Political Concern Research Articles

Comparative Historical Analysis in Political Theory

AbstractTwo important methodological debates in political theory concern (i) the place of historical research and interpretation in normative inquiry; and (ii) the importance of comparing different cultural traditions of political thought. The first question animates a long-standing controversy over the relative importance of ‘history of political thought’ versus ‘philosophy’ in political theory, while the second has been central to the recent growth of ‘comparative political theory’. Despite both debates being concerned, in fundamental ways, with history and comparison, they have remained surprisingly disconnected from broader debates in the humanities and social sciences about the use of comparative history and, in particular, of the prominent methodological approach in political science known as ‘comparative historical analysis’. This may reflect the fact that the debates over history of political thought and comparative political theory have fundamentally revolved around thought—history as the history of thought and comparison as the comparison of thought—whereas comparative historical analysis is more centrally focused on the study of political behaviour. In this paper I suggest that this neglect of comparative historical analysis in political theory represents a missed opportunity. Like other forms of social scientific inquiry, comparative historical analysis can yield important empirical knowledge for political theorists. But I wish to more ambitiously suggest that comparative historical analysis can also be adapted for conducting normative political theory itself. I summarise the key features of comparative historical analysis for political theorists, and explain how its use of historical cases can supplement both the use of imaginary thought experiments and the study of contemporary politics. I then delineate three specific ways in which comparative historical analysis might be used to support normative inquiry: deductive testing, inductive construction, and casuistic elaboration. All three, I argue, can help meet recent calls to bring the study of real political behaviour more centrally into political theory research.

The EU project VAXaction: tacking effectively vaccine hesitancy in Europe

Abstract The main objective of VAX-ACTION is to support EU Member States and relevant stakeholders to implement the results of tailored, evidence-based interventions aimed to reduce vaccine hesitancy. Based on the evaluation of effectiveness of these interventions, which will be conducted in selected target regions in EU member states, recommendations will be drawn through diverse dissemination strategies to allow scaling up good practices to other member States, but also to the USA and Canada, where gaps in implementation strategies also have prevented effective, evidence-based interventions aimed to better deal with vaccine hesitancy. The first phase of the research involved some relevant systematic reviews with the aim of: 1. to map public health evidence and research results on large-scale vaccination programs in Europe and north America; 2. to map interventions aimed to address vaccine hesitancy regarding new and well-stablished vaccines and vaccination programs (Covid-19, mpox, national immunizations programs for children) in Europe and north America; 3. to identify successful and unsuccessful interventions designs aimed to address vaccine hesitancy, including challenges in the implementation, evaluation designs, and the feasibility of scaling-up solutions that are context-sensitive; 4. to identify significant similarities or dissimilarities in the designs and outcomes of interventions aimed to address vaccine hesitancy in northern countries where political and academic concern towards this phenomenon is growing; 5. to identify the extent to which ‘grounding’ (bottom-up) experiences aimed to address vaccine hesitancy are evidence-based, build on current international knowledge and guidelines, and whether they are internationally reported; 6. to systematize the mapping of interventions aimed to address vaccine hesitancy in the northern hemisphere in a way that can be shared and used by third parties. This contribution will illustrate the results of the first phase of the project.

Rectifying local governments’ strategic environmental enforcement: Can refined air pollution monitoring enhance local air quality in China?

Insufficient local environmental enforcement has become a pivotal economic and political concern in China. In 2017, the Chinese central government introduced the Air Pollution Hot-Spot Grid (APHG) monitoring program. However, little is known about the consequences. This study investigates in detail how this monitoring program affects city-level air pollution by applying the difference-in-differences method. This program was responsible for a notable decrease in air pollution at the city level. This decrease was mostly the result of stronger local environmental governance, advances in green innovation, and an upgraded industrial structure. Additionally, an examination of heterogeneous treatment effects across different cities revealed that the most substantial effects were observed in large, non-resource-based, and eastern cities. Additional analysis reveals the presence of a spillover effect, whereby the adoption of this program in one city helps reduce air pollution in nearby cities. These results highlight the significance of refined air pollution monitoring for addressing imperfect local environmental enforcement.

Redefining Family Relationships: The Impact of Disability on Working-Class Families during the Industrial Revolution in Britain

The Industrial Revolution traditionally has been seen in Disability Studies as marking a decisive shift in the lives of disabled people. It is argued that the rise of mechanisation, time discipline and standardisation made the industrial workplace a hostile environment for people with non-standard bodies. According to this view, increasing demands to work outside the home also meant that families were less capable of caring for older and disabled members, leading to greater institutionalisation. This view of increasing segregation of disabled people from home and work has dominated understanding of disability in the British Industrial Revolution, but it does not reflect the variability of disabled people's experiences at the time. Drawing on official enquiries, fictional literature, journalism and social commentary from the 1830s and 1840s – a time when the impact of industrialisation on the bodies and family relationships of workers became matters of public, political concern – this article shows the continuing importance of family in the lives of disabled people. The legal duty of families to care for sick and disabled relatives was an enduring social principle throughout this period. Interpersonal relations were tested and sometimes re-drawn by disability, forcing a change in traditional familial roles and expectations. For working people and their families, the potentials for poverty resulting from disability could be great. However, disabled people continued to play significant roles in the lives of their families, and where possible continued to contribute to the domestic economy. Taking a disability perspective on the history of the family highlights the interdependence between family members in industrialising Britain.

Abuses of the past by the Italian far right: a first assessment of the Meloni government

ABSTRACT Collective memory plays an important part in the ideational and cultural battlegrounds that characterise current European politics. The mobilisation and manipulation of the memory of Nazi-fascism, in particular, is a growing political and academic concern, related to the rise of far right parties throughout the continent and the mainstreaming of their ideas and positions. Focusing on the case of Italy, this article examines three recent examples of abuses of the country’s past committed by Fratelli d’Italia, a far right party with a direct lineage to fascism, and the pivot of the current Italian government. By analysing the three episodes in light of a conceptual triad of abuses of the dark past – historical reassessment; fake history; evocation-cum-denial of fascist connections – the article shows how post-fascist FdI has engaged in the whole gamut of memory abuses rapidly, and shortly after rising to power. This in turn raises concerns about the effects of such mnemonic manipulations on the cultural underpinning of Italian democracy, given the party’s current position of political, institutional, and cultural influence.

Locus of control over global mine production– developments between 1985 and 2018 against a historical background

AbstractIt is a well-known fact that mine production has shifted from the industrialised countries of Europe, North America and Japan to emerging economies in Latin America, Africa and Asia and to Australia since the mid-20th century. The lack of self-sufficiency or high import dependence, in particular of the so-called critical metals, has become an issue of great political concern in these industrialised countries over the past 15 years. This study of six metals, cobalt, copper, iron ore, lithium, manganese and rare earths, contrasts this picture of geographical location of production with an analysis of where the control over mine production around the world is based, which we call the locus of control. Production might have moved out of the industrialised countries but control over production by companies based in the industrialised countries remains and has even increased between 1985 and 2018. We measure control as share of the total value of the production of the six metals. European transnational mining companies have increased their control from 14 to 18% while mining companies based in North America have lost control, a decline from 13 to 8%. When Australian companies, that have more than tripled their control in the same period, are added, control by the industrialised countries has increased to 44% of these six metals. Companies based in Latin America, Africa and Asia excluding China, taken together have maintained their control level, roughly a third of the total value of the six metals. Inside this group of countries African share has dwindled from 12 to 3% while Asian companies have more than doubled their share from 5 to 12%. Control by mining companies based in the republics of the former Soviet Union have been reduced from 25 to 7% while in the same period Chinese companies’ control has doubled from 6 to 12% of the total value of these six metals. Countries in Asia (excluding China) together with Latin American and African countries produce 51% of these six metals measured by the value at the mine stage. However, companies based in these countries control not more than 33% of the production.

Old wine in new wineskins: Christian nationalism, authoritarianism, and the problem of essentialism in explanations of religiopolitical conflict

AbstractIn 2001, John Levi Martin published a critique of authoritarianism scholarship, arguing that it was marred by fundamental biases of tautology, selective interpretation, and overtheorization of some research subjects but neglect of others. Drawing from this critique, I argue that Christian nationalism scholarship in sociology operates as a variant of authoritarianism research, exhibiting similar claims, strengths, and shortcomings. In a short span of time, the Christian nationalism research agenda has come to dominate the sociological study of religion and enjoyed a high profile in public discourse, presumably due to its relevance to matters of acute political concern. However, this literature interprets empirical results based on unverified assumptions of essentially authoritarian goals and motivations while ignoring plausible alternative explanations. It further neglects respondents who are low on Christian nationalism measures, despite evidence that these respondents play a role in religiopolitical conflict. The result is an essentialist account of Christian nationalism that is politically resonant but theoretically problematic. I propose that these issues can be addressed by a shift away from essentialist and toward social models of belief systems, which offer important advantages: greater consistency with current theories of political polarization, a stronger sociological element, and less susceptibility to researcher bias.

Income change and sympathy for right-wing populist parties in the Netherlands: The role of gender and income inequality within households.

The global rise of right-wing populist [RWP] parties presents a major political concern. RWP parties' voters tend to be citizens who have either experienced or fear economic deprivation. Income change constitutes a viable measure of this deprivation. However, previous contributions examining effects of income change on support for RWP parties have yielded diverging conclusions. This paper challenges previous findings by incorporating considerations of gender and within-household inequality. We hypothesise a negative relationship between, on the one hand, personal and household income change and, on the other hand, sympathy towards RWP parties. Furthermore, we expect to find a stronger association between personal income change and RWP sympathy among men. Moreover, we expect the relationship between household income change and RWP sympathy to differ between genders. Finally, we hypothesise that this gender disparity can be interpreted by considering who contributes most to the household income. All these hypotheses are grounded in gender socialisation and economic dominance theories. Analysing Dutch LISS longitudinal data spanning from 2007 to 2021 (N=7,801, n=43,954) through fixed-effects multilevel linear regression models enables us to address various competing explanations. It appears that only for men, personal income change is negatively linked with sympathies towards RWP parties. However, considering who is the highest earner within households reveals that women are also affected by their personal income change if they earn the highest income. For both men and women, household income change is negatively linked with sympathies towards RWP parties. These results lend partial support to both the socialisation and economic dominance theories. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The Archive as a Battlefield for the Future: Anti-colonial Struggles and Insurgent Temporality

Anti-fascist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial struggles of the twentieth century provide important intellectual and political resources as we collectively seek to forge alternative futures in the face of our depleted political present. Setting out with this analytical and political concern, this article is interested in the question of what it means to visit the archive of past struggles and past insurgencies. It argues for a critical historical method that foregrounds the agency of the insurgents themselves—the agency of women, slaves, foreigners, the poor and the peasants—as the subjects of an insurgent universality (Tomba 2019). The article explores the international brigades fighting the fascists during the Spanish Civil War, the peasants gathered to affirm the Second Havana Declaration, and the audience that comprised Thomas Sankara's speech in Harlem. The artifacts of insurgency, the authors suggest, are embodied expressions of collective struggles written not by one but by a multiplicity. They are the artifacts of a collective political subjectivity united in their insurgent claim to disrupt the temporal and spatial delimitations of politics in modernity—enacting an insurgent universality. The archive of insurgent universality is our future for it provides compelling ways to think, write, and act politically toward the present.

‘The right to fall in love and kiss without consequences’: on racialized Muslim women, ‘mixed’ intimacies, and Dutch sexual exceptionalism

ABSTRACT What does political concern with ‘mixed’ intimacies articulate about the nation? This article unpacks this question by analysing a Dutch poster campaign on self-determination, organized by the Rotterdam municipality and a feminist NGO, that visualized ‘mixed’ couples intimately kissing. It uses a visual analysis of the posters, combined with a post-structural policy analysis of a variety of documents that were essential to the production of this campaign. First, the article argues that the campaign centred on the racialized figure of the Muslim woman, problematizing her self-determination through a framework of liberal-secular notions of freedom and agency. Then, by historicizing the Dutch preoccupation with ‘mixed’ intimacies as a mode of (colonial) governance, the article accounts for how the campaign engages with particular kinds of ‘mixing’ to underscore Dutch sexual exceptionalism. The article argues the campaign can be seen as part of the contemporary configuration of the Dutch ‘Muslim Question’, mobilizing the intimate lives of racialized Muslim women to problematize Muslims as deviant populations. Overall, this article explores how representations of, and discourses on ‘mixed’ intimacies can be used as prisms to study the gendered and racialized state management of population, as well as (shifting) imaginaries of the nation in the Netherlands.

Eksistensi dan Kepercayaan Pemerintah Terhadap LSM Lingkungan dalam Penerapan Green Politics di Indonesia

Political activism, which cares about the environment and is embodied in the vision, mission, and programs of government and political action, must fight for the future. The form of political concern for the environment, previously referred to as environmental policy in Indonesia, has been implemented through the submission of petitions by Indonesian environmental NGOs to pay attention to ecological aspects, lawsuits over policies, and mass mobilization actions. A survey is conducted in the study. The data used to use other data to create a form of environmental and political awareness, or what is then known as "green policy" in Indonesia, is now being used by some NGOs in Indonesia to file petitions, legal procedures on regulations, and large-scale mobilization factors to draw attention to environmental aspects. The literature was used in the study. The data comes from other documents, regulations, and books. The community and the government feel the problem of this justice, which supports what is happening on social media in Indonesia. The current reality of the "green" political narrative, which some NGOs can appreciate, is not fully understood and is on the list. The existence of green cities in Indonesia is vital and should be held accountable by the government for places in Indonesia.

The rise of inflation targeting

AbstractThis paper discusses the interactions between politics and economic ideas leading to the adoption of inflation targeting in the United States. In the gold standard era, farmers' vulnerability to falling prices made price‐level stabilization a salient political and social concern. Economists of the progressive era honed in on price‐level stabilization as a key to promoting prosperity and social justice. Irving Fisher, in alliance with farm interests, helped members of Congress introduce price‐level stabilization bills that, while unsuccessful, introduced the possibility that a price‐level stabilization mandate might be a viable alternative to a gold standard. In the postwar years, the Great Inflation and Volcker disinflation set the stage for the rise of inflation targeting by highlighting the benefits of credibility, transparency, and expectations management. Tensions inherent in the implementation of inflation targeting—including its position in the “rules versus discretion” debate—have become more pronounced since the post‐COVID run‐up in inflation.

Historical State Formation Within and Beyond Europe

State formation is a critical concern for comparative politics. Much of the most influential literature has focused on the politically fragmented setting of early modern Europe, where warmaking fostered state consolidation and the development of institutions of representation and taxation. More recently, scholars have expanded this perspective by emphasizing the state-building implications of alternative forms of competition, interstate cooperation, and emulation, as well as the influence of a broader set of societal actors beyond belligerent rulers. The authors review recent scholarship on state formation that suggests that the canonical bellicist path is only one pathway to state consolidation, both in Europe and beyond. This article draws attention to the importance of geography and to new insights regarding the organization of state-society relations and the influence of regional and global economic engagements on state formation.

Promising the future, encoding the past: AI hype and public media imagery

In recent years, “AI hype” has taken over public media, oscillating between sensationalism and concerns about the societal implications of AI growth. The latest historical wave of AI hype indexes a period of increased research, investment, and speculation on machine learning, centred around generative AI, a novel class of machine learning that can generate original media from textual prompts. In this paper, I dive into the production of AI hype in online media, with the aim of prioritising the normative and political dimension of AI hype. Formulating AI as a promise reframes it as a normative project, centrally involving the formation of public and institutional confidence in the technology. The production and dissemination of images, in this context, plays a pivotal role in reinforcing these normative commitments to the public. My argument is divided into four sections. First, I examine the political relevance of stock images as the dominant imagery used to convey AI concepts to the public. These stock images encode specific readings of AI and circulate through public media, significantly influencing perceptions. Second, I look at the dominant images of AI as matters of political concern. Third, as generative AI increasingly contributes to the production of stock imagery, I compare the epistemic work performed by AI-generated outputs and stock images, as both encode style, content, and taxonomic structures of the world. I employ an entity relationship diagram (ERD) to investigate the political economy of AI imagery in digital media, providing a snapshot of how AI hype is materialised and amplified online. With this study, I reaffirm AI’s normative character at the forefront of its political and ethical discourse.

Importance of the Food Issue in Algeria's Economic Policy

The issue of food security has been taken very seriously by the public authorities since the country's independence in 1962. This major social and political concern was manifested in the various political speeches of leaders and in the national charter which proclaims this universal right of the population to healthy, varied, sustainable and accessible food for all. To achieve this, a decisive role was given to the national agricultural sector to ensure the supply of basic foodstuffs to the population at accessible prices, particularly for disadvantaged social groups. Thus, agricultural and agri-food policies were designed and implemented to achieve the objective of food security and preserve national sovereignty. In this article, we will try to provide some answers on the main axes of this food policy adopted by the State. First, we briefly present the characteristics of the consumption model of Algerians, then, we expose the importance of the means and actions implemented to achieve these objectives through in particular the recommended subsidy and import policies for basic foodstuffs. by the state. Finally and thanks to the statistical data available, we deduce some aspects of the limits and constraints of this food policy before suggesting some recommendations to strengthen its reliability in the face of the country's economic constraints.

China Special Education for Disabled Children: Problems and Countermeasures

Despite increasing awareness and political concern regarding the issue of inclusive education and educational inequality, China is still on its way to achieving education equality. The issue of special education for disabled students, problems related to preschool education, education equality within groups, and curriculum design are still matters of concern that hinder China's progression towards an egalitarian education system that guarantees equality. Although special education is specifically addressed in China's 14th Five-Year Plan, mere policy concern has not successfully translated into practical success. Through a thorough analysis of China's current situation, this article identifies three reasons that have thwarted the realization of this goal: a lack of micro-concern in policies relating to special education, misallocation of capital input due to a lack of sufficient regulations, and an insufficient supply of professional teachers. Countermeasures are proposed with the intention of improving China's special education system, with the hope of addressing the interests of students with special educational needs today.

Opening up and closing down teachers’ political dialogues: Dialectic and dialogic strategic orientations

This paper employs Mikhail Bakhtin for a dialogic reading of dialectics, conceptualising how early childhood education (ECE) teachers’ political dialogues are opened up and closed down. Explorations of ‘political dialogue’, or how teachers respond to issues they deem of political concern, is pertinent for teaching’s inherently political nature. How such encounters are opened and closed has special significance for ECE teachers, who have expressed feeling professionally and politically silenced. Guided by a philosophical framing of the contradictions and jostling interplays between dialogism’s in-betweenness and dialectic’s one-ness, excerpts are analysed from a doctoral study involving 10 Victorian, Australian ECE teachers. This framing and analysis signal the potential ramifications of a dialectical closing down of ECE teachers’ political dialogues in addition to how dialogism’s in-betweenness fosters openness. Contemplating these language strategies, the paper highlights how a silencing divisiveness may transpire, prompting a need for genuine listening in the threshold in-between the self and other.

Europe is not like you see on TV! Ramadan drama as a platform of education on Harga in Tunisia

The increase in clandestine migrants to Italy following the 2010 Tunisian uprising has been an issue of popular and political concern in both countries. This article investigates Harga (2021, 2022), a top-rated and critically acclaimed drama series. Produced and aired by Tunisian national television as a vehicle of entertainment-education, Harga strove to make a geopolitical intervention in the process of irregular migration. Combining textual analysis with interviews conducted with the production’s producers and participants, the article explores how local and transnational actors came together to create a counternarrative to the popular success stories of clandestine migrants. This approach contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between media and socio-cultural and political dynamics as well as of their effect on formulating mediated narratives on clandestine migration. Due to Harga’s documentarist depiction of the social and political driving forces behind irregular migration and its open criticism of Tunisian authorities, the show is investigated within the framework of post-uprising Tunisia’s mediascape, and domestic and international political environment. In this regard, it offers a good case study for examining how local politics, transnationalism, and postcolonialism are intertwined in formulating discourses on irregular migration.

Commentary

Does non-anthropocentrism necessitate a turn away from marginalized people? This is a crucial question, asked lately by a growing number of archaeologists. Some see a turn toward things as a turn away from people, while others take a more nuanced view. Greer falls into the latter group, exploring this question by highlighting important contributions and corrections from Black Studies. Although the paper is framed as a challenge to posthumanism, I read it as a broad critique of non-anthropocentric approaches; after reflecting on these relationships over the last few years, I no longer draw strong associations between posthumanism and symmetrical archaeology, entanglement theory, or even ANT; for me, posthumanism involves a relatively greater degree of social and political concern than the others.

Art and Patronage: Revisiting Ottoman Poetry From the perspective of İnalcık and Andrews

As life was shaped around the sultan and the court in the Ottoman Empire, being close to the absolute authority, the shelter of honor and prestige, was a necessity. Being honored by the sultan and having his favor was a must to be the "sultan of poets". Since the biggest compliment was to be a companion of the sultan, one had to reveal all his talent and mastery in the valley of poetry. In this context, the view "talent is subject to compliment" is important. However, it should be noted that almost every poet wanted to be the companion of the sultan, not his bookkeeper. That is, poetic concern preceded political concern. The patrimonial characteristic of Ottoman poetry was the event of tide between the poet's loss of prestige and his desire for reputation. The paradox between the poet's aesthetic concern and patrimonial patronage constituted the essential point of Diwan poetry. The artist was always tested on the fine line between art and life. A pen is the only thing remaining in the shadow of art and power. Each literary period has its unique conditions and sense of art. These conditions should be considered while evaluating a literary work or artist. By his very nature, an artist has poetic and political concerns. Any one of these concerns may be prioritized depending on the characteristics of a period. They may also vary from one artist to another. In this regard, the present study compares the evaluations of Halil İnalcık and Walter G. Andrews in their works titled Şair ve Patron [Poetry and Patron] and Şiirin Sesi, Toplumun Şarkısı [Poetry's Voice, Society's Song] respectively.