Political Concepts Research Articles

Global Islam and Political Patronage: Examining the Rise of Muslim Politics in Cambodia

This article seeks to study Muslim political activism in Cambodia, a predominantly Buddhist-Monarch state in mainland Southeast Asia that is often considered a semi-authoritarian regime. Cambodia’s Muslim community constitutes a minority. However, they have actively participated in formal politics, aligning themselves with both the ruling and opposition parties. This engagement has culminated in several Muslim individuals sit in political positions within the government. Additionally, high-ranking Muslims have cultivated close ties with government authorities and the monarchy. This article is grounded in fieldwork conducted during 2017-2018, complemented by up-to-date information obtained from desk research and online interviews with research subjects. This article argues that the current wave of Muslim political activism in Cambodia can be seen as a continuation of the historical patron-client relationship between Muslims and local rulers. In contemporary times, this relationship has evolved, manifesting as patterns of clientelism, with Muslims positioned within the political framework of Cambodia’s ruling party. In this context, Muslims receive protection and are ensured access to political participation. Moreover, this article emphasises the role of connections to the global Muslim world as a significant political asset, enabling Cambodian Muslims to exert a considerable influence on the nation's political landscape.

The State of Nationalism (SoN): Revisiting the Nationalism and Social Policy Nexus

Territory and solidarity are two central components of contemporary politics whose connection has come to be embodied in two quite different political phenomena: nationalism and the welfare-state. Nationalism is a form of politics linking territory (a homeland) to a special sense of solidarity deemed to supersede all others (i.e., non-national cleavages). The welfare state represents the tangible manifestation of social solidarity between citizens of a territorially-anchored community.

Overlapping consensus in pluralist societies: simulating Rawlsian full reflective equilibrium

The fact of reasonable pluralism in liberal democracies threatens the stability of such societies. John Rawls proposed a solution to this problem: The different comprehensive moral doctrines endorsed by the citizens overlap on a shared political conception of justice, e.g. his justice as fairness. Optimally, accepting the political conception is for each citizen individually justified by the method of wide reflective equilibrium. If this holds, society is in full reflective equilibrium. Rawls does not in detail investigate the conditions under which a full reflective equilibrium is possible or likely. This paper outlines a new strategy for addressing this open question by using the formal model of reflective equilibrium recently developed by Beisbart et al. First, it is argued that a bounded rationality perspective is appropriate which requires certain changes in the model. Second, the paper rephrases the open question about Rawlsian full reflective equilibrium in terms of the model. The question is narrowed down by focusing on the inferential connections between comprehensive doctrines and political conception. Rawls himself makes a demanding assumption about which connections are necessary for a full reflective equilibrium. Third, the paper presents a simulation study design that is focused on simplicity. The results are discussed, they fit with Rawls’s assumption. However, because of the strong idealisations, they provide a useful benchmark rather than a final answer. The paper presents suggestions for more elaborate study designs.

Political Formation

Political Formation

Dwa źródła do poglądów i mentalności katolickiej inteligencji u progu Polski Ludowej

The text presents two sources concerning the political views and mentality of the Polish Catholic intelligentsia in the first years of the People's Republic of Poland. The first is a memorandum from the „Dziś i Jutro” group to Władysław Gomułka, presenting its political aspirations and concepts, aiming to create a co-governing Catholic party in Poland. The second is a study of the situation in the country, addressed to the Polish authorities in exile, with an emphasis on the views of lay Catholics disillusioned with insurrectionist and anti-Russian concepts. These documents allow one to understand not only the dilemmas and ideological choices of Catholics at the time but also provide an important contribution to the genesis of later disputes among Catholic circles in communist Poland.

(In)securitising post-Soviet Space through Security Policies: Russian and the Western Concerns on the Colour Revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia

This article mainly elaborates the relations between Russia and the West during and after the Cold War. Both sides saw each other as a security threat during the Cold War. After 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed, this antagonistic relation ended for a short period. Once Vladimir Putin came to power, Russia once again revealed security concerns in the post-Soviet space. The iconic symbol of this concern was the Colour Revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine. The Kremlin saw the Revolutions as a Western threat to Russia’s identity formation in the region. On the other hand, the West saw the Revolutions as a call for democratic liberation for the peoples of the region. Hence, this study looks deeply into both sides of concerns about the Revolutions through the concepts of identity politics and security concerns.

Investigating Politeness in the Prayers of Prophets: A Quranic Discourse Perspective

In religious contexts, prayers are essential communication between humanity and the divine. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the concept of politeness in the context of the Qur'anic prayers delivered by the Prophets. By adopting a Qur'anic discourse perspective, the study uncovered the underlying patterns and linguistic devices used in expressing reverence and humility before God. It also aimed to identify the communication strategies used in the prayers to determine how these principles were manifested. There was an argument that the communication strategy employed by the prophets implicitly manifested their humility and politeness, a fundamental attribute of the messengers of God. To address this, the politeness maxims proposed by Leech and insights into strategies in interpersonal communication developed by Brown and Levinson served as an analytical framework for examining politeness discourse strategies within prayer utterances. In addition, pragmatic identity and contextual methods were employed to understand the context of these utterances. The results showed several politeness maxims observed in the Qur'anic prayers of the prophets, including the maxims of tact, approval, and modesty. It also revealed the wisdom evident in their language and behavior. The Prophets utilized two strategies in their pursuit of politeness: the 'on-record' strategy, characterized by direct and explicit expressions and the 'off-record' strategy, involving indirect and subtle expressions. This study contributed to a deeper understanding of politeness's linguistic and cultural implications in religious communication. It also provided insight into the divine-human relationship portrayed in the Qur'an.

Too Much Development or Not Enough Democracy? Exploring an Anomaly in the Democratization of Post-Communist Countries

This study of 28 post-communist regimes distinguishes a group of countries significantly less democratic than predicted by its very high Human Development Index score: Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. It also appears that, contrary to theoretical assumptions, such ‘developed dictatorships’ convert their economic growth into human development remarkably well. To measure such conversion, a new tool, the Growth Conversion Index is introduced. Considering these results, the explanatory power of several theories is briefly examined. While some theories imply possible explanations (e.g., the concept of patronal politics and the conditional approach to resource dependence), none of them discloses sufficiently the actual workings of such conversion mechanism, implying the need for more in-depth studies.

The Concept of the Political as a Space of Conceptual Controversies and Theoretical Debates

In the field of political theory and philosophy, the concept of political has undergone a complex evolution over the past century. Since its inception in the pioneering work of K. Schmitt in 1927, this term has become a deeply controversial concept, the interpretation of which was carried out by the most significant political theorists and philosophers of the twentieth century. However, Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, and John Rawls made notable contributions to understanding the term. This article aims to reveal and analyze the three main approaches to the conceptualization of the political and to identify the differences/similarities between the three formulations. Each conceptualization of the political is explored through the prism of three components: the perception of the other; the principle of building political relationships in society; and the nature of the conflict and the forms of its resolution. Based on the comparative method and cognitive analysis, the essence laid down by each author is derived: political as an existential confrontation between friend/enemy of K. Schmitt; political as an activity that realizes human freedom in the interpretation of H. Arendt; and political as the space of rational consensus in J. Habermas and J. Rawls. Nevertheless, common elements or consequences can be traced even in radical different formulations. The critical importance of the dynamic and evolving nature of the concept of the political is recognized, however, the explanatory power of each concept of the political reality of the present is questioned. In conclusion, a new level of conceptualization of the political is proposed, which considers the instability and uncertainty of the modern world.

‘Our Pacific Through Native Eyes’: Māori Activism in the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement, 1980–5

ABSTRACT The Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement (NFIP) developed a grassroots regionalism in opposition to nuclear colonialism in the Pacific. This article concerns Māori interactions with other Indigenous Pacific peoples within the NFIP movement from 1980–5, and what this meant for the Pacific as a conceptual and political region. Voyaging back across the Pacific, Māori drew on whakapapa, identified cultural commonalities, and parallel colonial legacies between themselves and other Pacific peoples. They saw a shared Pacific struggle: that between Indigenous and colonizer. While this was contentious to some, this article argues that it allowed Pacific peoples to draw upon an alternative network of political action outside formal politics or peace and humanitarian discourses.

Western Religious Propaganda in the Holy Land in the Correspondence of V.N. Khitrovo and K.P. Pobedonostsev in the 1880s

The author has examined the correspondence of socio-religious figure and founder of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (IOPS) V.N. Khitrovo with Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod K.P. Pobedonostsev in the 1880s; the problem of propaganda of the Catholic and Protestant churches in the Holy Land is explored. It is shown that in his detailed reports, historical essays and letters V.N. Khitrovo informed K.P. Pobedonostsev about threats to Orthodoxy in the Holy Land. V.N. Khitrovo rightly supposed that the success of Western propaganda was due to the Western powers’ implementation of their national interests. The religious policy of France and the Protestant powers (England and Germany) was a “tool” for promoting their national interests. “Propaganda” and religious penetration of Western faiths manifested themselves in religious and political forms, which was embodied in the creation of educational institutions, hospitals, the spread of semi-secular women’s orders, and the education of the local population. V.N. Khitrovo associated the success of Catholicism with the activities of Latin Patriarch I. Valerga. A special way of penetration into the Holy Land was biblical research, one example of which was the activities of Victorian General Gordon. V.N. Khitrovo considered that the weakening of Orthodoxy in the Holy Land was due to not only modest funding, but also insufficient coordination of secular and church institutions of the Russian Empire in the implementation of state religious policy. The author comes to the conclusion that the correspondents had trust-based relations and similar views on major religious and political issues.

Eschatology of the post-Christian Republic

The author analyzes the development of the political and philosophical concept of republic as a common cause in the conditions of transformation of the value system of Western society. The main problem of the research is the reason why the existence of the republic in the conditions of modern ideological and theoretical foundations of the society of individual consumerism faces the impossibility of achieving the common good as the goal-setting of a common cause. The study traces the ontology of the republic in the political thought of ancient philosophers, medieval thinkers and modern representatives of Western political theory. The central role, in this sense, is played by Christianity, which for many centuries has been a systematic representation of the essence of the common good. In the conditions of modern Western society, it has ceased to be a transcendent system of values, giving way to relativistic concepts that are unable to act as a foundation for social harmony. The author comes to the conclusion that the modern era has led to the deprivation of the republic of goal-setting, replacing the collective essence of society with the individual egoism of a citizen, while postmodernism, rejecting any form of collective self-identification of a person, deprives him of the opportunity to act as a citizen.

Quantifying the ideational context: political frames, meaning trajectories and punctuated equilibria in Spanish mainstream press during the Catalan nationalist challenge

ABSTRACT This article presents a quantitative method for mapping semantic spaces and tracing political frames’ trajectories, that facilitate the analysis of the connections between changes in ideas and socio-political phenomena. We test our approach in Spain, where the Catalan conflict fostered a competition in terms of decontestation of meanings of key political concepts. Using unsupervised machine learning, we track the salience, level of semantic fragmentation and fluctuations in meanings of 216 frames in the two largest Spanish newspapers, El País and El Mundo, throughout 8 years. This is achieved via the extraction, vectorization, and comparison of over 70,000 words. We apply Latent Semantic Analysis, an innovative methodology for the alignment of semantic spaces, and new institutional theory. Our exploratory study suggests that the evolution of many nationalism-related frames resembles a punctuated equilibrium model, and that political events in Catalonia, acted as critical junctures, altering the meanings reflected in the Spanish press.

СОЦИАЛНИТЕ МЕДИИ – КЛЮЧОВ ФАКТОР В ПОЛИТИЧЕСКАТА РЕКЛАМА

Social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, X, Tik-Tok, etc., as well as alternative channels for communication, marketing and dissemination of information such as Whatsapp, Telegram, Viber, etc. create comfortable conditions for holding various events, campaigns, rapid promotion of political messages, promotion of new political formations and individual subjects. At the same time, the online environment is extremely convenient for filtering information, propaganda, spreading misinformation and fake news. The quality and credibility of information, among the mass reader and consumer, is displaced by sensationalism and the feeling of news "saturation".

Rooftop gardening complexities in the Global South: Motivations, practices, and politics

AbstractAn increasing number of urban residents in the Global South are turning to rooftop gardening, whether through soil or hydroponics, to cultivate their own vegetables, fruit, and herbs. In Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, rooftop gardening serves as an important alternative to traditional wet markets and more recently established supermarkets. In this paper, we examine the motivations, practices, and constraints of Hanoi’s rooftop gardeners, along with the level of government support or disapproval for rooftop gardening. Our study is grounded in critical urban geography and urban political ecology and specific debates regarding informal life politics. Our findings reveal that Hanoi’s rooftop gardeners feel confronted by a critical food safety crisis, emphasising their need to access safe, fresh, and affordable produce through rooftop gardening. Simultaneously, they express scepticism about the capacity and willingness of formal political institutions at both the municipal and national levels to address and resolve these concerns. We explore whether Hanoi’s urban rooftop gardeners can be considered to be engaging in a form of everyday life politics and examine the dynamics emerging in this regard. We conclude by offering potential policy recommendations for Global South cities to support urban gardening communities.

The Dynamics of ‘The British Identity’ as a Concept in Contemporary British Mass Media: A Discursive Analysis

This article explores the multifaceted nature of “The British Identity” within the context of political discourse, focusing on its representation in The Guardian newspaper. The aim of this study is to investigate the content specificity of the concept and its transformation under the influence of socio-cultural and extralinguistic factors. Through a qualitative analysis of selected articles from The Guardian, the paper examines the linguistic units used to represent the British identity and the evaluative nature of their expression. The study adopts a conceptual framework that considers the British identity as a political and cultural concept, susceptible to diverse interpretations and judgments within the ideological context. By employing a content analysis approach, the research reveals the tensions arising from the attempt to cater to both conservative and progressive factions of the UK society. The findings indicate that the representation of the British identity in The Guardian is influenced by socio-cultural factors, reflecting the evolving dynamics of British society. The analysis highlights the presence of evaluative expressions, reflecting the conceptual domain’s evaluative nature and its connection to political and cultural debates, particularly those concerning multiculturalism. While the study predominantly relies on articles from The Guardian, it acknowledges the need for broader source diversity to capture a more comprehensive understanding of the British identity. Moreover, the paper suggests that further research in this field holds promise for exploring the evolution and adaptation of conceptual domains in an ever-changing world. This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by shedding light on the complex and evolving nature of the British identity within political discourse. The research serves as a foundation for future investigations into the concept of identity and its representation in professional media outlets, and its implications for social cohesion in diverse societies.

Indigenous Peoples and the Politics of Founding

The article examines the “foundings-beyond-origins” framework as proposed by An-gélica Bernal in her 2017 book, Beyond Origins: Rethinking Founding in a Time of Constitutional Democracy. While accepting Bernal’s arguments about the prevailing vision of founding a political order, she posits that the realities of power deauthorise political origins. This form of politics proposes a model of engagement between In-digenous Peoples (IPs), nations, tribes and communities and hegemonic political orders based on self-determination, autonomy, self-government and consent. These concepts are the cornerstones of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). At the heart of this politcs is the “axiom of indigenei-ty”, a proposition that bases political origins on populations, customs, territoriality and time. The fact that societies that existed prior to the founding of contemporary political orders have survived the realities of power gives meaning to the idea of indigeneity.

Africans in London: Chronicle of the Union of West African Students

Research interest in the problems of the young generation of the countries of the African continent, including students, has noticeably increased over the last decades. The student youth, called the “conscience of the nation” in African countries, for a long time has been one of the most organized streams of the democratic movement and continues to play a prominent role in national processes. However, the student movement is a very complex and contradictory phenomenon, feeding numerous hotbeds and centers of intense search for national identity and struggle for their rights and freedoms. The authors of this article saw their task in an objective examination of the experience of one of the most famous and authoritative student organizations, mainly in the historical and cultural context. The article is dedicated to the history of the Union of West African Students’ Union (WASU) – one of the largest organizations of African students who lived and studied in Great Britain in the first half of the 20th century. The historical and cultural perspective of representation was not chosen by the authors of the article by chance. The activities of the WASU are closely connected with the problems of the national liberation movement in West Africa, though it also performed various tasks to protect the interests and rights of students in London and in the UK and therefore holds a key place in the history of the African Diaspora. The authors examine in detail the stages of the ideological and political formation and development of the WASU – from the Union of Students of African Descent, which existed in London at the turn of the second and the third decades of the 20th century, to the extinction of the WASU in the early 1960s. The authors show that for all its weaknesses, mistakes, theoretical immaturity and eclecticism of ideological attitudes, it was the WASU that had formed the anti-colonial agenda in Africa implemented during the national liberation struggle at the turn of 1950–60s in most countries on the continent. In a number of countries in West Africa, after the declaration of independence, former members and leaders of the Union came to power. Among them are Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904–1996), etc. The authors offer a new look at the phenomenon of African students, who were equally capable to fight for their interests and the interests of the nation and at the same time expressed conformist sentiments to the colonial authorities and post-colonial reality.

Political Poetics of Arab Rap as a Form of Memorial Culture

The purpose of the article is to analyse modern Arab rap culture in the politics of memory. The author analyses the tactics and strategies of imagining and inventing the past, its ideologically and politically motivated reinterpretations in the discourse of Arabic rap. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of Arabic rap as a form of memory politics, since most academic studies of memorial culture are limited to the analysis of the visualization and actualization of the past in the nationalist and political imagination, which leads to ignoring the texts of modern mass culture and consumer society as forms and dimensions of the mnemonic space. The article analyses the contribution of Arabic rap to the formation and development of modern memorial culture in contexts of the historical memory of the Arab countries of the Middle East and North Africa. The article also analyses a wide range of problems presented in the Arabic rap discourse. It is presumed that texts of the rap singers inspire the fragmentation of the Arab societies, actualising and visualising various versions of the memorial culture. It is assumed that rap as a form of mass culture can significantly influence the politics of memory as one of the spaces for the actualization and visualization of various memorial canons inspired by the generational differences in ideological and political preferences of Arab societies in contexts of the transformation of collective historical memory.

Research on Bilingual Curriculum Construction of Finance and Accounting Major under the Background of Curriculum Ideology and Politics

In recent years, with the continuous development of ideological and political ideas in the curriculum, the optimization and construction of finance and accounting courses, especially bilingual courses, have attracted more and more attention from the education circle. The bilingual course of finance and accounting is international and professional, so it is necessary to pay attention to the correct value guidance in the ideological and political construction of the course, and cultivate compound talents with both virtue and ability. Taking International Trade, a typical bilingual course for finance and accounting majors, as an example, this paper systematically introduces the ideological and political concepts of the course, and uses the BOPPPS framework model to conduct in-depth discussions on the relevant issues of the course construction. The following conclusions are drawn: (1) In terms of the course construction ideas, it is necessary to improve the implementation mechanism of moral education and cultivate talents, and build a bilingual course system of "ideological and political education + major + language"; (2) In terms of teaching reform: bilingual teaching methods should be reformed to improve the quality of bilingual teaching. Through "online + offline" teaching, interactive teaching, case teaching, independent learning, to enhance students' interest in learning bilingual courses and strengthen the construction of evaluation system; (3) In the use of ideological and political resources: we should apply the political and economic theory of contemporary China's Marxism to create high-quality courses in combination with the actual economic and social development of China; (4) In terms of course plan design: It is necessary to start with the BOPPPS teaching link, and reflect the characteristics and highlights of ideological and political construction of finance and accounting courses through the establishment of students' correct values, the establishment of students' good thinking mode, and the growth of their character.