Download or read book Public Opinion and Interest Group Politics written by Heather A. Thuynsma and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2012 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pt. 1: Public opinion and interest group politics around the world: instructive insight?: Special interests and how they help shape US legislation: interesting possibilities or potential pitfalls -- Fundraising for social change in the US: interest group advocacy in contemporary US elections -- Interest groups in the German political system: advice for South Africa. Pt. 2: Public opinion and interest group politics in South Africa: comparing perspectives: Understanding the South African political psyche -- The character of the South African state: the self-understanding of the ANC as government and its impact on the public space -- The methodology of polling public opinion in South Africa: measuring the pulse of the people -- Managing public opinion during the 2009 South African elections -- The possibilities of election campaigns as sites for political advocacy: South Africa in comparative perspective -- Challenges for interest groups and their advocacy campaigns: the case of sustainable medium density housing -- An interest group at work: environmental activism and the case of acid mine drainage on Johannesburg's West Rand. Pt. 3: Championing public opinion: a future for interest groups?: Managing campaigns to influence the public policy agenda: putting theory into practice -- Advocacy and financing that shapes and shifts public opinion -- Government and access effects on the use of social networking sites by nationwide NGOs in the US, South Africa and Mexico -- The ability of social movements to affect policy change in South Africa and the United States: comparing and contrasting key elements of HIV/AIDS treatment and welfare entitlement campaigns -- Beyond appeasement: the real business agenda -- Democracy without choice? Interest groups, advocacy and political behaviour in Namibia: a warning for South Africa?

Download or read book The Quest for Constitutionalism written by Hugh Corder and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-24 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides a timely assessment on the progress made towards the achievement of a constitutional democracy in South Africa. The chapters collectively present an in-depth analysis of the development of the legal system and of the implications of the Constitution for the social configuration of power. To what extent has the vision of constitutionalism contained in the Constitution been realised? Primarily concerned with the impact of laws and the salience of their existence and enforcement for South Africans, the work highlights the importance of placing the constitutional regime in its historical, cultural, social, economic and political context. The book further recognises the importance of the South African constitutional provisions for transnational or globalised constitutionalism more broadly. It contains contributions from South African scholars, as well as European authors, bringing in new analytical angles and adding a specific comparative dimension. Through the prism of South Africa, the authors discuss the innovative character of constitutional and legal provisions in terms of both constitution-making and law-making processes and their contents. This book provides analysis that will be relevant to scholars, students and practitioners, specifically those interested in International Relations, Law, Sociology of Law, and African Studies, as well as socio-political comparative studies.

Download or read book Mobile Communication written by James E. Katz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the few short decades since their commercial deployment, 5 billion people—about three-quarters of all humanity, including children—have become mobile phone users. No technology has even approached the mobile phone's wildfire success. Effects of this success are apparent everywhere, ranging from accident scenes and earthquake rescue efforts to demeanor in the classroom and at dinner tables. No one interested in the next generation of issues provoked by the mobile communication revolution will want to miss this important new collection of essays.The mobile phone has given near-transcendent power to ordinary people. All aspects of social life have been touched by mobile technology. An ever-growing host of tracking, immersion, gaming, and commercial applications are becoming available. The community of mobile communication scholars has blossomed from a handful of pioneers a decade ago to a large and dynamic intellectual community that spans the globe. Area researchers have gained much insight into cultural, symbolic, and social interaction aspects of mobile communication as well as its relevance to commerce.To address the social policy dimension of the mobile communication revolution, this volume presents analyses by leading thinkers in the field. The volume offers novel and keen insights into the topic. Subjects include the role of mobiles in policy formation and evaluation in several areas including the mobile-digital divide and political campaigns. Also explored are processes and policy implications of mobiles in creating or alleviating social problems including social isolation and family dispersion. Other chapters analyze social policies for mobile devices, including attempts to regulate the use of the technology and to understand and moderate its potential harm to human health. The contributors' scope ranges across five continents and they address concerns at local, national, and international levels.

Download or read book Party Politics and Economic Reform in Africa s Democracies written by M. Anne Pitcher and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-07 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that the interaction of formal institutions and the quality of democracy explain patterns of private sector development across Africa.

Download or read book Development Challenges South South Solutions December 2009 Issue written by David South, Writer and published by DSConsulting. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Development Challenges, South-South Solutions is the monthly e-newsletter for the United Nations Development Programme’s South-South Cooperation Unit (www.southerninnovator.org). It has been published every month since 2006.

Download or read book Who Rules South Africa written by Martin Plaut and published by Jonathan Ball Publishers. This book was released on 2012-06-14 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this timely work, WHO RULES SOUTH AFRICA?, highly regarded authors Paul Holden and Martin Plaut analyse the political elites that battle daily for power in South Africa. They argue that power does not reside in traditional institutions such as Parliament or even the Cabinet. Rather, power lies within the ANC-led Alliance which, with no founding document and no written constitution, is an unstructured and mutable political hydra with business and criminal elements in close attendance. It is the interaction between these forces which is the real story behind post-apartheid South Africa. In a country where poverty is rampant and institutions are weak, the battle for power is set to intensify. The authors unravel the mystery of how the rainbow nation has reached such a pass. What are the origins of the Alliance, and will it survive the current power struggles? Who are the shadowy forces that operate within or alongside the Alliance? Most importantly, they seek to answer the burning question of whether South Africa is destined to become another African tragedy, or whether there is still the promise of growth and a stable democracy.

Download or read book Elections and TV News in South Africa written by Bernadine Jones and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-08-02 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes television news seriously. Over the course of nine chapters, Elections and TV News in South Africa shows how six democratic South African general elections, 1994–2019, were represented on both local and international news broadcasts. It reveals the shifting narratives about South African democracy, coupled with changing and challenging political journalism practices. The book is organised in three parts: the first contains a history of South African democracy and an overview of the South African media environment. The second part is a visual analysis of the South African elections on television news, exploring portrayals of violence, security, power, and populism, and how these fit into normative news values and the ruling party’s tightening grip on the media. The final part is a conclusion, a call to action, and a suggestion to improve political journalistic practice.

Download or read book Reflections on the 2019 South African General Elections written by Joleen Steyn Kotze and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-18 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reflections on the 2019 South African General Elections is a critical reflection on the key lessons of Elections 2019 in South Africa, focusing on the future of the country’s electoral democracy. The volume engages questions on land, election campaigns, voter turnout, voter apathy, and how opposition parties will be forced to co-exist in the context of declining electoral dominance the ANC once comfortably held. An important reflection on the lessons of the 2019 South African General Elections, the contributors ask: Quo Vadis South Africa? The 2019 General Elections marked a watershed in South Africa’s political landscape. The ANC under the banner of a narrative of regeneration and getting back on the moral path dipped below the 60 % mark for the first time in South Africa’s democratic history. This decline in electoral support for the party may be interpreted as a degeneration of the ANC through the loss of its moral stature, the erosion of its integrity and disillusionment with its performance as a governing party. Opposition political parties could not capitalise on this seeming disillusionment with the ruling ANC. Caught in their own factional battles and in the midst of corruption scandals, opposition parties were unable to successfully increase their share of the vote, and capture the undecided and disillusioned voter. Considering the future of South Africa’s electoral democracy at 25 years of democracy, Reflections on the 2019 South African General Elections will be of great interest to scholars of African Studies, South Africa, Governance and Elections. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies.

Download or read book New South African Review 2 written by Devan Pillay and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An explanation of the New Growth Plan and alternatives to neo-liberal and capitalist development in South Africa In this second volume of the New South African Review, the New Growth Path adopted by the South African government in 2010 provides the basis for a dialogue about whether 'decent work' is the best solution to South Africa's problems of low economic growth and high unemployment. There are investigations into rising inequality against the backdrop of the failings of Black Economic Empowerment; 'greening the economy', with emphasis on biofuels; the crisis of acid mine drainage on the Witwatersrand; possibilities for participatory forms of government; civil society activism; transformation of the print media and the SABC; the crisis in child care in public hospitals; the relationship between the police and a township community; the problems related to the absence of legislation to govern the powers of traditional authorities over land allocation; and assessments of the state of opposition political parties and the ANC Alliance. Asking whether the New Growth Plan reflects a set of new policies or an attempt to re-dress old (com)promises in new clothes, this volume brings together different voices in debate about possibilities for alternatives to neo-liberal and capitalist development in South Africa.

Download or read book The Local Turn in Peacebuilding written by Joakim Ojendal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-11 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary practices of international peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction are often unsatisfactory. There is now a growing awareness of the significance of local governments and local communitites as an intergrated part of peacebuilding in order to improve quality and enhance precision of interventions. In spite of this, ‘the local’ is rarely a key factor in peacebuilding, hence ‘everyday peace’ is hardly achieved. The aim of this volume is threefold: firstly it illuminates the substantial reasons for working with a more localised approach in politically volatile contexts. Secondly it consolidates a growing debate on the significance of the local in these contexts. Thirdly, it problematizes the often too swiftly used concept, ‘the local’, and critically discuss to what extent it is at all feasible to integrate this into macro-oriented and securitized contexts. This is a unique volume, tackling the ‘local turn’ of peacebuilding in a comprehensive and critical way. This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

Download or read book Opinion Polls and the Media written by C. Holtz-Bacha and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-04-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opinion Polls and the Media provides the most comprehensive analysis to date on the relationship between the media, opinion polls, and public opinion. Looking at the extent to which the media, through their use of opinion polls, both reflect and shape public opinion, it brings together a team of leading scholars and analyzes theoretical and methodological approaches to the media and their use of opinion polls. The contributors explore how the media use opinion polls in a range of countries across the world, and analyze the effects and uses of opinion polls by the public as well as political actors.

Download or read book South Africa s Political Crisis written by Alexander Beresford and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Africa's current political upheavals are the most significant since the transition from apartheid. Its powerful trade unions are playing a central role, and the political direction they take will have huge significance for how we understand the role of labour movements in struggles for social justice in the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Rethinking the South African Crisis written by Gillian Patricia Hart and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revisiting long-standing debates to shed new light on the transition from apartheid, Hart provides an innovative analysis of the ongoing, unstable, and unresolved crisis in South Africa today and suggests how Antonio Gramsci's concept of passive revolution can do useful analytical and political work in South Africa and beyond.

Download or read book Politeia written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: English and Afrikaans with abstracts in English.

Download or read book Political Parties in South Africa written by Heather Thuynsma and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2017-11-28 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political parties and the party system that underpins South Africa's democracy have the potential to build a cohesive and prosperous nation. But in the past few years the ANC's dominance has strained the system and tested it and its institutions' fortitude. There are deeper issues of accountability that often spurn the Constitution and there is also a clear need to foster meaningful public participation and transparency. This volume offers a different and detailed assessment of the health of South Africa's political system. This study intends to unravel the condition of the party system in South Africa and culminates in the question: Do South African parties promote or hinder democracy in the country? The areas of the party system that are known to require continued work are the weakness of democratic structures within parties, the perceived lack of responsibility of elected parliamentarians towards voters, non-transparent private partner financing structures and a lack of attractiveness of party-political commitment, especially for women. Experts in the respective fields address all of these areas in this book.

Download or read book The Promise and Perils of Populism written by Carlos de la Torre and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2015-01-13 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square to the Tea Party in the United States to the campaign to elect indigenous leader Evo Morales in Bolivia, modern populist movements command international attention and compel political and social change. When citizens demand "power to the people," they evoke corrupt politicians, imperialists, or oligarchies that have appropriated power from its legitimate owners. These stereotypical narratives belie the vague and often contradictory definitions of the concept of "the people" and the many motives of those who use populism as a political tool. In The Promise and Perils of Populism, Carlos de la Torre assembles a group of international scholars to explore the ambiguous meanings and profound implications of grassroots movements across the globe. These trenchant essays explore how fragile political institutions allow populists to achieve power, while strong institutions confine them to the margins of political systems. Their comparative case studies illuminate how Latin American, African, and Thai populists have sought to empower marginalized groups of people, while similar groups in Australia, Europe, and the United States often exclude people whom they consider to possess different cultural values. While analyzing insurrections in Latin America, advocacy groups in the United States, Europe, and Australia, and populist parties in Asia and Africa, the contributors also pose questions and agendas for further research. This volume on contemporary populism from a comparative perspective could not be more timely, and scholars from a variety of disciplines will find it an invaluable contribution to the literature.

Download or read book New South African Review 1 written by Doreen Atkinson and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is South Africa on a long-term decline? The New South African Review revives the tradition of critical, analytical scholarship developed by the South African Review in the 1970s and 1980s. Accessible to a wide readership and drawing upon authors from well beyond academia, its objective is to be informative, discursive and, at times, downright provocative. It seeks to provide contemporary comment and engage with current controversies. The first volume in the series, 2010: Development or Decline? ranges widely across the implications of the international crisis for the economy, the threats to our fragile ecology of present economic strategies, through to the state of the ANC and the public service, issues around service delivery, migration, HIV-Aids, land reform, crime, the sexual behaviour of our youth, and much more. Posing the provocative question of whether South Africa is embarking upon a long-term decline, the volume simultaneously argues the potential for a society premised upon social equality, social coherence and sustainability. This collection will appeal to both national and international audiences interested in engaging with the multiple dilemmas and challenges facing contemporary South Africa