Major Political Developments Research Articles

Bulgaria: Political Developments and Data in 2022

AbstractThe data entry reviews the major political developments in Bulgaria in 2022, including the governmental crisis of May–June 2022, the early elections in October 2022, the failure to form a new Cabinet in the last months of 2022, and the continuing de facto rule of President Radev. It also discusses the main issues in Bulgarian politics, including the position of GERB (i.e., Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria) in the political process, the Bulgarian ambivalent position on the Russian‐Ukrainian war, and the impact of the war on energy prices and general economic development in the country.

Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean: The Greater Antilles, 1493–1550 by Ida Altman

<i>Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean: The Greater Antilles, 1493–1550</i> by Ida Altman

:Disaffected: Emotion, Sedition, and Colonial Law in the Anglosphere

:<i>Disaffected: Emotion, Sedition, and Colonial Law in the Anglosphere</i>

State Building in Crisis Governance: Donald Trump and COVID-19.

State Building in Crisis Governance: Donald Trump and COVID-19.

Música Típica: Cumbia and the Rise of Musical Nationalism in Panama

In this book, Sean Bellaviti explores a musical genre that is still largely unknown outside Panamanian borders: música típica. By analyzing the historical development and current performances of this particular genre, Bellaviti aims to study the relationship of music with ideas of nation and nationalism in Panama. With an engaging narrative that combines anecdotes, photographs, and musical notation, Bellaviti situates the reader in a cultural history of Panama, and even when the book involves the unavoidable references to the canal, it mostly focuses on transregional circulations of musical influences and internal sociocultural interactions among Panamanians.The ideas of the book are supported by extensive ethnographic work: in-depth interviews, detailed descriptions, images, and secondary sources allowed Bellaviti to write an analysis that would appeal to specialists from different disciplines. For historians, the author offers a study of a country that is often overlooked in explorations about the construction of nationalisms in Latin America as well as in the history of material and popular culture. Unlike musical genres of some other countries in the region, Panama's música típica has not become a globally identifiable national symbol, like the case of rancheras and Mexico, for example. This is, perhaps, one of the most interesting contributions to the historiography, because Bellaviti explores the deep significance of música típica but also the conflicting negotiations about what should or could be considered as characteristically Panamanian and what should or could change in order to export those local national symbols to the world—including the name of the beloved musical genre, which has very specific meanings inside Panama but does not resonate abroad. One interview illustrates this point: when popular musicians Samy and Sandra Sandoval performed on the widely watched show Sábado Gigante, the host asked them which kind of music they played. When they answered “música típica,” the response they received was, “But what kind of música típica? Every country has música típica” (p. 248).A constant question when examining the construction of nationalisms is who gets to decide what would be part of the national heritage. In Panama, as in some other Latin American countries, the state played a central role. The first two chapters explore the work of folklorists, sponsored by the government, who saw as a central part of their work to “rescue” and “preserve” what they considered to be the main components of Panamanian cultural heritage (p. 23). Some of the national symbols refer back to the Azuero Peninsula, a geographical region located at a significant distance from the multiculturally traveled canal. However, nationalism is not a process that only comes from the top down. The location of the peninsula, its economic development, and its labor interactions shaped the components of música típica while also creating a fan base of listeners and dancegoers. As part of this work, the author also analyzes the major political developments in the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Panama, detailing how the specific geopolitical situation of the country shaped specific meanings of nationhood.In regard to the history of material and popular culture, Bellaviti's discussion of the instruments used in música típica performances is particularly interesting. The book explains in detail the transition from the violin to the accordion as the primary melodic instrument, as well as the technological developments that changed the way that music was played and enjoyed in the last century. Bellaviti also touches on gender interactions inside the bands and in bailes, lyric analysis, and the relationship between performances and political events. Regarding this last topic, the author explains what would seem to be a contradiction: musicians avoid openly expressing their political opinions but often perform at rallies and have increasingly played an active role in political events that seek to engage voters.There are a few aspects that need further exploration, because they are part of the rich analysis offered and catch the attention of the reader: For instance, how have performances of music and nationalism incorporated and celebrated (or not) Afro-Panamanian populations and their cultural heritage in recent years? What does it mean for música típica composers and musicians to feel as outsiders when traveling inside their own country due to their rural origins? These questions pave the way for future research, which would further situate Panama and its complexity as part of comprehensive studies of nationalism and popular culture in Latin America, as Bellaviti has in this book.

Temporalities of Israel/Palestine: Culture and Politics

This article charts a relational history of Palestinian and Israeli temporalities. Probing the interplay of political and cultural discourses, I show how while literature and film are indices of the temporal views that inform political action, they also work to expand those views. What are the key temporal concepts of Zionism and Palestinian thought, and how have they been negotiated in literary and cinematic works from the 1940s to the present? How have major political developments influenced temporal attitudes and cultural discourse? What emergent temporalities are at play in the current political climate? To address these questions, I bring insights from the social sciences into dialogue with close readings of Hebrew and Arabic works. After delineating what I call the syntagmatic model of Israeli and Palestinian temporalities, I discuss the fluid and nonlinear temporalities that are increasingly salient in Palestinian cultural production.

Reforming French Culture. Satire, Spiritual Alienation, and Connection to Strangers by George Hoffmann

Reviewed by: Reforming French Culture. Satire, Spiritual Alienation, and Connection to Strangers by George Hoffmann Bernd Renner George Hoffmann, Reforming French Culture. Satire, Spiritual Alienation, and Connection to Strangers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, 264 pp. George Hoffmann’s ambitious study of Protestant militant writing during the French Wars of Religion straddles many disciplines, first and foremost literature, history, rhetoric, and cultural studies, which makes it even more valuable than its vast erudition and highlighting of oft-neglected texts suggests on the surface. Consequently, the seven chapters of the study strive to integrate reformed satirical and polemical writing into the larger literary, historical, and religious context of the sixteenth century, demonstrating effectively the far-reaching impact of militant writing in the large sense on major cultural and political developments of the time. This comprehensive and innovative approach enriches our [End Page 299] understanding of the reformed project considerably, leading up to the convincing conclusion that France had become a culturally Protestant country in this period despite the objective confessional failure of the Reformation. The main authors and texts discussed throughout the study constitute a fair selection of the essential directions that reformed writing had explored to participate in the polemical exchanges of the time: Pierre Viret, Henri Estienne, Simon Goulart, Théodore de Bèze, Conrad Badius, and the authors of the Mappe-monde nouvelle papistique stand out among others. One would have obviously liked to know how Hoffmann’s refreshing readings would have renewed our take on other essential texts that could have been included, above all the well-documented polemical attacks against Pierre de Ronsard, Agrippa d’Aubigné’s Tragiques, or the capstone Satyre Menippee, all of which seem tailor-made for the study’s approach even though they would likely have doubled its length. The selection appears nevertheless coherent and varied, focusing on many lesser-known texts. All these texts, whether or not they made the cut, find common ground in their usage of the concept of alterity, which is analyzed more specifically within the framework of the “spiritual imperative” of alienation (67), of “ethnic and moral foreignness” (57, examples from Viret), and of what amounts to contemptible alterity. The juxtaposition of the ideal and real, a major satiric dichotomy, is a constant albeit latent presence throughout the discussion in this context. Through “self-conscious outsider styling” (65) and establishing parallels between unreformed Christians and barbarous Turks (63), reformers redefined the exotic in various ways and hoped to associate Christianity with a frame of mind rather than with a geographical place (152). Hence, in the first place, the well-chosen inclusion of travel literature (Léry). Hence, secondly, the emphasis on Menippean approaches in the Lucianic tradition, although one would argue that Juvenalian indignation occupies a more important place within this often violently polemical universe than the book seems to suggest, all the more so after the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. Fantasy, exoticism, and “vindictive pessimism” (75) constitute a perfect synthesis of the two major satirical traditions that are reflected in Juvenal and Lucian. It is this type of omnipresent ambivalence that Hoffmann’s study expertly problematizes throughout the seven chapters, an ambivalence, sometimes even an ambiguity, that is reflected, at times quite abstractly, in the concept of early modern satire and its various influences itself. Henri Estienne, as a “scholar, reformer, and moralist” (100) embodies the perplexing varietas of late sixteenth-century committed writing, especially in the intriguing treatise [End Page 300] Apology for Herodotus. But if alienation is an end rather than a means, as Hoffmann appears to imply in his discussion of Estienne, then one would be tempted to conclude that satire’s main objective, to heal the ills of society, is being thwarted by such monological and overtly polemical attacks (contrasted, implicitly, with the fine discussion of Montaigne in chapter seven). This is probably the major issue where the author did not push his analyses far enough: the distinction between satire and polemic, and accessorily, the importance of satirical movere (for example in his inspired pages devoted to admiratio). Whereas it is true that satire and polemic overlap, sometimes even substantially, especially during conflicts such as the Wars of Religion, they are...

Coping with change in India’s media: Struggles of English-language journalists in an evolving mediascape

In recent times, journalism, worldwide, has been undergoing significant changes. Some of the major revolutions have occurred in India, the world’s largest democracy. The size and face of Indian news media have seen rapid transformations owing to major economic, technological, and political developments in the country in recent decades. The focus of this research is on how India’s English-language media are dealing with the various changes, including digital disruptions and other pressures under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Hindutva’ government. The insights are drawn from the experiences and perceptions of a sample of journalists at the forefront of covering major events. Being in the coalface, these journalists are bearing the brunt of the developments, both good and bad. The email interviews reveal that while the English-language media may be a small part of India’s vast national media landscape, they are also buffeted by some major developments in the country, and fighting to maintain their independence in the face of some powerful trends and influences in technology, politics, and commerce.

Historical Atlas of Central Europe

Historical Atlas of Central Europe

A Left History of Liquorice: What It Means to Write "Left" History

This article is part of a special Left History series reflecting upon changing currents and boundaries in the practice of left history, and outlining the challenges historians of the left must face in the current tumultuous political climate. This series extends a conversation first convened in a 2006 special edition of Left History (11.1), which asked the question, “what is left history?” In the updated series, contributors were asked a slightly modified question, “what does it mean to write ‘left’ history?”&#x0D; The article charts the impact of major political developments on the field of left history in the last decade, contending that a rising neoliberal and right-wing climate has constructed an environment inhospitable to the discipline’s survival. To remain relevant, Palmer calls for historians of the left to develop a more “open-ended and inclusive” understanding of the left and to push the boundaries of inclusion for a meaningful historical study of the left. To illustrate, Palmer provides a brief materialist history of liquorice to demonstrate the mutability of left history as a historical approach, rather than a set of traditional political concerns.

Traditions and Innovations in the Clothing of Southern Altaians

Abstract The study deals with the traditional clothing of the Southern Altaians – Altai-Kizhi and Telengits, living in the territory of the Altai Republic in the Russian Federation, its common features, ethnic specifics and, above all, the changes it has gone through since the second half of the 18th century to the present. During this period, there were several major political developments that had a significant impact on traditional Altai culture, including clothing. Attention is focused on the influence of Russian and Chinese textile production, the transformation of the material used in the production of clothing, its forms, decorative elements, colour as well as its role and use at present.

Political Stability and Institutionalization in Pakistan: an Overview of Major Political Developments During 2008-2016

Political development refers to the significance of institutionalization and is a closely interrelated trend of modernization. Political development in a state depends on political participation while political participation depends on institutionalization. Political stability increases the prospects for civilian rule, and institutionalization strengthens the political system. Political history of Pakistan presents the infrequent institutionalization of political system for democratic stability and the political experiences of Pakistan are just a posed in order to understand the problems of political institutionalization. This paper explores the close relationship between institutionalization, political development and political stability, and also highlights the views provided by different social scientists in an explanation of these terms. The purpose of this study is to evaluates the democratic process and major political developments during 2008-2016 as a case study because this is the unique era for political stability and institutionalization in the political history of Pakistan.

Faith in Flux: Pentecostalism and Mobility in Rural Mozambique, by Devaka Premawardhana

In this book, anthropologist Devaka Premawardhana documents the outcomes of his research on Pentecostalism among the Makhuwa people of northern Mozambique. He made a purposeful decision to explore the dynamics of religious conversion in a place that is still largely immune to the much-touted “global explosion” of Pentecostalism. To explicate the Makhuwa’s experience of Pentecostalism, Premawardhana meticulously documents the everyday lives of selected converts, particularly those of Jemusse and the members of his family, and he digs deep into the community’s sociocultural and political history. The two chapters following the introduction depict this history and cultural background accessibly and provide an insightful and solid contextual frame that helps the reader to situate and interpret the biographical and family accounts in subsequent chapters.The book consists of six chapters divided into three parts. There is an introduction that provides relevant theoretical insights and a description of the researcher’s motivation. In his thoroughly articulated conclusion, the author restates the need to qualify triumphalist narrations of Pentecostalism as an all-conquering global religion. He also demonstrates that the adoption and adaptation of the new—Pentecostalism in this case—happens against the background of the old and present realities. The conclusion is followed by a helpful and comprehensive notes section (173–91) that provides additional insights into methods, methodologies, culture, language, history, and citations. The notes are followed by the bibliography and the index, both of which enhance the accessibility and the overall intellectual quality of the book.Although the narrow theme is Pentecostalism among the Makhuwa of northern Mozambique, this book examines broader questions about modernity, globalization, and mobility. Pentecostalism, as a global religion, has perched on the wings of mass migrations to reach far-flung places, but Premawardhana demonstrates in this book that mobility—even if just for existential reasons—can influence how people receive, resist, or rearticulate a global religion such as Pentecostalism.The author draws strong parallels between the Makhuwa people’s ambivalent interaction with Pentecostalism and their reaction to major political developments and historical epochs such as colonialism, postcolonialism, and interregional migrations motivated by unexpected and traumatic family or societal events. His analysis—woven through many chapters—leads to a conclusion that many analysts would concur with—that the pasts and several aspects of the present matter in most religious conversion experiences and the supposed rupture with the past can sometimes translate into continuities in various complex ways.Premawardhana set out to challenge extant theories about Pentecostalism—mainly that it is spreading like a harmattan wildfire globally. He achieved this aim as the book shows Pentecostalism struggling to put down roots in this province of Mozambique. Through lucid prose and vivid descriptions, this book not only paints an intricate and fascinating picture of the lifeworld of the Makhuwa, but also pulls the reader into this world effortlessly and irresistibly. I had to remind myself, again and again, that this work is not a fiction concocted by an imaginative twenty-first-century literary genius or the well-crafted diary of a seventeenth-century European adventurer, but the account of a modern-day people derived through solid and reliable socioscientific methods. Such is the excellent quality of the narration!Some of the conclusions reached by the author are less novel than others. For example, his idea that Pentecostal conversion is less of a rupture with the past but more of a continuity has been articulated by many scholars. Also, studying Pentecostalism as a minority and struggling faith is not entirely new, although I agree that many researchers have tended to focus mostly on places where the “explosion” has been profound. However, many studies of African-led Pentecostalism in diaspora spaces in the West could fit into this category of a minority and struggling religion. I also agree that focusing disproportionately on where the explosion is happening could give a distorted picture of the scale and impact of Pentecostalism as a global religion.This book, no doubt, adds new, unique, and refreshing insight to the ever-growing research and publications on Pentecostalism. Not only does it examine Pentecostalism in a place where it had not been studied extensively, it does so by means of time-tested anthropological methods and theoretical frameworks. This unique approach and the vivid and enthralling narrative style make this book a must-read for students, scholars, and practitioners of Pentecostalism everywhere.

تطورات رومانيا الداخلية وسياستها الخارجية أبان الحرب العالمية الاولى حتى احتلال بخارست (آب 1914 – كانون الاول 1916)

The Balkan region in general and Romania in particular have witnessed major political developments during the First World War. Suffice it to say that the first outbreak of war began from the Balkans, namely Sarajevo, and ended in the Balkans, where the last peace treaties were signed with the surrender of Bulgaria on September 29, 1918. Years of War The Balkans were generally a theater in which the armies of the belligerents demonstrated their military capabilities. Moreover, in the same period, both sides of the conflict (the Axis Powers or the Wafd States) were struggling to obtain the support of the Balkans, including Romania, Sugary, political and economic, both on military operations or planed Supply issues or control over trade routes, and on the other side of Romania was seeking for its part to take advantage of the chance of war to the maximum extent possible to achieve the national dream of achieving political unity.

Focus: Union rights in a region of dynamic change

Talking about the trade unions rights in a dynamic region such as the Arab World these days is really not an easy task. At the time where people lose their lives across the region, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere, we still note the increase of the attacks by governments against democratic unions and the right of the trade unions to act on a democratic environment. In this article I will be talking about trade unions rights in different Arab countries, including countries who don’t accept any trade union activities like, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE. The region can’t be taken as one block in respect of trade unions rights, as each country has its own characteristics: Morocco The nature and structure of the trade unions in Morocco is very similar to the French trade unions structure, where there are more than one federation representing the workers at the same entity, and the most representative federation has the right to negotiate. Many of the federations in Morocco belongs to political parties and implement the parties’ agendas, so, if the party is part of the government you find its associated federation supporting government policies, and they will change their role if the party is out of the government. Another important area is to note that for the last ten years the (Islamist) Justice and Development Party has been in power as the party won enough seats to form the government. This right wing party has a clear agenda to undermine trade unions rights in Morocco. The ITF and ITUC affiliate the UMT realised the party’s intention after a series of moves, starting from amending the pension law, reaching to suggest the amendment of the labour code to restrict the right to strike in Morocco, which is guaranteed by the Moroccan constitution. The UMT, with other federations, formed the alliance trade union group to defend the right to strike, and declared a one-month campaign, where hundreds of thousands of its members demonstrated against the government intentions to restrict the right to strike. Algeria In Algeria the situation is a bit different where the UGTA is still the biggest and more active federation, with representation all over the country. During the last five years when the oil prices have been dropped, workers started to face pressures on their economic situations, as the rise in fuel prices led to inflation in the cost of living. As Algeria ratified ILO Conventions No. 87 and No. 98, other independent unions are active in some sectors as education and health. Some of these unions outside the UGTA lead long strikes demanding improving working conditions. These unions have never been supported by the UGTA or its affiliated unions, and claim that they were under pressure by the government authorities. We can say that that the most represented federation, the UGTA, has representation across the country, with CBAs in most of the sectors, and the non UGTA unions are active in some sectors, but face pressure on their activities. Tunisia The UGTT is the lead trade union federation in Tunisia, where it plays a major role political developments as well, since they are part of the Carthage Declaration, which lead to the stabilisation of the country. The UGTT was one of the four organisations who received the Nobel Prize in 2016 due its contribution to the peace in Tunisia. Now, political and security pressures, have lead the country to lose more than 30 percent of tourism, which used to highly contribute to economy. The World Bank and IMF intervened putting more pressure on to the social situation, to facilitate loans to the government. The government started a series of actions to introduce privatisation, PPP, and liberalisations to many sectors. For example, the government announced plans to sign an open skies agreement with the EU, which will put more challenges on the national carrier, Tunis Air, which is unionised and facing challenges due to the drop in tourism. On the other hand, its worth mentioning that the UGTT unions are very active in all sectors, to the extent that employers and government think that the unions are one of the reasons of the economical deteriorations. Libya During...

Making Sense of the Messy Sixties: Introduction to a Review Symposium on Risa Goluboff's Vagrant Nation

This essay provides a summary and critical appraisal of Risa Goluboff's Vagrant Nation: Police Power, Constitutional Change, and the Making of the 1960s, a book that interweaves the stories of an eclectic cast of characters who were the targets of vagrancy law prosecutions with stories of the lawyers who challenged these prosecutions. In charting the demise of what she terms a “vagrancy law regime,” Goluboff provides insights on the major social and political developments of the 1940s through the 1970s, including the labor movement, the black freedom struggle, the antiwar movement, and the sexual revolution. Goluboff's most significant achievement is her ability to identify in seemingly scattered challenges to vagrancy law a coherent and historically significant episode of constitutional change. Although I question whether the book delivers on its promise to reframe the way we understand the “long 1960s,” Vagrant Nation nonetheless offers a model of how to integrate social history and doctrinal history into a compelling narrative of constitutional change.

Introduction: Migration and Differential Labour Market Participation

Recent major political developments, including Brexit and the US presidential elections, have been strongly associated with public concerns around levels of immigration. Much of this has centred on the role of migrants in the low-skilled sectors of the economy and concerns that they have displaced members of local communities from jobs and depressed wage levels. This is despite compelling evidence that immigrants rarely take jobs from native workers in OECD countries (Constant, 2014) and that in the long run, the wage and employment effects of immigration in the 1990s and in the 2000s were small and always positive for less educated workers of all OECD countries (Docquieret al., 2014). Recent UK specific studies have found that the impact on wages is considered to be relatively small (Dustmannet al., 2013; Nickell and Salaheen, 2015). Notwithstanding this evidence, hostility to migrants and migration more generally has become increasingly overt, as reflected in a substantial rise in ‘race’ hate crimes before and following the referendum on the UK's membership of the EU in 2016 (Burnett, 2017).

Oil Rent and Regional Economic Development in MENA

Oil rent has created a regional dynamic in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) whereby major political developments take place at the regional rather than the single-state level. The Arab Spring was a regional phenomenon, and the entire region is today involved in a regional civil war. The regional dimension of democratic transitions has often been postulated and supported in the literature. In seeking appropriate economic strategies that may support the democratisation process, the regional dimension cannot be forgotten: purely national recipes have little chance of success. Ever since the heyday of pan-Arabism, economic integration within the Arab region has been a recurring theme and objective, but accomplishments remain profoundly disappointing. This chapter reviews findings and the literature concerning the three dimensions of regional integration—merchandise trade, movements of labour and movements of capital—and details the insufficient progress that has been made. It is difficult to envisage a significant improvement in the development prospects of individual Arab countries unless greater success is achieved in pursuing regional integration. At the same time, the implementation of a new regional economic order also requires a new political order. The main difficulty in this respect is that those countries in the region that have the most economic assets and tools—the major Gulf exporters—are ruled by patrimonial monarchies rather than political forces, and their model of governance cannot be exported.

Asia and Africa during Decolonization

The section assesses the processes of decolonization and the emergence of independent states in the second half of the XX century. A detailed analysis of the roots of decolonization and the nature of this process makes it possible to draw some conclusions about its effects, including political splits in yesterday colonies (i.e. Korea, China, India) and an increasing role of Asia and Africa in international relations. In addition, the section pays special attention to the major political developments in Asia and Africa, with regionalization among them.

Twenty-seven years of the WHO European Healthy Cities movement: a sustainable movement for change and innovation at the local level.

Healthy Cities in Europe was launched with the ambitious aim to put health high onthe social and political agenda of cities. This ambition resonates well with the understanding today of the significance of the social, economic, environmental, cultural and commercial determinants of health and the fact that health is ultimately a political choice. What was remarkable from the start was that city leaders from across Europe enthusiastically embraced the concept of a healthy city as a whole-of-local-government responsibility. Paradoxically, 27 years on, such an understanding remains an elusive challenge for national governments, even though the evidence of the effects of these determinants of health is immensely stronger today than it was then. The evolution of healthy cities in Europe can be seen as the history of modern public health through a local lens, covering 27 years of major political developments in Europe and globally, major changes in how health and sustainable development are understood and dealt with as well as majorchanges in the social and public health landscape of the WHO European Region. The WHO European Healthy Cities Network was for