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The ratings of ten interest groups, along with party unity and presidential support scores, are analyzed to explore the broader evidence of change and stability in gender difference and women’s impact across the strikingly different environments of the 103rd and 104th Congresses. Although the results suggest that increased descriptive representation will enhance substantive representation of women, these findings of gender difference coexist with evidence that descriptive representation might not necessarily contribute to increased substantive representation of women. Gender differences narrowed in the 104th, primarily due to the influx of a new cohort of Republican women who were in some cases even more conservative than their male colleagues, but also due to ‘conversion’ effects, as veteran Republican women shifted rightward in an institutional environment where the cost of difference increased. With Democratic men on average being more feminist/liberal than Republican women on average, the question is raised whether substantive representation of women would be better served by increasing the proportional presence of Democrats (regardless of gender) or by increasing women’s presence regardless of party.

This chapter considers the 1843 revolt from the perspective of the trans-Patkai region and possible connections with the Opium Wars. It explores the political and cultural contexts of Singpho-Jinghpaw interaction with a wider world, and concludes that the spread of gumlao revolt was an outcome of the region-wide pressures that were placed upon this region in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Evidence of ideological change in Jinghpaw models of power is then suggested by a close examination of a ritual called the Tawn Na, which emerged as a discourse in relation to changes seen at the Burmese court during this time. The chapter proposes that in light of this regional transformation, it would be inappropriate to consider ‘Kachin’ ideological models insulated from the political developments that were taking place across this region, and these changes were important in the later development of modern Kachin ethno-nationalism.

The chapter argues that the development of unemployment protection in Sweden, especially since the early 1990s, has been particularly ambivalent. While the voluntary state-subsidized system has been formally preserved, unemployment protection overall has become less generous and encompassing, and there has also been increased differentiation between a core group who had a stable attachment to the labour market before they became unemployed and others. Economic incentives to work have been emphasized by all major political actors and there has been a homogenization of benefit levels in the public system, but the overall benefit package has meanwhile become increasingly differentiated due to the growing role of private and collectively negotiated benefits. Active measures have also been developed, but are increasingly used as an extended form of income security. It is argued that these developments should be understood in the light of a changed economic policy paradigm, budgetary strain, and ideological change among political actors.

The analysis of the developmental trends in Danish child protection policy reveals that a major ideological shift has slowly, however steadily, been taking place in the last decade. Seemingly, Denmark is moving from a family service oriented ideology characterized among other things by voluntary partnership with the parents, and with a focus on preventive family oriented interventions. It is now moving towards a more legalistic, individualized, and interventionist ideology. This ideological shift is on a practical policy level reflected in e.g. succeeding changes in the legal basis for child welfare with an increased amount of measures targeted children with special needs in child welfare law; and an increase in the number of interventions possible without the consent of the parents and the child. Also, this chapter reports a more strict attitude towards the families, individualizing the responsibility of every single family, reflected in e.g. parental orders, youth orders, and other ‘punitive’ measures without the consent of the family involved,

Voting is only relevant for citizens when they can choose between genuine political alternatives that correspond to their preferences. Proponents of ‘more’ democracy claim that political competitors are today all alike, and that they all behave similarly once in office, regardless of their electoral promises. Were this to be true, citizens could vote, but not choose; and policies would likely be disconnected to citizens’ preferences. Are there no significant differences between Left and Right? Have such differences disappeared over the sixty-five years since 1945? Are changes of party programmes due to inescapable exogenous factors, or is there room for political choices by party leaders? What are the political consequences for parties of convergence and polarization?

This chapter discusses the changes in contemporary Irish republicanism by drawing on some of the perspectives and analyses of the resurgence of nationalism as an international contemporary political phenomenon. It challenges the view of Irish republicanism as simply a tradition–driven paradigm in which, ‘the mandate of the dead outweighs that of the living’. Instead, it adopts a structural approach which sees post–republicanism as a facet of wider ideological and political change. By placing the discussion within this framework, the chapter shows that in these aspects Northern Irish politics are not sui generis and that the transformation within republicanism is not simply ideological but organizational. It concludes by outlining some possible structural determinants of this shift towards the forms of new nationalism.

The conclusion summarizes the findings of an ideological and discursive shift at various levels of social life in Catalonia. The shift is away from a traditional framework of linguistic authenticity and toward a construction of Catalan language and national identity as anonymous and cosmopolitan on the one hand and authenticity as a pluralistic project rather than a matter of origins, on the other. These ideological and discursive emphases have accompanied an extension of the Catalan language and identity to more speakers in social strata that did not participate in these in an earlier era. The chapter characterizes these Catalan developments as responding to historically specific demographic and political conditions that are not shared in most other minoritized language cases. It also relates the Catalan developments, however, to broader trends such as globalization and neoliberalism that bring changing discourses of language, self, and society to late modern polities more generally.

This chapter shows that Hasan al-Banna is still an icon in the Muslim Brotherhood and that everybody refers to the founder of the MB, even if many of the present leaders do not follow his ideological line. As a result even the most liberal ideas within the MB are ascribed to Hasan al-Banna. On the other hand, it has the disadvantage that a fundamental debate on the outdates ideas of Hasan al-Banna has never been held and a re-evaluation of the Brotherhood ideology has never formally taken place.

This chapter discusses the oratorical style of Barbara Castle as one of Labour’s outside left fiery rhetoricians. She was one of Labour’s leading orators because of his forceful style of delivery, associations with the left of the party, and her broader impact upon the ideological divisions within the party. Although she argued she was ‘no feminist’, she undoubtedly demonstrated the significant impact of commanding women within the party, ultimately leaving an impressive legacy for the party and British politics, more broadly.

Chapter 3 focuses on how the Girls’ College Tamil-medium teachers negotiated and contested sociolinguistic hierarchies in relation to power shifts that followed the outbreak of the civil war in 1983. Consistent with language-based models of identity, the teachers mapped the differences between Jaffna Tamils (Tamils from the Jaffna Peninsula); Batticaloa Tamils (Tamils from the eastern coastal region); Up-country Tamils (descendants of plantation laborers); and Muslims onto Tamil sociolinguistic varieties. This chapter investigates teachers’ discussions and debates about which Tamil varieties are the best, as well as how they acted on those ideologies in different contexts, including subject-area classrooms, language classrooms, and Tamil oratorical performances. The incongruities within and across the teachers’ ideological assertions and practices reveal subtle dynamics in the configuration of social inequality.