to compensate for the significant difficulties opposition figures take on by joining the ruling party. In the months preceding the pact, the DP leader authored op-eds that spoke positively of Muhoozi who, in turn, called Mao the “most brilliant opposition leader”. The NRM likely hopes the new justice minister will act as a shock-absorber, diverting public criticism from the regime and preventing anti-Museveni sentiments from crystallising. The NRM’s guaranteed access to state resources, however, means it is always in a position to meet any demands the target may put forth. The recruitment of an opposition politician is usually accompanied by some under-the-table payments, whether in the short- or long-term. In 2001, Kizza Besigye became the face of the opposition in Uganda. And in 2005, his establishment of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) saw huge numbers of seasoned politicians from DP and other parties defect to Besigye’s platform. Mao’s critics have responded in kind, accusing him of working covertly with Museveni to undermine the opposition – accusations they claim have now been vindicated. Many pundits have responded to it by speaking of the 77-year-old president’s exceptional shrewdness and capacity to outmanoeuvre his opponents. The FDC became the country’s leading opposition party, leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of DP stalwarts who had hoped to become key opposition players following the restoration of multi-partyism in 2005. The pact between the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) and the Democratic Party (DP) is purportedly aimed at ensuring collaboration on matters of constitutional importance.

Zack Beauchamp and Nicole Hemmer on why state-level politics is more important than ever.

And so helping people to understand that these are not just regional issues or red state issues, but that what happens in other places has consequences for your life, and you should care about people in other places, is a pretty basic political idea, but one that we should be emphasizing a lot more. But there’s something incredibly demanding about asking people to move to be political entrepreneurs, right, and politics doesn’t take up the mental space for a lot of people that that kind of political ask would require. And so what you end up getting is not federalism in the sense of distributed power to the local level. And I’m thinking about how that interplays with what Niki was just saying about the amount of control that the state government exercises over blue enclaves, right, there’s some tension there between those two comments. Take the example that Niki was just using, right, the spread of gerrymandering — right, and then you can also see that with voting rights restrictions, voter I.D. laws. And state politics becomes an incubator, and state politicians become national figures, which isn’t new, but so many of these states then act on the idea that something is happening in Sacramento, ergo, you must pass a law so that doesn’t happen in Georgia, when the chances of that happening were minimal to say the least. And so helping people to understand that these are not just regional issues or red state issues, but that what happens in other places has consequences for your life, and you should care about people in other places, is a pretty basic political idea, but one that we should be emphasizing a lot more. But there’s something incredibly demanding about asking people to move to be political entrepreneurs, right, and politics doesn’t take up the mental space for a lot of people that that kind of political ask would require. And so what you end up getting is not federalism in the sense of distributed power to the local level. And I’m thinking about how that interplays with what Niki was just saying about the amount of control that the state government exercises over blue enclaves, right, there’s some tension there between those two comments. Take the example that Niki was just using, right, the spread of gerrymandering — right, and then you can also see that with voting rights restrictions, voter I.D. laws. And state politics becomes an incubator, and state politicians become national figures, which isn’t new, but so many of these states then act on the idea that something is happening in Sacramento, ergo, you must pass a law so that doesn’t happen in Georgia, when the chances of that happening were minimal to say the least.

Mississippi Republican U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith are in near-lockstep on their votes — skewing conservative on fiscal and social issues ...

Technology and global politics make growth in high-end semiconductor fabrication and research a matter of national security. The average new automobile in the U.S. has over 1,000 computer chips. In June, the Center for Strategic and International Studies offered this bipartisan assessment: “All major U.S. defense systems and platforms rely on semiconductors for their performance. As it was in shipbuilding after World War II, America has seen the substantial offshoring of semiconductor fabrication and that trend is growing exponentially. In comparison, the U.S. Navy’s battle force was approximately 293 ships as of early 2020. “Moreover, the U.S. civilian economy is deeply dependent on semiconductor-based platforms for its daily operations. The original legislation under U.S. Senate consideration was a measure that would have provided $52 billion in subsidies/incentives to encourage chipmakers to open U.S. semiconductors production/fabrication plants. Another $2 billion will help fund other areas of the semiconductor industry — education, defense and future innovation.” So, Hyde-Smith’s immediate concerns over the bill’s deficit spending and national debt impact have a basis. The U.S. has the most powerful Navy in the world — yet no less than a Pentagon report verifies that the Peoples’ Republic of China has the largest navy in the world, with an overall battle force of approximately 350 ships and submarines. Wicker voted in favor of it. Hyde-Smith voted against it.

Prior to July 1st, 2022 I took time to read written records about a movement towards re introduction of pluralistic politics in Tanzania.

However, there is a danger of going back to a granted democracy. One was to change the constitution to allow multiparty system and the other to regulate the registration of political parties. After the most competitive election in which CCM nearly lost presidency, the new CCM leader decided to ‘take back the democracy’. For five years up to 2021 the country went into the process of being a de facto one party state. All CCM members of parliament in a single party parliament approved the changes. Finally, in a development that directly prefigured the 2020 elections, CCM won 99 percent of the 12,000 village chairmanships and 4,000 street-level leadership positions contested in the November 2019 “street” elections. I was arrested 16 times over five years and convicted of sedition by the district court few months before the election. As we mark 30 years of multiparty democracy in the country, it is a time for reflection to correct past mistakes and consolidate our democracy. From the first election under the State granted multiparty system in 1995 to 2015 elections, electoral democracy grew stronger through increasing opposition seats in parliament as well as parliamentary and presidential election results. I made an argument to the effect that Tanzanian democracy was rather granted by the State and not a result of a serious pressure from concerned citizens through a protracted struggle. Subsequently upon being offered State democracy on a platter, after 25 years of experimenting with multiparty democracy, the State seems to take it back regardless of its growing maturity underpinned by a one-time vibrant parliament I was part of. After this CCM resolved to give us a ‘democracy’. It was a very well-orchestrated move. On the onset it is important to note that since January, 2021 I have embarked on writing a book about our recent political history and my participation in it.

Other lives: Politics professor known for his work on democracy and human rights whose teaching style made political theory accessible and relevant.

His years in the Scouts inspired his approach to family life. His colleagues remember an inspiring intellectual leader, a generous mentor and a fierce opponent of the managerialism that was gripping higher education. David joined the department of government at Manchester as a lecturer in 1965, and in 1980 succeeded to the chair of politics at the University of Leeds, where he was based for the rest of his life.

In this article, we discuss a different type of partisan polarization underappreciated by scholars: “belief polarization,” or disagreements over what people ...

Therefore, the racialization of American parties is likely to continue, and the intensity of political conflict in the United States is likely to grow. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. These developments — or upheavals — and especially the reaction to them have tested the viability of our democracy and suggest, at the very least, an uphill climb ahead. The pessimistic outlook for the prospect of a return to less divisive politics revealed in many of the papers cited here, and the key role of racial conflict in driving polarization, suggest that the ability of the United States to come to terms with its increasingly multiracial, multiethnic population remains in question. the growing racial gap between the Democratic and Republican support bases leads to formation of racialized stereotypes about the two parties. Part of the reason White Democrats and White Republicans hold increasingly different views about Black Americans is due to their partisanship. In other words, Trump not only attracted whites with more conservative views on race; he also made his white supporters more likely to espouse increasingly extreme views on issues related to immigration and on issues like the Black Lives Matter movement and police killings of African Americans. Implied in this line of research is that politicians or political campaigns do not change levels of prejudice, but they can prime these attitudes, or make them more or less salient and therefore more or less politically relevant. By 2017, 73 percent of Republicans said the poor “have it easy,” while 19 percent of Democrats shared that view, a 54-point difference. We illustrate large, and increasing, partisan divides in beliefs regarding whether an unequal society, or unequal behavior, is the cause of socioeconomic inequality. It is difficult to deny that many harsh inequalities exist in the United States. Exorbitant wealth as well as homelessness are plain to see. Like-minded groups polarize when they are trying to decide an action that the group will take; and they polarize also when there is no specific decision to be reached.