Idealistic Approach Research Articles

Populism: Utility of its Approaches and the Prospects of the Phenomenon's Resurgence in America

Populism in the 21st century became prominent in scholarly circles following Brexit and the 2016 electoral victory of Donald Trump. As democracy and globalization enthusiasts least anticipated these two monumental events in modern history, much emphasis came to be placed on the nature of populism and what conditions led to its manifestation in contemporary times. Working within this background, this study aims to review the ideational, political strategy and discursive approaches to the populism phenomenon and unpack the relative utility of each approach. I offer a thoughtful perspective that while the ideational approach’s “thin-centered” strand has the tendency to blur the boundaries of populism and lead scholars to accept “anything” as populism; it nevertheless enables us to comprehensively capture populism usage in multiple contexts. Further, I advance the notion that the 2020 electoral defeat of Donald Trump should not be misconstrued as the end or weakening of right-wing populism; the present state of American politics makes it ripe for populism resurgence.

Ideologically consistent, but for whom? An empirical assessment of the populism-elitism-pluralism set of attitudes and the moderating role of political sophistication

Scholars who study populism from an ‘ideational approach’ consider populism as a set of ideas based on a moralised anti-establishment thinking and a strong people-centrist view of politics. From this perspective, at a theoretical level, populist attitudes have the following two main contrasts: pluralism and elitism. In this article, we investigate the ideological consistency of the populism-pluralism-elitism set of attitudes among voters. Analysing data from Flanders (N = 1444), we make three main contributions. First, we show that there indeed exists an internally consistent relationship between populism, elitism, and pluralism among voters. Second, we demonstrate that this consistency only holds for the most politically sophisticated citizens. And third, we show that the relationship between populist and elitist attitudes is much more nuanced than often assumed. We show that it is possible to empirically distinguish between ‘expertise elitism’ and ‘anti-populist elitism’, two forms of elitism which relate differently to populist attitudes.

Populism in Europe: An Illiberal Democratic Response to Undemocratic Liberalism (TheGovernment and Opposition/Leonard Schapiro Lecture 2019)

AbstractIn this lecture, I lay out my approach to populism, which falls within the now dominant ‘ideational approach’ of populism, discuss the complex relationship between populism and politics, and identify some of the main causes of the ongoing ‘populist Zeitgeist’. My main arguments are: (1) while populism is related to (real and perceived) ‘crises’, these so-called ‘crises’ are often catalysts rather than prime causes of the rise of populism; (2) populism is essentially an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism; and (3) populism can only be overcome by more rather than less liberal democracy. I illustrate my arguments on the basis of the recent rise of populism in Europe, but believe they also largely hold true beyond that specific regional and temporal context.

Neoliberalisation of industrial relations: The ideational development of Dutch employers’ organisations between 1976 and 2019

This article considers the debate about the process of liberalisation of industrial relations from an ideational institutional perspective. While the gradual liberalisation of industrial relations has increased employer discretion, the role of employers’ organisations in this process is unclear. The case study is the Netherlands, a neo-corporatist country described as stable and robust but where institutional outcomes have undergone major shifts. To understand how this happened, the author analysed 40 years of collective bargaining policy using an ideational approach. The article argues that Dutch organised employers had the confidence that the strength of their ideas was enough to gradually but surely change industrial relations within the existing neo-corporatist framework by redefining the role of the firm, the state and the employee in the economy. The article also shows that since the early 2010s Dutch organised employers have changed their strategy leading to further de-collectivisation of industrial relations.

A Scoping Review of Research into the Origins of Cynicism Among Medical Trainees.

There is a perception that medical trainees begin their training idealistic and full of excitement. Yet, there is growing recognition in scholarly literature that this idealism is replaced by cynicism as a result of the training process itself. The ultimate goal of this study was to review the current literature on cynicism during medical training in order to identify factors that engendered its development. Equipped with this information, medical education can expand data collection regarding cynicism in order to further inform the development of solutions to combat it. This scoping review was conducted with a broad search for published articles across three medical education databases using search terms "cynicism in medical students." Additional relevant articles were added from reference lists of included articles. Articles on cynicism in practicing professionals were excluded as were articles that focused on burnout. The search identified 161 unique articles; 30 articles merited full reading and 19 ultimately met inclusion criteria. Emergent themes comprised three categories: causes of cynicism, variations of cynicism among populations, and outcomes of cynicism. Within these 3 categories, 9 sub-categories were also extracted. From Kopelman's perspective (Kopelman in JAMA 250(15):2006-10, [11]), the presence of cynicism verifies that students' ideals are still alive because they recognize that things could be better and are disappointed that they are not; cynicism may be preferable to despair. This review revealed that trainees have not suffered a death of their ideals, but a burial. Corrective action may be able to excavate what was lost-an idealistic approach to medical training.

Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the structure of a historical text

The subject of this research is the historical writing technique, which allows creating convincing images of the past. The goal of this article is ti analyze the structure of texts written by the historians and covering the period from antiquity to the XXI century. The theoretical framework consists of the idealistic approach towards history developed by the author. This article is first to examine the structure of texts written by the prominent historians of the past, such as Herodotus, Nestor, Karamzin, Klyuchevsky, and some historians of the XX – XX centuries from the perspective of idealistic approach and the use of quantitative methods. For comparison, analysis is conducted on the literary texts of A. S. Pushkin and V. S. Pikul dedicated to historical themes. The article employs content analysis, structural analysis, and terarchical cluster analysis of the texts on the basis of their structure. This revealed that the structure of these texts consists of the factual and theoretical statements, where the firs prevailed until the mid XX century. The use of cluster analysis allowed building a matrix of similarity of the works. The main method of creating convincing historical text lies in selection and interpretation of the the facts in accordance with the dominant worldview or a widespread historical concept. Facts are subordinated to the theory and confirm the fundamental ideas and historical concepts, as well as depict a convincing image of the past. The conducted analysis indicates that theory plays the key role in creating a convincing historical text, while facts are secondary; no significant impact of historical methods is revealed. The major difference between the analyzed historical and literary texts consists in the fact that there is no theory in the literary works.

Populism as a ‘corrective’ to trade agreements? ‘America First’ and the readjustment of NAFTA

AbstractThe past few years have seen an upsurge in populist politics around the globe. Yet, its potential impact on the liberal international order has been analyzed mainly from a discursive perspective, and much less is known about actual policy implications. Adopting an ideational approach to populism and taking the case of the NAFTA renegotiation process as a building block in the liberal economic order, this article studies the populist imprints of the revised agreement. First, we demonstrate how the populist division of society between ‘the corrupt elite’ and ‘the honest people’ and the emphasis on popular sovereignty were used as narrative frames in criticizing NAFTA. In a second step, through selected provisions, we show how alterations to NAFTA are considered as ‘populist corrections’ to guarantee greater representation for ‘the people’ and better safeguards for popular sovereignty under the USMCA. The article concludes with a discussion of potential implications for global trade.

Taking stock of the field of populism research: Are ideational approaches ‘moralistic’ and post-foundational discursive approaches ‘normative’?

This article sets out to examine two claims that have increasingly come to define the dividing lines between the ideational and the post-foundational discursive approaches to populism: namely, that the former is moralistic and the latter is normative in orientation. The article considers the conceptual merits of both critiques while using them to further examine some of the implicit assumptions and pitfalls within Cas Mudde’s and Ernesto Laclau’s paradigmatic conceptualizations of populism. It is argued that ideational scholars’ attribution of a moralistic particularity to populism runs the risk of pathologizing the latter for characteristics that are arguably constitutive of all politics, while the danger of a certain crypto-normativity can be seen in Laclau’s tendency to equate populism with the political and simultaneously emphasize its emancipatory effects. The key difference between the two approaches ultimately consists in the location that they assign to populism within the wider topography of politics itself.

How many different types of populists are there in Germany? An experimental approach with multiple methods

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the demand-side of populism; to this day, many studies implemented variable-centered approaches to investigate populist attitudes. Utilizing a convenient sample of the German voters (N = 839), we adopt a person-centered approach by estimating latent psychological profiles and examining the exchange between the supply and demand side of populism in an experimental setting. After treating the participants with real-life populist slogans in two different demonstration settings (contemporary vs. historical) and comparing them to a control group, we discover that the estimated populist profile is only reactive to the slogan in the contemporary demonstration. This finding expands the ideational approach to populism by showing that the populism's supply demand exchange mechanism is not only context-specific but also sensitive to subjective viewpoints. Acknowledging this person in the context approach contributes to the normative and empirical debates in the field by showing populist attitudes' subjective manifestations.

Populist Attitudes: Bringing Together Ideational and Communicative Approaches

The study of populist attitudes has thus far drawn heavily on ideational definitions of populism, focussing almost exclusively on attitudes related to dimensions such as people-centredness and anti-elitism. However, these accounts have largely ignored other approaches to populism, especially the discursive-performative school which see populism as something that is communicated and done by political actors. We argue that when studying populist attitudes, these approaches are not mutually exclusive. In this article, we develop a novel measure of attitudes towards populist communication and consider how these interact with populist ideational attitudes. Testing our measures on the Australian case, we demonstrate that attitudes towards populist communication exist independently of populist ideational attitudes, and that they have a significant effect on voting behaviour and on attitudes related to the ideational approach. Therefore, we argue that studies of populist attitudes need to take attitudes towards populist communication into account in future work.

Populism and nativism in contemporary regionalist and nationalist politics: A minimalist framework for ideologically opposed parties

Recent literature on the centre–periphery debate in European politics has produced a wide range of composite paradigms of regionalism, nationalism, and populism and nativism. A number of these definitions, however, tend to overemphasise the importance of populism by either framing it as a core ideology or by conflating it with the nationalism or regionalism of a specific party. This article makes three innovative contributions to populist studies by sustaining an ideational approach to populism and its combination with regionalist and nationalist ideologies. First, the article addresses the varied and at times conflicting composite paradigms of regionalism, nationalism, and populism by proposing a minimalist ‘populist regionalist’ and ‘populist nationalist’ conceptual framework; this places the emphasis on the type of nationalism and regionalism (left- or right-wing, civic or ethnic) to which populism and (potentially) nativism are attached. Second, by emphasising a clear distinction between populism and nativism, the article adds to a growing field of literature which aims to address the problem of ‘populist hype’. Finally, the contribution of a brief comparative case study illustrates how populism represents a key link between nationalists and regionalists ranging from the far-left to the far-right which are otherwise separated by nativism.

Framing right-wing populist satire: The case-study of Ghisberto’s cartoons in Italy

Abstract Over the last few years, right-wing populism has increased its popularity and political weight, successfully merging with Euro-scepticism, nationalism, xenophobia, religious symbolism, and aggressive forms of conservatism (e.g., anti-feminism, homophobia, and, in general, patriarchal politics). Several studies have focused on the communication strategies of contemporary populism, examining the latter’s use of traditional and new media. So far, however, little attention has been paid to the role and language of right-wing populist satire. Our study draws on the ideational approach to populism to explore how right-wing populism is expressed in satirical cartoons. This approach perceives populism as a thin-centered ideology, based on a Manichean division between ‘good people’ and ‘evil elites,’ which regularly combines with other ideological components (e.g., nationalism, Euroscepticism, xenophobia). Our analysis focuses on the Italian cartoonist Ghisberto, known for his provocative and frequently controversial work. We examine a sample of Ghisberto’s vignettes using multimodal analysis tools and Greimas’s notion of isotopy. The aim is to investigate how right-wing populist satire constructs its different targets (the EU, left-wingers, migrants, NGOs, women, etc.) and how populist ideology exploits cartoons’ communicative resources and power.

Bir İdeoloji Olarak Popülizm

Günümüzde popülizmi fikrî yaklaşım içinde değerlendirmek yaygınlık kazanmıştır. İdeolojileri kavram temelli bir morfoloji üzerinden değerlendiren Michael Freeden’in teorik çerçevesi popülizmi açıklama konusunda yardımcı olmaktadır. Buna göre ideolojiler yoğun-merkezli ve seyrek-merkezli ideolojiler olmak üzere iki ana kategoriye ayrılmaktadırlar. Popülizm sınırlı sayıda konuya ve kavrama odaklanan ve dar bir alanı kuşatan yapısıyla seyrek-merkezli bir ideoloji olarak tanımlanmaya uygundur. Bu çalışmada popülizmi, bir ideoloji olarak ele aldığımız taktirde, çekirdek ve bitişik kavramlarının neler olabileceğine dair bir öneri sunulmuştur. Popülizmin çekirdeği, halk ve etrafını kuşatan seçkinler, birlik ve egemenlik olmak üzere dört kavramdan oluşmaktadır. Bu çekirdeğe bitişik olan kavramlar temsiliyet, anti-çoğulculuk ve demokrasi olarak kendini göstermektedir.

The Effects of Basic Human Values on Populist Voting. An Analysis of 13 European Democracies

Basic human values have been used to predict voting patterns associated with the left–right and the authoritarian-libertarian divides. However, the connection between basic human values and populist voting has received less attention, especially if an ideational approach to populism is considered, that allows for separating it from traditional dimensions of competition. To fill this research gap, this article explores the relationship between basic human values and voting for left-wing populist parties (LPPs) and right-wing populist parties (RPPs), in 13 European democracies. The results suggest that values help explain voting for populist parties beyond the effect they have on preferences related to the economic left–right and the authoritarian-libertarian divides. First, basic predispositions reflecting tradition and conformity are negatively associated with voting for populist parties of the left and the right, thus suggesting a connection that is independent of the host ideologies to which populism attaches. Second, giving less importance to universalism and more to security correlates with voting for RPPs. Last, benevolence shows no effect on populist voting that is independent of other dimensions of political competition.

The Linguistic Idealism Question: Wittgenstein’s Method and his Rejection of Realism

Abstract After the publication of Wittgenstein’s posthumous work the question was raised whether that work involved idealist tendencies. The debate also engaged Wittgenstein’s immediate students. Resistance to presumed idealist positions had been ideologically central to G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell and other representatives of realism and early analytic philosophy. While Wittgenstein disagreed with them in key respects, he accepted their tendentious definition of ‘idealism’ at face value and bequeathed it to his students. The greatest flaw in the Realists’ view on idealism was their assumption of symmetry between realist and idealist approaches. For Realists, the chief task of philosophy was to establish what kinds of thing exist, and they took Idealists to offer an alternative account of that. However, the Idealists’ guiding concern was rather to investigate the subjective conditions of knowledge. In this respect, Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophical method was closer to theirs than to that of the Realists. This is especially obvious in his rejection of Moore’s idea of immediate knowledge. Ultimately, the trouble with Wittgenstein was not that he endorsed any kind of idealist ontology. It was his refusal to deliver the expected realist ontological messages on the supposed question of whether reality is independent of language or otherwise.

English

One of the debates regarding the EU’s role in the international relations has been what kind of an international actor the Union has been since its inception.  While, some argues that the Union has a realist approach, authors like Ian Manners see the EU as a ‘normative power’, which is more of an idealist approach in the international relations. The latter conception has brought a lot of attention towards the study of EU’s relations with the rest of the world; particularly, the developing countries in Sub Saharan Africa. In an attempt to navigate such debate, basically by examining the case of the EU and Ethiopian relationship, this article attempt to reveal the narrative of labeling the EU as a ‘Normative Power’ and democracy promoter is just an idiom. The article suggests that the strategic importance of Ethiopia to the EU, in the fight towards terrorism, peacekeeping, and managing migration in the region of the Horn of Africa has affected the EU’s commitment towards diffusing the alleged normative values in the country. Thus, this article divulges that the EU’s security interest overshadows the promotion of its democratic values and norms in Ethiopia.   Key words:  Normative power, Neo-realism, Cotonou agreement, Ethiopia.

Institutions, Policy, and Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in Latin America

Research has underscored the agenda-setting and policy implementation advantages associated with the concentration of political and policy-making authority. But to what extent does this concentration of authority within health policy-making institutions determine the early timing and depth of non-communicable disease (NCD) policies? Are other factors within and outside of government more important? Comparing one Latin American country exhibiting a strong concentration of political and policy-making authority, Mexico, to one that does not, Brazil, we find that weaker, fragmented political and policy-making powers in Brazil expedited the creation and implementation of NCD programs. As seen in Brazil, our findings suggest that the factors that account for the earlier adoption of NCD policies and successful implementation are the early institutionalisation of societal interests and pressures within the bureaucracy, the “bottom-up” diffusion of early policy ideas, and international policy recommendations. This institutional, participatory, and ideational approach may provide more important predictors for explaining variation in NCD policies.

The ideal essence of a museum object

The article examines the museum object from the theoretical and methodological positions of the idealistic approach, placing the Human Creator at the center of culture and history. The museum object is characterized as a substance of nature from the theoretical point of view. Also, it is designed in accordance with the ideological content of human consciousness and having value from the point of view of the main ideas of society’s worldview. An explanation of the phenomenon of information of a museum object is provided in the article. The process of endowing a museum object with such a specific property as museum character is substantiated and the procedure for its creation is described. At the same time, it is indicated that the main properties of a museum object are not immanent, but they are instilled in it by the consciousness of a museum worker and a visitor. The value of a museum object is determined by the ideas of the dominant worldview; when it changes, the value of the museum object also changes. The degree of expression of the main properties of a museum object such as expressiveness, attractiveness, and associativity also depend on the ideas of the current worldview. Original objects that sufficiently express the main content of the subject are of the greatest value. From the authors’ positions, criticism of views on the most important properties of a museum object is made. From the standpoint of an idealistic approach, a definition of authenticity of a museum object is provided and the particular importance of authentic objects inthe current time of multimedia and interactive technologies being introduced into museum practices is emphasized. The article concludes that the idealistic approach, offering a solution to many problems in relation to a museum object, nevertheless, is not at the moment an all-encompassing theory that can explain it in all manifestations of creation and functioning. However, according to the author, in comparison with other theories the idealistic approach is able to give more answers to questions in this area than other museological concepts.

Imagining the Grotian Europe: Hugo Grotius’s Vision of Europe and Ideas of European Integration

The paper offers a comprehensive study of Hugo Grotius’s vision for the new co­existential paradigm in Europe and ideas of European integration through the prism of political philosophy and international relations. The paper proceeds with the construction of a theoretical framework from various ideas of the thinker and de­fines it as the Grotian theory of European integration. Based on the complex analy­sis of the Grotian concept of a community of sovereign nations and with an inter­pretive approach, the paper studies the visions of European unity in early modern and modern times. Grotius’s recommendation of “general congresses of Christian powers” had a constructive role in the configuration of the emerging European sys­tem of sovereign nation-states and for the new patterns of co-existential consensus. Hence, Grotius’s idealistic and holistic approach towards nations and society of na­tions is viewed within the framework of the theories of structural constructivism and intergovernmentalism of European integration.

N.N. Strakhov, the journal Zarya and F.M. Dostoevsky’s works at the end of the 1860s

The article examines the significance of Nikolai Strakhov and the journal Zarya for Fyodor Dostoevsky’s works at the end of the 1860s, in particular, for the poetics of the story The Eternal Husband. Strakhov’s well-known review of Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace and the range of his writings on problems of psychology is analyzed in the article. The context of Strakhov’s works allow us to investigate the specifics of the mechanism for creating the image of an “eternal husband” in the writer’s story (the problem of the “predatory” and “meek” types) and consider the features of Dostoevsky’s psychological realism through the prism of Strakhov’s scientific developments, which have not yet been updated in Dostoevsky studies. Analysis of the poetics of dreams and the problem of will in the context of Strakhov’s objectively idealistic approach allows us to interpret them in accordance with the author’s modality of Dostoevsky’s creative laboratory. The study revealed the multidimensional character of the “eternal husband” type realized by Dostoevsky in the image of the Trusotsky type, which includes the typological features of the cuckold, the underground man and the dreamer. The conducted research makes it possible, at the present stage, to fill in the gaps that exist in the source study base of Dostoevsky studies.