Political Institutions Research Articles

Nazi Crimes, Max Merten and his Prosecution as Reflected in Greece and beyond

The prosecution of Max Merten (1911–1971), the only Nazi war criminal accused of Holocaust involvement in Greece, coincided not only with the start of the Greek-German negotiations on victim compensation but also with the Eichmann trial. In 1959, the Merten Case provoked a massive public backlash, both because of the gravity of his crimes and because of his impending extradition to West Germany. We argue that in the Cold War atmosphere, when the Merten Case attracted international attention, the actions of internal and external power elites in the West deliberately departed from the concept of transitional justice to use this murky affair to their political advantage. Rather than a fair trial, the aim was to obstruct it in the interests of good relations, political self-preservation, and gradual social amnesia about Greek complicity during the German occupation. In contrast, the Eastern Bloc fed the opposite narrative of rotten capitalism by building on its proclaimed struggle against fascism. By combining archival sources and newspaper coverage of the Merten Case on both sides of the East-West conflict, our article explores which mechanisms were mobilised in public and which incentives were carried out behind the scenes. This allows us to examine multidirectional attitudes in a geopolitical sense, with the main aim of showing the discursive imposition of disinformation operating (in)formally through the channels of political institutions during the Cold War.

Entrepreneurship Education in Interactions in English Terminale and Mastering English (High School), Cameroon EFL/ESL Textbooks: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Entrepreneurship education in the 21st century has increasingly become an important topic in the field of language teaching. EFL/ESL textbooks, in the process of teaching English, have incorporated, among themes of interest, entrepreneurship, which is helpful to transform students’ environments, improve their socio-economic status, and keep them away from poverty. However, the teaching methodology and the quality of materials selected bear questionable social practices likely to denature textbook designers’ laudable intentions. This paper is a critical discourse analysis of the teaching of entrepreneurship in two selected Cameroon English language textbooks used in the French and English subsystems of education, namely Interactions in English Terminale and Mastering English (High School). It is a sociolinguistic qualitative study which hinges on Fairclough’s (2001) three-dimensional theoretical paradigm, which holds that discourses are not language-bound but encompass internal features that (re)produce social structures, social practices, and power relations, reinforcing social inequalities and hegemonic ideologies. The findings yielded significant findings, showing that both Interactions in English Terminale and Mastering English textbooks are replications of the political, economic, and social institutions of Cameroon society and inadvertently promote gender discrimination in terms of entrepreneurship representation. The textbooks examined are too idealistic in their entrepreneurial discourses and outcomes. They fail to expose students to the realities of entrepreneurial ventures, thereby depriving them of the risks and challenges faced by the prominent entrepreneurs celebrated in their course books. This study is relevant as it contributes to the improvement of entrepreneurship pedagogy in EFL/ESL textbooks used in Cameroon classrooms while adopting realistic overtones.

Understanding and Addressing Political - Bureaucratic Corruption in Africa: Reflections from Tanzania

Systematic literature on the proliferation of political-bureaucratic corruption and ways of fighting it barely exists in Tanzania because political and bureaucratic corruption is dealt with exclusively or is generally associated with corruption. This article, through a conceptual-analytical analysis of relevant secondary data, reveals the factors responsible for Tanzania's vulnerability to political-bureaucratic corruption, elucidates the consequences of political-bureaucratic corruption, and recommends mitigating measures. The article contends that political-bureaucratic corruption is mainly exacerbated due to fragile bureaucratic and political institutions and institutional mechanisms erected to crack down on the vice committed by bureaucratic and political elites. Such institutional fragility strips the legitimacy of the institutions charged to fight it, diminishes development endeavors, and ignites neo-patrimonial social differentiation. As such, containing political-bureaucratic corruption needs an eclectic approach, characterized by a strong political resolve to reinforce state institutions’ zeal in administering law and order, particularly by enhancing the capacities of relevant officials on detection, exposure, and prosecution of politicians and bureaucrats committing corrupt practices irrespective of their status to enthuse trust in their political system.

Informality and insecurity in the Sahel: unravelling the hybrid political orders of Northern Mali and Northern Niger

Since the Sahelian crisis broke out in 2012, Northern Mali and Northern Niger have been identified as the two potential epicentres of violence in the region. Nevertheless, while sharing very similar structural conditions and constraints, during the last decade these two subregions have scored very differently in terms of stability and armed conflict along the centre-periphery divide. Aiming to understand the divergent security patterns in Northern Mali and Northern Niger, this work highlights the importance of informal institutions as politically – and spatially contingent networks whose mechanisms for regulating authority and power are key for the appreciation of state capacity and political ordering, and essential for understanding statehood in the Sahel. We stress the importance of hybrid political orders and informality for the definition of political settlements which result in (a) the cooptation of political/economic competitors and the stabilisation of viable governance arrangements; or (b) an open contestation of authority and value-extraction that paves the way for destabilising dynamics. The diverging pattern exhibited by the two cases demonstrates that hybrid networks that straddle political and informal institutions are crucial in determining either the stabilisation or destabilisation of political settlements.

Rally Around the Government or a Populist Response? How Concerns About COVID-19 and Emotional Responses Relate to Institutional Trust and Support for Right-Wing Populism

Recent studies have shown that the coronavirus pandemic not only temporarily increased support for incumbent politicians and trust in experts but also triggered an authoritarian response. Because the pandemic has significantly affected individuals’ goals, needs, and control over their lives, we expect that it has generated emotional reactions. In this article, we study how concerns about COVID-19 relate to institutional trust (trust in political institutions and experts) and a preference for populist right parties—directly and indirectly—via emotions. Our theoretical framework relies on the “rally around the flag” hypothesis, the cultural backlash theory, as well as appraisal theories of emotions. We analyze a novel data set collected as part of the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences Panel Survey for the Netherlands at the beginning of the second wave of the pandemic (October 2020). Our findings reveal that concerns about COVID-19 are positively related to institutional trust but unrelated to preferences for right-wing populism. The relationship between concerns about the coronavirus crisis and trust in political institutions is mediated via fear and sadness; these emotions also explain opposition to right-wing populist parties. We interpret our findings in relation to research on the rally around the flag effect, right-wing populism, and emotions. We discuss the implications of our results in the context of the coronavirus pandemic and other “rally”-inducing events.

Sympathies for Putin Within the German Public: A Consequence of Political Alienation?

AbstractWhy do individuals in democratic nations sympathize with autocratic leaders from abroad? In this article, we address this general question with regard to Germans’ attitudes toward Vladimir Putin in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Building on the intuition that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and its formalization in balance theory, our study focuses on the role of political alienation at home. To study this role comprehensively, we consider several facets of political alienation: a lack of trust in political institutions, low support for democracy as a regime, a sense of estrangement from public discourse, and an inclination toward conspiracy thinking. Using longitudinal analyses on data from the German Longitudinal Election Study panel, we provide empirical evidence consistent with our argument that political alienation—particularly in terms of low political trust and a proclivity for conspiracy thinking—drives sympathies for Putin and his regime. Against the backdrop of mounting attempts by Russia and other autocratic powers to influence discourses in Western societies via some segments of society, our findings illuminate one important source of sympathy for Putin and, potentially, foreign autocrats more broadly.

Do Political Institutions Influence the Dismantling of Fossil Fuel Subsidies? Lessons from the OECD Countries and a Comparative Analysis of Canadian and German Production Subsidies

Despite a global consensus that fossil fuel subsidies should be reformed, limited progress has been made. The study assesses whether domestic political institutions insulating politicians from backlash and compensating those affected by reforms make subsidies easier to dismantle. It was found that proportional representation and corporatism were correlated with lower levels of fossil fuel subsidies in OECD countries. A comparative case study of coal production subsidies in Germany and gas production subsidies in Canada suggests that political insulation and compensation contributed towards the dismantling of fossil fuel subsidies. The findings provide an understanding of the impact of corporatism and electoral systems on reform.

Trust and State Effectiveness: The Political Economy of Compliance

Abstract This paper explores the link between trust in government, policymaking and compliance. It focuses on a specific channel whereby citizens who are convinced of the merits of a policy are more motivated to comply with it. This, in turn, reduces the government’s cost of implementing this policy and may also increase the set of feasible interventions. As a result, state effectiveness is greater when citizens trust their government. The paper discusses alternative approaches to modelling the origins of trust, especially the link to the design of political institutions. We then provide empirical evidence consistent with the model’s findings that compliance is increasing in government trust using the Integrated Values Survey and voluntary compliance during COVID-19 in the United Kingdom.

Underperforming reformers: Examining disappointing cases of economic reforms

AbstractWhile pro‐market economic institutions are a strong and causal predictor of economic development, such institutions are not expected to have the same impact across countries. Furthermore, there are actually a few instances where countries that enacted market‐friendly reforms had negative economic growth soon after. Examining 49 cases of large and sustained increases in economic freedom over a five year window, we find 10 cases that were followed by low/negative economic growth thereafter. We consider various potential determinants of failed reforms by comparing different measures between the successful and failed reforming countries. Our strongest evidence points to the following as plausible reasons for failed reforms: culture (high levels of power distance, low levels of individualism, and low levels of generalized trust), areas of economic freedom that countries reformed (less focus on sound monetary policy, more focus on limiting the size of government, and more variance between the five areas), and autocratic political institutions.

Roberto Mangabeiros Ungerio įgalintos demokratijos teorija: ar liberalios demokratijos antinomijos gali būti išspręstos?

The purpose of this article is to analyze Roberto Mangabeira Unger’s theory of empowered democracy and to evaluate it with regard to antinomies of liberal thought as formulated by the author himself. This article discusses the main presumptions of Unger’s political philosophy and his conceptualization of politics. The theory of empowered democracy is analyzed as an attempt to overcome the antinomy of the universal and the particular, which permeates the liberal worldview. Unger criticizes liberal thought and its central components – liberal psychology and ethics. This critique of liberalism serves as a basis for the philosopher’s vision of politics, at the centre of which is an emancipated and autonomous individual. “Negative capability”, which is the power of individuals to review and rebuild their social contexts, helps them create a political order, which aims to create a “bigger life for all”. To empower individuals, Unger offers a wide-ranging set of changes – starting with more plasticity in political institutions and ending with political protection of the individual ensured by “immunity rights” and prevention of “false necessities”. This article aims to show that Unger’s theory ultimately fails in this goal due to contradictions between the theory of empowered democracy and the author’s own conception of politics as well as due to questionable sustainability of such solution.

The Death and New Life of Law and Religion

Abstract The year 2023 was an end and a beginning. It saw the passing or retirement of many giants in the field of law and religion—scholars who brought their formidable erudition and insight to bear on questions that transcended legal doctrine, venturing upward into the heady realms of political theory, philosophy, history, sociology, and theology. These and other recent departures from the active world of law and religion are an occasion to reflect on the state of the field. This article begins with a brief history of the field, highlighting the questions that motivated it to emerge in the 1970s and 1980s and the intellectual currents and legal developments against which it was reacting. It then argues that some of the central concerns and inquiries that occupied law and religion as a discrete field of academic study in what it calls the first wave heyday are now at an end. These include the nature of religion and the secular in the law, the division between these concepts, and the implications for law and religion as an independent academic discipline; the concept of state neutrality as to religion and the connected public–private divide as respects what is religious and what is non-religiously political; and the regime of religious exemption for everyone with a sincere objection to a law as the central feature of religious free exercise, in constitutional and statutory law. This article argues that these are now, or will soon become, dead issues. Of course, they may well continue to be important for lawyers making and opposing claims in litigation, and for judges deciding among them, since the operative textual and doctrinal categories relevant to such claims will continue to depend on clever argumentation concerning some or all of them. And scholars will, no doubt, continue to wrangle over them. But to the extent that they continue to define the field or remain its signature issues, their growing irrelevance signals its death. Intellectual enterprises that survive over generations learn to adapt, and law and religion will need to do so as well. And, in fact, different issues, based on different premises and cultural circumstances, are beginning to emerge that may come to dominate the field and give it new life: the nature of political establishments and how they change; the use of ‘religion’ as a term for a category of political or ideological identity either to re-entrench or subvert political establishment; and the limits of what the so-called religious dissenters (who are now, and in large measure thanks to the first wave, indistinguishable from political or ideological dissenters) from the political establishment may reasonably expect in the way of accommodation from it. If the field is to survive, it will need to reorient itself towards new problems that afflict a very different world from the one in which it came into being.

Assessing the US foreign assistance activities impact on violent conflicts

The Global Fragility Act, H.R.2116 116th Congress, directs the Department of State to establish an interagency initiative to stabilize conflict-affected areas and prevent violence globally. We propose and demonstrate an approach to evaluate the success of funding these initiatives. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has identified deteriorating economies, weak, or illegitimate political institutions, and competition over natural resources as causes of violence, extremism, and instability. The agency prioritizes mitigating the causes and consequences of violent conflicts, instability, and extremism and funds corresponding programs. Focused on military aid, we quantitatively assess these programs effectiveness at preventing or deescalating conflicts during 2010 to 2020. Our statistical analysis shows the funds during that period did not have an immediate impact on countries prone to violence. However, cumulative long-term relationships exist between some funds and the global conflict levels. As the total amount of 5 years cumulative Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) implemented funds increases, the total number of countries not-in-conflict increases while the total number of the most violent countries decreases. Those funds also correlate to the decline in total conflict levels during that timeframe. This quantitative approach assesses the aggregate effectiveness of aid across various countries.

The Role of Institutions in the Civilization Schism (the Case of Christianity)

The geopolitical transformations of recent decades have added to the topicality of the study оf civilizational differences between the East and the West relevant. Religion is often cited as a contributing factor to these differences. This can be confirmed by the example of the split of the Christian Church into the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches and, as a consequence, the emergence of the Western and the Eastern Christian civilizations. As a rule, the authors “isolate” religion from the social system, considering it independently of all other spheres, as the primary factor that triggers the emergence of civilization. In this work, the emergence of a new Western and Eastern Christian, is considered within the framework of the institutional approach, as a process of formation of a certain complex institutional structure that regulates the life of society and consists of a whole complex of interconnected and interdependent economic, political, and socio-cultural institutions, including religion. This process can begin in the bowels of the “mother” civilization, causing its crisis. The stages of development and resolution of such a crisis are analyzed using the example of a split in the united Christian world using a matrix approach. This approach assumes that civilization is characterized by a civilizational matrix formed by an institutional core that simultaneously contains market and redistributive institutions on the basis of dominance/complementarity, and a shell that includes cultural-religious and national-demographic characteristics, the naturalclimatic and material-technological environment. The necessity of both strengthening dominant institutions in the institutional core and creating balancers (complementary institutions) for the sustainable development of civilization is shown.

How Citizens Meet the State: Police Contact, Trust, and Civic Engagement

This paper investigates the relationship between the police, the most visible street-level bureaucrat of local city governments, and citizen political attitudes and behaviors toward local city institutions. We introduce a holistic conceptualization of police-citizen contact and examine how each type impacts citizen trust toward and participation in political institutions. Leveraging an original survey targeting the city of South Bend and spatial data from the city government, results demonstrate that greater day-to-day contact with police has a positive impact on trust in state agencies while citizens who seek service from the police but are left unsatisfied result in lower trust in state apparatus. Most importantly, indirect exposure to police coercion has a negative impact on trust while direct and proximal contact with police predicts higher level of civic activism. This study demonstrates the fragility and challenge of building trust in police-citizen relationships, and how extreme encounters with the police can, in the right circumstances, spur citizen activism.

Democratic quality and excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic

The aim of this study is to analyse the relationship between democratic quality and excess mortality produced in the year 2020 before COVID-19 vaccinations were generalised. Using cross-sectional data from 80 countries on five continents, multiple linear regression models between excess mortality, the general democracy index and its disaggregation into five categories: electoral process and pluralism, government functioning, political participation, political culture and civil liberties were estimated. The analysis also considered, public health spending per capita, overweight inhabitants, the average temperature of the country, population over 65 years of age, The KOF Globalisation Index, and the Gross National Income per capita as control variables. It was possible to establish a strong inverse association between excess mortality per million inhabitants and the general democracy index and four of its five categories. There was a particularly strong relationship between excess mortality and the political culture dimension (−326.50, p < 0.001). The results suggest that the higher the democratic quality of the political institutions of a State and particularly of their political culture the more improved the response and management of the pandemic was in preventing deaths and protecting their citizens more effectively. Conversely, countries with lower democracy index values have higher excess mortality. Quality democratic political institutions provide more effective public health policies in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Missing Transformational Place Leadership-Why High-Tech Industries are not Developed in Hong Kong

This paper adopts a place leadership perspective to examine the failed efforts of developing high-tech industries in Hong Kong. It demonstrates that it is challenging to change from transactional to transformational leadership and argues that the failure of developing high-tech industries in Hong Kong is partially attributable to the lack of transformational political and business leaderships. The political leaders' ineffectiveness in developing hightech industries in Hong Kong is also attributable to the regional/national/international institutional structural forces that have created both opportunities and challenges. This study contributes to the discussion on the critical value of transformational place leadership for creating new local/regional economic growth path and the embeddedness of place leadership in local/regional/national political and economic institutions.

Political crisis and social trust: the case of Australia

ABSTRACT Trust in Australian political institutions has declined markedly since 2007. Trust scholars and social capital theorists argue that institutional trust affects social trust, which implies that declining trust in political institutions should also reduce social trust. However, using data from the Australian Election Study, World Values Survey and HILDA panel study, I find no evidence of any aggregate-level decline in Australian social trust since 2007. While this could be a result of the ‘coup era’ in Australian politics from 2010 to 2018, a better explanation is that social trust remained high because permanent changes in trust occur primarily among younger people. A long-term decline through generational replacement therefore remains possible. This challenges both social capital theory and institutional theories of social trust, but would explain the experiences of other advanced democracies during episodes of political crisis, including New Zealand, Greece, Finland, Japan, Sweden, Spain and the United States.

Cooperation and Struggle Between Vietnam and the United States: Impediments to Improved U.S.-Vietnam Relations

Abstract The relationship between the United States and Vietnam began when Prince Nguyen Phuc Canh worked with Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary American Ambassador Thomas Jefferson in 1787. The United States, however, later invaded Vietnam, causing a bloody conflict unlike any in human history from 1954 to 1975. Then, in 1995, a shared sense of humanity and morality motivated the two countries to attempt to form a comprehensive partnership that they achieved in 2013, and they have been working to refine their approach toward collaborating together ever since. In this partnership, there is a need to uncover and resolve a few mysteries. This article’s objective is to analyze the fundamentals of both cooperation and conflict in this historical partnership – human rights (including for prisoners of war and those missing in action), military security, policy reform in Vietnam, and financial gains for Vietnam and the United States. However, differences in political institutions, interests and values, and aims for the relationship have all become points of contention since normalization of bilateral relations in 1995.

Individualistic Versus Relational Ethics – A Contestable Concept for (African) Philosophy

AbstractThaddeus Metz, in his book “A Relational Moral Theory” compares the relational African view to Western theories of right action with a focus on Kant (respective contemporary Kantianism) and Utilitarianism. In focussing on the opposition between a relational and an individualistic view, Metz questions the interpretation of basic normative assumptions that are guiding central Western moral and political institutions. He particularly focusses on Kantian and Utilitarian approaches to which he ascribes substantive moral assumptions in terms of utility respective autonomy. In this paper, we reconstruct Metz’s position on the opposition between a relational and an individualistic view on ethics. We then investigate whether his relational conceptualisation is a convincing reconstruction of African views and question his take on Western positions, focussing in particular on views around individual rights and communality as presented in the Kantian tradition. We highlight the value of ubuntu in intercultural discourse to foster ethical and moral reasoning in a holistic way and conclude that any reflection on ethics necessarily involves an understanding of our common human nature, which is at the core of philosophical anthropology.

Has Kenya democratized? Institutional strengthening and contingency in the 2022 general elections

ABSTRACT Kenya’s 2022 general elections saw – for only the second time in the country’s history – a transfer of power from a retiring president to a candidate that they had not backed. Moreover, despite accusations of electoral malpractice, the Supreme Court upheld the results, fewer petitions were submitted for lower-level races, and political unrest around the election itself was relatively minor. This has led some commentators to speculate that Kenya’s political institutions are becoming robust and that the power of ethnicity is waning – and hence that the country is on a steady path towards democratic consolidation. We counsel against this interpretation, arguing that the 2022 polls were anything but a formality, and rested, at least in part, on a set of contingent factors that may not be reproduced. It is thus important to understand both the structural changes that have transformed Kenyan politics and the challenges that remain. We undertake such an appraisal by considering three areas often seen to be the building blocks of a high-quality democracy: the strength of democratic institutions, how politicians seek to mobilise support, and the independence and vibrancy of civil society and the media.