Effective Political Tool Research Articles

Ecclesiastical refuge in medieval Wales: formation and role in political processes

The article is devoted to the penetration of the concept of ecclesiastical refuge into the British Isles, its spread and regional peculiarities. The focus is on the origin and realization of the right of ecclesiastical refuge in the territory of the Welsh kingdoms from the early Middle Ages, when sources record the first signs of the allocation of the temple territory as a place with a special legal status, until the XV century, when the charters of the English kings approved the traditional privilege of Welsh religious centers to provide security to those in need. Being one of the most important achievements of church diplomacy, the right of ecclesiastical refuge was directly related to the status of a religious center: documents confirming it were preserved and copied, if there were no documents, they were forged or episodes in which they hid someone from persecution within the walls of their cell or monastery were included in the lives of the patron saints. The almost simultaneous appearance of such plots in the Lives of the late XI–XII centuries. It suggests that this was one of the main arguments of the Welsh religious communities in the struggle to maintain their position in the face of the changes that began with the arrival of the Normans on the island. For representatives of the secular authorities, the right of ecclesiastical refuge was an inconspicuous but very effective political tool that allowed, on the one hand, to control local religious communities, allowing them to exercise the privilege they needed or violating it, on the other hand, creating an opportunity at the right moment to ensure the safety of both themselves and other participants in political processes.

Situationally-triggered metaphor as political argument

Abstract This paper proposes to investigate the public responses to situationally-triggered metaphors as these have been observed in political argumentation. Situationally-triggered metaphors occur when a nonmetaphorical connection is made between the metaphor and an aspect of the relevant situational context. The question addressed in this research is: how are such metaphors perceived by the public when these form part of the political argumentation? To answer this question, the study focuses on a particular instance of political situationally-triggered metaphor i.e., Boris Johnson’s “James Bond” metaphor produced during COP26. The paper draws on Critical Metaphor Analysis and Deliberate Metaphor Theory to analyse the public comments and reactions posted on the social media platform Twitter in response to the politician’s arguments. The analysis reveals that most of the public responses exploit the “James Bond” metaphor to dispute Johnson’s self-identification to the fictional character and provide meta-arguments that revolve around the politician’s misuse of metaphors. In contrast, responses that exploit the metaphor to convey political arguments or endorsement are much more limited. It is thus argued that situationally-triggered metaphors not only represent a political rhetorical device, but they are also effective political tools to shift public attention towards discursive patterns instead of arguments presented in discourse.

Restoring What Never Existed: The Role of Familism in Narratives of Return in Hungary

This study seeks to provide insight into the mechanisms of familism in the landscapes of Hungarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs), public and higher education, and academia. By contextualizing the growing importance of familism as a governing ideology and an effective political tool used by the current government, aiming to offer an alternative to the insecurities rooted in economic restructuring and cultural transformation in eastern Europe in the last few decades, we show how “academic familism” and “NGO-familism,” often intertwined, reproduce the ideological underpinnings of the Hungarian neoliberal gender regime. The article’s novelty is in, first, revealing how recent institutionalization tendencies show that Hungarian academia, especially in the social sciences, is shifting to reproduce and legitimize familism, risking the autonomy of science even in the short term. Second, the study highlights the fact that besides some government-friendly NGOs dedicated to promoting familism, the ideology of the importance of families is strengthened even by some bottom-up civil organizations that campaign for a more inclusive family concept as a reaction to the government’s idealization of nuclear, heterosexual, and marriage-based family formations.

Relating Sustainable Development Goals in a Conceptual Integrated Model of Growth and Welfare

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is one of the most relevant efforts aiming at the promotion of sustainable development around the world. Many indicators serve as a guide to evaluate the actual level of development and to identify the issues that need more attention. What is not clear yet is the association between the goals and their indicators. This can limit the information on effective political tools to reduce inequalities at the national and local levels. Based on that, the paper aims to explore the connections between SDGs. Its approach involves i) the proposal of a conceptual integrated model of sustainable development rooted in the literature and connectable with the SDGs; ii) based on World Bank (2019) data on sustainable indicators over two decades, the test of a two-stage econometric model, one to explain product per capita and a second one to explain lack of happiness, assessed by the suicide rate. From the results, it is possible to identify the factors that influence the level of wealth and happiness while integrating Sustainable Development Goals.

Emergence of National Nutrition Policy in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic: an analysis of collaborations between governmental and external actors

BackgroundIn most developing countries, addressing malnutrition involves a coalition of stakeholders that includes the government and international development partners. This study explores the evolution of the malnutrition actor coalition landscape before and after the emergence of the National Nutrition Policy in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) in 2008.MethodsA qualitative study was conducted based on the theory of coalition structuring. Twenty semi-structured interviews were performed with representatives of national and international organisations involved in addressing malnutrition in Lao PDR. The information obtained from the interviews was complemented by an analysis of relevant documents dating back to 1990. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. A thematic analysis was performed using NVivo 11 software and the diagrams of collaboration drawn by the participants were turned into a visual collaboration map using SocNetV software. We relied on various types of triangulation to increase the analysis's credibility, reliability, and confirmability.ResultsThe results showed that before the emergence of the National Nutrition Policy, three coalitions representing the health, agriculture, and education sectors coexisted. These colalitions worked largely in silos, although with some interactions when deemed necessary mainly by United Nations agencies. The emergence of the National Nutrition Policy provided the government with an effective political tool for coalescing the three coalitions into a unique coalition involving all major stakeholders in the nutrition field. All three forces that incite actors to collaborate inside a coalition according to the theory of coalition structuring (transactions, control, intangible factors) were mobilised in the creation of the single coalition.ConclusionsCombating malnutrition is a government priority in the Lao PDR. The current study showed that the National Nutrition Policy in Lao PDR has led to a significant evolution in the malnutrition coalition landscape, resulting in improved collaboration among stakeholders. This finding highlights the effectiveness of public policies in facilitating intersectoral activities to tackle complex problems, such as malnutrition.

Selling the Economic Miracle: Economic Reconstruction and Politics in West Germany, 1949–1957

Selling the Economic Miracle: Economic Reconstruction and Politics in West Germany, 1949–1957

Страх як інструмент політики держави

The article analyses fear as an effective political tool. It is noted that fear can regulate domestic and foreign public policy. The use of fear in political governance through the use of certain technologies allows one to achieve the following: to identify vectors of political development, to change the regulatory framework, to reformat work with influence groups and public opinion leaders and to focus on certain values. Fear in political processes may be used to achieve either positive or negative goals. The author emphasizes the interconnection between fear and the weakening of democratic moods of the society. Fear reduces the "value" of a political regime that becomes undemocratic. It insists that fear pushes the state to violate its own moral principles, which are based on the law. This affects certain features and sets the level of development of political culture and the sense of its citizens. It is determined that the current fears which are used as the political tools are: migration; terrorism and use of weapons of mass destruction; economical crisis; natural disasters; threats to national security, war; uncertain future and others. Overstatement of the dangers and fueling fears for both: individuals and the state can slow down reforms, – as an obstacle to further development and reformation. For the state, this leads to the increase in costs which are necessary for the needless control and reinsurance, which, hence, leads to the significant use of human, material, financial and other resources. It shows how citizens’ fear of terrorist attacks is used to achieve a certain political goal. Emphasis is placed on various losses from terrorist acts, their comparison with other threats. It is emphasized that the use of fear in the management process can not only harm the development of society, but also can develop problems for the government itself. Fear is a tool that requires both special attention and careful planning of possible consequences.

THE UK’S REFERENDUMS DURING ITS INTEGRATION INTO THE EU (1973-2016)

Throughout the UK’s integration into the EU (1973-2016), referendums were considered and used as an effective political tool for the Government to negotiate with the common people on important issues. During the period of 43 years, the Government called for their practices 12 times with an uneven frequency between the UK’s leaders, namely the UK’s Prime Ministers. One important notice is that among the 12 referendums, only two have direct links to the relationship between the UK and the EU. This article looks into the use of referendums in the UK in general and the two that are directly related to the EU in particular in the period of 1973-2016. Its conclusion and findings are expected to help outline the usage of this political tool in the contemporary and futuristic climax of the country.

Two Faces of Ideology: Double-Edged Functions of Ideology in the Reform Discourse Under Xi Jinping

Many scholars recognise that ideology plays indispensable roles in sustaining the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party and enhancing its governing capacity. However, less attention has been given to how party ideology operates in public discourse and whether it truly functions as an effective political tool to facilitate support for party initiatives. This article conceptualises public discourse as a “language game” played by the rules set by the party and examines how party ideology is “operationalised” by multiple actors as political rhetoric for persuasion in contentious reform discourse. Through the analysis of more than 400 periodical articles published in Chinese media outlets, this study examines policy discourse over the mixed-ownership reform of state-owned enterprises from 2014 to 2016 as a case study. The analysis demonstrates that ideology assumes two opposing operational functions in public discourse, consensus-inducing and conflict-inducing, depending on how it is employed by participants in the discourse.

REKAYASA BAHASA DAN KONSTRUKSI POLITIK “PERSATUAN-KESATUAN” DALAM WACANA “NEGARA KESATUAN REPUBLIK INDONESIA”

The formation of the Indonesian nation-state is inseparable from linguistic engineering. This includes phrases that transformed their lexical meaning to become a binding political concession produced by Indonesian political leaders in the 1940s and 1950s. The official name of the Indonesian state “The Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia” is the result of this political concession in the statecraft of Indonesia. This article aims to examine the meanings of the “unity and unitary” phrases in the imagined form of Indonesian nation-state. Why was “unity and unitary” an effective political tool for the shaping of the imagination of “Indonesia”? Linguists and historians would these choices of words as a reflection of the power of language in the creation of facts. Language can transform a lexical fact into a material one. It is therefore essential to understand how did the phrase “unity and unitary” transform from a lexical to a political meaning in the context of Indonesian history? This article is based on literary analyses of official relevant documents, including the assembly proceeding of the Council for the Investigation of the Preparation for Indonesian Independence (Badan Penyelidik Usaha-usaha Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia, BPUPKI) of August 1945, and the so-called Principal Guidelines for State Development (Garis-Garis Besar Haluan Negara, GBHN) of the New Order. It argues that the “unity and unitary” phrase represents a negotiation of diverse political elements which then shaped the crafting of Indonesian nation-state. The changes in the contexts in which the phrase was used show a changing association between the lexical and ideological meanings of the phrase. While these changes worked towards institutionalizing the Indonesian state, this article concludes that they also submerged the people’s discontents. The phrase “unity and unitary” reflected the making of people’s uniformity to a large extent.

Political efficacy, respect for agency, and adaptive preferences

ABSTRACTSerene Khader and Rosa Terlazzo have each recently proposed theories of adaptive preferences (APs) which purport to both respect persons’ agency and provide an effective political tool. While Khader and Terlazzo thus share a similar goal, they take fundamentally different paths in its pursuit: Khader offers a perfectionist account of APs and Terlazzo an autonomy-based theory. In this paper, I argue first that if it is to adequately respect persons’ agency, a theory of APs should in some way include autonomy considerations. If it is to provide an effective political tool, however, our theory should not be entirely autonomy-based, but include a condition addressing a preference’s compatibility with basic flourishing. The suggestion is thus that it is worth considering the possibility of a ‘mixed,’ rather than exclusively perfectionist or exclusively autonomy-based, theory of APs. I outline two such theories. The first, I argue, does quite well with respect to the political efficacy aim of AP theorizing, but has difficulty satisfying the respect for agency aim. The reverse is true of the second. I conclude by suggesting that respect for agency should in this context take priority over political efficacy and that we therefore should accept the latter of the two theories outlined.

Another flew over the digital divide: internet usage in the Arab-Palestinian sector in Israel during municipal election campaigns, 2008

This article is part of a pioneering study which analyses Internet usage by some 600 candidates for heads of 156 local authorities in Israel in the municipal campaigns of 2008. Despite the importance attributed to the municipal elections in the Arab-Palestinian sector in Israel, the high turnout rate, the competitiveness of the elections and the continuing penetration of the Internet, it was scarcely used by candidates, compared to about 50% usage by candidates who competed in municipalities with Jewish populations. Interviews suggest that beyond access gaps, additional obstacles impede the usage of the Internet as an effective political tool in the Arab-Palestinian sector.

War, Diplomacy, and “Family Affairs” in Seventeenth-Century Eastern Europe: Moldavia in the Danubian Policy of Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1648–1653)

Marital diplomacy and marriages have been known in history as effective political tools. While many events occurred under the impact of political, social, and religious factors, “family affairs,” through intrigues and dynastic contacts, also played an important role. Such is the case of the marriage of Ruxandra, the youngest daughter of the Moldavian hospodar Vasile Lupu, and Tymish, the oldest son of Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Their marriage in 1652 was the result of the hetman’s Danubian foreign policy during the most dramatic episode of seventeenth-century Ukrainian history—the Zaporozhian Cossack uprising against the Poles. In addition to the ethno-political and cultural-religious backgrounds, the internationalized Polish-Ukrainian conflict was infected by a “personal feature,” that is the “Moldavian affair” of the Khmelnytsky clan. This article examines the circumstances that led to the political alliance of Bohdan Khmelnytsky with Vasile Lupu and explores how the hetman’s dynastic project shaped political alliances during the conflict between the Poles and the Ukrainian Cossacks. Particular attention is paid to Romanian-language studies frequently omitted in Western scholarship.

Defining by naming: Israeli civic warring over the Second Lebanon War

Politics is a public effort directed at the allocation of resources, both material and symbolic. Quite often it involves conflict in the form of a public struggle over the allocation of resources. Informed by Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, this article offers a political reading of constructivism (a theoretical perspective here called Political Constructivism). It maintains that politics is guided by a conscious effort by political agents to control the commonsensical understanding of social reality using the media of political concepts, metaphors, symbols, and — the focus of this article — names and definitions. Political agents regard controlling the commonsense as one of the most effective political tools. They understand that it can be controlled by attaching meanings to political concepts, by linking metaphors and symbols to ideas, and by linking events to classes of events through naming and defining. This article examines the civic warring in Israel over the defining and naming of the Second Lebanon War as a case in point. Defining and naming the event involved a political struggle to frame the commonsense, gain the upper hand in the political process of constructing socio-political reality, and reap the political gains. The article argues that the political struggle was resolved by what I call a weak Kripkean-like defining, in other words, defining by naming.

Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice (review)

Reviewed by: Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice Mark Jurdjevic Horodowich, Elizabeth — Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. 258. In Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice, Elizabeth Horodowich examines numerous connections between language — and more often the spoken word — and Venetian political culture in the sixteenth century. She demonstrates that Venetian political anxiety, whether caused by sharply rising numbers of recent immigrants to the city, the presence of marauding foreign armies, or more purely internal tensions between aristocrats at the top of the social ladder and those further down, always manifested itself, among other ways, in attempts to regulate, control, and thereby dominate language and speech. The Venetian government was particularly sensitive to the ways in which mastery of the rules of language and a monopoly over the terms and boundaries of its proper use were a particularly effective political tool for shoring up elite hegemony in a contestatory republican setting. Her analysis considers the intersection of language and politics from several perspectives. The first chapter surveys the linguistic component of the broader pan-Italian genre of Renaissance conduct literature. Books such as Castiglione's Il Libro del Cortegiano and Giovanni della Casa's Il Galateo laid out detailed and widely influential rules governing aristocratic and courtly speech. Horodowich interprets such texts less in terms of a literary preoccupation with the rhetorical theories of classical antiquity, or literary debates over the relative merits of Latin and the volgare, and more as a fundamentally social and political attempt by Italian elites to define themselves in the midst of the Italian Wars and their related growing sense of powerlessness. By complicating and then mastering elaborate rules of linguistic etiquette, Italian elites, whose elevated position lacked the legal and military foundation typical elsewhere in Europe, both defined themselves as a group and attempted to demonstrate their superiority (if only to themselves). The second chapter turns to Venice, looking in particular at the Esecutori Contro la Bestemmia, the magistracy established in 1537 to investigate and punish blasphemy. Horodowich provides abundant evidence to support David Lawton's argument that blasphemy emerges as a controversial issue in direct proportion to the degree to which its surrounding society is internally divided. She concludes that the Venetian government established the blasphemy magistracy as a response to a sudden escalation in the immigrant population in Venice, the result of shifts in the city's domestic economy and Venetian military defeats on the mainland. The magistracy's records reveal an unsurprisingly distinct tendency to identify blasphemy with the city's most recent and unwanted immigrants (and a tendency not to punish noble blasphemers). In addition, and somewhat more surprisingly, the magistracy occasionally expanded its jurisdiction to include the punishment of purely secular verbal insults made by non-nobles to nobles. The fourth chapter looks in more detail at the legal punishment of insults. Horodowich considers examples from several additional archival sources — the Council of Ten, Avogaria di Comun, Signori di Notte al Criminal, and Provveditori sopra le Pompe. The records of these magistracies reveal the [End Page 263] government's aggressive patrolling of servants' speech, coarse talk by gondoliers, and other members of Venice's labouring classes. The government concentrated the vast majority of its coercive power on the prosecution of insults against nobles. Horodowich plausibly connects this development with the increasing monopolization of the government by an ever smaller aristocratic oligarchy. The government defined itself in terms of its noble class and hence viewed insults towards individual nobles as conceptually synonymous with assaults on the government itself. Chapters 5 and 6 shift the focus from law to culture by considering the role of gossip in Venetian public life and the speech of Venice's famously eloquent courtesans. Both chapters are good examples of the anxieties and contradictions that accompanied Venetian awareness of the political implications of speech. While gossip was generally condemned as a frivolous and potentially destructive form of distinctly female speech, it nevertheless was an essential method of political deal-making and intelligence-gathering in the ostensibly masculine culture of republican politics. Similarly, Venetian courtesans, who sold verbal companionship as well as sex, were clearly in fundamental...

The Excess of Modernity: Garbage Politics in Oaxaca, Mexico

In the last several decades, garbage strikes have taken place around the world. In this article, I examine the case of garbage strikes in Oaxaca, Mexico, a rapidly growing city. Here, garbage, which is normally considered a hazard, is revealed also to be an effective political tool for people demanding “rights to the city.” Processes of modernization that have produced an expectation of cleanliness in modern cities have, at the same time, relied on production and consumption patterns that create more and more garbage. It is this inherent contradiction that provides a space for marginalized people to use garbage as a political tool.

Reconciliation through Sports? The case of South Africa

Can sports—and if so how—serve as a vehicle for reconciliation and increased social cohesion in countries wrecked by civil conflict? This article analyses the case of South Africa and its experiences in the sports sector since the fall of apartheid, in an effort to explore the processes necessary to understand the potential sports may hold for peace building. By identifying initiatives in South Africa employed at the national, community and individual level of analysis, the article outlines the possible effects of sports on reconciliation in divided states. Through linking experiences from state policies, ngo activities and donor projects with social identity and reconciliation theory, the article outlines the possible positive and negative aspects of sports. Finally, important avenues for further research to uncover how to turn sports into effective political tools for post-conflict peace building are suggested.

Flatter world and thicker walls? Blogs, censorship and civic discourse in China

The Internet simply because it exists in China will not bring democracy to China. It is a tool, not a cause of political change. So far, the Chinese government has succeeded through censorship and regulation in blocking activists from using the Internet as an effective political tool. Likewise, blogs may be a catalyst for long-term political change because they are helping to enlarge the space for collaboration and conversation on subjects not directly related to political activism or regime change. However their role in China is more likely to involve political evolution—not revolution.

The Religious Right and Public Education: The Paranoid Politics of Homophobia

With the political rise of the U.S. Religious Right, public educators, administrators, and policy makers have faced numerous charges that public schools promote homosexuality. These charges have been made regardless of the actual content of various programs and curricula. Nevertheless, the typically incendiary charges seem an effective political tool in derailing and/or reshaping educational reform and program offerings. Drawing upon the methodologies of social historiography and historical policy analysis, this author examines the use of strategic homophobia by the Religious Right in their quest to "take back America,"concluding with a general discussion of homophobia, paranoid politics, and implications for educational policy makers and public school personnel.

Public Housing Program as a Vehicle for Economic and Social Transformation and Effective Political Tool: The Experience of Singapore

Public Housing Program as a Vehicle for Economic and Social Transformation and Effective Political Tool: The Experience of Singapore