Search results

This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.

The self-initiated nature of migration by self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) may make them more susceptible to the impact of the national context within which their adjustment takes place. Consequently, the failure or success of the expatriation depends on an SIE's ability to adapt to this national context. The paper aims to contribute to the adjustment theory literature by using the contextual angle and examining the impact of historical, legal, employment and hiring contexts on adjustment.

The paper uses data from a qualitative study of 42 in-depth interviews with German SIEs. The study used semi-structured in-depth interviews in order to collect a wide range of information on adjustment experiences, circumstances and expectations, enabling comparative analysis. All participants have self-initiated their move to Britain and relocated without organisational support, held university diplomas, worked according to their qualifications and relocated following a job offer.

Among the study's main findings is impact of national context on adjustment experience, especially the historical relations between the countries involved. German SIEs have enjoyed easy adaptation in their new workplaces due to structurally favourable positions within the local hierarchies of prejudice, which can be attributed to the complex historical relations between Germany and Britain. Furthermore, this study draws the attention to the particularities of the nationally constructed hiring practices. In particular, the speedy recruitment in Britain presented additional challenges in adjustment for some participants, while facilitating it for others.

This study focuses on a specific population, and further research is needed to determine whether the findings can be generalised to other groups of SIEs in Britain and elsewhere. Another limitation of the study is the homogeneous nature of the sample in terms of education level and participant employment status (educated at a university level and found employment before relocation). Future research avenues include applying a comparative approach and focusing on the intersection between national context, employment circumstances, educational level and SIE adjustment.

The study documents the complex effects of the hiring context on SIE adjustment and suggests that communicating the nationally constructed recruitment practices will align the expectations of both parties. This may increase the effectiveness of hiring and placing within the company and have a positive impact on the adjustment and work performance of the SIE. Furthermore, understating the particularities of each national context can enable international human resources management (IHRM) professionals to assess the specificity of each potential employee and can provide well-considered suggestions concerning the effect of country-specific legal and historical context on their adjustment and hence provide SIEs with tailored support.

Although the adjustment of SIEs has attracted considerable research interest in recent years, it is often limited compared to the attention focused on assigned expatriates. This paper adds several original contributions to the IHRM literature. First, it expands knowledge on SIEs adjustment from a single country of origin living in a specific host country. Second, it enables a deep examination of the impact of the specific national context on SIEs adjustment as informed by certain historical and legal relations, as well as locally constructed hiring and employment practices.

This paper attempts to explain the phenomenon that Macau has a parliament (Legislative Assembly) and mass suffrage but no political parties.

This paper reviews the development process of “parliament – mass suffrage – political party” in Hong Kong and Macau and tries to explain why Macau does not have a party using comparative research methods.

The political party development of Hong Kong and Macau was influenced by both the (former) colonial power and China, and whether there were political parties in these two regions was the result of the game between China and the (former) colonial power. China hoped to limit the development of party politics in the two regions. Since Britain felt reluctant to cooperate with China, political parties in Hong Kong developed. At the same time, Portugal chose to defer to China, which led Macau not to have a political party.

Existing studies have yet to explain why there are no political parties in Macau, and this paper is the first attempt to do so.

This essay engages with scholarship on history as a discipline, curriculum documents and academic and public commentary on the teaching of history in Australian, British and Canadian secondary contexts to better understand the influence of the tension between political pressure and disciplinary practice that drives the history wars in settler-colonial nations, how this plays out in secondary history classrooms and the ramifications this may have on students' democratic dispositions.

This article aims to compare secondary history curricula and pedagogies in Australia, Britain and Canada to better articulate and conceptualise the influence of the “history wars” over the teaching of national histories upon the intended and enacted curriculum and how this contributes to the formation of democratic dispositions within students. A conceptual model, drawing on the curriculum assessment of Porter (2006) and Gross and Terra's definition of “difficult pasts” has been developed and used as the basis for this comparison. This model highlights the competing influences of political pressure upon curriculum creation and disciplinary change shaping pedagogy, and the impact these forces may have upon students' experience.

The debate around what content students learn, and why, is fraught because it is a conversation about what each nation values and how they construct their own national identity(ies). This is particularly timely when the democratic self-identification of many nations is being challenged. The seditious conspiracy to storm the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, Orban's “illiberal democracy” in Hungary and the neo-Nazis in Melbourne, Australia are examples of the rise of anti-democratic sentiment globally. Thus, new consideration of how we teach national histories and the impact this has on the formation of democratic dispositions and skills is pressing.

The new articulation of a conceptual model for the impact of the history wars on education is an innovative synthesis of wide-ranging research on: the impacts of neoliberalism and cultural restorationism upon the development of intended curriculum; discipline-informed inquiry pedagogies used to enact the curriculum; and the teaching of national narratives as a political act. This comprehensive comparison of the ways in which history education in settler-colonial nations has developed over time provides new insight into the common elements of national history education, and the role this education can play in developing democratic dispositions.

Political Science in the United States has focused too much on variable-oriented, quantitative methods and thus lost its ability to ask “big questions.” Stein Rokkan (d. 1979) was an eminent comparativist who asked big questions and provided such qualitative tools as conceptual maps, grids, and clustered comparisons. Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), arguably the first social scientist, also asked big questions and provided a universal explanation about the dialectical relationship between nomads and sedentary people. This article analyzes to what extent Ibn Khaldun's concepts of asabiyya and sedentary culture help understand the rise and fall of the Muslim civilization. It also explores my alternative, class-based perspective in Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment. Moreover, the article explores how Rokkan's analysis of cultural, geographical, economic, and religio-political variations within Western European states can provide insights to the examination of such variations in the Muslim world.

Informal conversational encounters are explored using free indirect discourse (FID) as a novel storytelling method to gain a multi-generational understanding of the experiences of women working in public relations (PR) in 1960s/1970s Britain.

Echoing a literary tradition, anonymised transcripts of recordings provide impressionist accounts that immerse the reader in the thoughts and feelings of novelistic characters. An informal network of women narrate their stories with a much younger listener enabling exploration of intergenerational relationships and the intersection of gender and age.

This unstructured approach develops a complex yet natural flow to create unique withness-understandings. The author/narrator introduces a conception of informal conversational encounters, supporting an organic approach of interweaving storying, everyday performance, situated accountings, narrative unfoldings and inside/outside points of view.

An interplay of multiple female voices reveals a degree of symmetry in fractal patterns of women's early career experiences over the duration of a generation. Facilitation of sense-making through intergenerational conversations connects with Mannheim's theory of generational unity.

Women's beginnings of PR careers in 1960s/1970s Britain demonstrate a liberal feminist perspective in taking responsibility for their careers and enjoyment beyond the workplace in a man's world.

Commodity histories generally posit colonies’ roles as mere producers but have overlooked their roles in shaping global consumption. This study aims to investigate how Malayan tin producers and British colonial institutions used public relations and advertising strategies as entrepreneurial tools to fend off competition from substitutes amid global economic and geopolitical transitions during the height of the Cold War crisis and post-war boom in the 1950s and 1960s.

This study draws on archival research of newspaper reports written in Singapore, the USA and Britain from the inter-war years until the 1960s. It also consults advertisements placed by the Malayan Tin Bureau on Time and Scientific American, data and views on tin scarcity by US congressional reports and commodity trends data published by the US Department of Commerce and the US Department of the Interior.

This paper demonstrates how the value of tin is recreated by manipulating its symbolic meanings and embedding them within the national and political contexts of the targeted consumer markets. This creative resistance against tin substitution was enacted through a transnational collaboration among colonial institutions, entrepreneurs in colonies and marketing strategists across geographies and territories.

This paper provokes further reflections on the importance of socially constructed meanings in shaping the market value of a product and the understanding of embedded political value systems in marketing generic commodities. Future research may adopt this perspective to reassess the framing of meanings of commodities in the contemporary setting, especially against rising concerns on the sustainability of mining natural resources, including minerals.

This study integrates the perspectives of Malayan tin producers in reframing the meaning of a commodity and so, widens the scope of historical analyses of commodities beyond the industrialized global North. It reassesses how a commodity’s marketing value evolves and interacts with colonial politics. It also highlights the collaborative nature of colonial governments and local producers in developing new uses and representations of a generic commodity to create new markets for its consumption.