Political Science Perspective Research Articles

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Issue 53 includes publications on topics related to the manifestations of communication and rhetoric in dynamically developing fields and spheres in the 21st century: politics, social processes, media, the internet, business, education, etc. Some articles are more narrowly thematic, while others present the results of interdisciplinary research. The methods and methodologies used by the authors are both quantitative and qualitative. The analyses include inferring phenomena and processes in different areas of society, identifying trends, and presenting predictions from a scientific perspective. Bulgarian reality is one of the objects of study. Katya Mihailova analyses the campaigns for early parliamentary elections in Bulgaria in 2021 and draws rhetorical and discursive features based on an in-depth analysis. The presidential election candidates in Bulgaria in 2021 are analysed through the prism of visual communication and in particular based on posters by Anelia Georgieva. A broader scope is presented in the research of Ivelina Boevska, who presents digital democracy not only in a national context but also reaches to bring out the essence and trends in the dynamic communication environment from the perspective of political communication, political science and sociology. Again in discursive terms, but this time the dominant one is the online space as the object of study, with the authors (Natalia Ryabchenko, Olga Malysheva, Veronika Katermina, Anna Gnedash) making a study on the American reality from a linguistic perspective. Media and contemporary phenomena and manifestations are studied by Iliya Valkov, who analyzes four media or platforms that are part of the media ecosystem and media market in the country. Blogs and blogging are the subject of a theoretical overview by Rosalina Bozhilova, who presents traditional and new types and identifies specific manifestations. Lavinia Enache finds intersections between virtual communities, branding, ecotourism and consumer behaviour, with a focus on Romania. Education, academic communication and changes in the attitudes of teachers and students provoke the interest of researchers. Antoaneta Getova informs about some results of an analysis of changes in attitudes and communication in higher education during the pandemic in Bulgaria. Zeyneb Khadi, Hana Aissaoui present results of hybrid learning in an virtual environment in Algeria. Randy Harris’s book “Linguistic Wars: Chomsky, Lakoff, and the Battle for Deep Structure” is presented by Simeon Vassilev. The text has the metaphorical yet informative and appealing title of Randy Harris’s Linguistic Shakespeare. The publications written by students from the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland (Armin Kuźmiński and Agnieszka Budzisz), are related to public and media communication. The internationality of the authors and the broad range of the subject matter, the high quality of the research, and the topicality of the issues are the features of Issue 53. Traditionally, there is a section introducing the authors.

Alternative routes to HiAP implementation

Abstract From a public health political science perspective there are alternative routes to HiAP. Besides the ‘classic’ HiAP approach seeking government internal departmental alignments, facilitating and rewarding bottom up social initiatives by communities, or marketed health innovations by commercial health-related consultancies and enterprises, and regional (socio-) economic innovation networks that after a developmental stage can start to pressure multi-level governments for action. A final route lies along the litigation path (Think of climate agreements and governments being held accountable by the judiciary to comply with agreed emissions reductions etc.)

Public administration and political science: From monogamous marriage to professional partnership

Public administration and political science: From monogamous marriage to professional partnership

Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Theories of Wellbeing and Their Suitability for Wellbeing Policy.

A growing interest among governments in policies to promote wellbeing has the potential to revive a social view of health promotion. However, success may depend on the way governments define wellbeing and conceptualize ways to promote it. We analyze theories of wellbeing to discern twelve types of wellbeing theory and assess the suitability of each type of theory as a basis for effective wellbeing policies. We used Durie’s methodology of working at the interface between knowledge systems and Indigenous dialogic methods of yarning and deep listening. We analyzed selected literature on non-Indigenous theories and Indigenous theories from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States to develop a typology of wellbeing theories. We applied political science perspectives on theories of change in public policy to assess the suitability of each type of theory to inform wellbeing policies. We found that some theory types define wellbeing purely as a property of individuals, whilst others define it in terms of social or environmental conditions. Each approach has weaknesses regarding the theory of change in wellbeing policy. Indigenous relational theories transcend an ‘individual or environment’ dichotomy, providing for pluralistic approaches to health promotion. A broad theoretic approach to wellbeing policy, encompassing individual, social, equity-based and environmental perspectives, is recommended.

Has Institutional Theory Lost its Way? From the Perspectives of Co-citation and Regression Analyses

Institutional theory is an important mechanism to explain the phenomenon of institutional stability and transformation in the context of transitional periods and the COVID-19, as well as the practical problems in many social sciences. As an important theoretical perspective of management, economics, sociology, political science and other disciplines, although this theoretical paradigm has attracted extensive scholar attention, experienced an early initial and development period, and has now successfully been developed into a mature and legitimate mainstream management theory from the beginning of 21st century, it turns out that institutional theory seems to have lost its way. In order to address questions such as whether the institutional theory is

Closing the Implementation Gap: Obstacles in Reaching Net-Zero Pledges in the EU and Germany

The European Union and Germany have recently committed themselves to greenhouse-gas neutrality by 2050 and 2045, respectively. This substantially reduces their <em>gaps in</em> <em>ambition</em> to the Paris climate goals. However, the current climate policy mix is not sufficient to reach these targets: There is a major <em>implementation gap</em>. Based on economic, legal, and political science perspectives<em>, </em>this article identifies key obstacles in legislating stringent climate policy instruments and making them effective. Using a simple framework, we map the stage of the process in which the obstacles are at work. Moreover, we discuss the potential effectiveness of a select list of prominent drivers of climate-related regulation in overcoming said obstacles and conclude by pointing towards conditions for closing the implementation gap. In doing so, we focus on the current legislative processes of the “Fit-for-55” package by the European Commission and the 2021 Federal Climate Change Act in Germany. Our analysis builds on the extant literature, and we suggest avenues for further research.

Twitter as Higher-Education Community of Practice: A Political Science Perspective

ABSTRACTA community of practice is where a group works together toward a shared goal. This article argues that Twitter hosts a community of practice within political science and international relations. This occurs in three key ways: (1) offering an area to share feelings about our role as educators, (2) connecting to a wider network of educators in our discipline (and other disciplines), and (3) providing a space to proffer practical support. This has been especially true during the current COVID-19 pandemic, when many educators are teaching remotely and potentially feeling cut off from colleagues and students at their institution. In more normal times, Twitter also offers a valuable means of connecting with other scholars in the discipline across the world, providing a space to learn from and support one another. The article concludes by reflecting on what this might mean for continued professional development in the political science and international relations discipline.

Second-Wave Women's Movements as Foreign Policy Actors: Assessing Canadian Feminist Interventions before 1995

AbstractThis article addresses second-wave feminist interventions in Canadian foreign policy debate with reference to two analytic streams: (1) political science and international relations (IR) perspectives since the late 1990s that stress the formal decisional aims of advocacy and the role of transnational networks in pressuring reluctant governments and (2) sociological approaches that underline movements’ cultural as well as statist dimensions and the significance of their domestic political strategies. Examining engagement by the Voice of Women (VOW) in nuclear weapons debates and National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) in free trade controversies confirms sociological expectations of campaigners’ varied claims and contributions and the importance of their political rootedness in Canada. Consistent with political science and IR arguments, the study finds NAC paid growing attention to international political opportunities in 1990 and following. The conclusion considers implications of the analysis and directions for future research.

Gender bias recognition in political news articles

Gender bias exists not only in the stereotypes used to portray male and female figures, but more importantly, in the word choice media outlets use to describe political figures. Research in computational linguistics has not yet focused on the problem of identifying gender bias in political news from a variety of leanings, despite decades of research from the political science perspective. In this work, we introduce a new dataset – News-Bias – and demonstrate through extensive experimentation that there exists significant gender bias in political news, even with all gendered terms, and personally identifiable information removed. We show that bias persists through the document embeddings, sentiment and word choice across news outlets and political leanings.

Protest Müzik - Melezleşme ve Kültürel Miras Arasında Türkiye’de Siyasal Müziğin Gelişimi

This paper examines the genesis and development of politicized popular music in Turkey from a political science perspective. For a better understanding of specific factors influencing the content and music, or path dependencies arising from them, a discourse-theoretical framework based on the work of Michel Foucault is used. The main focus of the study is on the genre of Turkish Anatolian Rock of the 1960s and 1970s, which appears as a musical reservoir of hybrid musical forms and political lyricism.

Judicial Activism vs. Judicial Restraint: A Political Science Perspective

Judicial Activism vs. Judicial Restraint: A Political Science Perspective

Policy Advocacy and NGOs Assisting Immigrants: Legitimacy, Accountability and the Perceived Attitude of the Majority

The article addresses the involvement of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) assisting immigrants in policy advocacy (PA) connecting the perspectives of political science and social work. In a context in which many politicians and a major part of society opposes immigration, it examines how NGOs perceive their legitimacy and accountability concerning their attempts to influence policymaking. It also studies how the attitude of the society towards these NGOs affects their work. The analysis builds on the multimethod research combining qualitative and quantitative approaches carried out among Czech NGOs. Among the key findings is that, when talking about legitimacy, NGOs’ representatives refer mainly to themselves and their own vision of society. This is however a manifestation of internalized external legitimacy sources such as democratic principles and existing laws, together with experience and direct contact with clients, as well as moral obligations. As for accountability, despite many people identify these NGOs as irresponsible welcomers, in fact most of them feel accountable primarily to society (in particular its weakest parts), then to immigrants and finally to themselves. The negative attitude of the majority toward these NGOs clearly affects their PA activities, e.g., their access to authorities, the raised topics and applied tools or types of arguments.

Feminist Perspectives in Political Science in Central and Eastern Europe

Feminist Perspectives in Political Science in Central and Eastern Europe (Feministické perspektívy v politických vedách v strednej a východnej Európe) Journal Politické vedy has been released since 1998. The aim of the academically reviewed journal is to publish original articles of Slovak and foreign authors, concerning different fields of social science

On Brokers, Biases and Leaving the Veranda: Working with Research Brokers in Political Science Based Field Research

ABSTRACT In this paper I critically discuss the pros and cons of working with research brokers from a political science perspective. I do this by sharing my experiences of collaborating with two types of local “fixers” – cultural and communal brokers. I argue that even if similar approaches risk introducing a number of broker-induced biases, countermeasures can be taken to mitigate their effect: e.g. continuous triangulation, interviewing “sleepers” and asking in-depth questions to exclude interviewees who misrepresent themselves. However, researchers must be aware that working with multiple brokers can also generate methodological and ethical challenges that need to be taken into consideration.

Germany and Israel: White Washing and State Building by Daniel Marwecki

Reviewed by: Germany and Israel: White Washing and State Building by Daniel Marwecki Lorena De Vita Germany and Israel: White Washing and State Building. By Daniel Marwecki. London: Hurst, 2020. Pp. vii + 274. Cloth £30.00. ISBN 9781787383180. "Germany stands unconditionally by our friendship with Israel," declared German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on May 20, 2021. "And," he added, "our support for the Palestinians, too, has always been dependable, even in challenging times." With these words, Maas set off for his visit to the region at a time in which Israel and Hamas were engaged in the heaviest round of fighting in the past few years. But the 2021 events were not just a matter of foreign policy concern for Germany, and the conflict quickly found an echo in German streets, too. In Bonn and Münster, protesters burnt Israeli flags in the street. Others, in Gelsenkirchen, chanted antisemitic slogans while heading towards the local synagogue. "Our democracy will not tolerate antisemitic protests," stressed Angela Merkel's spokesperson, while condemning Hamas' rockets against Israel "in the strongest possible terms." In this context, a book that offers a critical reinterpretation of seven decades of relations between Germany and Israel is particularly timely. Daniel Marwecki's Germany and Israel: White Washing and State Building argues that "the history of German economic, financial, military and political support to Israel is highly underappreciated" (4) and aims to provide a corrective of sorts. The book analyzes German policy vis-à-vis Israel and the Palestinians by drawing from files of the German Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt) as well as "cabinet protocols, parliamentary debates and interviews with experts" (8). The book, which stems from a PhD thesis defended at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, is inspired by but also critical of two main strands of literature: on the one hand, the historiography analyzing "specific periods of German-Israeli relations" and, on the other, "works [written] from a political science perspective" (6). The work is articulated in thirteen chapters divided into four parts. Part 1 focuses on the reparations (Wiedergutmachung/Shilumim) agreement signed in September 1952 between the then very young Federal Republic of Germany and the State of Israel. Part 2 ("The Military Alliance"), covering the years from 1956 to 1967, focuses on the expanding security ties between the two countries. Part 3 ("Normalisation and the Palestinian Question in Germany's Israel Policy") takes a step back to 1965, examining the metamorphosis of German-Israeli relations after the two countries exchanged diplomatic relations. This section also considers how the relationship held as tension in the Middle East escalated further, mapping how Germany attempted to handle the difficulties that followed, including the 1972 Black September terror attack against the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Part 4 ("New Commitments and Failing Prospects") examines the years after German unification, mapping Germany's support for the Oslo Agreements. The final section also investigates the implications of Angela Merkel's 2008 declaration, in the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) [End Page 190] that "Germany's special historical responsibility for Israel's security … is part of my country's raison d'être" and examines whether and to what extent Germany is involved in "perpetuating the occupation" of the Palestinian Territories by financing Palestinian state-building efforts (205). It is clear that Germany has long been a key player in the region, and this book makes a convincing case for the importance of focusing on actors other than the United States when analyzing the international relations of the Middle East. Marwecki also rightly points out the enduring relevance of the early history of the GermanIsraeli relationship—those distant decades left enduring marks that are not yet fully understood. The attempt to shed further light on the complex, intertwined dynamics of German-Israeli and German-Palestinian relations is an important feature of this book, one that has not yet been fully explored in the existing literature. The book's main argument revolves around the claim that the repeated German material support for Israeli or Palestinian state-building was, in fact, connected to the "whitewashing" of Germany's dark past. It is not completely clear, however, to what extent the two...

Concepts of security from a perspective of political science

Security is one of the most basic needs of human beings and has become one of the fundamental issues not only for people but also for the states. Security has emerged within the human history and it is one of the fundamental concepts of the discipline of international relations. Many studies have been carried out into the concept of security in the discipline of international relations and many definitions of this concept have been offered in the conceptual and theoretical framework of these studies. However, in the literature there is no one, commonly accepted definition of security. Since security has a dynamic structure, the concept of security has also changed cyclically and maintained its existence. Unique opportunities for the concept of security emerged particularly during and after the cold war, arousing interest of many disciplines and theorists. The concept of security, which continues its existence today, has changed and deepened, confronted with different threats. In our study, firstly, the concept of security will be defined and its analysis will be performed by associating it with humanity and its history. Afterwards, it will be explained how the change in the system transformed the concept of security as conceived in terms of the critical theories developed in the cold war period and later.

ПРОБЛЕМЫ ЭЛЕКТРОННОГО ГРАЖДАНСКОГО УЧАСТИЯ В ПУБЛИЧНОЙ ПОЛИТИКЕ ГОРОДА: СЛУЧАЙ САНКТ-ПЕТЕРБУРГА

Modern public policy is characterized by the ‘participatory turn’ - a widespread expansion of ways and channels the citizens can influence policies with. The ongoing digitalization transformed these civic participation instruments into a new form, now called e-participation. Both experts and authorities around the World believe that integrating such platforms and channels into policy process will facilitate public engaging, involving into it those who were not previously interested in policy making and those, who lost their interest in engaging with the authorities. Digital civic participation has gained significant traction in Russia, but mostly in so-called cities of federal importance, such as St. Petersburg. And while it is investigated by many different scholars, the frameworks applied were mostly of computer science or technologically inclined. This article is an attempt to start closing this gap by analyzing e-participation in Russia from political science perspective. For this task, we interviewed 10 public activists and urban policy experts to get a better understanding of its functioning specifics. The analyses shows that while it is perceived as an effective way to solve basic public policy issues, there are multiple problems undermining its operations. Mainly, these are due the lack of legal support for these channels, which make authorities less responsible for not responding to the citizens’ preferences and complaints. We also discovered that insufficient organization changes and silo mentality prevents the authorities from acting in a fast and efficient fashion, disrupting the whole idea of e-participation. Among other issues are digital divide which in fact excludes certain social groups from engaging with the authorities and having a say in policy process. We conclude by stating that more research is required to understand the dynamics and issues of the Russian e-participation portals.

A Theoretical and Empirical Studies on the High-quality Development of China's Economy

Following the establishment of New China, China's economy quickly recovered from the post-war period, particularly after reform and opening up. China's economy has ushered in a 40-year period of rapid growth, with the report of the 19th National Congress in 2017 stating that "China's economy has shifted from a stage of rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development." The article first reviews and summarizes previous studies on high-quality economic development by domestic and foreign scholars to provide a reference for this study; second, it conducts a theoretical study on the definition of high-quality economic development through two perspectives of political science to clarify the economic definition and measurement method of high-quality economic development and to test the objective facts of high-quality economic development. Third, a comprehensive evaluation system for high-quality economic development was constructed through 16 indicators in four parts: economic structure, social security, environmental protection, and institutional construction. Fourth, scientific experiments were carried out using the double difference method to verify that "China's economy has shifted from the stage of high-speed growth to the stage of high-quality development," reflecting the obvious development transformation.

Transboundary Marine Spatial Planning in European Sea Basins: Experimenting with Collaborative Planning and Governance

ABSTRACT This article employs a multi-disciplinary planning and political science perspective to examine transboundary marine spatial planning (TMSP) in European sea basins through a collaborative governance and planning framework. The article argues that TMSP is a breeding ground for collaborative planning and governance in the Baltic Sea, North Sea and Adriatic Sea Regions. Collaborative governance and planning models can be developed into an effective framework for MSP policymakers, practitioners and researchers to structure and evaluate TMSP practices. The approach can potentially contribute towards overcoming TMSP challenges and to increasing cohesion and alignment of national marine spatial plans within European sea basins.

The Concept of Oceanian Sovereignty in the Context of Deep Sea Mining in the Pacific Region

Based on an interdisciplinary experience addressing traditional dimensions in marine resource management in the Pacific, the socio-ecological interconnectivity between island communities, the ocean realm and the legal context concerning the management of seabed resources (Tilot, 2006, 2010; Tilot et al., 2018, 2021a,b; Mulalap et al., 2020; Willaert, 2020a,b, c; 2021; DOSI, 2021), this paper proposes to discuss the relevance and efficacy of the concept of “Oceanian Sovereignty” (Bambridge et al., 2021) in the context of Deep Sea Mining, from the different legal, environmental, anthropological, social, political, and economic science perspectives. The policies and practices developed in the Pacific in this context could well serve as a suitable model elsewhere to reconcile competing perspectives in addition to sustaining the Human Well-being and Sustainable Livelihoods (HWSL) and the health of the Global Ocean.