Personal Politics Research Articles

Preparing for the Next Pandemic: An Asian National Cancer Centers Alliance (ANCCA) Initiative.

The COVID-pandemic has shown significant impact on cancer care from early detection, management plan to clinical outcomes of cancer patients. The Asian National Cancer Centres Alliance (ANCCA) has put together the 9 “Ps” as guidelines for cancer programs to better prepare for the next pandemic. The 9 “Ps” are Priority, Protocols and Processes, Patients, People, Personal Protective Equipments (PPEs), Pharmaceuticals, Places, Preparedness, and Politics. Priority:to maintain cancer care as a key priority in the health system response even during a global infectious disease pandemic. Protocol and processes:to develop a set of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and have relevant expertise to man the Disease Outbreak Response (DORS) Taskforce before an outbreak. Patients:to prioritize patient safety in the event of an outbreak and the need to reschedule cancer management plan, supported by tele-consultation and use of artificial intelligence technology. People:to have business continuity planning to support surge capacity. PPEs and Pharmaceuticals:to develop plan for stockpiles management, build local manufacturing capacity and disseminate information on proper use and reduce wastage. Places:to design and build cancer care facilities to cater for the need of triaging, infection control, isolation and segregation. Preparedness:to invest early on manpower building and technology innovations through multisectoral and international collaborations. Politics:to ensure leadership which bring trust, cohesion and solidarity for successful response to pandemic and mitigate negative impact on the healthcare system.

The personalization of party politics in Western Europe (1985–2016): evidence from an expert survey

The personalization of politics has been extensively studied from different angles and in different national contexts. Nonetheless, an easily comparable and longitudinal study of the personalization of politics at both the country and the party levels is still missing. In this article, we fill this gap by presenting data from an expert survey on the personalization of politics for around 110 parties and a series of Western European countries from the mid-1980s to the mid-2010s. The dimensions analyzed concern the impact of the personalization of politics in general elections, and also party leaders' room for maneuver in candidate selection, the definition of the party's policy-making agenda, and party leaders’ intra-party control. Different reliability tests confirm the goodness of the data collected. At the same time, first descriptive analyses show that there has not been a homogenous diffusion of this phenomenon in Western Europe, and diverging personalization trends are present for different groups of countries or different dimensions of this phenomenon.

The Essence of Political Behavior and Forms

The aim of the work is to study political behavior and formation. Researching process of the problem depends on the methods of comparing and empirical analysis. The work is partly studying effort of political behavior and related problem in Georgian Political Science. Political behavior is the form of political activeness and passiveness, which represents different forms of political persons’ actions, with aim of satisfying politically important interest of these persons. Conclusions according to the researching result can be used in the process of analysis of political behavior.

Jayaprakash Narayan and Indira Gandhi, 1966–74: Before the Rivalry

When the Gandhian Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) gave the clarion call of Total Revolution, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi responded heavy-handedly by imposing the Emergency in India in 1974–5. This all-encompassing duel has dominated politics and political scholarship since. Their domestic clash has established many analytical prisms for the contemporary public sphere in India, particularly personality politics versus people’s power, single party versus coalition grouping, electoral democracy versus authoritarian dictatorship, and student/youth movements versus generational status quo. Simultaneously, it has also highlighted their differences in a way that has served to bury their affinities and agreements—not only on obscure matters. This article seeks to soften this dichotomy on the basis of their correspondence, and complemented by other primary material, to sketch their consensus in an earlier period. It shows that before their break, the socialist JP and the statist Indira Gandhi exhibited complementary stands on national issues regarding Nagaland, Kashmir and Bangladesh. This national nearness complicates their later adversarial politics on domestic issues, adds dimension to our understanding of the mid-1960s and mid-1970s, and contributes to contemporary understandings of their respective places in narratives of the state against society in India.

Nevertheless, partisanship persisted: fake news warnings help briefly, but bias returns with time

Politically oriented “fake news”—false stories or headlines created to support or attack a political position or person—is increasingly being shared and believed on social media. Many online platforms have taken steps to address this by adding a warning label to articles identified as false, but past research has shown mixed evidence for the effectiveness of such labels, and many prior studies have looked only at either short-term impacts or non-political information. This study tested three versions of fake news labels with 541 online participants in a two-wave study. A warning that came before a false headline was initially very effective in both discouraging belief in false headlines generally and eliminating a partisan congruency effect (the tendency to believe politically congenial information more readily than politically uncongenial information). In the follow-up survey two weeks later, however, we found both high levels of belief in the articles and the re-emergence of a partisan congruency effect in all warning conditions, even though participants had known just two weeks ago the items were false. The new pre-warning before the headline showed some small improvements over other types, but did not stop people from believing the article once seen again without a warning. This finding suggests that warnings do have an important immediate impact and may work well in the short term, though the durability of that protection is limited.

Editorial: Political Psychology: The Role of Personality in Politics

Editorial: Political Psychology: The Role of Personality in Politics

WhatsApp coup jokes and the dialogue on Zimbabwean politics

ABSTRACT This article analyses the dialogue stemming from viral WhatsApp jokes on the Zimbabwean coup in November 2017. It argues that coup jokes have created an opportunity to discuss the nature of Zimbabwean politics since 2000. This dialogue, characterised by ambivalence, multiplicity, and open-endedness, provides insights on the political traits that have dominated Zimbabwe since 2000. These are rendered as politics of personality, chimurenga and partisanship. While the architects of the coup sought to create and propagate one narrative, later described as ‘restoring legacy’, coup jokes carried internal contradictions, doubts and conflicts which made possible an understanding of the coup narrative as inherently dialogic. Selected WhatsApp coup jokes, which circulated between 14 and 24 November 2017, were studied. Insights from Bakhtin's dialogism were applied to the study of jokes in order to illuminate their contradictions, dualities and openness, and how this enabled an understanding of the traits that have dominated Zimbabwean politics.

Virtual Political Reality's Dilemmas in Creating Political Persona Unconnected to Antecedent Imagination about Politics

The antecedent imagination about U.S. politics has been shattered by the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021. Virtual politics’ two decades of development, experienced difficulty when hundreds of virtually empowered protesters laid siege to the U.S. Capitol disrupting the Electoral College’s confirmation of president-elect Joseph Biden. Virtual guru and incumbent president Donald Trump refused to accept the election outcome and encouraged his media conditioned following to protest. This paper is presented with a belief that the analysis contained in the paper could prove useful in pragmatic and rational adaptation to technological innovation and politics.Analysis of recent presidential elections in the U.S. has emphasized the increasing importance of virtual politics. The elections of 2008 and 2016 witnessed outcomes influenced by the candidate's ability to skillfully use virtual politics to build a dependable following. Little is known of how virtual reality influences behavior. The January 6 Capitol riot is presented as an example of virtual bonding in politics gone wrong. The paper follows the events of January 6 and the public opinion generated by the riot. Maturation effects in public opinion over months are observed. Contending public opinion influences including institutions, political parties, mainstream media, social media, and Internet personalities are mentioned. Analysis is included about the uncertainty resulting from 520 unresolved criminal riot cases. Differences in how Democrats and Republicans perceive various issues are noted.Since the Capitol riot is likely to be compared to other events such as Arab Spring, a research design about virtual empowerment is included. Theoretical sampling allows an image sample presenting rioters’ use of mobile devices. Interpretive techniques analyze this data. Two possible explanations for the empowerment emerge. First, mobile devices are seen as keeping rioters connected with reliable political information. Second, virtual reality is theorized to catalyze with the public place. Cognitive mechanisms may compel action as virtual reality and public place interact. Data analysis procedures to supplement interpretivism of the visual data, cognitive mapping is suggested. Placing each riot image on a graph analyzing two dimensions, political information and ethnography, was mentioned as a possibility for improved data analysis.

Just for the Record: Ōkuma Shigenobu and the Mediatisation of 1910s Japanese Politic(ian)S

One of the most decisive landslide victories in the political history of Japan was achieved by Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu in March 1915. His election campaign catalysed the mediatisation of Japanese politic(ian)s. In its centre, Ōkuma resided as a carefully crafted political persona and as a populist, charismatic orator. Ichishima Kenkichi, head of the Count Ōkuma Support Association, resorted to a media strategy unprecedented in Japan, which involved the first major case of distributing records of a political speech and speeches held at train stations in dramatic, ‘auratic performances’ (Richard Bauman). The article investigates the campaign in detail and argues that its media strategy was driven by the necessity to counter persistent pork-barrel politics but depended on a charismatic political persona and on time-specific circumstances to such an extent that in its aftermath—for at least a decade—no similar media usage was seen in the political history of Japan.

John Pym and Libellous Politics in Early Civil War England

AbstractThis article explores the royalist libels that afflicted the parliamentarian leader John Pym during the early 1640s to argue that the period marked an important turning point in English libellous politics. First, like many of the political libels circulating in early Civil War England, royalist attacks against Pym transitioned unsteadily from manuscript to cheap print and then finally into official court-sponsored publications throughout the period as contemporaries grew more comfortable with openly libellous language. That medial transformation, in turn, was informed by a broader personalization of politics that drew on early Stuart modes of ‘politic thinking’ to frame the nascent military conflict as a battle of rival political personalities. Both contexts informed the creation and dissemination of the most vicious anti-Pym libel of the period: an allegation that Pym's mother had once committed the act of bestiality with a horse, and that Pym himself was the miscegenated result of their illicit union. Rather than a spurious invention, moreover, the horse libel in fact possessed tangible roots in an embarrassing episode of Pym's family history thirty years prior. Consequently, it demonstrates the importance of oral and scribal transmission alike in shaping and sustaining the vitriolic libellous politics of early Civil War England.

A Principled Pragmatism: Gerald R. Ford and Apartheid South Africa

ABSTRACT My article explores the stance of ‘principled pragmatism’ adopted by the Gerald R. Ford presidential administration in its relations with apartheid era South Africa during the mid 1970s. This policy was shaped by the values of equality, fairness and justice that stemmed from the political and private persona of Ford himself. Moderated by a practical realpolitik, however, Ford recognised the necessity of avoiding measures that, while carrying an important moral symbolism, would in fact prove to be counterproductive to the aim of ending apartheid. Ford further identified the geopolitical necessity of engaging with rather than isolating South Africa in order to advance broader US strategic and moral objectives in the southern African region.

The Personalization of Politics in Anglo-American Democracies

In American politics, few argue with the idea that leaders matter: in the 2020 American election, the media closely tracked the performance and activities of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, for example, suggesting to us that who they are matters. Voters indicate on their ballot which presidential candidate they prefer, marking an x next to the person’s name, giving further credence to the idea that the individual matters in the process. Contemporary Anglo-Westminster-style democracies have many things in common with the United States, but operate with completely different political systems, and without a direct vote for a specific party leader. What is the relationship between voters and party leaders in these contexts? Do party leaders matter the same way in these countries? Has this relationship changed over time? Are we really seeing the personalization of parliamentary elections, as some scholars have suggested? The personalization literature provides us with mixed evidence of the increasing importance of leaders, and part of the reason for that maybe linked to the lack of comparable data. This paper assesses the role of leaders in the United States as well as four parliamentary democracies (Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia) over time. Combining data from the election studies of these five countries from the 1960 s to the present, the analyses presented here suggest that leaders are not increasingly important to voters over time, but that leaders have always been important to election outcomes. What has changed over time, however, is the way partisans see the leaders of other parties. Partisans are increasingly polarized in their views of opposing party leaders, and this has the potential to change the impact of leaders in the electoral process.

The Rise and Struggle of Presidents During the Coronavirus Emergency: National and Sub-National Evidence in Italy and Spain

This article aims to explore the expansion of power of monocratic figures during the Covid-19 crisis. In particular, it compares the Italian and Spanish cases, at both national and sub-national levels, during the pandemic. First, we explore the dynamics of personalization through an empirical analysis of emergency decrees at the state level. Second, we examine personalization as evidence of centre-periphery conflict by taking into consideration regional rules (decrees, orders, regulations, resolutions) and their relation to the state level. The comparison shows a similar path of institutional personalization of politics in Italy and Spain, with both countries displaying the features of an unstable regional framework.

EMİR ÖMER HAN’IN SULTAN II. MAHMUD’A GÖNDERDİĞİ MUHABBETNAME MECMUASI HAKKINDA

Amir Umar Khan, the 10th ruler of the Kokand Khanate, is one of the poet rulers who comes to the forefront with his tough political personality as well as with madrasahs, mosques, water channels he built, successful domestic and foreign policy, the science and literature assemblies he organized, the importance he gave to art, science, literature and artists. The collection of divans named Muḥabbat-nāma, which is the subject of our article, was sent by Amir Umar Khan to Sultan Mahmud II through the diplomatic mission. While it was previously in Yildiz Palace Library, today this collection is registered with the name of Necit-name with the number TY 5452 in the museum of Istanbul University Rare Works Library. The book is decorated with exquisite illuminations. It consists of seven divans of four poets. The Muḥabbat-nāma collection begins with preamble of Ali Shir Nava’i’s Badāyi‘u’l-Bidāya, ends with a prose epilogue decorated with some poems. Among them there are the divans named Gharā'ibu'ṣ-Ṣiġar, Navādiru'ş-Şabāb, Badāyi’u'l-Vasaṭ, Favāyidu'l-Kibar which are parts of Nava’i’s Khazāyinu'l-Ma'ani and divans of Umar Khan (Amiri), Lutfi and Fuzuli. In the article the divans are discussed with their preambles, the different parts and features of preambles from other copies are emphasized. It is stated the number and type of poems in every divan, the poems not found in publications in Turkey are transcribed. The different features from the other copies are emphasized, Eastern Turkic features in Fuzuli’s divan are listed. At the end of the article, the text of the epilogue part was given and it was determined that the work was arranged by order of Amir Umer Khan as a collection in 1234 of the hijri calender in order to be sent to the Ottoman State.

Early Life Leadership Dimensions of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman: An Exceptional Political Leadership Model

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was an unparallel political leader of Bangladesh who gained leadership qualities from the early days of life. He is popularly known as Bangabandhu and was a great philanthropist. Mujib was the unique political personality and the creator or father of the nation of Bangladesh. His 'Historic 7 March Speech' of 1971 now is the documentary heritage in the Memory of the World Register of UNESCO-United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. By his captivating leadership, the people of Bangladesh snatched the country's independence. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman captured the ideals of life, education and learning of the love and sympathy to the people, communal harmony, securing the right of the 'have not' people since his boyhood. These leadership traits made Sheikh Mujibur Rahman an exception character ever since his early days, and peoples are knowledgeable about his trademarked political career and venerated his artisanship in crafting Bangladesh. However, the concept of childhood leadership that Mujib belonged merely came to light. This article aims to examine the significant small events of domestic surroundings, dynastic background and family education, schooling, right-based activities, and the gradual involvement in the country's politics of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. These fundamental elements translated into charismatic and democratic political leadership and made him a tremendous humanitarian personality. As a method, analyzing the archival resources and related published literature as books and journal articles, this study has crafted a vivid picture of an unsophisticated but the foundation of moral learning of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from early life. The significant result of this study is that it would present an exceptional model of political leadership and fulfil the gap about the information over his early life leadership. Most importantly, the outcome will provide the leadership capability to achieve goals personally set by the Mujib through his distinguishing attributes and response to the social and environmental situation during early life that would contribute to the discourse of political leadership studies.

Book review: The Personalization of Democratic Politics and the Challenge for Political Parties

Book review: The Personalization of Democratic Politics and the Challenge for Political Parties

Ernst Plischke and Post-war Politics in New Zealand: The Case of Naenae

ABSTRACT Through his work for the first Labour Government in Wellington, Austrian-born émigré architect Ernst Plischke (1903–92) was directly involved with New Zealand politics in the 1940s. While he has appeared to others as a not outwardly political person, his professional life in New Zealand was directly tied to governmental decisions of the time. Particularly his duties in the town planning division of the Department of Housing Construction (1943–1947) meant that Plischke was not only involved with the politically initiated design of large-scale environments, but in this role he also actively took sides – for a somewhat more collectivist model of living than many New Zealanders favoured. By bringing together the existing debate about housing, dwelling and in particular the Community Centre in Naenae with Plischke’s design work and his own views, it may be possible to characterise more closely his interactions with New Zealand politics. It appears that despite being an “Enemy Alien,” Plischke’s attitude towards architecture and society was largely aligned with the positions of the first Labour Government for the quality of his work to be recognised.

Electoral politics, party performance, and governance in Greenland: Parties, personalities, and cleavages in an autonomous subnational island jurisdiction

Greenland is a strongly autonomous subnational island jurisdiction (SNIJ) within the Kingdom of Denmark. This paper takes its point of departure in studies of politics in small island territories to ask to what extent Greenland matches findings from other small island states and SNIJs in terms of personalisation of politics, party performance, and political cleavages that do not follow left-right divides. Even though Greenland possesses a strongly multiparty system, supported by elections involving party-list proportional representation within a single multimember constituency, a single political party, Siumut, has led the government for all but a brief period since the advent of Greenlandic autonomy in 1979. By considering Greenland’s political ecosystem, spatially and personally conditioned aspects of voter behaviour, and coalition-building processes, paying particular attention to the 24 April 2018 parliamentary elections, we argue that it is inappropriate to study Greenland as a monolithic political unit or to draw oversimplified analogies with party politics from large state Western liberal democracies. Instead, Greenlandic politics must be understood in relation to the island territory’s particular historical, geographical, and societal characteristics as well as its electoral system.

From State Repression to Fear of non-state Actors: Examining Emerging Threats of Journalism Practice in Ethiopia

ABSTRACT Non-state media journalists in Ethiopia traditionally faced safety threats emanating from state-sponsored attacks and punitive legal frameworks. Recently, however, state hostility is being replaced by non-state actors’ aggression against journalists. By framing emerging threats of reporters’ safety in Ethiopia within normative vis-à-vis alternative debates of journalism practice in the context of transitional, unstable, pluralistic-partizan societies, this study examines the prevalence of non-state actors in remapping threats of journalistic impunity in Ethiopia. Key findings from interviews conducted with editors, reporters, and other practitioners indicate, while the government cannot be ruled out as a safety threat for journalists, there is an emerging consensus that identifies non-state actors such as vigilante groups, influential social media political personalities, and weaponized media as the most perceptible safety risks to journalism practice. Although threat levels vary depending on journalists’ regional affiliation or perceived ethnic identity/political worldview, domestic journalists face increased native othering that amounts to mobility restrictions and physical aggression compared to foreign correspondents.

Realization of the apology speech act: selection of speech tactics and the perlocutionary effect (based on the material of the Russian, English and French languages)

This article examines the realization of the apology speech act in the three linguistic cultures: Russian, English, and French. The goal of this work is to determine the similarities and differences in functionality of the verbal act of apology in the context of the indicated cultures. The subject of this research is the expression with illocutionary meaning of apology. The authors review the composition of speech repertoire, means of realization of such speech act (conventional language, conventional speech, and nonconventional means), selection of speech tactics in expressing apology in form of the indirect speech act. Special attention is turned to perlocutionary effect, i.e. verbal response of the interlocutor to the addressed apology, as well as to the speech tactics that are frequent in the instances of expressing apology. The novelty of this work consists in studying the apology speech act of within the framework of cross-cultural pragmatics, with the use of practical material from the three linguistic cultures. The preliminary survey conducted among native speakers allowed concluding that the majority of respondents of these linguistic cultures attribute the ability to apologize with the image of a polite person. This particularly this pertains to the English-speaking and French-speaking cultures. Meanwhile, the examination of the articles of explanatory dictionaries demonstrates that the perception of the ability to apologize as a mandatory component of the concept of politeness is rather inherent to the mentality of native speakers, that to academic science. The analysis of practical material clarifies the speech repertoire and the frequency of selecting separate linguistic (imperative, performative) or speech means (speech cliché) used in realization of the direct speech act, as well as determines the key speech tactics used for expressing apology in form of the indirect speech act. Examination of the interlocutor’s verbal response as a perlocutionary effect on the apology indicates that this speech situation suggests a predominantly positive response. The maximal similarity in expressing apology is observed in the composition of speech repertoire of the speakers belonging to three different linguistic cultures, while the difference manifests namely in the selection of speech tactics for expressing apology or responding to it in form of the indirect speech act.