Ideological Loyalty Research Articles

Ciencia, mar y poder. Historia sociopolítica del Instituto Oceanográfico de Venezuela (1958-1969)

This work consists of a socio-political history of the Instituto Oceanográfico de Venezuela (IOV), a research center with which the field of Marine Sciences began its process of academic institutionalization in Venezuela. The initial decade (1958-1969) of the institute meant a start and boom of research in the Venezuelan seas, even in the context of controversies and confrontations for the control and direction of the institute, which in turn were directly influenced by the Venezuelan political climate of the time and because the IOV was also the academic center that made was possible to create the Universidad de Oriente (UDO) in 1958 in the city of Cumaná (Sucre state, Venezuela), a higher education center created in 1958 in the city of Cumaná (Sucre state, Venezuela), Venezuela), a center of higher studies created by the new political elite of the nascent Venezuelan representative democracy. The analysis was based on primary documents from the archive of Pedro Roa Morales, academic archives of the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) and the UDO and the Oriente Universitario (UDO’s newspaper in the 1960s). These are letters, minutes, telegrams and manuscripts that were made available to us by Evelyn Zoppi de Roa - Pedro Roa’s widow - in 2017. As a university project that summoned scientific and political leaders, the UDO was born as a space where science converged with political- partisan practice through ideological loyalties and confrontations, features that did not take long to appear in the IOV. Thus, politicians (and politics) prevailed over scientists even in an academic institution, putting in check the project that gave rise to it.

Conscientiousness of representatives and agreement with their party positions

ABSTRACT Party unity is an important feature in contemporary democracies. Ideological loyalty, disciplinary measures implemented by party leaders and homogeneity of preferences among elected representatives lead them to act in unison. This study focuses on the last mechanism and assesses under which conditions party representatives agree on policy positions. It argues that the personality trait of conscientiousness is linked to how a representative agrees with her party’s position and that this relationship is moderated by her knowledge of dissent between party voters and representatives. This study use data from a comparative survey conducted among 866 representatives in Belgium, Canada, Germany and Switzerland, and among the party constituencies in the four countries. Results show that conscientious representatives are more likely to differ significantly from the position of their party peers if they spend more time on constituency work and if their voters’ preferences are not congruent with those of their fellow representatives.

Between Ideological Loyalty and Political Adaptation: The “Agrarian Question” in the Development of Bulgarian Social Democracy, 1891–1912

At the end of the nineteenth century, European social democracy found acceptance among some circles of the Bulgarian intelligentsia. However, the social base of this new ideology, including industrialization and urbanization, was almost missing. This contradiction confronted the young party with the challenge of adapting to local social reality, not only leading it to a chain of internal ideological dilemmas questioning its social democratic identity, but also stimulating various political interactions with the public environment, culminating in a change of national politics. The present article lays out the problem of social democracy’s political adaptation by focusing first on the “Agrarian Question” debates among the party elite through investigation of the public discussions in the congresses, newspapers, and letters, and second, on political practice in the field of electoral politics through analyses of electoral statistics and mobilization discourses. The article’s main conclusions are that (1) dialectics between the intensive transfer of modern ideas and the complex process of their adaptation to national conditions is one of the “moving contradictions” of Bulgarian social democracy’s development in the Balkan peripheral context, (2) the Bulgarian Workers’ Social Democratic Party’s (BWSDP) experience confirms the more general tendency in Second International social democracy of a strong interdependence between electoral politics and ideological debates, and (3) the efforts for political mobilization of the petty peasants and artisans through Marxist language led to its evolution into a socialist-populist discourse that stimulated massification of political participation and encouraged but also opposed the early Agrarian movement.

FEATURES OF THE LAST STALINIST ELECTION CAMPAIGN IN TRANSCARPATHIA (ELECTIONS TO LOCAL COUNCILS ON FEBRUARY 22, 1953)

The article examines the last Stalinist election campaign in Transcarpathia – the local council elections, which were held on February 22, 1953, a few days before the death of the Soviet dictator. Unlike the first two waves of Soviet elections in the region in 1946-1947 and 1950-1951, they already took place without any excesses for the authorities. During this time, the Bolsheviks managed to completely Sovietize Transcarpathia, which manifested in the implementation of a personnel policy primarily based on the verification of "ideological loyalty" to the communists, numerous campaigning and propaganda measures, strict censorship, and repressive policies. These factors soon paid off. The Soviet government already achieved the cherished "99.9%" in the elections without much difficulty. The article highlights the course of the election campaign: the work of election commissions (event plans and their implementation, reports on their implementation), the procedure for nominating candidates, the tasks of campaigning and propaganda work for campaigning groups, points, and individual agitators (conducting lectures, discussion reports, reading newspapers and magazines) instructions to the local press, radio, clubs, and libraries), the election ritual on election day (honorary votes of the most worthy voters, delivering patriotic speeches in honor of the Communist Party, the Soviet Government and the "great leader of the peoples, Comrade Stalin," reports on the fulfillment of socialist obligations Yazan) and other attributes of the "national holiday." It should also be noted that the mechanisms for conducting elections developed by the authorities during Stalin's rule and the election traditions imposed on the population lasted almost until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Memes As A Symbol Of Political Communication

Memes as a culture of political consumerism restructure the position of communication in society, shrink traditional forms of political communication and cause ideological loyalty to erode deeper. The study used a qualitative design to explain forms of political propaganda communication as a means of communicating. The method used is a critical analysis of the contents of Grant Kien's book entitled Communicating with Memes Consequences in Post-truth Civilization. The results generally explain that Grant Kien's book Communicating with Memes Consequences in Post-truth Civilization provides a balanced analysis of the purpose of memes, identity politics, and reconstruction of Political communication in the post-truth era. In the early chapters, Grant Kien gave assumptions about the chaos of communication posted on social media called Digital Steamworks . In his writing, Kien said that memes on social media are a tool of political propaganda and a means to corner the position of the media and society. The political styles highlighted on social media are increasingly operating as a focus for post-truth lifestyle choices rooted in identity politics. Political deconstruction became one of the conservative options, supporting a more eclectic, fluid, and specific form of political recognition. Meanwhile, memes tend to be a means of reproducing political messages and propaganda in a narrower spectrum. The study concludes that memes, which were initially a form of the general message of communication, shifted into a tool of political propaganda.

A Colonial Celebrity in the New Attention Economy: Cecil Rhodes’s Cape-to-Cairo Telegraph and Railway Negotiations in 1899

Abstract In 1899, the British colonialist Cecil Rhodes went to Berlin to negotiate about his fantastical ‘Cape-to-Cairo’ telegraph and railway scheme with his former nemesis, the German emperor Wilhelm II. Why did this initiative of Rhodes, who was held responsible for the disastrous Jameson Raid and no longer occupied any official position, receive so much coverage and legitimacy in the international press? Despite the vast scholarship on Rhodes, there is strikingly little analysis of these negotiations, considering that they were hailed as marking the rehabilitation of Rhodes and the troubled Anglo-German relationship, signalled that Germany would not support the Boers in their conflict with Britain, and led to Germany’s inclusion in the prestigious Rhodes Scholarships scheme. This article analyses the reporting of the negotiations and shows that Rhodes overshadowed other political figures in the competitive ‘attention economy’ of the emerging mass press. Building on the notion of ‘celebrity politics’, it argues that the press attention for him resulted from three interconnected logics: a political logic of agenda-setting and ideological loyalties, a journalistic logic in which scarce access to Rhodes fostered his mythologising, and a mass media logic that increasingly superseded ideological divides. This mass media logic dictated a focus on Rhodes’s personal narrative (infused with literary and colonial themes), personifying politics, and performing these politics in a novel business-like style. This press attention gained Rhodes informal power and shows how, by the end of the nineteenth century, successful politics required the new ability of political figures to attract and leverage media attention. Moreover, it constituted the precondition for the growing cult of Rhodes in the twentieth century, and the subsequent criticism of this cult and its representation of racism in recent times.

Late Soviet Sociology about Old Age and Gender: There Were Theoretical Insights

The focus of the article is construction of old age and gender in the late Soviet sociology. The author is engaged in secondary analysis of the texts based on the empirical research conducted in the 1970s-1980s. The author argues that Soviet sociologists produced empirically based knowledge about Soviet elderly, which contradicted with ideological claims of the party state. Their texts were balancing between ideological loyalty and positivist knowledge. Researchers were well informed about international sociological discussion of the time: they criticized ‘bourgeois’ disengagement theory of ageing and hailed active ageing paradigm. Empirical studies confirmed however that the life of Soviet elderly was very different from the normative model of active ageing Soviet style. Not many aged citizens were engaged in social activities, most of them experienced shortage of contacts, loneliness and social exclusion. Biographical passage to retirement has been fearful and traumatic experience with lack of institutional help and family care as the preferred option. Men showed more vulnerability to the losses of retirement than women did who are claimed to be better adapted to the life outside paid job due to the Soviet gender contract. Thus, Soviet sociologists in fact were critical to the elderly care regime of the late-Soviet period, though expressed their criticisms in the veiled way under the disguise of the ideological clichés. Though Soviet sociological research was mostly policy oriented and is criticized for its ‘theoretical poverty’, the author argues that certain theoretical insights are fruitful and relevant for the current research on ageing in Russian society.

Almost “Direct Route”: Ideological Meanings in the Construction of the Factory Identity of Uralmashplant Workers

The article is devoted to the study of factory identity based on the material of autobiographical texts of Uralmash workers written in 1967—1984. The novelty of the research is in the theoretical approach to identity as a discursive concept, which is structured by systematically recurring themes in personal narratives. The main focus is on ideological meanings in autobiographical texts. Their ritual and integrative functions are established, which are realized in the analyzed texts. The leading role of ideological meanings in describing the construction of a plant and in constructing the image of the enemy and the threat posed by it for the plant and the collective is shown. The ways to include memoirs of the theme of victims of political violence in the 1930s in the texts and to restore their names in the factory biography are discussed in the article. It is proved that the introduction of the theme of victims of political repression, as well as ritual formulas of ideological loyalty, reproduced by naive authors with involuntary distortions and deviations from the norms of written literary speech, results, among other things, in “corrosion” of the Soviet official discourse and is one of the factors that led to the “performative shift” characteristic of the late Soviet era. The analyzed text material has not previously been the object of research.

Flying with the Stars: Performance, Loyalty, and Awards in the Soviet Air Force during WWII

One of the main debates in the study of authoritarianism concerns whether autocrats promote and reward agents based on performance or ideological loyalty to stave off the threat of elite coups. Yet autocrats often face existential crisis situations, particularly military conflict, where their survival depends on the performance of lower-level cadres defending the regime. In this paper, we develop a new theoretical framework for understanding how autocrats manage bureaucratic selection under crisis. Introducing the concept of ‘bounded meritocracy’, we theorize that although merit dominates decisions over rewards and promotions, autocrats also strategically prioritize other non-merit considerations in order to prevent shirking and defection by out-group members. To test our hypotheses, we combine qualitative archival work with analysis of a new dataset of 2,898 top Soviet fighter pilots during WWII that includes unique measures of individual performance –a number of downed Axis planes– as well as markers of regime loyalty and out-group status. The results show that wartime imperatives led Soviet officials to prioritize merit over party loyalty, while also trumpeting the achievements of non-Slavic aces as part of a propaganda campaign to increase support for the war effort among potentially disloyal minority groups.

Laying Claim to Social Media by Activists: A Cyber-MaterialDétournement

This article examines current appropriations of social media by activists of the radical left in Greece and Sweden. Previous research has shown that the discourse concerning social media’s empowering potential is embedded in commercial values that contradict the value systems of many activists who engage in struggles against the current economic system. We employ the notion of détournement, which describes how social movements turn something aside from its normal course or purpose. Based on interviews and online ethnographic observations, we seek to understand how and with what consequences social media facilitate and limit collective action. The article enhances our understanding of activists’ social media use by turning our attention to the sociotechnical impact of social media on collective action initiated by leftist groups as well as the relationship between ideological loyalties and the political economy of corporate social media.

Public Verse and Property: Marvell's "Horatian Ode" and the Ownership of Politics

Most recent scholarship on Marvell's "Horatian Ode" has read the poem as an expression of Marvell's loyalty to Cromwell and republican government. This paper looks beyond categories of ideological loyalty and instead argues that the ode offers a distinct expression of the social and cultural foundations of the new regime. The ode bases its praise for the state on its citizens' common interest in securing property rights and on their communal ownership of government. The speculation in Irish land in the 1640s by English investors that Cromwell's military victory secured for them provides the crucial historical context for this representation.

Corruption in Autocracies

Corruption is typically depicted as a result of one of two factors: a lack of political accountability or insufficient state capacity. Nonetheless, substantial variation in corruption levels exists even within the set of politically unaccountable high-capacity regimes. In this paper, we examine a third determinant of corruption ‐ the ideological appeal of the government ‐ and demonstrate that this variable can explain variation in the types and levels of corruption experienced in politically unaccountable regimes. Using a model of both moral hazard and adverse selection, we predict that (1) regimes that inspire the intense ideological loyalty of the populace are likely to enjoy low levels of petty corruption and that (2) autocratic regimes that enjoy such intense support from only a narrow segment of the populace will erect credible anti-corruption institutions. Political corruption, by contrast, need not covary with levels of ideological support. We illustrate the mechanisms of our model through a series of case studies that demonstrate the importance of ideology in driving levels of corruption ‐ with a particular focus on low levels of corruption in ‘developmentalist’ regimes. Finally, we discuss the relevance of our findings to other ‐ democratic ‐ political settings.

Public Interactions between Orthodox Christian and Muslim Organisations at the Federal Level in Russia Today

When we discuss Orthodox–Muslim relations in Russia we need to be clear which particular partners we are talking about. My article is about relationships among the religious leaderships at the federal level. These relationships are essentially asymmetrical, and this is the result not only of differences in the number of believers, but also of differences in political weight and ideological loyalty to the regime. One important factor is that Orthodoxy is part of the basis of Russian ethnic self-identification, whereas Islam has not become a unifying factor for many varied ethnic groups in the country. Orthodox and Muslims have asymmetrical relations as far as tolerance is concerned. At all levels – ordinary citizens, the mass media, the actions of leaders – this is heavily dependent on the dominant political mythology. The Russian Orthodox Church has privileged relations with the federal power, and Muslim leaders simply have to accept this as a fact. Some of the latter are preoccupied with their own ethnic issues; some follow the ideological lead of the Orthodox Church; others invoke Islamic unity; yet others see themselves as defending minority rights. Relations between Orthodox and Muslim leaderships are intimately involved with discourse about identity, and in the context of the ever-increasing significance of this discourse in Russia their relations are becoming ever more strained. Meanwhile the federal authorities do not seem to be paying serious attention to this phenomenon.

Comrades and Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (review)

Reviewed by: Comrades and Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War Scott E. Belliveau Comrades and Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War. By Cecil D. Eby. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-271-02910-2. Maps. Photographs. Appendixes. Bibliography. Notes. Index. Pp. 490. $45.95 (hb). The Spanish Civil War has its share of legends, one of the more durable being that the soldiers of the International Brigades went to Spain solely to make a valiant “first stand” against fascism and that the “Internationals” were prized shock troops who got along famously with their Spanish comrades who eagerly volunteered to fight with them. In the 1960s, Cecil D. Eby examined the record of the American unit in the International Brigades, the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, and found that this legend was based more on agitprop and wishful thinking than demonstrable historical facts. In 1969, he revealed his findings in Between the Bullet and the Lie, a book that earned him the undying enmity of many of the Battalion’s veterans and those historians who continued to print the legends. Rather than close Dr. Eby’s experience with the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, Between the Bullet and the Lie perpetuated it. Many with first-hand knowledge of the Battalion and the International Brigades contacted him. These accounts and new sources of information, including the discovery of the Battalion’s archives, enticed Dr. Eby to return to the Battalion’s story. The result of this new research is a detailed, forthright, and empathetic account of the short, but active life of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, set masterfully in the larger [End Page 971] context of the Spanish Civil War and the politics of the American Left in the 1930s. Eby takes a wide view of the Battalion’s history, from its recruitment from the ranks of the American Left (initial volunteers included hard-boiled labor activists and committed young intellectuals) to its bloody battles, from its members’ escapes after the collapse of Republican Spain through the decades of mythologizing of its role in the Spanish Civil War and the cause of anti-fascism. Dr. Eby’s account is as unflinching as it is comprehensive. He frankly describes how the Battalion’s less than rudimentary training, shoddy equipment, and frequently inept leadership led to tragic consequences on the battlefield. He also dispassionately dismantles many of the myths associated with the Battalion. For example, Spaniards were reluctant to serve with the Battalion because Nationalists allegedly shot any “Internationals” they captured. He forthrightly depicts the fractious political situation within the Republican camp and shows how, as the pro-Soviet faction gained ascendancy, it became characterized by strident demands for strict ideological loyalty and harsh punishments for political deviation. While he unsparingly criticizes the bungling commanders, inflexible commissars, and ruthless apparatchiks who plagued the Battalion (from within and without), Dr. Eby has an abundant respect for the men who filled its ranks and executed their duties with courage, determination, and grit—and he pays them the supreme compliment of providing an exceptionally honest account of their travails in Spain. Military historians who are interested in writing unit histories will find Comrades and Commissars at once instructive and inspiring. Those teaching graduate and undergraduate level courses on the Spanish Civil War and the conflicts of the 1930s will find it to be a useful text in their classes. Scott E. Belliveau Virginia Military Institute Foundation Lexington, Virginia Copyright © 2008 The Society for Military History

Жизненное пространство Versus идентичность руського шляхтича XVII ст. (на примере Яна/Йоакима Ерлича)

SUMMARY: The article by Natalya Yakovenko deciphers the complex of political, national, state, and social estate (corporate) identity of the seventeenth century gentry man Jan (Joachim) Erlich, the author of a diary that has attracted historians’ attention since the nineteenth century. Yakovenko gives her interpretation of the political and social loyalties of Jan Erlich whose case, in her view, contradicts the accepted views about “macro-identities” of Rzecz Pospolita . She examines Erlich’s sense of geography, his understanding of “rus’ka” identity, and his confessional and state loyalties, especially vis-à-vis contemporary meanings of “Ukraine.” Five levels of analysis produce five possible “situational” identities and loyalties: local; corporate; “Kievan”; “Ukrainian” (limited to the Kiev lands); and Russian Orthodox, which is representative of the Rzecz Pospolita’s szlachta . The later, in Yakovenko’s view, is the least elaborated identity, because Erlich’s macro-political consciousness is very limited. Erlich’s picture of the world does not provide grounds for constructing larger ideological loyalties and their corresponding entities (for example, historiography’s rather popular “Rus’kii people”). For Yakovenko this indicates multiplicity of early modern identities and political loyalties, as she allows for a more ideologically motivated feeling of groupness for more politically and publicly engaged noble men.

Terrorism, Gay Marriage, and Incumbency: Explaining the Republican Victory in the 2004 Presidential Election

An analysis of the 2004 presidential election results indicates that President Bush’s relatively narrow victory reflected the normal advantage of incumbency and preexisting divisions within the American electorate rather than a fundamental shift in the partisan or ideological loyalties of the electorate. There was little change in the public’s attitudes toward Mr. Bush or the political parties during the campaign and gay marriage referenda had no discernible impact on either voter turnout or support for the President. However, Mr. Bush did somewhat better than expected in the states most directly affected by the September 11th terrorist attacks.

The End of the Democratic Era? 1994 and the Future of Congressional Election Research

Using data from the 1994 and earlier National Election Studies, this essay examines the causes and consequences of the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives and its implications for research on congression al elections. The dramatic Republican gains in the 1994 midterm election appear to reflect long-term shifts in the partisan and ideological loyalties of the U.S. electorate and not just short-term issues that favored the GOP Between 1990 and 1994, the American electorate became increasingly Republican and increasingly conservative while the Democratic party was perceived as increasingly liberal. Democrats will probably find it difficult to regain most of the seats that the party lost in 1994 because Republican identifiers outnumber Democratic identifiers by a wide margin in these districts. The era of Democratic domination may be giving way to a new era of intense competition for control of the House of Representatives. In light of these developments, more research is needed on the extent and consequences of partisan and ideological realignment in the U.S. electorate, variability among congressional contests, and the effects of congressional campaigns on voter decision making.

Avant-gardism in Bruno Jasieński’s Socialist GrotesquerieThe Mannequin Ball

The remarkable output of Bruno Jasienski (1901-1939) bilingual prose writer, poet, dramatist, whose personal life and literary œuvre in both Russian and Polish were formed by divergent, often conflicting social and cultural traditions stands until today unevaluated in terms of the intrinsic continuity of his writing. Jasienski is acknowledged for his substantial contributions both to the Polish Futurist and the Soviet Socialist Realist literatures.1 Yet, because of the seemingly antinomic features of his works, he has generally been viewed by literary scholars in an exclusivist way: either as one of the most individualistic and innovative figures of Polish Futurism during the 1920s, or as an ideologically orthodox proletarian writer ready to serve the cultural policies of his second homeland, the Soviet Union, during the 1930s. Although he was both calumniated and lionized by the public and literary establishments in Poland, France and the Soviet Union, Jasienski remains diminished in his significance due to an incomplete assessment of his poetics. Viewed either as a flamboyant Futurist or a dogmatic Socialist Realist, he is a writer whose work as a whole has not received its due exegesis in tenus of the stylistic and historical avant-garde principles that inform it. The present paper is premised on the belief that Jasienski's writing offers insight into the relationship between the realm of belles lettres and political society, more specifically, the way ideological beliefs about the contemporary human condition aie conveyed through the postulation of fictional worlds by the only art form that is purely propositional imaginative literature. At the heart of the matter is the need to go beyond the outdated positivistic interpretation of Jasieriski that sees him as a writer who eventually compromised his art in the name of ideology, a categorical view rooted in Platonic idealism which persists in liberal Polish circles today.2 Polish scholars have produced important and absorbing studies of Jasienski's early period but have been intellectually abashed in treating his Soviet period, seeing it as both the personal and literary martyrdom of a writer who succumbed to a well-intentioned but ill-placed ideological loyalty to Marxism a fate common to leading intellectuals between

The character of ecology

Contrary to many contemporary readings of ecological thought, the internal structure of both the political beliefs and philosophy is immensely complex and tangled. Existing typologies neither pay sufficient attention to this internal complexity, nor to the problematic and tense relationship of the philosophical ideas and political aspirations. All analyses of these questions are handicapped to some degree by a resistance to classification within the ecology movement itself. However, an analysis of the various ecological beliefs reveals a typology which both shows affinities with aspects of traditional ideologies, and also illustrates a cross cutting of familiar ideological loyalties. This typology does not offer any placebo to these dilemmas. Conversely it charts the subtle shifts in meaning and allegiance between various contributions to ecological thought. Distinctions within the typology are made for heuristic purposes; they are not hard and fast exclusive dichotomies. There is a subtle ‘shading over’ of concepts through a spectrum of judgements and positions. Thus, differences are not wholly exclusive. At times they represent slight but significant shifts of emphasis. The typology thus displays the internal complexity of ecological thought and consequently exhibits its character as a movement.

The therapeutic value of psychotherapists' values and therapy orientations.

This study investigated novice psychotherapists' personal values and therapy orientations as a therapist variable affecting their therapeutic rapport with psychotic patients. Both types of therapist characteristics were found significantly related to their initial success in terms of rapport with patients, while psychological differentiation and A-B types (Whitehorn and Betz 1954) were not so related. "Equilitarianism" among the values, expressive-experiential qualities among self-declared fortes, and directiveness among therapy orientations were the specific areas found associated with therapists' initial rapport. Conversely, emphasis on "identification" and "suggestive powers" as modes of change produced inverse correlations with success. The results underscore the importance of these variables as therapist attributes but do not necessarily argue for the absolute or intrinsic advantage of these values and doctrines. The composite picture which emerged of the effective therapists suggested equalitarianism combined with some degree of individualism and eclecticism underlying their personal and professional orientations. This may reflect the prevailing actual pragmatism in the professional community, even though it may contrast with their declared ideological loyalties.