National Political Space Research Articles

National security and political space for youth in Thailand’s Deep South

The study at hand focuses on youths in Thailand’s violence-ridden Deep South, since they tend to become drawn into political struggles more than other groups. Youths are not only targets of security officials but are people who represent the future of Thailand’s Deep South. Using the concept of political space from the United States’ National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the conflict transformation theory of John Paul Lederach, this study found that national security measures drawn up by the Thai state have limited the political space of youth in conflict area. The main target group of this study is youths of 15–35 years old who have sought to broaden political space with regard to social and political activities. This study shows that the Thai government has used the strategy of “Politics leading the military,” prioritizing political space rather than using force to solve problems. However, state policies were organized under a framework of security which affected the political expression of young people. Nevertheless, youths have been aware of this limitation and have thus sought to improve their strategies of broadening political space as a means of helping to create a more fear-free atmosphere to increase their influence on potential peacebuilding processes.

1950 India–Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship and Regional Mobilisations in Eastern India

Regional demands for statehood in India have had an aspiration towards a ‘nationalisation’ of their issues in the hopes of accommodation. In the case of the Gorkhaland movement for separate statehood in northern West Bengal, the competition among regional forces to occupy and share a ‘national political space’ from the ‘margins’ has fuelled the increasing employment of debates regarding international treaty obligations. While there are numerous factors that are the causes of regional political mobilisation, the demand for the abrogation of Article VII of the India–Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship (1950) has nevertheless remained as one of its central themes. This symbolises an accentuation in the anxieties of citizenship and belonging to the nation. Examining these amid the important issues relating to unsuccessful invocations from Nepal for a Brihat Nepal (Greater Nepal), and the constitution of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) for India–Nepal relations, the article concludes that there will not be any radical change in the status quo of India’s international treaty obligations with Nepal despite repeated demands by regional actors in India. This is indicated in an elusive ‘permanent political solution’ declared by the ruling party in India as a response to the regional political mobilisation that will possibly depart from the debates that invoke and demand transformations to India’s treaty obligations with Nepal.

The "New Left" in Chile in the face of existential challenges

The article examines the ideological principles of the Chilean "New Left" and the political practice of the government of G. Borich during his first year in power, the process of developing key reforms, fulfilling pre-election promises to form a socially-oriented development model, completing work on the draft of a new constitution. Interaction with the centrist and left-wing radical line in the national political space played an important role. The difficult path of finding answers to the existential challenges of real politics has led to a significant transformation of the president's tactics, a revision of a number of priorities, a gravitation to the positions of centrism and the format of the "compromise model". The changes resulted in increased disagreements within the ruling coalition, a large radicalization of supporters of an irreconcilable ideological position, which can significantly complicate the further work of the government.

The Impact of Myth Consciousness on the Formation of the National Political and Cultural Space: “Ukraine is not Russia”

The articles researches the concept of political culture as a system of inherited political notions expressed in symbolic forms and generalizes the differences between the political culture of Ukrainians and Russians. It stresses that the cultural identity of Ukraine is established on one of its basic tendencies – penchant for archaization of all symbolic forms; it researches the place of the heroic political myth in this process; it analyzes sacral projections of the political in the myth through which the subject-and-object order of the Ukrainian politics world is explained. Thus, the pattern of the heroic monomyth (a structured ontological range of symbols) serves as a program of political reality (as a structured order of political objects). The symbols of the heroic monomyth have sacral significance because they present an idea of political order, stability, forecastability of politics (the latter is lacking in the crisis context of development) when there is unwillingness of a part of citizens to bear responsibility for prospects of future development of events in the country in the conditions of long-term uncertainty. The article researches peculiarities of the how the structure-image of the hero builds the constitution of political reality in Ukraine and Russia.

The Role of Public Opinion in EU Integration: Assessing the Relationship between Elites and the Public during the Refugee Crisis

AbstractWhile the EU was still recovering from the Great Recession, the refugee crisis polarized and mobilized national and European political spaces, inducing governments to revise their immigration policies. Scholars are presently engaged in academic debate over whether these revisions can be explained by reference to grand theories of European integration. In this context, we ask the following questions. If public opinion favoured ‘constraining’ EU integration, can public concern over the refugee crisis prompt political elites to stand against a regulative solution that would replace the Dublin System? How do these trends align with the grand theories of EU integration? By analysing longitudinal surveys of elites, general public and experts, we show that public rejection of immigrants relates to elites' opposition to a supranational prevalence of EU institutions for setting immigration quotas, thus inhibiting integration on extra‐EU migrants' resettlement.

Information Interference as a Phenomenon of the Contemporary International Policy Subjects Activity

Introduction. The author aims to analyze the phenomenon of information interference with national political processes in the conditions of the contemporary information society and the evolution of the Internet as a space of political communications. The article shows that the digital information intervention is relevant and at the same time, a complex multidimensional phenomenon of contemporary politics. In many respects, the potential of the digital interference phenomenon is closely related to the essential features of functioning and the transformation of the contemporary Internet, which has been actively used when changing political regimes in many countries. The problem of information security and sovereignty of the present state on the Internet is becoming one of the most urgent in the conditions of the rapid development of information and communication technologies. Methods and materials. The issues identified in the article are investigated using the methods of comparative, structural-functional and normative analysis, included observation, as well as the case-study method. The method of scientific forecasting and scripting techniques has allowed to form a scenario for the effective settlement of international conflicts in the field of information security. The empirical base of the study is reports of foreign experts, official materials of state authorities of the Russian Federation and foreign countries, reports of Freedom House international organization, official speeches and statements by the heads of state on the issues outlined in the work. Analysis. Countering external information expansion is becoming one of the most critical tasks of effective political governance at the state level to preserve the sovereignty of the national political communication space, including domestic segments of the Internet. The initiatives of states to form the sovereign national segments of the Internet space are, on the one hand, an attempt to protect their political systems from external influence and invasion, to ensure their own political stability, and on the other hand, they create risks for the democratic potential of the Internet. The article substantiates the thesis that the phenomenon of interference in elections in actual practice often becomes not so much an objective process as an instrument of information warfare, mass political propaganda and discrediting political opponents, a manipulative tool that can be actively used not only by authoritarian regimes with a low level of democratic development. Results. The study shows that differences in understanding and defining the essence of the Internet by various countries give rise to a significant potential for political conflicts on a global scale. This circumstance leads the author to the conclusion that it is necessary to form international institutions capable of preventing and regulating information conflicts in the Internet space, as well as reducing global political risks (including risks associated with potential interference in the electoral process of sovereign states). The implementation of this scenario will allow forming a collective responsibility in the functioning of the global Internet.

Национально-культурный тренд в исследовании российского политико-правового пространства начала XXI в.: ментальное измерение модернизационных стратегий

Authors of the article allocate and in details consider the so-called “not positive” components of national legal reality reflecting difficult morphology of public and individual legal consciousness and included in structure of legal mentality. Such approach allows to allocate various approaches to identification and typification of such significant element of national legal and political space as legal mentality, which accounting, undoubtedly, has huge informative value within national and cultural and even intellectual and technological trend of evolution of domestic and social and legal, and political and institutional space.

Comparative political communication research in the digital epoch: A typology of national communication spaces

This study makes a systematic effort to connect digital communication research with comparative political analysis. It explores the concurrence of global influence and national resilience in digital spheres, integrating the homogenizing tendencies of networked connectedness and globalization with heterogeneous configurations of national political communication spaces, which are strongly influenced by enduring social contexts. Drawing on the process-oriented actor-connector-interlocutor model, this study uses three sets of indicators to classify national political communication spaces. It conceptualizes three distinctive types of political communication spaces – “symmetrical and fully-fledged,” “vigorous but censored,” and “infertile and unresponsive” – and identifies their characteristics, internal logics, and their linkages to other communication spaces. It offers a systematic and applicable framework that may be used in future studies on cross-national comparisons of political communication processes in digital spheres.

State, power and global order

This article examines the evolution of international thought through the notion of ‘political space’. It focuses on two important domains of international politics, the nation-state and the global, to reflect on spatial categories in the discipline of International Relations (IR). Since its inception, the concept of the nation-state has dominated mainstream IR theory. Yet an investigation of how international order has been theorized over IR’s first century shows that this era has also been defined by globalist visions of political order. Nowadays, globalization is sometimes seen as the apex of the historical interplay of particularity and universality. The progression towards global political and economic order, however, is today undermined by the resurgence of state-centric political nationalism which seeks to challenge the legitimacy of the global political space. By examining how past international thinkers including Alfred Zimmern, Barbara Ward, Hans Morgenthau, E. H. Carr and John Herz, imagined and interpreted the relations of space and politics in the national and global spheres, this article suggests that spatial thinking offers an insightful approach for theorizing international relations. The article argues that the global and national spaces attain their political meanings through divisions as well as interactions and connections. The focus on divisions, exemplified in the writings of Barbara Ward, helps to make sense of the modus operandi of power in the national and global political spaces by investigating differences, tensions and instability.

Performing Tradition while Doing Politics: A comparative study of the dozos and koglweogos self-defense movements in Burkina Faso

Abstract:This article is about self-defense movements in Burkina Faso, with an emphasis on the interplay of political pragmatics and cultural representation in public debate. It examines how two different self-defense movements—the dozos and the koglweogos—articulate tradition and politics with respect to locally organized self-defense in present-day Burkina Faso. In addition to a description of these movements, this comparative study of self-defense movements adds the important dimension of political rivalry and antagonism between the movements under study. First, it demonstrates how the state has tried to contain self-defense movements. Second, the emergence of koglweogos is analyzed with respect to public debate, as well as the state’s attempts to contain the movement bureaucratically. Third, it describes how dozos and koglweogos seek to assert public authority in “the new Burkina Faso” that has taken shape since the fall of Blaise Compaoré in October, 2014. More specifically, this article is devoted to the conflictual relationship between the dozos and the koglweogos that was publicly enacted in late 2016 and early 2017. Self-defense movements must not only be locally and traditionally legitimate, but they also need to be responsible actors in the national political space. Hence, “performing tradition, while doing politics” simultaneously represents the political containment and the cultural legitimacy of the self-defense movements.

Barriers to equity in REDD+: Deficiencies in national interpretation processes constrain adaptation to context

A national interpretation process involving diverse actors and interests is required to transform global environmental initiatives into policies appropriate to the national or subnational context. These processes of localising norms are critical spaces to formulate equitable pathways to environmental conservation, yet have received limited attention from policy makers and researchers. We explored national policy processes for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) in Uganda and Nepal from the perspectives of ‘intermediaries’, state and civil society actors at subnational and national scale who promote the interests of various stakeholder groups. Through think-tank meetings and semi-structured interviews with a range of intermediaries, we uncovered that REDD+ implementation processes in both countries are dominated by international actors, applying a demanding administrative agenda and restricting space for deliberation. Consequently, social aspects of policy were compartmentalised, reduced to technical exercises and local equity concerns inadequately addressed in national REDD+ policies. For example, social safeguards approaches were perceived to lack substantive guidelines to promote equity. Limited national political space to criticise government policy and lack of attention to relevant evidence further restricted ability to address entrenched injustices such as status inequalities faced by marginalised groups. Although civil society organisations choose to maintain official involvement with REDD+, many expressed a possibility they would oppose REDD+ in future, or serious doubts about its design and expected outcomes. Concerns centred on lack of recognition of indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ values, identities, practices and institutions such as customary tenure systems, alongside possible detrimental impacts to decentralised forest governance regimes, well established in Nepal and emerging in Uganda. We suggest features to be enshrined in REDD+ policy for adapting national interpretation processes to become more effective spaces for empowering diverse intermediaries to negotiate and influence localisation of international norms, ultimately to promote more equitable pathways to reduced deforestation and degradation.

Civic Education as Education for Peace in the Context of Serbia's 2000 Democratic Revolution

The introduction of civic education in Serbia in 2001 marked a beginning of an allencompassing reform that set the tone for future changes designed to support the country’s democratization. This article draws on documentary and elite interview data to unpack the conceptualization of this policy, revealing it to be a multi-level positioning exercise in the national and international political space. It argues that, by using favorable political and international policy conditions, Serbian policymakers created a version of civic education that significantly drew on grassroots peace education programs developed during the 1990s, recognizing the priority of needs in building a democratic society. The latter offered Serbian policymakers agency in the context of what critical literature perceives as a transfer/imposition of policies in societies facing “Westernization.”

Resonance of the Arab Spring: Solidarities and youth opinion in the Global South

The Arab Spring exemplifies to many a kind of globalisation from below. It cuts across borders and challenges liberal and technocratic élites. But how far does its global resonance really go? Are publics still largely corralled within national political spaces? Are waves of revolt confined by civilisational breakwaters? Or is the cosmopolitan space that many leftists envision taking shape? Based on a three-country survey of university students, this article probes these assumptions. It finds far-reaching solidarity with the aspirations of the Arab Spring, driven by the rise of a cross-border global society. But on probing the bases of such solidarity, it also finds that the cosmopolitan cohort emerging in the Global South does not fit a simple liberal or leftist mould. The Arab Spring resonates on multiple frequencies at the same time. This complex cosmopolitanism has implications for layers of common ground as global political opportunity structures emerge.

Beyond Kriesiland: EU integration as a super issue after the Eurocrisis

AbstractWhere some researchers have seen only a limited impact of Europeanisation on national party politics, others have added a separate European Union dimension to the pre‐existing economic left‐right dimension to model the national political space. This article examines the effects of the European crisis on the national political space across the EU utilising data from the 2014 European Election Survey. It analyses the effect of a country's economic development on the coherence between attitudes towards the EU and economic issues using multilevel regression. Strong evidence is found that in the Southern European debtor states economic and European issues are merging as a result of strong European interference in their economic policy. In the Northern European creditor states a second relevant dimension focuses on cultural issues. These results offer the next step in theorising Europeanisation.

Фашизм в европейской политико-правовой культуре XX в.: "мифы" и реальность (понимание природы государственно-правовых режимов на примере доктрины А.Розенберга)

In the article highlighted and addressed sociocultural, institutional, historical, and other aspects of State-legal (political) modes, as well as theoretical and methodological features of their research. As part of the critical analysis of Nazi political and legal doctrines and ideological positions and conduct study authors Rosenberg.-typical of Russian jurisprudence approaches to public entities-legal regimes, their classification, definition, place and role in national political and socio-legal space.

How the European debt crisis reshaped national political space: The case of Greece

Where some authors saw a limited impact of Europeanisation on national party politics, others proposed that in addition to the pre-existing economic left-right dimension a separate European Union dimension structures the national political space. This article looks at the Greek bail-out during the European sovereign debt crisis to examine how Europeanisation can change the national political space. The bail-out came with memoranda that set the main lines of Greek economic policy for the coming years. Accepting these policies was connected with remaining in the Eurozone. This restructured the political space: the economic and European integration form one dimension. A second relevant dimension focuses on cultural issues. The economic/European dimension is a stronger predictor of vote choice than the cultural dimension.

Mobilizing Europe in national competition: The case of the French Front National

This study of the uses of Europe by the leaders of the Front National shows how the opening of a new European political space can have indirect effects, supporting political parties at the domestic level and strengthening specific actors within political organizations. The theme of Europe, together with European elections and the European Parliament, are transformed by Front National leaders into material as well as symbolic resources which they mobilize in the national political space at both inter and intra-party level. These uses of Europe reinforce the capacities and resources of the party as well as its legitimacy and visibility. It helps Front National actors to widen their electoral support and allows party presidents to strengthen their position. The article reveals the specificity of the Front National relationship to the European arena and underlines the strong continuity of the practices developed by the new leadership. Finally the study provides a detailed account of the process of Front National Europeanization and advances understanding of the impact of European integration on domestic political competition.

New parties and the transformation of the Italian political space

This article presents an analysis of the programmatic supply and ideological positioning of parties in the general election of 2013. The Italian party system went through format simplification through a reduction in the number of party units after the creation of the two large parties, PD and the PdL, but the erosion of their vote and the corresponding breakthrough of the large anti-system party, the Five Star Movement, have reversed the previous tendency towards increased fragmentation. My main goal is to understand whether, after the emergence of new parties on the political scene, the national political space has changed not only in terms of format, but also of mechanics. In particular, this article explores whether new dimensions of party competition have arisen and whether the ideological positioning of parties has consequently been affected. I show that after 2013 the Italian party system was ideologically more polarised and multidimensional than in the past as new issue dimensions emerged and traditional ones acquired new meaning.

Teacher Learning in the In-between: Encountering an ‘Invisible Barrier’

Since early childhood has become the focus of national and supranational political spaces, issues around teacher learning have also gained a firm position in the debates. This has seen the literature on teacher learning largely being positioned within a managerial/alternative dichotomy, arising from a resistance to technical-rationalist discourses present in contemporary policy. This article examines data from a participatory action research project investigating the learning of three early childhood teachers working in an early childhood centre located in an independent school in Australia. It illustrates shifts in data analysis methods, which permitted teacher learning to be understood outside of this dichotomy and instead as that which is always already taking place in the in-between. Working with Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of lines and forces, the in-between became an intensive space of affect where teacher learning was produced in/through the circulation of multiple discourses that were always already leaking.

Navigating the boundaries of active global citizenship

This paper informs the active global citizenship debate by assessing whether returned international volunteers with a strong belief in the need for global governance also believe that participation in national political and civic spaces can drive global change. Regression models use survey responses from 245 returned international volunteers at three points in time. Findings indicate no significant difference in volunteers' conceptions of global citizenship before and after international service. However, volunteers who hold cosmopolitan views about the need for global governance have a higher sense of efficacy that participation in national spaces may affect global change. In addition, they are more likely to engage internationally but not locally. Findings suggest that global citizens may maintain an active civic identity rooted in overlapping locations. In addition, heightened notions of global citizenship appear to have a significant effect on returned volunteers' interest in international affairs and active engagement across national borders.