Elements Of Political Culture Research Articles

INVENTION OF “ROMAN”, IMAGINATION OF “BARBARIAN”: THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE IMPERIAL IDENTITY OF ROME IN THE LATER TEXTS OF OVID

Purpose. The author in the presented article considers the late texts of Ovid, presented by Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. The purpose of the article is to analyze how the texts reflect the processes of formation of the imperial political culture and identity.
 Research novelty. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of the late texts of Ovid not as literary, but as political narratives that inspired the transformation of Roman identity, contributing to the actualization of the concepts of Self and Otherness.
 Materials and methods. Methodologically, the article is based on the principles of interdisciplinarity proposed in the framework of studies of nationalism, intellectual and cultural history, transplanted into the contexts of the literary history of Rome in the 1st century AD.
 Results. The article analyzes 1) Ovid’s attempts to form an ideal and positive image of power, 2) Ovid’s contribution to the development of Roman ideas about barbarians, 3) peculiarities of Ovid’s geographical perception of the formation of Roman territory as an imperial heterogeneous space. The contribution of the later texts of Ovid, represented by Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto and written in exile, to the formation of political imperial culture and identity is shown. The results of the study suggest that 1) Ovid was one of the first Roman authors who textualized the transformations of political power, contributing to the genesis of the cult of imperial power as an element of political culture; 2) in the formation and imagination of the images of the barbarians, Ovid continued the earlier tendencies of hierarchization and idealization of the inhabitants of the peripheral provinces: 3) the later texts of Ovid, written in exile, became a contribution to the development of the cultural geography of the emerging Roman Empire, based on the glorification and positive idealization of Italy through the prism of its opposition to the provinces.

Historical Consciousness of Society as an Element of Political Culture

Historical Consciousness of Society as an Element of Political Culture

Basic Elements of Political Culture (exemplified by the activity of deputies of I State Duma, Russian Empire)

Basic Elements of Political Culture (exemplified by the activity of deputies of I State Duma, Russian Empire)

Editorial

Editorial Kristin Stapleton As I enter the fifth year of my service as editor of Twentieth-Century China, I have been working with the editorial board to arrange a transition to new leadership. Margherita Zanasi, well known to scholars of twentieth-century Chinese history, has agreed to take up the position of editor. She joined our staff as associate editor in June of last year. Her first issue as editor will be October 2019. The journal will be in great hands. Our January number presents five research articles, a review essay, five book reviews, and an essay on a major new Chinese publication on historiography. The articles and essays appear in the print edition, included with membership in the Historical Society for Twentieth-Century China. All content, including the book reviews, is available online via Project Muse. Working from formerly obscure sources, Zhongping Chen analyzes the activities of Kang Youwei’s second daughter, Kang Tongbi, in North American cities. Chen argues that Kang Tongbi pioneered transnational feminist organizational work among the Chinese communities of Canada and the United States but that her early achievements were not sustained due to lack of support among male political activists and a failure to broaden the leadership of the organizations beyond Kang herself. Nagatomi Hirayama examines the interactions of Youth Party and Communist Party leaders among the Chinese in Europe in the early 1920s, arguing that key techniques of political struggle were developed in that environment. The history of hostility that developed during that period contributed to the extremism that characterized both parties over the next three decades. Monetary policy in the 1950s is the focus of an article by Matthew Lowenstein. Focusing on local party documents from Wenzhou in Zhejiang, Lowenstein shows that officials struggled to find ways to manage how farmers employed the currency that they received for sales of grain to the state. Party committees consciously created local monetary policy and promoted rural credit cooperatives to try to prevent the use of “excess cash” for a range of unapproved black-market economic activities. The “contest between censors and individuals over sexual representations and the desires they generated” is the subject of Y. Yvon Wang’s article. Wang argues that elements of political culture during the early People’s Republic—including self-confessions, encouragement to challenge established authority, and the spread of literacy and print media—opened some space for the discussion of sex and its manifestations. Despite its determination to stamp out “yellow” thoughts and yellow publications, the Chinese Communist Party was never able to banish erotic feelings or printed expressions of them. [End Page 1] Yun Liu analyzes the institutional history of the Hubei provincial government in regard to environmental protection. Concern over the impact of industrialization on the environment emerged in the 1950s with ad hoc efforts to address particular issues spurred by popular outcries. In the 1970s, new offices responsible for coordinating environmental protection policy and its implementation emerged, but they remained relatively weak in the face of the imperative for economic development in subsequent decades. Liu also examines the similar organizational history of an initiative to promote biogas in Hubei. Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik contributes an assessment of Wang Xuedian’s massive Chronology of Twentieth-Century Chinese Historiography to our Notes on Archives and Sources feature. In an essay entitled “Connecting China and the West: Culture, Christianity, and the Treaty-Port Press,” Victor Zatsepine reviews four works that collectively “paint a complex portrait of China’s interactions with the West and challenge our assumptions about China and the West as fixed units of historical analysis.” The five books reviewed in this issue examine, respectively, the history of the 1931 Yangzi flood, the attraction of Soviet culture to Chinese youth in the 1920s and later, recruitment of Shanghai youth by political organizations in the decades before 1949, the Paoge brotherhood in Sichuan during the 1940s, and the development during the 1911 Revolution of discourses and practices related to popular participation in governance. [End Page 2] Copyright © 2019 Twentieth Century China Journal, Inc

Mystifying but not misleading: when does political ambiguity not confuse voters?

The purpose of political campaigns in democracies is to provide voters with information that allows them to make “correct” choices, that is, vote for the party/candidate whose proposed policy or “position” is closest to their ideal position. In a world where political talk is often ambiguous and imprecise, it then becomes important to understand whether correct choices can still be made. In this paper we identify two elements of political culture that are key to answering this question: (i) whether or not political statements satisfy a so-called “grain of truth” assumption, and (ii) whether or not politicians make statements that are comparative, that is contain information about politicians’ own positions relative to that of their adversaries. The “grain of truth” assumption means that statements, even if vague, do not completely misrepresent the true positions of the parties. We find that only when political campaigning is comparative and has a grain of truth, will voters always make choices as if they were fully informed. Therefore, the imprecision of political statements should not be a problem as long as comparative campaigning is in place.

Структура політичної культури курсантів вищих військових закладів

У статті обґрунтовано структурні елементи політичної культури особистості. Проаналізовано підходи і терміни поняття “політична культура”, “спрямованість політичної поведінки” курсантів ВВЗ. Визначено різновиди спрямованості політичної поведінки особи, зіставлені з основним підходами спрямованості у різних культурах особистості.

Political “genotype” as a structural element of political culture

The article is devoted to the issue of genetic foundations of political culture in the context of the socio-political system changes. The author elaborates the concept of “political genotype” as a sustainable structural element of political culture that determines its content and the possibility of permissible variation. In this paper the main forms of existence of political genotype and its functions are also investigated; and “genetic” mechanism of political culture succession is explored.

Russian

Russian

Political knowledge: Theoretical formulations and practical implementation

Political knowledge is a key concept in the theory of political culture. Political culture reflects the political values in the society, modifies the political system and is modified by the latter. This element of political culture which defines the civic values and behavior and is an object which can be defined is the political knowledge. The democracy needs competent citizens and requires a certain level of knowledge on political matters – theoretical knowledge and knowledge about current political leaders and events. The purpose of this paper is to systematize theoretical formulations concerning political knowledge and the approaches for its empirical study. In this sense the main questions of the current work are: 1/ why the political knowledge is significant?; 2/ what is the definition of “political knowledge”?; 3/ how the political knowledge is studied empirically? The main tasks of the study are as follows: 1/ theoretical examination of sources on political knowledge; 2/ summary of suggested definitions; 3/ comparison of “political knowledge” with similar or related categories; 4/ examination of empirical studies on political knowledge. The main methods used are comparative approach and analysis of the content.

Empires ancient and modern: strength, modernity and power in imperial ideology from the Liberal period to Fascism

This article examines the image of Empire developed in public discourse in Italy during the late Liberal period and Fascism by placing it in the context of representations of the British Empire, with which Italian imperial ambitions were compared. There is a continuity in seeing the British Empire as the expression of industrial and commercial modernity and its resultant strength, but what in the Liberal period was seen as an unparalleled superiority became under Fascism a supremacy acquired in a particular period but now exhibiting signs of decline, which Fascism should contest and surpass. Admiration of the British was mixed with disparagement: key figures expressed a competitive resentment towards Britain and its dominant international position, seeing it as the epitome of ‘modern’ imperial power against which Fascism was destined to be measured. In the 1930s signs of the British Empire's decline were sought, developing the idea in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that British domination would also rise and fall, and announcing the replacement of the ‘British order’, founded on commercial modernity and the strength of money and capital, by Fascism's new civilisation, with its authentic heritage of imperial romanità. This competitiveness towards Britain, which historiography has principally seen as a component of foreign policy (as was clear over Ethiopia), has additional significance when seen as an element of political culture that relates to the concept of the State. The autonomy and strength of the State were an important feature of Fascism's self-representation and of its legal culture, and in this light the possession of an empire came to be seen as an essential aspect of statehood and power.

Społeczeństwo obywatelskie w Polsce 25 lat po wielkiej zmianie

Artykuł jest próbą pokazania ewolucji i stanu społeczeństwa obywatelskiego w Polsce w ćwierć wieku po transformacji ustrojowej na podstawie najważniejszych badań zastanych oraz badań i obserwacji własnych. Nawiązuje też do obecnej w polskim dyskursie od połowy XIX w. do dziś tezy o trudnościach w budowie polskiego społeczeństwa obywatelskiego. Z przeprowadzonej analizy wynika, że Polacy rzeczywiście rzadziej stowarzyszają się nie tylko w porównaniu z obywatelami Europy Zachodniej, ale nawet w porównaniu z obywatelami innych krajów postkomunistycznych. Polską specyfiką jest wreszcie z jednej strony wielość rozmaitych stowarzyszeń, w tym także reprezentujących tzw. nowe ruchy społeczne, z drugiej zaś – ich kadrowy charakter. Przynależność do stowarzyszeń nie jest w Polsce masowa, nie jest elementem kultury politycznej społeczeństwa, lecz ma charakter elitarny. Media społecznościowe mogą ułatwić komunikowanie się i współdziałanie w sprawach publicznych, ale na razie rolę tę pełnią w niewielkim stopniu.

Oppositions and their Member Nominations in the Conflict Communication Discourse of Rolandas Paksas (2003–2004)

The object of this article is the linguistic means of political conflict communication that are characteristic of the political discourse of the former President of the Republic of Lithuania, Rolandas Paksas (2003–2004). In modern democratic societies, political life is founded upon the actions of political parties, their duly elected leaders, and various political ideologies. In this context, political discourse, which records a variety of opinions and, frequently, their conflict, becomes an inseparable element of political culture. Conflict communication in political discourse may be perceived as the main research object of political linguistics, because the attack and winning of governmental positions occur in the context of the conflict of various political forces. That conflict is expressed through discourse. The aim of this study is to analyze how conflict communication was manifested in Lithuania during the period from 2003 to 2004. In political communication, an initial situation of verbal and non-verbal actions can become a source of conflict, while disapproval of such a situation is verbalized in political communication. Any individual who wants to influence political events becomes the subject of such communication. Moreover, this article discloses the fact that linguistic means are closely related to the ideology of the speaker and linguistic practices are conditioned by culture.

The Soviet Experience of Zionism: Importing Soviet Political Culture to Palestine

Soviet Russia in the 1920s was the scene of intensified Zionist activity, fed by an economic and existential crisis among large segments of the Jewish population and tolerated to a surprising degree by the Soviet authorities. The article explores these factors and the “Soviet context” of Zionism, and documents the powerful influences they exerted on the young membership of the Zionist organizations. The author's interest goes beyond articulated ideological positions to include learned habits of work, political and cultural practices, and perceptions of the social and the personal. She analyzes the transplantation of these elements of political culture into Palestine by the 3,000-odd young Zionist immigrants who arrived between 1924 and 1931, cautioning that ideas and practices were borrowed selectively and modified by the reality of the Jewish settlement in Palestine.

Religion, Social Class, and Political Tolerance

:This article examines the impact of individuals’ religious beliefs and practices, as well as their location in the social structure, on political tolerance-an important element of political culture. Here, political tolerance is measured as the willingness to extend civil liberties to those who want to overthrow the government by revolution. Employing this extreme form of political tolerance, hypotheses regarding its determinants are tested. The data utilized are from thirteen industrialized countries included in the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP)1996: Role of Government. Results show that both religion and social class affect political tolerance. In particular, non-Catholic Christians and non-Christians have lower levels of tolerance than those without a denominational preference. Independently of denomination, the more individuals attend church, the lower the level of their tolerance. Members of privileged social classes are particularly tolerant, and this effect remains significant even when controlling for social stratification: formal education, occupational prestige, and income. Moreover, the impact of religion and social class on tolerance is different in post-communist and advanced capitalist countries.

Living Together: International Aspects of Federal Systems

Living Together: International Aspects of Federal Systems

Political Culture and Development In a Rentier State: The Case of Kuwait

This article uses political culture to explain Kuwait's socio-economic and political development. It attributes Kuwait's political stability, its smooth transition from a subsistance economy to petroleum-induced prosperity and its ability to handle high rates of socio-economic changes to the management skills of the Kuwaiti ruling family and the commitment of the bureaucracy to the state. These two elements of political culture explain how the Kuwaiti regime has been able successfully to meet the challenges of development which would otherwise have made it a prime candidate for instability. The article concludes that Kuwait's political culture creates a bond between Kuwaiti citizens and their ruler, with the bureaucracy promoting and strengthening allegiance to the state and its development policies.