Opposition Members Research Articles

Codes of Modern Written Communication: Acoustic-Auditory vs. Manual-Visual

The article introduces the semiotic, cognitive, and technical aspects of the most important trends in the modern written communication, which arise as a result of the competition between acoustic-auditory and manual-visual codes. The author believes that Russian education has to adapt to the contemporary trends in virtual communication, which requires a preliminary research. The problem is that the integral-systemic presentation of communicative content is developing as a result of the growing share of visual data in various types of communication. The school course of Russian is based on elementary strategies and cannot keep up with these changes. Video-clip unites give the visual-written perception much better holistic possibilities than those of the phono-auditory-written channel. The competition of these two forms of writing is unlikely to displace the weaker opposition member. Chances are that it will redistribute their functions based on the advantages of each form.

The Reconversion of the Hagia Sophia into a Mosque: A Historian’s Perspective

The Reconversion of the Hagia Sophia into a Mosque:A Historian's Perspective Edhem Eldem (bio) KEYWORDS Hagia Sophia, Turkey, Secularism, Nationalism, Kemalism, Erdoğan Almost two years ago, only days before the municipal elections that promised to challenge his party's hold over Istanbul, President Tayyip Erdoğan rekindled the debate over the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, suggesting that he would challenge the decree that had transformed it into a museum.1 However, nobody really believed that he would carry out the measures that would make the "dream of the Muslim world" come true. This reconversion had been demanded for decades: first, by "marginal" groups rebelling against the Kemalist establishment; then, by some political parties who knew well that their claims would remain rhetorical; and finally, by Erdoğan's AKP (Justice and Development Party), especially after a proposal was brought to Parliament in 2013 by an MP from the MHP (Nationalist Action Party).2 Things had evidently taken a more serious turn, as it was felt that Erdoğan's populist and authoritarian ambitions were feeding increasingly on Islamist sentiments and rhetoric. After all, had two other Hagia Sophias not been converted into mosques in İznik (partly, 2011)3 and Trabzon (2013)4? Yet it simply did not make sense as the stakes were too high. The Hagia Sophia was too visible, too [End Page 243] famous, and the consequences would be disastrous: international opprobrium, loss of prestige, and, perhaps more importantly, tourism revenue. Erdoğan's general attitude confirmed this assumed cautiousness. To hopeful partisans, he simply pointed to the many neighboring mosques that first had to be filled before the Hagia Sophia's reconversion could be justified. And yet, on 10 July 2020, the improbable, indeed the unthinkable, did happen. The Hagia Sophia was converted back into a mosque by presidential decree, following a decision of the Council of State to cancel the 1934 decree that had turned it into a museum. Two weeks later, on Friday, 24 July, the re-consecration was performed before a packed audience of allegedly hundreds of thousands, despite the ongoing pandemic. While the event unleashed feelings of elation among AKP supporters and the Muslim-conservative public that were then relayed to the broader Turkish public by the partisan press and media, opponents displayed reactions ranging from disappointment to outright anger. Those members of the political opposition who did not openly approve of the move were very cautious in voicing criticism. Scholarly objections were severely curtailed by the lack of a proper platform and audience. Of course, the real outcry came from abroad, with the obvious exception of the Muslim world. Rather predictably, Greece, whose national sensitivities are often like a mirror image of Turkey's, was outraged and demanded the adoption of sanctions against Turkey. Political and cultural institutions throughout the Western world voiced their criticism by employing a more diplomatic vocabulary of sadness, regret, and concern. One of the rare but notable consequences of this move was that the International Association of Byzantine Studies (AIEB) revoked its decision to hold the next International Congress of Byzantine Studies in Istanbul in 2021, postponing the meeting until 2022, and changing the venue to Venice and Padua.5 The 24 July event was showy and aggressive, but it was carried out in conjunction with a series of statements that resembled a process of negotiation or bargaining. The government tried to reassure the concerned parties on some of the immediate issues, such as tourism and access to the Byzantine/Christian heritage of the monument. Promises were made that it would remain open to tourists—now free of charge—outside of prayer times; plans were made to find means to veil and unveil the frescoes and mosaics offensive to Muslims, ranging from traditional solutions such as curtains and screens, to the—somewhat dubious—use of sophisticated laser technology. Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavuşoğlu was said to have declared that Turkey was sensitive to the protection of the building's character, adding, rather enigmatically, "The function [End Page 244] can be this way or that way—it does not matter."6 No solution was proposed for the remarkable stone floor...

Pandemic response credit-claiming and blame-avoidance in France

Abstract Credit claiming led in France during the first wave to centralization and during the summer to decentralization. During the second wave, blame-avoidance led again to centralization. First wave: In the spring, the French government attempted to take credit by centralizing the crisis governance but soon faced mounting criticism from the population, health care professionals and members of the political opposition. These initial missteps prompted legislators to set up two parliamentary inquiry commissions. Complaints were filed against several members of government, including former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and former Health Minister Agnès Buzyn. In July, Phillipe was replaced by Jean Castex, who was tasked with designing France's reopening strategy with greater attention to regional needs. Summer: The government's response to Covid-19 significantly changed during the summer. The government's failure to put in place a critical triptych of testing, tracing and isolation and to contain the spread of the virus led to a recentralization of the crisis governance and a second national lockdown in late October. Second wave: Although the first lockdown was deemed “necessary” by most French people, implementation of stringent measures was less accepted by the population after a resurgence of cases at the end of the summer. As France entered a third lockdown in late March 2021, Macron's popularity rate fell 4 percentage point from a month earlier. According to an IFOP poll, 37% people said they were satisfied with the president's management of the pandemic.

На что способны боты? (Модель протестной и контрпротестной политической мобилизации)

Despite the increasing interest among scholars in the effect of Internet bots, or automated social media accounts, on the processes of political communication and mobilization in the online sphere, the extent of bots’ effectiveness and the specific mechanisms of their use remain largely understudied. The deficit of the overarching conceptual understanding and concrete results is arguably due to researchers’ aspiration to solve a problem in the empirical way, without attempting to combine data analysis with mathematical and computational modeling. Having analyzed the existing models on the topic, the authors offer their own model that is based on the spiral-of-silence theory. The key features of the model that set it apart from the existing ones are the following: a) taking into account differences in the types of motivation and costs associated with expressing protest and loyalist sentiments; b) including “partner effect” into the spiral-ofsilence mechanism; c) employing a neurological decision-ma king scheme according to which the same stimulus can prompt action and be a deterrent. On the basis of a series of computational experiments with the model, the authors demonstrate that bots are more effective in mobilizing opposition members when an individual motivated for political participation refrains from it because his local social community does not share his views. In this case, the emergence of a like-minded partner bot can destroy the spiral of silence created by this community and encourage this individual to openly express his position. On the contrary, when mobilizing loyalists, bots are most effective in relation to poorly motivated individuals. The model elaborated by the authors not only allows us to evaluate bots’ effects in a new way, but it also sheds light on how people make decisions in the framework of political communication and mobilization in social networks.

Средства актуализации оппозиции «свои - чужие» в инаугурационной речи Бориса Джонсона

The paper aims to identify the characteristic strategies and tactics and their functions, as well as lexical and syntactic means that represent the opposition “them – us” in the inaugural speech of the 77th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Scientific novelty of the study lies in describing linguistic means of actualising the opposition “them – us” on the basis of the material of B. Johnson’s political discourse during the Brexit period in Great Britain. As a result of the study, the authors have identified reference of the opposition “them – us”, described various means of their naming, determined patterns in Boris Johnson’s choice of strategies and tactics, which are accounted for by the nature of the political relations between the opposition members.

‘Unfettered Freedom’ Revisited: Hungarian Historical Journals between 1989 and 2018

In his 1992 article, ‘Today, Freedom is Unfettered in Hungary,’ Columbia University history professor István Deák argued that after 1989 Hungarian historical research enjoyed ‘unfettered freedom. Deák gleefully listed the growing English literature on Hungarian history and hailed the ‘step-by step dismantling of the Marxist-Leninist edifice in historiography’ that he associated with the Institute of History at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) under the leadership of György Ránki (1930–88). In this article he argued that the dismantling of communist historiography had started well before 1989. Besides celebrating the establishment of the popular science-oriented historical journal, History (História) (founded in 1979) and new institutions such as the Európa Intézet – Europa Institute (founded in 1990) or the Central European University (CEU) (founded in 1991) as turning points in Hungarian historical research, Deák listed the emergence of the question of minorities and Transylvania; anti-Semitism and the Holocaust; as well as the 1956 revolution. It is very true that these topics were addressed by prominent members of the Hungarian democratic opposition who were publishing in samizdat publications: among them János M. Rainer, the director of the 1956 Institute after 1989, who wrote about 1956. This list of research topics implies that other topics than these listed before had been free to research and were not at all political. This logic interiorised and duplicated the logic of communist science policy and refused to acknowledge other ideological interventions, including his own, while also insisting on the ‘objectivity’ of science. Lastly, Deák concluded that ‘there exists a small possibility that the past may be rewritten again, in an ultra-conservative and xenophobic vein. This is, however, only a speculation.’ Twenty years later Ignác Romsics, the doyen of Hungarian historiography, re-stated Deák's claim, arguing that there are no more ideological barriers for historical research. However, in his 2011 article Romsics strictly separated professional historical research as such from ‘dilettantish or propaganda-oriented interpretations of the past, which leave aside professional criteria and feed susceptible readers – and there are always many – with fraudulent and self-deceiving myths’. He thereby hinted at a new threat to the historical profession posed by new and ideologically driven forces. The question of where these ‘dilettantish or propaganda-oriented’ historians are coming from has not been asked as it would pose a painful question about personal and institutional continuity. Those historians who have become the poster boys of the illiberal memory politics had not only been members of the communist party, they also received all necessary professional titles and degrees within the professional community of historians.

The Frequency of Use of Legislative and Non-Legislative Tools in Five Countries

This study analyzes the use of legislative and non-legislative tools, which has rarely been done simultaneously. I collected data about the frequency of use of legislative tools (presenting and passing legislation) and non-legislative tools (making one-minute speeches, written and oral parliamentary questions and motions for the agenda) in five countries: the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and Israel. The results confirm my three hypotheses. Legislators from Australia, the UK and Canada use fewer legislative tools because their use is more constrained than in the US and Israel. Legislators use more semi or unconstrained tools that involve publicity than those that simply appear on the record. Finally, opposition members use more non-legislative tools while government members use more legislative tools. However, the degree of constraint on the use of the tool moderates this finding. The study provides a comprehensive understanding of the legislators' strategic use of legislative and non-legislative tools. 

Democratic Subversion: Elite Cooptation and Opposition Fragmentation

Incumbents in electoral regimes often retain power despite having to regularly compete in multiparty elections. We examine a specific channel through which incumbents can seek to prevent the emergence of a strong opposition that might threaten them in future elections. We present a formal model demonstrating that incumbents can strategically induce opposition fragmentation by appointing some opposition members to ministerial cabinet positions. Opposition politicians who have the opportunity to secure a cabinet position in an incumbent’s government tend to compete for office independently rather than coalescing into broad-based parties or electoral alliances. The model shows that weaker incumbents are more likely to rely on this cooptation strategy. Using original data on presidential elections across African countries during 1990–2016, we show that past cooptation of opposition politicians is associated with a more fragmented opposition field in subsequent elections.

Pronoun Usage as a Measure of Power Personalization: A General Theory with Evidence from the Chinese-Speaking World

AbstractHow can the growing personalization of power be identified and measured ex ante? Extant measures in the authoritarian literature have traditionally focused on institutional constraints and more recently on individual behaviour – such as purging opposition members from (and packing allies into) government bodies. This article offers a different strategy that examines leaders’ individual rhetoric. It focuses on patterns of pronoun usage for the first person. The author argues that as leaders personalize power, they are less likely to use ‘I’ (a pronoun linked to credit claiming and blame minimizing) and more likely to use ‘we’ (the leader speaks for – or with – the populace). To test this argument, the study focuses on all major, scheduled speeches by all chief executives in the entire Chinese-speaking world – that is, China, Singapore and Taiwan – since independence. It finds a robust pattern between first-person pronouns and political constraints. To ensure the results are not driven by the Chinese sample, the rhetoric of four other political leaders is considered: Albania's Hoxha, North Korea's Kim Il Sung, Hungary's Orbán and Ecuador's Correa. The implications of this project suggest that how leaders talk can provide insights into how they perceive their rule.

Behaviour of CFDST and RCC member hybrid frames

This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation and Finite element analysis of concrete-filled double skin tubes (CFDST) using hot rolled square hollow sections having cross-section of 100 mm for outer tube and 30 mm for inner tube. The annulus between the two steel hollow sections is filled with M-25 grade of concrete. The picture frame testing procedure has been adopted for the analytical and experimental investigations. Two opposite members were provided as CFDST members, while as other two members were provided as normal reinforced cement concrete (RCC) members with equivalent amount of steel as used in CFDST members. The finite element analysis of the frame has been done using Simula Abaqus finite element package. The results were compared with the frames without the CFDST members, i.e. the CFDST members replaced with normal RCC members, which were also experimentally as well as analytically. It was found that the performance of CFDST frame is better than that the conventional RCC member frame. The load-carrying capacity of the frame with CFDST members is above 30% more with lesser deflection in horizontal as well as in vertical direction.

Professional activity of former members of the united opposition in the 1930s (on the example of biographies of the Bolsheviks who signed the “Declaration of 83”

The object of this research is the collective fate of former members of the united opposition (Bolshevik-Leninist faction) in the 1930s. This topic is rarely covered by the researchers and remains poorly studied. The subject of this article is the peculiarities of professional career of the oppositionists reestablished in the ranks of the Communist Party. The group under review is the members of the All Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), who in May 1927 signed the “Declaration of 83”. Comparative analysis of the available biographical records on the signers of the “Declaration of 83” allow determining the spheres of professional activity of the former Bolshevik-Leninists. The author enlists the spheres of their activity, indicating the number of employed capitulated factionists therein, as well as positions held by them, enterprises and institutions they worked at during this period. The conducted research demonstrates that the highest concentration of capitulated oppositionists was in the industrial sector, while professional spheres, such as science, trade, etc., are noticeably behind. At the same time, former Bolshevik-Leninists often mastered new types of activities. Most of them were appointed as chief executives, which the author explains with shortage of personnel committed to the Communist ideas who possessed organizational experience. The novelty of this research consists in the statement that the returned to the All Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) supporters of Trotskyism and Zinovievism), despite their demotion, were actively engaged in Stalin's modernization. They were appointed with executive positions and included into the ruling elite (although holding a special “niche” therein).

The Licit Life of Capitalism: US Oil in Equatorial Guinea by Hannah Appel

Reviewed by: The Licit Life of Capitalism: US Oil in Equatorial Guinea by Hannah Appel Gisa Weszkalnys Hannah Appel. The Licit Life of Capitalism: US Oil in Equatorial Guinea. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019. 332 pp. There is a telling moment about two-thirds of the way through Appel’s monograph (200). In a reversal of roles, fostered by the intimacy of long-term fieldwork, the ethnographer becomes the (reluctant) informant. “[I]s this normal?” Appel’s friends demand to know at the end of an informal get-together during which they shared experiences of exploitation and racialized discrimination in Equatorial Guinea’s oil industry. “Does this happen in other places?” Appel’s discomfort is palpable as she scrambles for a truthful response. Are low salaries, the lack of job security, insurance, and other benefits unique to this country? How about neighboring oil producers such as Nigeria or Angola? Or is Equatorial Guinea’s story typical of an analytical “anywhere,” a story of exclusion and dispossession that applies to late liberal capitalism, generally, across the uneven geographies of the postcolonial world? The Licit Life of Capitalism sheds light on the operations of the international oil industry in Equatorial Guinea, in particular, prominent US corporations whose aim it is to extract oil for the largest profit possible while leaving an impression of benevolence, legality, and non-interference in sovereign matters. The result is deplorable. Poverty remains entrenched in the small state whose GDP per capita is among Africa’s highest. According to local activists and opposition members, since the discovery of hydrocarbons in the mid-1990s, oil companies have helped prop up a sinking authoritarian regime led by President Obiang Nguema without however assuming sociopolitical membership in the country (147). (The intriguing counterfactual of what would have happened in the absence of [End Page 551] oil is unfortunately not pursued here.) This is not simply an expression of a common resource curse, as Appel is careful to point out. Rather, concepts such as the curse have become part of a local repertoire readily deployed by Appel’s corporate interlocutors who keenly point to corrupt behavior among the Equatoguinean rank and file but seemingly have no qualms doing business with them. How is this possible? How can a country like Equatorial Guinea at once appear so exceptional, with its failings openly denounced, and be “just another oil exporting place” (21)? This is the conundrum that The Licit Life of Capitalism aims to solve. Doing so, it builds on feminist approaches and a black radical tradition in political economy to reveal the epistemological grounding and far-reaching implications of key technical infrastructures and forms of economic expertise, which together give Equatorial Guinea’s economy an acceptable and comparable shape. Each of the book’s six chapters explores one of these building blocks of liberal capitalism, from the Offshore to the Enclave, the Contract, the Subcontract, the Economy, and the Political. Together, they generate a kind of dream space in which, as Tim Mitchell has argued, widespread forms of “leakage, network, energy, control, violence, and irrationality” (2002:300) are ignored. In this view, departing from post-Callonian economic sociology, economics does not so much enact its worlds than allow capitalism to press on under a “licit” veneer. This is a story, not about how capitalism fails, but about how it works regardless of its failures. Though focused on the hydrocarbon industry, this book is about much more than oil. Its incisive contribution is to show that the circumstances observed in Equatorial Guinea reveal something about the project of capitalism at large. Appel rejects both a reductive understanding that sees oil primarily in terms of petro-dollars flooding local economies and resource-deterministic approaches that hinge on the material properties of specific substances. Instead, she highlights the extensive web of institutional and infrastructural relations centered on transnational oil firms busy managing their uncomfortable entanglement in resource-rich locales. Rather than kinship diagrams of elite families or crony networks, Appel deploys complex organigrams and graphics to render visible the “corporate archipelago” with its stupefying capacity to sidestep financial and ethical accountability. Here the financial and the industrial offshore merge in a spatialized abdication of responsibility...

Northern Mariana Islands

Northern Mariana Islands Zaldy Dandan (bio) Former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan—so the story goes—was once asked to name the greatest difficulty facing a leader. His (supposed) reply was, “Events, dear boy, events” (Will 2002). During the period in review in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), it was just one event after the other. In the summer of 2019, the Marianas Public Land Trust threw the CNMI government a lifeline by approving a $15 million loan. The trust manages the government’s earnings from public land leases. With the tourism-based economy bruised and battered by two typhoons that pummeled the three main islands in September–October 2018, the CNMI government needed the money to pay some of its most pressing obligations: pension and bond payments (mv, 1 July 2019). Two days later, it was reported that for the rest of fiscal year 2019, which would end on 30 September 2019, the government had $30.3 million left. The austerity measures implemented in April and expanded in May included a reduction in work-hour schedule to seventy-two hours from eighty hours per pay period (mv, 3 July 2019). As in most US territories and insular areas, government is the main employer of local residents in the CNMI (mv, 27 April 2020). Tourist arrivals were down 11 percent in June 2019 compared to the same period in the previous year, the Marianas Visitors Authority (mva) said (mv, 18 July 2020). In a board meeting, the tourism agency announced that because the central government wasn’t remitting funds to the mva, it might suspend some of its promotion and marketing programs in Japan, South Korea, and China—the CNMI’s top three tourism markets (mv, 1 Aug 2020). In August, it was reported that July visitor arrivals were down 5 percent compared to the same period in the previous year (mv, 15 Aug 2019). Also in August, disgruntled members of the community—including members of the political opposition and the islands’ delegate to the US Congress, Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan—staged a peaceful assembly to “demand answers and action” from the Republican administration of Governor Ralph Deleon Guerrero Torres. Local Democratic Party chairwoman Nola Hix said it was “time to take action” and that the “people need to find the courage to rise up” (mv, 19 Aug 2019). Saipan’s lone casino operator, Imperial [End Page 166] Pacific International (ipi), paid the remaining $10.5 million of the $15.5 million annual casino license fee on 27 August 2019, providing much needed funds for the CNMI government (mv, 28 Aug 2019). But ipi lost its appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which allowed the public disclosure of the casino investor’s income tax information (mv, 28 Aug 2020). In addition, ipi had to pay a $375,000 fine for late payment of the $15.5 million casino license fee (mv, 5 Sept 2019). For its part, the central government said it was expecting to end the fiscal year with a $19 million shortfall (mv, 6 Sept 2019). As the Public School System (pss) struggled to repair its typhoon-damaged schools and address a budget shortfall, Education Commissioner Glenn Muna announced his resignation for “personal reasons” on 12 September 2019 (mv, 13 Sept 2019). For her part, Board of Education (boe) member MaryLou Ada said the CNMI government should be sued for not remitting funds to the Public School System. “Pay up or we close schools,” she added (mv, 13 Sept 2019). Visitor arrivals were down 16 percent in August, but the administration of Governor Torres was commended by the federally appointed Settlement Fund trustee for “diligently” paying $1 million each week (mv, 23 Sept 2019). In 2009, a retiree, Betty Johnson, sued the CNMI government for its failure to make mandated payments to the Retirement Fund since 2005. In September 2013, the parties agreed to settle the lawsuit, and the federal court approved a $779 million consent judgment in case the CNMI government does not meet its obligations to the Settlement Fund (mv, 24 June 2020). In September 2019, casino operator ipi was sued by a contractor, Pacific Rim Land Development...

Does political motives affect local government financial statement quality

This study aims to analyse the effect of political motives on the quality of local government financial statements (LGFS) in Indonesia. As a public institution, local governments need to increase transparency and accountability by producing high quality financial statements. The LGFS quality is measured using qualitative characteristics while political motives are measured by percentage of opposition member in the legislative, meanwhile, the election year and re-election chances are used as moderating variable. To test the hypothesis, two sample groups were used. The first group of all selected local governments between 2016 and 2017 while the second group are the local governments that have conducted an election. The results showed that political competition had positive effect on LGFS quality while election year together with re-election chances strengthened the positive effect.

Niue

Niue Salote Talagi (bio) This has been an unprecedented period for Niue, with the global novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic compelling Niue to shut its borders for the first time in contemporary history and the 2020 Niue general election resulting in the ousting of former Premier Sir Toke Talagi. While the former was a significant and unforeseen event, the latter was [End Page 214] unsurprising, following concerns regularly raised by opposition members of Parliament (mps) over the former premier’s extended absence from Niue due to ill health and the ensuing calls for his resignation due to his inability to carry out duties expected of him as premier and minister for finance. First, I extend my condolences to the family of and the people of Niue led by former Premier Sir Toke Talagi, who passed away while this review was being written. While our approaches to politics differed, Sir Toke was an admirable and bold leader who was fiercely proud of Niue and its people and who saw great potential in what Niue could achieve. It is without a doubt that, thanks to his leadership, Niue is now well placed for the new government to carry forward. There were a number of key items and events worth noting during this period: Niue designated 40 percent of its exclusive economic zone, an equivalent of 127,000 square kilometers (49,035 square miles), as a marine conservation area (Moana Mahu Marine protected area); the country became the world’s first Dark Sky Nation; there was impressive external diplomatic representation at Niue’s forty-fifth constitution celebrations, with representatives from Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and the People’s Republic of China; and Niue was removed from the European Union’s blacklist for tax havens after it implemented all necessary reforms to strengthen good governance and clamp down on tax avoidance (bcn, 25 Feb 2020). A total of four acts were passed in the Niue Legislative Assembly during this period, and four regulations were introduced (Niue Crown Law Office 2020). Evidently, this period has been quiet on the lawmaking front, with opposition to some extent dominating discussions in the assembly and media, in addition to disruptions caused by covid-19 and the Niue general election. As such, this review focuses on the impacts of covid-19 and the 2020 election. The covid-19 pandemic saw Niue, which remains one of the world’s few covid-19-free countries, shut its borders to the outside world for the first time in contemporary history. Plagued by disquiet and calls from opposition mps and the local business community to shut Niue’s borders, the government and other relevant agencies’ proactive management of Niue’s response to the virus, including the application of a virus-prevention strategy, has so far been successful. This approach follows the lead of other countries who have been successful in their management of covid-19, such as Tonga and New Zealand. As the number of cases surged globally, it was evident that Niue’s health-care system, as well as its broader political system, was in no position to handle any case or community outbreak of the virus. The decimating outbreak of measles in Sāmoa in 2019 signaled that island countries like Niue are not immune to such events. Given Niue’s ill-equipped health-care system, which is reliant on New Zealand and other regional and global bodies for support, equipment, and supplies, the best strategy was prevention. With the establishment of covid-19 as a notifiable disease pursuant to the Public Health Act 1965, travel [End Page 215] restrictions and strict quarantine requirements for incoming passengers were implemented (Government of Niue 2020). The first few repatriation flights were not without issues, as many people were confused about the meaning of “quarantine” and “isolation” and the quarantine rules for arrivals were inconsistent. The first covid-19 briefing in Niue for arriving passengers also saw family and community members attend out of interest, raising concerns about the risk of exposure not only to those present but also to the Niue Golf and Sports Club members. Many appeared to struggle to fully grasp and understand the implications of...

Approbation of Results Obtained During Interview: Research of Possibilities for Exercising the Rights of Political Oppositions in Lithuanian Self-Government

Analysing the problematic aspects of the legal regulation of local self-government of the Republic of Lithuania related to the realisation of the rights provided for the minority (opposition) of the municipal council in the Law on Local Self-Government and other legal acts, the following empirical research was performed. During the research, the method of interviews was used in order to identify, as precisely as possible, the problems of the realisation of the rights of political minorities (opposition) in the whole Lithuanian municipality. It is the interview method that was chosen to ensure the interaction between the researcher and the respondent, which enables to obtain the widest and deepest possible information in identifying practical problems and also allows to collect the detailed data needed to solve the identified problems. The interview focused on the target group of respondents from many different Lithuanian municipalities who are fully acquainted with the practical aspects of the realisation of the minority rights of the council. All respondents are current or former opposition members of municipal councils. With the aim of maximising practical benefits, as many as thirty respondents were interviewed in this research. Keywords: local self-government, political minority’s rights, opposition.

Necessary Heroes and Ethos, from Fighting Nazis to COVID-19.

Necessary Heroes and Ethos, from Fighting Nazis to COVID-19.

MPs on Facebook

Social media platforms are today the main spheres in which politicians make political and personal statements, confront other public figures, and interact with the public. In the current study, the Facebook pages of all Israeli Members of Parliament (MPs) were scraped and analyzed for the entire period of the 19th Israeli parliament service (between 2013 and 2015), in order to find similarities and differences between the posting behavior and acceptance of coalition and opposition members posts. We found that popular posts published by members of coalition and opposition differ in terms of scope of publication, scope of user engagement (posts by coalition members were more engaged with), content, and format (posts by members of opposition more varied in format, more mobilizing, critical, opinionative and negative, less formal but also less personal). The implications for the character of Facebook as a key parliamentary discursive arena are discussed.

The menu of autocratic innovation

ABSTRACT This article develops the menu of autocratic innovation to account for a perceived transformation in the nature of autocratic rule. Drawing from an original list of 20 techniques intended to cultivate the pretence of accountability without permitting the actual practice of it, the article describes how autocratic innovation takes different forms (informational, legal, political, reputational and technological) and concerns different targets (citizens, civil society activists, opposition members and foreign policymakers). This theoretical framework is tested against nine autocratic regimes in Southeast Asia from 1975 to 2015. The evidence shows substantial variation in terms of the form and target of at least six distinct techniques: libel and defamation suits, anti-civil society measures, mock compliance to human rights agreements, public relations firms, think tanks and zombie monitors. The article concludes by discussing three possible explanations for why autocratic innovation occurs: waves of autocratization, density of international linkages and leadership turnover.

“Male” and “Female” As a Fuzzy Set in Gender Opposition (Through Intonation Patterns)

The paper considers two polar members of gender opposition, social and linguistic phenomena, as a fuzzy set revealing fuzzy, overlapping areas while distinguishing between feminine and masculine properties as regards to male and female intonation patterns in acted speech. As a social construct, gender is reflected in gender stereotypes—certain signs of group identity that can be realized through intonation patterns. These patterns possess certain distinctive features forming male/female category memberships. The research reveals that some prosodic parameters in acted speech are not gender-specific, thus making up overlapping areas in male/female speech. The claim is that the fuzzy set approach to the study of gender opposition questions the binary cut of the object under study and gives rise to the thought that in acted speech prosody this opposition is not clearly cut.