Left-wing And Right-wing Research Articles

Continuity or Change: considering the policy implications of a Conservative government

This paper reviews current Conservative Party thinking in relation to four policy areas: urban and regional policy; housing policy; labour market and welfare policy; and the third sector. It seeks to explore aspects of continuity and change, both with the current New Labour government and the Conservative government of 1979-1997. A remarkable degree of continuity is revealed, reflecting the shift in British politics away from traditional left-right divisions and towards a neo-liberal orthodoxy. Nonetheless, divisions remain, particularly around the diagnosis of policy problems, with the Conservative critique of New Labour focusing on the failings of the state and, by association, its failure to address dependency. There is also emerging evidence that the financial crisis and recession could prove to be an important point of divergence between the priorities and public spending plans of the current New Labour government and a future Conservative administration.

Public choice and foreign affairs: Democracy and international relations in Turkey

AbstractIn a democracy it is through the process of voting that people find an opportunity to register their likes and dislikes of domestic and foreign policy decisions most effectively. In Turkey, the recent national elections on 22 July 2007 provided an opportunity to observe the nexus between voters’ choices and foreign policy issues. Questions pertaining to problems facing the country and the campaign issues fail to give any clue as to whether people paid attention to foreign policy in making their choices among the political parties of the country. However, a closer examination of the factors determining the vote indicates that, although party identification and satisfaction with the performance of the economy and the expectations of the government in managing the economy played major roles, attitudes towards the European Union (EU), nationalism, and globalization closely followed in magnitude those two factors in determining the voters’ party preferences across the left-right spectrum. While AKP supporters had the most favorable attitude towards the EU, MHP supporters appeared highly nationalistic, and CHP voters seemed most influenced by positive orientations to openness to the world.

Human Auditory Localisation in a Distorted Environment: Water

This study is concerned with sound localisation abilities in water, where the cues for localisation are theoretically severely altered. The main goal of the study was to understand the discrepancy between the poor localisation abilities predicted by the degree of cues alteration and the relatively good performance empirically measured in past investigations. Nine experienced divers performed 8-alternative forced-choice identification tests in open water, with auditory targets presented both in the frontal and rear parts of the horizontal plane. Targets were trains of 300-ms bursts with 25-ms rise/decay times. Bursts were either pure tones (0.4, 1, 6 or 8 kHz) or white noise. With 0.4-kHz tones, the subjects exhibited very accurate left-right distinction and acceptable azimuth resolution. Four subjects made frequent front-back reversals. Also, a bias of the responses towards the median axis was observed in 24% of the data. Six subjects tested with head motion either restricted or free all showed a clear drop of front-back reversals due to head motion. Three subjects tested with all target frequencies exhibited correct localisation accuracy with the white noise, again associated with frequent front-back reversals for two of them. With the 1-, 6- and 8-kHz tones, however, results varied more between individuals. The same three subjects were tested with both the head-conduction and the ear-conduction pathways available, with the head-conduction path blocked off by the wear of a neoprene hood, and with the ear-conduction path blocked off by the wear of neoprene earplugs, in random order. They showed a strong degradation due to the covering of the ear-conduction pathway.

Bolivia and the Political Dynamics of Change

It is commonplace today to argue that the politics of class and a left-right ideologi cal positioning on the political spectrum do not matter as much as they once did that the 'new world order' of neoliberal globalization has totally changed the po litical landscape. All regimes and parties in power seem to be constrained in a similar way to implement close variations on a few policy themes. Thus, left-right distinctions in the shaping of political space and the unfolding of diverse political dynamics in diverse contexts are no longer relevant. What matters is that under current conditions, politicians of whatever stripe, no matter what the professed ideological orientation, in power end up with the same policies. A different way of putting this is that the forces of globalization (the dynamics of neoliberal globaliza tion and capitalist development) work by constraining the policy options available. Class factors, including ideology, play a reduced role or so goes the prevailing theory. This article explores several dimensions of this issue in the context of Bolivia, with reference to political developments associated with the ascent and assumption of state power by Evo Morales, an indigenous leader of the Movement to Socialism (MAS), after a year and a half in power. Compared to Ignacio [Lula] da Silva, leader of the Worker's Party (PT) and now president of Brazil, in regard to whom a similar analysis could be (and has been) made, and other 'leftists' (or populists) who in recent years have assumed state power in Latin America, Morales is rela tively close to the social base of the popular movement and 'the people' that he purportedly represents. These 'people', indigenous and poor like Morales look at him with hope as a saviour ('I am like you', cried Morales at one of the many lightning visits to indigenous communities during his presidency, 'from a poor background'). Prior to his ascent to state power he led 'los cocaleros', a popular social movement of coca-producing indigenous peasants, and was constrained by this movement in a number of ways. The indigenous movement has never been as close to state power as it is today with Morales as president. In this context Morales' electoral victory in late 2005 and his assumption of state power in Janu ary 2006 were events of transcendental significance to the indigenous peoples and population in their long struggle against class exploitation and racist oppression. The issues addressed in this paper are explored with reference to two sets of political dynamics, one having to do with the struggle for state power, the other with the use of state as a source of social change and the forces acting on the re gime over sixteen months in the exercise of state power.

Histoires croisées: François Furet, Ernst Nolte and a Comparative History of Totalitarian Movements

The global political avalanche that accompanied the breakdown of the Soviet Union swept away the European discursive landscape, with its strict right-left divisions. In its wake, a renaissance and reorientation of debates about totalitarianism can be observed. First, more emphasis is placed on the utopian content and other elements of totalitarian ideologies, which explain the enthusiasm they evoked. Second, there has been a shift of interest from totalitarian regimes to total-itarian movements. Third, recent research has been marked by an expansion of the comparative apparatus, which allows the analysis of reciprocal perceptions, imitations and learning processes between totalitarian movements. François Furet and Ernst Nolte have been among the most prominent combatants in the arena of historical politics. There can be no doubt that their stances in the debate on totalitarianism were deeply influenced by the Cold War. Nevertheless, it is argued in this article that they also contributed to the recent reorientation of these debates. The impulses towards a comparative history of totalitarian movements yielded by Furet and Nolte were particularly intense in the second half of the 1990s, when the two historians met and influenced one another. The article starts with Furet’s interpretation of Jacobinism, which can be understood as a paradigmatic analysis of a totalitarian movement. The second section compares Furet’s and Nolte’s vision of the Russian Revolution. While the French historian sees 1917 as a re-enactment of the French Revolution, his German colleague’s chief concern is to interpret the Russian Revolution as something wholly novel. The last section of the article focuses on Furet’s and Nolte’s view of National Socialism. In this context, the mutual influences but also the fundamental differences between the two are most obvious. In ‘Le passé d’une illusion’, Furet adopts Nolte’s history of interactions between communism and National Socialism without sharing Nolte’s provocative assumption of a ‘causal nexus’. It is above all Furet’s critical and creative reading of Nolte’s ‘Der europäische Bürgerkrieg’ that points the way towards a comparative cultural history of totalitarian movements.

Agriculture and working-class political culture: A lesson from The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel can be given a reading that links events and the mentality of characters to mainstream schools of liberal and neo-liberal political theory: libertarianism, egalitarianism, and utilitarianism. Each of these schools is sketched in outline and applied to topics in rural political culture. While it is likely that Steinbeck himself would have identified with an egalitarian or utilitarian view, he resists the temptation to deny his Okie characters an authentic voice that matches none of these schools so well as it articulates an agrarian mentality once associated with Thomas Jefferson and today articulated by Wendell Berry. This reading of The Grapes of Wrath, in turn, can be interpreted as both a rebuke to contemporary social theorists who continue to impose an ill-fitting left-right dichotomy on working class political culture in rural America and as a roadmap suggesting ways that philosophy and rural sociology might engage one another more directly and productively with respect to contemporary rural development and environmental quality issues.

Social Movements and Political Parties: Gays, Lesbians, and Travestis and the Struggle for Inclusion in Brazil

The struggle for recognition and inclusion of gays, lesbians, and travestis (GLTs) into Brazilian society and politics emerged during the democratization process set in motion in the late 1970s. Part of this struggle has involved attempts at gaining access to and influence over political parties in order to push forward a pro-GLT agenda. This article examines and seeks to explain how political parties matter for the struggle of GLTs in Brazil, as well as the main patterns of support for and opposition to GLT rights across the left-right spectrum of political parties in Brazil. This article argues that while it is neither the sole nor main vehicle for progressive change, parties matter in generating policy and legislative change in favour of sexual minorities. While greater support can be found in leftist parties mainly for institutional and historical reasons, this support is not unanimous within the left. Religion and individual attitudes also help explain these patterns. Moreover, the same factors, coupled with electoral incentives, also shed light on the general opposition and occasional support from right-wing parties.

Religion and Radical Democracy after the 1960s

At the heart of this book is a largely sympathetic analysis of three religiouspolitical groups: the evangelical left Sojourners community led by Jim Wallis, the radical pacifist and left-leaning Catholic Jonah House founded by Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister, and an organization of the New Christian Right (NCR) called the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), led by Michael Farris. These groups are important in their own right. Moreover, Jason Bivins correctly points out that the disciplines he uses to analyze them religious studies, cultural history, and political theory have important complementary strengths that are too seldom brought to bear on the same cases at the same time. Thus his book is also an interesting model for the grounded interdisciplinary analysis of religion, steering between the extremes of a public discourse that devalues religion and an uncritical blanket endorsement of religious values. Although Bivins s model is not entirely satisfying in the end, it yields valuable insights along the way. What do the above groups have in common and why does Bivins call them antiliberal? According to Bivins, they share three characteristics. First, each is politically illegible. This means that Bivins does not recommend introducing and categorizing them in the way that I have just introduced and categorized them, in terms of their place on a left-right spectrum or their theological/denominational traditions. Their antiliberalism (in the senses discussed below) is more fundamental. Second, each emphasizes sacred registers of Religious commitments are central to their sense of political identity, in something akin to a religious form of identity politics. Third, each uses ritual protest in its activism; a classic example is the 1 968 Catonsville action in which Daniel and Philip Berrigan destroyed draft files with homemade napalm. These characteristics come together in a composite theme of koinonia, a Biblical

Constructing the Citizen

Discussions of citizenship and citizenship education have been conducted largely within the worldview of stable, Western societies and have been based on psychological models that emphasize individual cognition. The concepts of citizenship that evolved in this context have become taken for granted. But during the past decade, different concepts of citizenship have arisen from emergent democracies, from societies in transition, from the dissolution of the left‐right spectrum in Western society, and from a changing perspective in psychological theory that attends to language and to social and cultural context. These developments have implications for defining the goals of citizenship education and for formulating educational programs, particularly in relation to identity, positioning, narratives, and efficacy.

The New Distributional Politics of Globalization and the Lessons of the Great Depression

The paper examines political resentments and backlashes in historical episodes of globalization in terms of discussions of the morality of rising inequalities of income and wealth. It investigates the link between this discussion and a different interest-based political system that prevails in periods of global opening. While politics in the framework of the national economy has a simple left-right dichotomy, politics in globalized societies mobilizes an incoherent coalition of anti-global left and anti-global right against a pro-global center. (JEL N10, N20)

Rome, global city? Church, state and the Jubilee 2000

This paper explores the Holy Year (Jubilee) held in Rome in 2000 in the context of debates about the global nature of cities. It argues that the event clarified the importance of ‘Rome’ to powerful political actors, which crudely correspond to the left-right division of post-war Italian politics, with the Vatican an important player in negotiating this divide. However, it is suggested that the spatial reach of these actors is uneven, yet that both exploit the ‘global’ event as a means of expanding their scalar power. Through a discussion of four aspects of the event—the nature of Rome as a capital city, the role of the mayor, Francesco Rutelli, the Gay Pride march that took place during the Holy Year, and the urban planning debates that surrounded its staging—the politicisation and scalar politics of Rome are elaborated.

New World, New Politics, New Labour: Third Way Revisionism and Prophetic Political Theology

Tony Blair's vision of a ‘third way’ political programme is formative of New Labour's second term revisionism, claiming to transcend traditional left-right distinctions and embody the principles of ‘equal worth’, ‘opportunity for all’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘community’. Drawing upon a variety of sources, Anthony Giddens among them, the following material sketches the lineaments of the ‘third way’ agenda Having identified its political aspirations and principal theoretical components, the article suggests a number of areas representing potentially fruitful points of contact for further theological reflection.

How many music centers are in the brain?

When reviewing the literature on brain substrates of music processing, a puzzling variety of findings can be stated. The traditional view of a left-right dichotomy of brain organization--assuming that in contrast to language, music is primarily processed in the right hemisphere--was challenged 20 years ago, when the influence of music education on brain lateralization was demonstrated. Modern concepts emphasize the modular organization of music cognition. According to this viewpoint, different aspects of music are processed in different, although partly overlapping neuronal networks of both hemispheres. However, even when isolating a single "module," such as, for example, the perception of contours, the interindividual variance of brain substrates is enormous. To clarify the factors contributing to this variability, we conducted a longitudinal experiment comparing the effects of procedural versus explicit music teaching on brain networks. We demonstrated that cortical activation during music processing reflects the auditory "learning biography," the personal experiences accumulated over time. Listening to music, learning to play an instrument, formal instruction, and professional training result in multiple, in many instances multisensory, representations of music, which seem to be partly interchangeable and rapidly adaptive. In summary, as soon as we consider "real music" apart from laboratory experiments, we have to expect individually formed and quickly adaptive brain substrates, including widely distributed neuronal networks in both hemispheres.

Conserving the Left: Reflections on Norberto Bobbio, Anthony Giddens and the Left-Right Distinction

In a brief exchange with my mother following the British election in 1998, she told me that her bet was that ‘John Major and all the rest of them’ would now be kicking themselves for not having gone ‘New Tory’ and moved a little further to the left. The New Labour success indicated, she thought, that had they done so they could easily have stayed in power. I was not at all sure she was correct in this, but her remark interested me as reflecting both the impossibility of discoursing about politics without the left-right distinction, and one of the main reasons why its continued relevance to the European political situation is being called increasingly into question.

Local and global patterns during morphogenesis of the retinotectal topographical mapping in the vertebrate brain.

The highly ordered neuronal projections from the retina to the tectum mesencephali (optic tectum) in several vertebrate groups have been intensively studied. Several hypotheses so far have been proposed, suggesting mechanisms to explain the topographical and biochemical specificity of the retinotectal projections during ontogeny. In the present paper we compare the main hypotheses of retinotectal development with respect to the nature of specificity envisaged, the activity-dependence versus inheritance criterium and the strategy of argument, in casu the descriptive versus interferential type of argument. Matching of the current developmental hypotheses and mechanisms for elimination or persistence of contralateral, respectively ipsilateral connections, is attempted with respect to the known neuroanatomical connectivity data in the amphibian optic tectum and with respect to the symmetry relations between ipsilateral and contralateral connection patterns described in amphibians and other vertebrate groups. Local mechanisms influencing the survival potential of synaptic contacts between retinal afferents and tectal neurons are probably essential for generating global symmetry patterns. Finally, a global topological approach is discussed with respect to its applicability in the amphibian retinotectal projection system. Basic assumptions of topological modeling appear to rely on anatomical and functional properties of the visual system like left-right symmetry, dichotomy, (absence of) convergence and segregation of fibers and neurons into columnar information units. It is concluded however, that more neuroanatomical, physiological and ultrastructural data are needed to establish a formalized operation model of the amphibian retinotectal system.

On the Absence of Centripetal Incentives in Double-Member Districts

In its final months, the Pinochet regime engineered a number of institutional reforms with the intent of bolstering the right side of the spectrum and of promoting centripetal political competition once democratic procedures were reinitiated in 1989. One of the most important reforms created 60 double-member districts for elections to the lower house. Although some analysts have claimed that the new system does in fact promote centrist position taking, using game theory and spatial modeling, the authors demonstrate that the incentives of the Chilean electoral system encourage politicians to take noncentrist positions along a left-right spectrum. The combination of double-member districts with the d'Hondt seat allocation method and open-list voting creates a Rival Partners Game, creating perverse incentives for Chilean candidates. The authors' theoretical results help clarify the debate about the effects of post-authoritarian institutional reforms in Chile and should encourage empirical research on the same issues.

Ventilation and perfusion imaging by electrical impedance tomography: a comparison with radionuclide scanning

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a technique that makes it possible to measure ventilation and pulmonary perfusion in a volume that approximates to a 2D plane. The possibility of using EIT for measuring the left-right division of ventilation and perfusion was compared with that of radionuclide imaging. Following routine ventilation (Kr) and perfusion scanning (Tc-MAA), EIT measurements were performed at the third and the sixth intercostal level in 14 patients with lung cancer. A correlation ( r = 0.98, p<0.005) between the left-right division for the ventilation measured with EIT and that with Kr was found. For the left-right division of pulmonary perfusion a correlation of 0.95 ( p<0.005) was found between the two methods. The reliability coefficient (RC) was calculated for estimating the left-right division with EIT. The RC for the ventilation measurements was 94% and 96% for the perfusion measurements. The correlation analysis for reproducibility of the EIT measurements was 0.95 ( p<0.001) for the ventilation and 0.93 ( p<0.001) for the perfusion measurements. In conclusion, EIT can be regarded as a promising technique to estimate the left-right division of pulmonary perfusion and ventilation. Keywords: electrical impedance, tomography, radionuclide, ventilation, perfusion

The Austrians in the German National Assembly in 1848

SUMMARY In this article Lothar Höbelt has analysed the political orientation of the Austrian deputies to the Frankfurt parliament of 1848–9, who constituted nearly 25 per cent of the total membership. The article shows that the pattern of political opinions was complex, since although the deputies can be placed on a Left-Right political spectrum, their actual voting behaviour was often influenced by other considerations. These included confessional allegiance, since the Austrians were a Catholic grouping in a predominantly Protestant assembly, but more important was the question of the future of the Habsburg monarchy, and whether its German inhabitants wanted to enter a German federal state that would exclude a large part of the Habsburg territories, or whether they preferred in the end to preserve the monarchy as they knew it. The author shows how traditionalism, carecrism and nationalism influenced deputies, and could create unexpected alliances between otherwise politically opposed deputies. It was only in the final phase, when the parliament broke up, and a rump assembly met in Stuttgart from April to June 1849, that a clear Left-Right division emerged, with most of the Austrian deputies deciding to leave the parliament.

Tony Blair and the New Left

He has been feted in Britain and abroad; denounced as the Stalin of the British left and hailed as its savior; profiled, interviewed, and investigated by the British press, the foreign press, and the tabloid press. But to my mind the phenomenon of Tony Blair, the man who became leader of the British Labour Party in the spring of 1994 and is now the leading contender to become Britain's next prime minis ter, is best illuminated by a conversation that took place in the lobby of the German parliament. A member of the Green Party was de scribing to me the impression Blair had made during his 1996 trip to Germany. Practically the whole of the Bundestag had heard him speak, she said: What really excited us was this new idea of rein venting the Tony Blair is reinventing the left. asked her what exactly that meant, the reinvention of the She winced slightly, and paused. I don't remember any of the details, exactly, she replied, but this reinvention of the left is very important. It would be hard to find a better illustration of the feelings that Blair inspires. He undoubtedly interests people, in Britain and perhaps even more so in the rest of Europe. He even seems to many to be the har binger of a whole new kind of European politics, a 21st-century poli tics: he himself speaks frequently of transcending left-right divisions, of leaving old ideas of party loyalty behind. In the three years he has been leader of Britain's opposition, he has galvanized his party, reju venated its supporters, and mounted the first serious challenge to the Tories since 1979, something that previous Labour reformers like Neil

Postmodernism, Welfare and Radical Politics

AbstractThis article argues that postmodernist theory is something which students of social policy should neither accept uncritically nor dismiss out of hand. Firstly, the article takes issue with the responses made to postmodernist theory by Ramesh Mishra and Peter Taylor-Gooby. Secondly, it argues that the ideas loosely known as ‘reflexive modernisation’ constitute a more measured and critical response, though such ideas are likely to be of little use to social policy research in the absence of any reference to a left-right spectrum. Thirdly, it argues that by combining reflexive modernisation with a left-right spectrum, a decentred conception of welfare emerges which could be of value to a radical left politics. Finally, it argues for a Citizen's Income as a reform proposal which has the potential to establish such a system of decentred welfare.