Ideological Commitment Research Articles

The Crisis of Democracy and the Legitimate Rule of Law: Kelsen, Populism, and the Politics of Recognition

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: This essay examines how deliberation and recognition contribute to our understanding of democracy as a form of government combining two sources of legitimacy, one based on a legal procedure and the other based on ideological faith commitment.
 THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: Although joint deliberation about policy aims and recognition of person’s political identities are often assumed to be complementary (Habermas, 1996; Honneth, 2014; Taylor, 1994), I argue that this need not be the case. Political identities oriented by faith commitments pose a challenge to deliberation oriented by rational compromise. A one-sided emphasis on deliberation or recognition as exclusive sources of democratic legitimation threatens to debase the res publica to an arena of identity politics whose populist proclivities are antithetical to liberal democracy. Exacerbating this trend is the phenomenon of political polarization caused in large part by the economic stratification and socio-cultural fragmentation of a global, digital form of capitalism. My method for examining and resolving the problem relies on notable philosophers who have written about the legal and political implications of deliberation and the politics of recognition: Charles Taylor, Jürgen Habermas, and Hans Kelsen.
 THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The paper begins by summarizing the importance of recognition for political life and its ambivalent humanistic and nationalistic (and sub-nationalistic) senses (Part 1). I then turn to Kelsen’s critique of recognition as incompatible with the rule of law, followed by his qualified endorsement of recognition, understood as a necessary political ethos underwriting a liberal, deliberative form of democracy (Parts 2 and 3). Turning to our contemporary democratic crisis, I show how structural transformations within and between political parties and the public sphere have given rise to authoritarian forms of populism (Part 4). I conclude by noting how imperatives within digital capitalism produce ambivalent effects regarding the restoration...
 

Patterns of tolerance: how interaction culture and community relations explain political tolerance (and intolerance) in the American libertarian movement

Existing explanations of political intolerance and partisanship highlight how individuals’ ideological commitments and the homogeneity of their political environments foster intolerance toward other political groups. This article argues that cultural, interactional conditions play a crucial role in how personal and environmental factors work – or do not work – in local groups. Based on a four-year ethnographic study and 12 focus group discussions with two culturally distinct civic associations of American libertarians, I show how groups’ varying patterns of interaction, or “styles,” establish distinct cultural settings, in which different attitudes and behaviors seem sensible and appropriate, particularly regarding other political groups. Thus, when libertarian groups established a “community style” of interaction, viewing the relationship among members in terms of friendship and community bonds, they also opened their social activities to non-libertarians, collaborated with them in political projects, and viewed politics as a matter of advancing shared interests with people from other political groups. Comparisons across and within field sites show how this relationship between style and political tolerance works in different libertarian groups and different social environments. These findings highlight the role of local factors in explaining variations in groups’ levels of political tolerance and present a key mechanism—centered on interaction patterns—to supplement existing analyses of the relationship between political intolerance and changing forms of civic organizing in the US.

Conspiracies Gone Wild: A Psychiatric Perspective on Conspiracy Theory Belief, Mental Illness, and the Potential for Lone Actor Ideological Violence

ABSTRACT Conspiracy theory belief (CTB) has been increasingly recognized as a driving force of extremist violence. This paper provides a psychiatric perspective on the phenomenon of CTB-driven violence in an effort to bridge the gap between psychiatry and terrorism studies. First, it makes a case for the growing relevance of CTB to ideologically-motivated violence and lone actor violence in particular. Next, acknowledging common themes of shadowy forces, clandestine plots, and malevolent motives, it argues that CTB can be reliably disentangled from delusional belief and examines the association between mental illness and terrorism with a critical and skeptical eye. Finally, after reviewing the association between CTB and terrorist radicalization within existing models from psychiatry and terrorism studies, it outlines five stages of ideological commitment to characterize the link between CTB and the perpetration of ideological violence. Rather than alternately “explaining” terrorism on the basis of mental illness or “blaming” it on ideological extremism depending on biased attributions, modeling ideological commitment through a normalizing cognitive and socio-epistemic framework can facilitate a less stigmatizing understanding of the link between CTB and ideologically-motivated violence.

Simultaneously ‘national medicine’ and ‘East Asian medicine’: A cross-boundary network of medical exchange in wartime East Asia

Abstract This article examines a transnational network of advocates for Kampō (traditional) medicine in Japan, occupied China, and Manchukuo during the Sino-Japanese War (1931–1945), shedding new light on collaborationism, Asianism, and the modernization of traditional medicine in East Asia. In the 1930s, despite deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations, the Kampō revival movement in Japan joined forces with the struggle to preserve traditional medicine in China. In 1938, the Association of East Asian Medicine was founded in Japan, gathering together Chinese, Korean, and Japanese advocates under the banner of ‘East Asian medicine’. This article delineates the evolution of what I call ‘medical Asianism’ and how it was institutionalized in different parts of the Japanese empire. Participants in this network differed in their priorities and ideological commitments, yet they tactfully utilized the Japanese imperial infrastructure and wartime circumstances to promote traditional medicine. Their work laid important intellectual and institutional foundations for the postwar development of traditional medicine across East Asia. This study also contributes to a more nuanced understandings of collaborationism. The type of collaboration examined in this article was preceded by a long history of intellectual exchange, based on a shared body of knowledge and morals, motivated by mutual empathy, and for a cause that was much valued in postwar Asia. As a result, unlike most Chinese collaborators who were prosecuted as ‘traitors’, protagonists in this study continued to prosper professionally and became valuable assets in the postwar rebuilding of Sino-Japanese relations.

Parties’ Platforms, Migration, and Security: Patterns and Determinants

ABSTRACT The integration of national security concerns in states’ treatment of international migration has become a prominent issue in recent years as global migration is regularly presented as a security threat to host countries. In this paper, we illuminate a number of patterns and determinants of political parties’ treatment of immigration as a security matter–the securitisation of migration–through the comparative study of a new data set of parties’ platforms in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States that spans seven decades. We distinguish between the salience of migration and of security in parties’ platforms and explore the effect of various migration-related domestic-level factors in accounting for both phenomena. Our empirical strategy to assess the extent to which political parties have presented, promoted, and framed the security concerns associated with migration is based on textual data from parties’ platforms. We report three findings. First, parties have increasingly mobilised migration in their platforms regardless of ideological or partisan commitments since the 1990s, and the number of refugees hosted by a country constitutes the primary migration-related explanatory factor for this fact. Second, we show that mainstream right-wing parties account for the increase in the securitisation of migration in parties’ platforms. Finally, among migration-related domestic factors, the number of refugees has (surprisingly) a negative impact on the securitisation of migration in platforms. Overall, this paper illuminates important patterns in how parties discursively link security and migration, and investigates the determinants of this widespread phenomenon.

The Colors of the Populist Radical Right: The Strategic Use of Hue and Saturation in Party Logos

Populist radical right (PRR) parties tend to stress their differences from other parties. Yet at the same time, PRR parties have increasingly sought to integrate into party systems across the globe. In seeking to understand the way that PRR parties negotiate this paradoxical situation, the literature tends to focus on their policy offerings or discourse. We, on the contrary, investigate an underestimated aspect of their political communication: their visuals. Namely, we focus on the question of if and how PRR parties communicate their similarities or differences from other parties via the color profiles of their logos, given that color is a key way that political parties can signal (a) their ideological commitments (via hue) and (b) their approach to “valence” considerations (via saturation). We expect PRR parties’ attempts to signal their integration into party systems to be mainly sought via saturation, as a proxy for valence perceptions related to parties’ seriousness and competence, while we expect them to signal their difference from other parties via hue, given the incentive for PRR parties to communicate their ideological distance from non-populist parties as a marker of distinctiveness in the political market. We test our research questions by analyzing parties’ logos across 35 democracies in recent elections. Results largely confirm our expectations, demonstrating the utility of focusing on the visual aspects of PRR parties’ political communication. Interestingly, the results do not replicate if we focus on populist parties beyond the PRR party family.

When Socialist Legacy Meets International Norms: Gender Quota Adoption and Institutional Change in China

ABSTRACT Gender quotas have a long history in China, with the earliest gender quota introduced in 1933 in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) border regions. Yet, research on China’s gender quotas has been scarce. This study addresses the gap by examining the process of gender quota adoption in China’s subnational Party-States and the People’s Congresses. Using an institutional approach, we argue that quota adoption in China was a process of ‘institutional layering’ that lasted from the late 1980s to the 2010s. During this process, domestic actors contested the CCP’s existing personnel rules and strategically exploited the CCP’s ideological commitment to gender equity and its need for an improved international image during the second wave of global gender quota adoption. Two changes have happened during the ‘layering’ process: the slow diversification of domestic actors, including both state and non-state ones, and the shifting of the actors’ working strategy from an informal and network-based approach to an institutionalized one that operated through formal channels. In so doing, this article expands the comparative literature on gender quotas, which has been preoccupied with quotas in elected parliaments, and enriches our understanding of Chinese politics.

Gender roles and political ideology in the pandemic: experimental evidence from Western Europe

The economic shutdown and national lockdown following the outbreak of COVID-19 forced families to take on tasks themselves that were previously outsourced, like child care and housecleaning. These tasks were, and to a degree still are, traditionally performed by women. The concern is that the pandemic placed these burdens again primarily on their shoulders. In this study, we examine how the lockdown-imposed difficulties to the outsourcing of essential household tasks affected views on who in the family should sacrifice their career to cope with new challenges, and how these views interacted with ideological commitments. Analyzing data collected from an experiment embedded in a representative survey of nearly 4,000 residents from five West European countries, we find that the pandemic reduced the ideological polarization between the political left and right with regards to gender roles and household tasks. However, this reduced polarization is primarily found among female respondents.

Наукові дослідження Миколи Битинського в Канаді

The character of Mykola Bytynsky and his activities have not yet been sufficiently studied and analyzed, although they undoubtedly deserve it. Mykola Bytynsky is an expert in the field of heraldry and the author of a number of articles and surveys devoted to the problems of city and land heraldry in the historical and ethnographic regions of Ukraine. Due to the fact that the works of M. Bytynsky are scattered in various journals of public and religious associations of the Ukrainian community abroad, his scientific heritage has not become the object of special research. The article examines and analyzes the activities of M. Bytynsky in the field of Ukrainian heraldry and vexillology in Canada. M. Bytynsky was one of the organizers of the Ukrainian Genealogical and Heraldic Society, which contributed to the popularization of heraldry among the Ukrainian community in emigration. In his scientific activity, M. Bytynsky, first of all, devoted himself to the study of the city and territorial coats of arms of Ukraine, as evidenced by the huge number of publications during the years 1953-1972. M. Bytynsky was also engaged in the study of Ukrainian heraldic terminology, in particular the divisions of the shield, the peculiarities of the use of helmets, mottos, mantles, tents and crowns. Along with explanations, he gave examples of blazoning (description) of coats of arms. Due to the ideological commitment and political motivation of the city heraldry of the time in the Ukrainian SSR, the majority of city coats of arms were created in gross violation of the basic prescriptions of theoretical heraldry. M. Bytynsky, who was a leading specialist and practical specialist in the production of coats of arms, developed a number of recommendations that have not lost their relevance to this day and are an important evidence of the strength of the coat-of-arms tradition of Ukraine. For the first time, M. Bytynsky drew attention to the problems that objectively arose during the study of Ukrainian city symbols. The elaborated epistolary of M. Bytynsky also made it possible to analyze the creative ideas and directions of the researcher’s scientific activity, as well as the socio-cultural factors that had an impact on his life and activity. First of all, attention is drawn to the correspondence of M. Bytynsky with the famous heraldist R. Klymkevich, in which the researchers discussed a number of topical problems of Ukrainian city and land heraldry. Let’s note that the letters are carriers of versatile and unique information, which contributes to the understanding of a wide range of topical issues. Due to the lack of many sources, the letters will contribute to filling in the white spots in the study of scientific activity. In view of this, they are important sources for the reconstruction of the scientific activity of researchers of auxiliary historical disciplines.

John Witherspoon and Slavery: Ideology versus Praxis

This article reassesses the life and legacy of John Knox Witherspoon on the basis of his relationship to slavery. It argues that Witherspoon's ideological commitment to Presbyterianism came into constant tension with the realities of slavery both in his native Scotland and in the burgeoning American colony he eventually called home. Three snapshots in Witherspoon's life encapsulate this tension: his interaction with Jamie Montgomery, an enslaved man whom Witherspoon baptized in Scotland; his contributions to the scheme to train two free African Americans—John Quamine and Bristol Yamma—for their mission to Africa; and his tutoring of John Chavis, a free Black man from Virginia, at the same time he held property in slaves. Most accounts of Witherspoon's life fail to interrogate these snapshots and so fail to grasp a nuanced portrait of the imminent figure. This article parses through his unequal treatment of the African Americans he taught and the African Americans he enslaved to deliver a new reading of Witherspoon. This reading, in turn, maps onto a broader reconsideration of the founding principles of the early United States.

Criminal Law Perspective In The General Elections That Occurred In Indonesia

The enactment of Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning General Elections is proof that Indonesia really designs elections on a strong, constitutional, legal basis and regulates everything related to elections on a legal basis. Enforcement of election crimes in Indonesia needs to be improved as an effort to create a democratic system that is certain and just. Without legal certainty it will lead to anarchism and result in death, therefore democracy must provide legal certainty to all parties who seek justice. So the supremacy of law must be prioritized in guarding the democratic process in Indonesia. Whether the election criminal law enforcement mechanism is enforced from the start in accordance with the provisions of procedural law (due process of law) or not (undue process), if it has been implemented in accordance with the provisions of procedural law then justice has been carried out and upholds the ideology envisioned by the supremacy of law ( Rechtstaat) is based on democratic ideals to realize comprehensive justice so that election criminal law is used as a tool to postpone the ideological commitment to the ideals of establishing the Indonesian state. The aim of this research is to determine the perspective of criminal law on the implementation of elections in Indonesia. The method used in writing this research is normative juridical using statutory regulations and context.

Criminal Responsibility Of Suspects And Victims Of Corruption In The Private Bribery Sector In Indonesia

Suspects and Victims of the Arbitrariness of Authorities in the Criminal Justice System Examining whether the Criminal Enforcement Process in the case of Corruption Crimes has been carried out correctly both in the order of Making Legal Norms and in terms of Law Enforcement. Correct and fair resolution of criminal cases is not only seen from the results of the verdict handed down by the judge. Rather, it is seen from the victim who is asked to be held accountable based on the principle of business judgments and is made a suspect for the business decisions he takes in the criminal justice system.. To realize the objectives of criminal justice within the framework of the criminal justice system, the criminal justice model that is guided is actually based on the due process of law. Whether the criminal justice is enforced from the start in accordance with the provisions of procedural law (due process of law) or not (undue process), if it has been implemented in accordance with the provisions of procedural law then the justice has implemented and upheld the ideology envisioned by the rule of law (Rechtstaat). and a democratic society. In order to uphold an honest criminal justice system from start to finish as a form of ideological commitment and justice for people who are dealing with criminal trials, whether suspects, witnesses or victims, this is the main or absolute goal. The aim of this research is to determine the responsibility of a suspect and victim as a manifestation of law enforcement ideology. The method used in writing this research is normative juridical using statutory and conceptual approaches.

Toward Disruptive Agency

We take up disruption in this article to consider what sustained attention to disruption and its relationship to agency can bring to scholars and educators. We do so by revealing the ideological commitments, relationships, and labor that make disruption possible and valuable. We also look to Indigenous studies and new materialism to explore matter and ethical responsibilities at the interstices of rhetorical practice and work. From this, we propose a theory of disruptive agency that seeks to understand how disruptions emerge and how they can be rhetorically engaged for progressive change.

Restorative Justice in a No Excuses Charter School

Restorative justice practices are an increasingly popular approach to behavioral management, rooted in relationships rather than the behaviorist approach of many traditional forms of schooling. Research on restorative practice implementation demonstrates that schools rarely have time to consider cultural change, as they rush to reduce suspensions and discipline gaps. Presumably, this mismatch between culture and practice would be even more pronounced in a no-excuses charter, but this presumption warrants inquiry. Framed by theories of institutional logics, the current study examines an historically no-excuses charter school’s shift toward restorative justice. We find that a behaviorist, “no-excuses” logic inhibits teachers and administrators from embracing the cultural and ideological foundations of restorative justice, even as they express ideological and intellectual commitment to the shift in practices. We close with implications for school leadership and restorative justice implementation.

Are party families in Europe ideologically coherent today?

AbstractResearchers classify political parties into families by their shared cleavage origins. However, as parties have drifted from the original ideological commitments, it is unclear to what extent party families today can function as effective heuristics for shared positions. We propose an alternative way of classifying parties based solely on their ideological positions as one solution to this challenge. We use model‐based clustering to recast common subjective decisions involved in the process of creating party groups as problems of model selection, thus, providing non‐subjective criteria to define ideological clusters. By comparing canonical families to our ideological clusters, we show that while party families on the right are often too similar to justify categorizing them into different clusters, left‐wing families are weakly internally cohesive. Moreover, we identify two clusters predominantly composed of parties in Eastern Europe, questioning the degree to which categories originally designed to describe Western Europe can generalize to other regions.

An Archipelago of Aid

Community pantries proliferated in the Philippines to address the corporeal hungers debilitating Filipino bodies and the Philippine body politic at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. These initiatives saw Filipinos contributing their physical labour, material resources and cultural capital to the widely celebrated cause and demonstrating expanded notions of compassion and community spirit in the face of bureaucratic mismanagement and government neglect. Many have since lauded this socio-civic phenomenon, calling it ‘a silent revolution’, ‘a ray of sunshine amidst the stories of gloom’ and an indicator of the Filipino people’s generous ‘will to give’. Examining an array of materials such as interviews, photographs, news features, video recordings and other online resources that lay bare the bodily, visual, and discursive components of these civic engagements, I show in this article how community pantries constituted a scattered and spontaneous yet coordinated network of action that mirrored the archipelagic formation of the Philippines. This ‘archipelagic effect’ involved differently stationed Filipinos who formed autonomous or interconnected collectives and engaged in improvised and shape-shifting mechanisms with the view of not only extending immediate aid to the hungry, the homeless, and the unemployed but also reworking existing socio-political structures. Such an effect also included an unprecedented convergence and circulation of goods, bodies, talents, ideas, images, creative and critical initiatives, cultural practices, and ideological commitments from across the country. I argue that this mode of doing politics, activism, and social work deviated from the ‘patronizing logics of philanthropy’, countered statist efforts of controlling the Filipino people, and accentuated a type of expressive resilience and embodied resistance that was, indeed, central to a vernacular formulation of action hunger. I conclude the article with reflections on the importance of performative solidarities – how people come together, share their resources and provide nourishment to others – in foregrounding the usefulness of the arts and other embodied acts in establishing a liveable life for precarious populations caught up in tense political climates.

Spying (in)spires: The dwindling likelihood of an Oxford spy ring to rival the Cambridge Five

ABSTRACT This article asks why no comparable spy ring to the Cambridge Five developed concurrently at Oxford University and argues that, based on an updated and comprehensive review of primary and secondary sources, holding out hope for a new revelation of one may be waiting for Godot. We argue that whilst structural and institutional factors played a significant role in the creation of a mid-20th century Cambridge spy ring, the role and agency of individuals was paramount, and Oxford was missing comparable personalities. Specifically, the galvanising effect of an intellectual authority figure in the person of Cambridge Don Maurice Dobb, the greater attention, talent, and strategy by Soviet intelligence recruiter Arnold Deutsch, and the higher level of ideological commitment and social reinforcement on the part of the Cambridge Five themselves—as a ring—were of greater significance. Not all these factors were present in Oxford and casts increasing doubt on whether an equivalent Oxford spy ring ever existed. Recently declassified files reveal that Oxford did produce Soviet era spies, but never a collective akin to that of the infamous Cambridge spies, who remain a unique historical and cultural touchstone to the present day.

What does the ideal citizen look like in China’s new era? A bottom-up view

ABSTRACT China has reformed the way it nurtures a generation of citizens for the new era of the Xi administration. School curricula have been reformed and more teachers have been trained to deliver political – ideological education. While the central authorities play a crucial role in forging a vision of the ‘ideal’ citizen from the top down, the enactment of centrally promulgated policies and curricula is complicated. This study explores a bottom-up view from the perspective of a group of university teachers, the institutional actors who socialise young people into ‘ideal’ citizens on the ground. Four themes emerge in the informants’ narratives: ideological commitment, abilities, developing a global outlook, and the influence of traditional culture. The paper concludes with a discussion of the interplay between socialist, traditional, and neoliberal rationalities in the making of Chinese citizens.

Politicizing Masks? Examining the Volume and Content of Local News Coverage of Face Coverings in the U.S. Through the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic quickly became a political and health communication crisis whose impact varied by geographic location in the United States. Although local television is known to be an important source of public information, little is known about how it covered the pandemic. We analyze the volume and content of local TV coverage of masks from 758 stations across all 210 U.S. media markets in the first 22 months of the pandemic to assess how often news mentions masks and the extent to which mask wearing is framed as a contentious issue by highlighting controversy and partisan cues. Overall, we find widespread but variable attention to masks throughout the pandemic at levels frequently matching or exceeding the initial coverage of the CDC recommendation to wear face coverings. Controversial coverage of face masks peaks in late summer 2021 at roughly 23%, amid the rise of the new Delta variant, although partisan controversy comprises a relatively small portion of mask-related television news. Case rates, population size and density of the market, and partisanship of the local area are associated with volume and content of mask coverage, but these relationships vary over time. We also find evidence that stations owned by the Sinclair Broadcasting Group air fewer stories about masks and more controversy including partisan conflict in their mask coverage. The results add further support to the notion that the messaging surrounding COVID-19 on television varies in part based on geographic location and corresponding demographics but may also vary based upon ideological commitments of station owners.

Why is Macroeconomics Neglected in Equity and Inclusion Strategies for Sustainable Development? An Exploration of Four Systemic Barriers

ABSTRACT The literatures on Macroeconomics and Human development and capabilities have been described as constituting “two different worlds” that never intersect despite the importance of macroeconomics for human development (Nayyar [2012]. “Macroeconomics and Human Development.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 13 (1): 7–30.). This paper explores the barriers that keep the two worlds apart in policy making. It considers the case of national strategies for one is implementing UN Agenda 2030 (better known as the SDGs) with a commitment to equity and inclusion; the majority of which rely on social protection and neglect macroeconomic policies. This paper proposes four systemic barriers in the policy making processes: institutional silos and gaps, informational deficits, ideology, and interests. We highlight how these barriers play out in mutually reinforcing ways to construct resilient barriers: narrowly defined mandates of central banks and other economic agencies are reinforced by ideological commitments and the influence of vested interests to neglect inclusion, equity and sustainable development as policy objectives, and in policy research agendas. This in turn creates a vicious circle of information deficits with respect to policy alternatives. The paper discusses how these barriers play out differently in different policy making contexts for different stakeholders.