PolitikonPub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/02589346.2021.1996124
A. Chikwanha
{"title":"Trust and Justice – Establishing the Link","authors":"A. Chikwanha","doi":"10.1080/02589346.2021.1996124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2021.1996124","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article discusses the complementarity between the concepts of ‘justice’ and ‘trust’, and points out the ‘logical’ link between the two concepts, but observes that while the notions of justice implies trust, trust does not imply justice. The argument is that in the ideal situation where there is both trust and justice in a modern democratic state where cooperation is voluntary, there is a constant supply of justice that enhances the quality of governance. The substance of justice as fairness, is discussed with reference to Rawls concern with redistributive issues and this is illustrated by the long-standing land redistribution challenges in South Africa and other settler post-colonial states. This link with justice is established through order which originates from the trust that is generated through cooperation. The significance of justice for social order depends on the values it is associated with, and conversely, the significance of trust for social order depends on the degree of the presence of justice. Linking the two concepts: trust and justice, can thus enrich the analytical assessment of social order.","PeriodicalId":45047,"journal":{"name":"Politikon","volume":"48 1","pages":"589 - 606"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48644673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PolitikonPub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/02589346.2021.1998744
A. Chiweza, J. Chunga, Charles Chunga
{"title":"Incumbency Turnover of Local Government Councillors in Malawi","authors":"A. Chiweza, J. Chunga, Charles Chunga","doi":"10.1080/02589346.2021.1998744","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2021.1998744","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Since Malawi adopted democratisation in 1994, local government elections have been erratic. To date, only three rounds of local government elections have been conducted against six rounds of Presidential and Parliamentary elections. The first local government elections took place in 2000. When the first term of office expired in 2005, local government councils were dissolved. Thereafter, local government elections were postponed for a variety of reasons, until 2014 when the country conducted its first tripartite elections. The most recent local government elections took place in 2019 and have seen a huge turnover rate for incumbent councillors. This paper draws from the 2014 and 2019 elections data and Afrobarometer round 7 survey data, to explore the extent, origins and drivers of the 2019 councillor incumbency turnover rate under a single-member district electoral system. Are voters expressing dissatisfaction with these representatives as has been argued about Members of Parliament, or does this high turnover have other origins?","PeriodicalId":45047,"journal":{"name":"Politikon","volume":"48 1","pages":"625 - 644"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44332427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PolitikonPub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/02589346.2021.1995271
D. Betancourt, E. Vivier
{"title":"The Relevance of Contemplative Studies and Practices for Improving Participatory Urban Governance","authors":"D. Betancourt, E. Vivier","doi":"10.1080/02589346.2021.1995271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2021.1995271","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Evidence suggests that substantial and robust community engagement is essential to local urban governance. In this paper, we reflect on the importance of a more comprehensive approach to community engagement that values both the cognitive and the affective, the technical and the relational, and the outer and inner dimensions of human experiences. The intangible and inner dimensions receive little attention in public administration and political science fields, or in governance processes themselves. The paper aims to make a start in addressing this gap by engaging ideas from the emerging field of contemplative studies. This field brings attention to the inner worlds of people, and the importance of valuing affective and embodied experiences. We explore how community engagement processes could potentially embody these insights to strengthen participatory urban governance, and reflect on some of the risks and limitations.","PeriodicalId":45047,"journal":{"name":"Politikon","volume":"48 1","pages":"607 - 624"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43591929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PolitikonPub Date : 2021-07-22DOI: 10.1080/02589346.2021.1958463
{"title":"Notice of duplicate publication: Ecological conflicts, resistance, leadership and collective action for just resilience: What can we learn from a community struggle against a proposed coal mine in Fuleni, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/02589346.2021.1958463","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2021.1958463","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45047,"journal":{"name":"Politikon","volume":"48 1","pages":"648 - 648"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2021-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02589346.2021.1958463","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42093197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PolitikonPub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/02589346.2021.1952737
B. Fagbayibo
{"title":"Studying the Past in Present Tense: International Law in the Benin Empire","authors":"B. Fagbayibo","doi":"10.1080/02589346.2021.1952737","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2021.1952737","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Africa’s international legal history remains an understudied and grossly neglected aspect of international law within and outside the continent. Both the pedagogic and practical processes of international law present Eurocentric perspectives as the universal standard, thereby excluding the contributions of other non-European civilisations to internationality. This article looks at the practise of internationality in the Benin Empire. Both oral history and accounts of European explorers not only point to the sophistication of the organisational structure of the Kingdom but also indicated some important elements of its interactions with external parties. The consideration of the Benin Empire is predicated on two points. One is to provide the specific aspects of the Empire’s international law/relations engagements. The second seeks to use the Benin Empire as an entrée analytical lens to illuminate the imperative of further research on Africa’s international legal history and, therefore, stimulate the decolonisation of the understanding of this discipline.","PeriodicalId":45047,"journal":{"name":"Politikon","volume":"48 1","pages":"468 - 485"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02589346.2021.1952737","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49036183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PolitikonPub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/02589346.2021.1962085
D. Kotzé
{"title":"Memorial CommendationProf Clive J. Napier (1950–2021)","authors":"D. Kotzé","doi":"10.1080/02589346.2021.1962085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2021.1962085","url":null,"abstract":"Clive Napier has had a very long and close relationship with the South African Political Studies Association (SAAPS) and its predecessor, the South African Political Science Association (SAPSA). He served for several terms on its council and during the period 2012–2014 also as the SAAPS President. When SAAPS decided to form research caucus groups in the association, Napier proposed a caucus for African Politics, and he acted as its coordinator for a number of years. It laid the foundation for the African Politics research committee in SAAPS, which followed later. In his presidential address at the 2014 SAAPS national conference, he concentrated on two important points. At that moment the Protection of State Information Bill (‘the Secrecy Bill’) had become a very controversial issue and SAAPS issued a public statement against it. In this context, Napier raised the relationship of professional associations, like SAAPS, with government as one of his concerns. He insisted that political scientists should be vigilant in guarding their freedom to conduct research and write on what ‘we believe is necessary and right’. This Act served as a catalyst for him revisiting the importance of academic freedom for political scientists. The second focus in his address was a brief assessment of Political Science in South Africa. He suggested that more attention should be given to the history of Political Science in the country. He took the audience back to when the discipline started in South Africa in 1925, in the form of a chair in Public Administration and Political Science at the University of Pretoria. As a practical step towards a stronger historical awareness and to create SAAPS archives, he announcement the agreement reached between SAAPS and the Unisa library during his term to host the association’s archives. In a number of articles, and also in this address, he continued to present his views on the importance of Political Science research and its teaching for the South African society. For him it had become an imperative that such teaching and research had to engage with ‘the new order and its institutions’. As a practitioner also, he expressed his concern that South African political scientists had been ‘very distant’ in their approach to the real world of politics. Prof Napier enrolled for his undergraduate studies at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, in the late 1960s. For his MA degree, he studied at the George Washington University in Washington, DC and received his degree in 1979. While already a lecturer at","PeriodicalId":45047,"journal":{"name":"Politikon","volume":"48 1","pages":"511 - 515"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02589346.2021.1962085","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47997195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PolitikonPub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/02589346.2021.1952736
A. Matamanda, I. Chirisa, Siphokazi Rammile
{"title":"Elitist Domination and Its Import: Survey of Four Decades of Perpetuation of Inequities in Zimbabwe","authors":"A. Matamanda, I. Chirisa, Siphokazi Rammile","doi":"10.1080/02589346.2021.1952736","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2021.1952736","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The purpose of the paper is to interrogate the meaning of Zimbabwe’s four decades of independence after the country attained it in 1980. We argue that the creation of and continued dominance by a new class of elites in the country is the principal reason why many citizens remain entrenched in poverty. Based on a desktop study of the evidence and cases of issues surrounding dichotomies of sectors – urban versus rural, formal versus informal, low-income versus high-income – the paper engages thematic and content analysis. The findings reveal that inequality remains a staunch force that the new president must fight. The country has rich mining deposits, yet inequality remains high. Good governance and progressive distributive policies are suggested as possible measures to rescue the country from gross inequalities currently bedevilling it.","PeriodicalId":45047,"journal":{"name":"Politikon","volume":"48 1","pages":"450 - 467"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02589346.2021.1952736","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46891918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PolitikonPub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/02589346.2021.1956293
B. Nwosu, Uzochukwu Amakom, T. Isife
{"title":"Civil Society, Democracy and Budgeting: Citizens Engagement and Transformations in Nigeria’s Budgeting","authors":"B. Nwosu, Uzochukwu Amakom, T. Isife","doi":"10.1080/02589346.2021.1956293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2021.1956293","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT\u0000 Democracy in the sphere of policy-making warrants fulfilling the popular will by opening spaces for citizen knowledge of the governance processes participation, inclusion and a framework for accountability. The four budget stages of preparation, approval, implementation, and audit necessarily ought to integrate the above principles for an essential nexus with democracy. Using the work of two groups of civil society partners working on Nigeria’s budgeting, we studied the 2016–2019 period around the principles of democratic budgeting as well as explored changes related to civic engagements over the period. We found a monopoly of budget preparation by cloistered bureaucratic experts. The approval stage is marred by politics of vested interests in the legislature and executive with resulting delays in implementation and limited monitoring of the process by citizens. Budget audit suffers delays and non-response to its sensitive findings. Nonetheless, participatory civic engagements have led to a legal framework for civic vigilance in budgeting and enabled the country to save US$500,373,421.40 from frivolous allocations as well as annual budget adjustments for pro-poor inclusiveness and fair distribution of capital projects. Hence, civil society work for democratic budgeting regime is slow but incremental and unfolds amidst encumbering political and institutional dynamics.","PeriodicalId":45047,"journal":{"name":"Politikon","volume":"48 1","pages":"391 - 410"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02589346.2021.1956293","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43137379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}