Role of State Feminism in Reducing Gender Lag: A Study of Pakistan

State is considered to be the custodian of rights of vulnerable segments like women. Neo liberal ideology advocates women's participation in the economic arena, yet it resists state role in the economic sphere for protection of the "second" gender. State role for protection of women is equally intolerable for the custodians of tradition. Ideology of state feminism believes that interest articulation for the protection of women must be done on the system/state level. The paper aims to reflect on the state's role in eliminating the prevalent gender lag in the context of cultural and economic lag between regions and classes? The qualitative methodology of "gap analysis" is employed. The study is based on data analysis of Pakistan's performance on Sustainable Development Goals and Global Gender Gap index2021. The core finding of the study is that though the equality/equity between genders is still an imagined reality yet state initiatives are the first steps from baseline.

John Stuart Mill‘s Liberal Reformism and the New Concept of Freedom, Property and Government

The article is devoted to a key moment in the history of British liberalism when, under the influence of the Industrial Revolution, the need arose for a revision of classical liberal teaching. On the border between classical and social liberalism stands the figure of the British philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill who attempted to update the basic tenets of liberal ideology. Taking into account the socio-economic reality of his time, he set out to revise the foundations of liberal ideology, rethinking in modern times the problems of freedom, property and governance by expanding their perimeter in favour of the masses. This article also details Stuart Mill’s concept of individualism and collectivism in the context of freedom and the right to self-determination.

Features of the historical memory of students of Russian megacities

In the course of sociological analysis, linguistic models of students’ historical memory, events and historical figures were identified, that represent, in the opinion of young people, the “political evil” and the “political good” in Russian history. The students identified serfdom, “Stalinist repressions”, the famine of the 1920s and 1940s and the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya as “political evil”. The “political good” – the victories in the Patriotic War of 1812, the Great Patriotic War, the flight to space, the 1980 and 2014 Olympics. The author’s sociological studies of the largest Russian megalopolises have revealed the complexity and inconsistency of the historical memory of student youth. The study established the adherence of student youth to liberal ideology, a shallow awareness of the life of their family, their kin in earlier periods of Russian history, from pre-revolutionary times to the lives of their relatives in the 20-40s of the XX century, the association of “political good” with the achievements of our country and the association of “political evil” with defeats and reforms.

Postliberal Politics

The present article consists of key extracts from the recently published Adrian Pabst’s book “Postliberal Politics. The Coming Era of Renewal” (2021). According to the author, stability in the West faces the challenges of left and right populism. And if left populism hasn’t survived the trial by real elections, the right populism is quite successful in removing liberal elites from power. At the same time the strong point of the right populism is the provision of a political program, but its weakness is in the absence of any concepts or political instruments for transitions implementation. But forces, - the ultraliberal left and anti-liberal right, - develop various types of identity politics thus undermining the cultural and civilizational fundamental aspects of the West and the feelings of common goal and common destiny. The author opposes those extremes with postliberalism – non-uniform ideological movement directed at overcoming the contradictions of the deadlocked liberal ideology that is characterized by the rise of both left and right populism. According to Adrian Pabst, postliberalism acknowledges the failure of liberal projects and at the same time the necessity to preserve the most valuable liberal aspects in new form. Liberalism with its multiple trends is not beyond hope and some institutions it created are worth preserving. Still liberal ideology lead to the situation when freedom once alienated from self-restraint and mutual obligations turned into unfreedom. Self-destruction of liberal values such as freedom, equality, tolerance and pluralism demonstrates abnormalities that at once distort liberal principles and show liberal ideology logic. Postliberalism is intended to cut short those defects. In particular, postliberal ideology proceeds from acknowledging that the society is based not on some non-personal social contract between individuals as claimed by the liberals from the times of Hobbes and Locke, but appeared as the result of mutual arrangement between generations. Civil liberty does not man freedom from obligations or freedom for the sake of egoistical interests, but liberty to take care of oneself and others. Personality development based on personal independence should be balanced by common well-being. Equality does not mean uniformity but respect for integral virtue. Individual rights should not be downgraded but should be specific and relative due to their connection with obligations towards other people. Postliberalism in this interpretation endeavors to preserve the best gains of liberal ideology while eliminating the threat of blunt authoritarianism that is always concealed in liberal logic.

The Political Economy of Sectoral Credit Provisioning in India: An Empirical Analysis

Electoral dynamics is believed to have a direct bearing on the scope of governmental control over the supply of credit to different economic sectors. This paper attempts to examine the impact of opportunistic electoral manipulations, ideological beliefs and political lobbying on the supply of agricultural and industrial credit across the Indian states. The findings indicate that more competitive elections are associated with increases in credit provision. An incumbent party with a more liberal ideology is found to provide greater average credit to agriculture relative to industry. Finally, an increase in the political contributions provided to an incumbent state government is found to entail greater industrial credit and lower agricultural credit, on an average.

Why NATO survived Trump: the neglected role of Secretary-General Stoltenberg

The election of Donald Trump posed an existential challenge to NATO. At the end of his tenure, however, the US president had neither withdrawn membership nor substantially undermined the alliance from within. This article helps explain the puzzle of why NATO survived Trump's presidency. Extant explanations emphasize domestic factors such as the US foreign policy machinery and entrenched liberal ideology, structural reasons and Trump's idiosyncratic personality. While these accounts possess some explanatory value, they remain incomplete as they omit one central factor: NATO's leadership. Drawing on more than twenty original interviews with senior officials, the article demonstrates that particularly Secretary-General Stoltenberg's strategic responses were a necessary factor in changing Trump's stance on burden-sharing and helped maintain a robust deterrence policy toward Russia. These findings carry important implications both for theoretical debates on international organizations' agency in fending off contestation and policy debates on which actors shape NATO by emphasising the hitherto understated role of the secretary-general.

Contesting Counterpublics: The Transformation of the Articulation of Rural Migrant Workers’ Rights in China’s Public Sphere, 1992–2014

This article extends the theoretical discussion of counterpublics and applies the concept to an authoritarian context. The article contends that it is necessary to distinguish between the counterpublic oriented by liberal ideology that criticizes authoritarianism at an abstract level (Counterpublic I) and the counterpublics that are concerned with substantive inequality (Counterpublic II). To illustrate the approach taken, the articulation of rural migrant workers’ rights between 1992 and 2014 is documented, demonstrating that, in the 1990s and early 2000s, most public discussion on the issue tended to reduce workers’ rights to civil rights. It was not until the late 2000s that alternative forms of rights, such as social rights, were thematized. As the article argues, this was because the power balance between Counterpublic I and Counterpublic II had been changed. The empirical study explains the transformation and highlights the heterogeneity within Counterpublic II by comparing the diverse strategies employed by different actors.

THE PROPOSED LEGALIZATION OF PROSTITUTION IN SOUTH AFRICA – FRAMING THE DEBATE FROM A LIBERAL PERSPECTIVE

The debates surrounding the issue of whether or not prostitution or sex work ought to be legal or illegal have a long and convoluted history, both in South Africa and abroad. This article seeks to provide greater clarity and focus to current debates on this complex issue, in particular from a liberal perspective. By examining certain of the main issues at stake for those committed to the broad tenets of liberal ideology, the article hopes to bring at least some measure of clarity and focus to a contentious set of theoretical and empirical questions. It is argued that, from a liberal perspective, to interfere with the freedom of each South African to make his or her own moral choices is to interfere with the very foundation of South Africa’s hard-won constitutional democracy. In order to convince those committed to truly liberal principles of the need for the criminal law to prohibit sex work, it must be shown that it causes either “harm” or “offence” to others. Liberals will accept neither the principle of “legal moralism” nor that of “legal paternalism” as legitimate reasons to criminalize sex work.

Conclusion

The conclusion of this book reflects on the enduring importance of transition as a major factor in contemporary society and politics and examines how transition could have been accomplished more successfully. The conclusion points to the growth of nationalist movements as a reaction to the traumas of transition. It re-evaluates the dismissal of the “third way” as an alternative to pure market capitalism or state socialism and suggests that different reforms could have mitigated negative impacts of transition. It emphasizes the importance of future economic reforms that balance individualism and collectivism and bring more post-socialist citizens along in a widely shared prosperity. The chapter draws lessons about the importance of universal rather than targeted benefits and rejects strict adherence to liberal ideology as a sustainable model for economic transition.

Imagining Ireland's Pasts

The book describes how various authors addressed the history of early modern Ireland over four centuries, and explains why they could not settle on an agreed narrative. It shows how conflicting interpretations broke frequently along denominational lines, but that authors were also influenced by ethnic, cultural, and political considerations, and by whether they were resident in Ireland or living in exile. The book details how each set of authors extolled the merits of their progenitors, offered hope and guidance to the particular audience they addressed, and disputed opposing narratives. The author shows how competing scholars, whether contributing to vernacular histories or empirical studies, became transfixed by the traumatic events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as they sought to explain either how stability had finally been achieved, or how the descendants of those who had been wronged might secure redress. Humanist, Apocalyptic and Enlightenment authors are treated separately. Greatest attention is given to the nineteenth century when some Protestant authors adopted a nationalist perspective inspired by European liberal ideology. It is explained how this was spurned by Catholic Church leaders no less than by conservative Protestants, and how each set their minds to composing an alternative grand narrative. The publications of Lecky and Froude are given special consideration before attention shifts to authors who, in the late nineteenth century, permitted happenings from the early modern past to flow into the present to produce an outpouring of historical publications that has not been fully appreciated by scholars of Ireland’s literary renaissance.