Political Debate Research Articles

Religious Tolerance as a Political Argument. Debates on the Legal Status of the Protestants of Hungary, 1790–1791

The Decree of Toleration (1781) brought radical changes to the lives of the Calvinist, Lutheran and Orthodox denominations in the Kingdom of Hungary. The most important change was that the private religious practice was substantially extended. Another important element of the decree was that it exempted non-Catholics from the so-called decretal oath and from participating in Catholic rites. Equally significant is the regulation on marriage law, which, among other things, specified the denominational status of children in mixed marriages and after conversions. Following the death of Joseph II (1790), an unprecedented political ferment began in Hungary. As no assembly of the Estates had been convened since 1765, the Hungarian political elite, inspired not least by the French example, felt that the time had come to put into practice the long-matured reform ideas. Among these matters, the religious question was the most prominent. The majority of the Estates supported the equal rights of the Protestant denominations, and only the Catholic clergy and a few secular Catholics maintained the earlier intolerant position. With the legalization of the free exercise of religion by the two Protestant (and Orthodox) denominations initiated the process of dismantling the status of Catholicism as a state religion. A few decades later, this led to the establishment of religious equality, an essential cornerstone of the modern civil state.

The Limits of Governmentality: Call-in Radio and the Subversion of Neoliberal Evangelism in Zambia

ABSTRACT The spread of mobile telephones in Africa has enabled a broad range of citizens to join live conversations on call-in radio shows. Both African governments and foreign aid agencies claim that broadcasting such debates can raise awareness, amplify the voices of the poor, and facilitate development and better governance; they now fund a large share of interactive shows in some countries. Critics of such participatory initiatives typically accept that they have powerful effects but worry that debates among citizens are deployed as a technology of “governmentality”, producing forms of popular subjectivity compatible with elitist economic systems and technocratic political regimes. This article argues that instrumentalising political debate is harder than either side assumes, and that the consequences of these shows are mainly unintended. It develops an in-depth case of a Zambian call-in radio programme, “Let’s Be Responsible Citizens”, emphasising the ability of the show’s audience, and its host, to subvert the programme’s surveillance and governmentality agenda, and to insist that the key responsibilities of citizens are to criticise, rather than adapt to, policies and systems of governance that do not meet their needs.

Design of X’s platform masks discontent with presidential social media posts instead of reflecting public opinion

ABSTRACT This study calls into question the notion that X (previously known as Twitter) serves as an effective global “town square” for political debates. An analysis of replies to the posts of former U.S. presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump finds that, even when they posted remarkably similar messages, public reaction to Trump was far more negative than was reaction to Obama. However, this more negative overall sentiment was masked on the platform because there was no way to gauge aggregate reaction to the posts other than by reading each reply individually. In this sense, X serves the interests of unpopular politicians by relegating discontent in replies to their posts to relative obscurity. The study lays out a number of ways social networks could be better designed to shape political debate, including by using artificial intelligence tools to summarize the tone and nature of replies to politicians in order to reflect public reaction.

Consumers’ perception of plant-based alternatives and changes over time. A linguistic analysis across three countries and ten years

Aiming to minimise environmental impacts, diets with reduced consumption of animal products have increased strongly in recent years. These changes give rise to innovative developments in the plant-based market. In this study, we aimed to investigate these changes by looking at the linguistic discourse on plant-based alternatives in three countries. We chose the USA as the country with the highest meat consumption and India as the country with the highest percentage of vegetarians. For both countries, we analysed linguistic data from the most read English newspapers over the last two years. As a third country, we chose Switzerland, where a lot of plant-based innovation is currently happening. Additionally, we performed a longitudinal analysis on Swiss data from the last ten years to more closely examine this recent period of plant-based innovation. With that, we focused on consumer perception of plant-based products by analysing the linguistic discourse and thereby contrast the available data from the literature that was mainly obtained through interrogation of consumers. Cross-cultural comparison reveales that in all three countries, there is a distinct focus on meat (alternatives). Dairy alternatives seem to play a minor role in the discourse. In the USA, appearances matter (food stylist), the Indian discourse includes the aspects health (“skin”, “hair”) and wealth (prices) and the Swiss discourse includes sustainability. Longitudinal analysis of the Swiss discourse over the last ten years revealed that there was an overall increase of the discourse and a connection to the ongoing political debate. Our study suggests that plant-based products are not only part of the sustainable transition but can also be a lifestyle choice. Overall, the study highlights cross-cultural differences and similarities in the language used about plant-based alternatives and discusses some implications.

International Perspectives on Jordan’s Legislation on Deprivation of Liberty Prior to Trial

Abstract The right to personal liberty is fundamental for individuals and societies based on the rule of law. The United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights and United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights broadly define rules limiting possible pre-trial detention and protecting against arbitrary detention. Since 1961 the Code of Criminal Procedure has regulated detention in Jordan and in 2017, there were comprehensive revisions of the Code on these matters. To better understand factors that shaped the scope of the Code revisions in 2017 and to question whether the Code of Criminal Procedure fully adheres to ICCPR international human rights norms, this paper will draw upon political and legal debates prior to 2017 and upon legislative amendments, legislative text and subsequent jurisprudence. In so doing, this paper will critically examine whether the Jordanian legislation respects the right of personal liberty.

Multimodal rhetorics in the gun debate: Encouraging youth agency in March for Our Lives’ “The Most Vicious Cycle”

ABSTRACT In October 2018, March For Our Lives (MFOL) released “The Most Vicious Cycle,” a music video designed to mobilize collective agency among youth voters in the midterm election. The video, which features the song “Safe,” performed by Sage (featuring Kesha, Chika), utilizes a Rube Goldberg machine sequence to visually depict the “vicious cycle” of gun violence and the predictability of the gun control debate. Rhetorical scholars have largely examined the gun control debate by analyzing the public address of political elites and argumentation presented in gun rights discourses. There exists, then, a need to consider how youth activists, who have been excluded from the gun control debate, are using emergent discursive strategies like the music video to claim authority and exercise agency. I argue that the video’s multimodal discourse employs visual, lyrical, and sonic elements to create an immersive and instructional experience that performs a collective youth agency grounded in struggle. The video acts as a pedagogical tool to inspire collective agency by visualizing gun violence and amplification, visually refuting the status quo, and displacing authority. In moments when discourse and debate have become static, multimodal elements can provide a new perspective, making arguments felt, immediate, and grounded in experience.

Modern approaches to global and governmental regulation of virtual assets: what to choose to support digital innovations?

The paper offers a critical outlook at modern approaches to supranational and governmental regulation of the circulation of virtual assets, which have already developed with confidence and which actually determine the conflict between generally global and national views on a very heterogeneous category – virtual assets. The purpose of this article is to summarize some key regulatory approaches spread globally – from global to state levels – regarding the circulation of virtual assets and their critical analysis from the point of view of supporting digital innovation in a national economy. The paper is a continuation of the ongoing wide-ranging expert and political debate about what government officials and presidents should be guided by in matters of circulation of virtual and, in particular, backed (secured) tokenized assets. The logic of the presentation and judgments in the paper is related to the step-by-step consideration of such issues: (1) the basic political approach of the International Monetary Fund and its discussion from a public-management point of view; (2) institutional and administrative risks for governments regarding the full implementation of the IMF’s 2023 policy recommendations on the regulation of virtual assets; (3) widespread standards for the prudent (prudential) circulation of virtual assets, which were developed by other authoritative supranational organizations; (4) an overview of key problems in the coordination of multi- and single-level approaches to the regulation of virtual assets; (5) highlighting 5 regulatory approaches in the ways and scope of governmental (national) regulation of virtual assets currently operating in the world; (6) author’s comparison and assessment of regulatory approaches; (7) assessment of Ukrainian prospects in supporting technological innovations in the field of circulation of virtual assets in the context of the adoption of the new law «On Virtual Assets» in 2023. The author makes the final conclusion that, generally, modern regulatory efforts of supranational and state regulators in the field of circulation of virtual assets are mostly focused on the problems of illegal financing, unfair competition and the integrity of new and old markets of financial assets, as well as focused on requirements for experience and financial stability of private service providers in the field of virtual assets. However, there is a growing understanding that regulators will arrive at a more or less single or multiple regulatory approach, which will be set at the supranational level, and this will only facilitate technological innovation. Such an approach will most likely be combined – based on regulatory flexibility and on the basis of principles (expected results).

Religious History in Portugal from Lusitania Sacra (1720) to the Enciclopédia de História Religiosa (2023): An Overview

The religious history in Portugal remains fragmented despite the progress made, especially in the last four decades, compared with other European historiographies. This article intends to identify factors that explain the Portuguese religious history landscape through an exhaustive diachronic presentation of the main works and authors. It aims to present the fundamental milestones of the field’s evolution, both thematically and institutionally. The ambiguous relationship between national memory and the hegemonic Catholic religious tradition, the ideological and political debates surrounding the late modern reset of national identity benchmarks, and the impacts of a dictatorial experience that conditioned the academic landscape for almost 50 years are the reasons for the late emergence of religious history in Portugal and its discreet presence in the academy. After establishing the essential chronology and underlining the main results, this article will outline Portuguese religious historiography’s most pressing tasks and challenges.

Abortion Attitudes (Media Content, User Comments)

Abortion Attitudes (Media Content, User Comments)

Tous soldats de la guerre psychologique ?

ContextThe total, fractal and transversal war (Alliez & Lazzarato, 2016) of cybercapitalism is not the military or interstate war of Freud's and Einstein's time, while preserving the share of psychosis, annihilation and sacrifice that Einstein questions in his correspondence with Freud (Einstein & Freud, 1933). Capital's war takes place in-for-against the population, in order to fabricate the economic unconscious and consumable-consumerist-productivist subjectivities capable of enrolling in an indefinite and infinite warfare system, taking the form of a multiplicity of wars that no longer respond to the “peace-crisis-war-solution” equation. The main problem raised by this context is not only the fundamentally unconscious nature of this dynamic, but its absence from clinical and theoretical studies, which seem to be in collusion with the propaganda of the dominant powers that determine the dominant thinking of all times. ObjectivesThis research has four main objectives. The first is to contribute to the debate concerning our involuntary participation (as citizens and/or health professionals) in total war. The second objective is to provide theoretical elements for a better understanding of the modus operandi and arsenal of cybercapitalist psychological warfare (CPW), as well as some of its mechanisms and dynamics. The third objective is to link the foregoing to medical and epidemiological data that seem to prove the ravages caused by CPW. The fourth objective is to explore clinical approaches that could elaborate on the repressions and conditionings of this context. MethodThe theoretical framework of this qualitative and interpretative work is inspired by critical studies, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, medicine, and epidemiology. ResultsThe intersection of various theoretical perspectives shows: the relevance of the PSYOP program launched by the United States at the outbreak of the Second World War; the immobilization of CPW soldiers in the simultaneity of the fight-flight-freeze triad; the role of neuroculture and its modifications of the neuro-cognitive-behavioral and emotional complex (which do not respect human rights); the exploitation of the social matrix of war by social networks; the injection to saturation point of predatory and pathogenic “non-self” objects provoking aberrant autoimmune psycho-somatic defenses that can lead to autoimmune diseases (conceived as a “war against self”); the alarming pathologization of younger generations increasingly exposed to total war strategies. InterpretationThe data reviewed call for an urgent adaptation of clinical and theoretical perspectives to take into account both the more than disturbing health effects and the repression of the mechanisms and consequences of total war by health professionals. In addition, clinicians are invited to contribute to public and political debates, with the aim of promoting the advent of new laws that effectively protect human dignity and human rights.

Making the voice matter in English Studies Teaching

Abstract This introduction frames the guest edition of the journal on ‘Oracy and English Studies’. The pieces in this special forum explore how a renewed focus on speaking can re-imagine what it means to ‘do English’. We are two university-level teachers, one from Classics, one from English, eager to explore the potential of this idea. We have brought together a series of short provocations from leading UK-based practitioners both within and beyond the subject area: including a speech-writer, university teachers of Shakespeare and contemporary poetry, charity leaders, and political communication specialists. Their pieces reflect on classroom practices including reading aloud and vocalization, impersonation, the analysis of political speeches and argumentation, or getting students to interrogate their attitudes to their own voices. In each case, our contributors have been asked to respond to the concept from educational theory known as ‘oracy’ (simply put, ‘listening and speaking skills’). English studies clearly need to grapple with this suddenly ubiquitous concept. Not just for its political resonances, but because it is rich in implications for teachers of English at all levels, and deserves greater recognition and interrogation beyond the world of education.

Origin stories: Framing 25 years of Dutch political discourse on child sexual exploitation by tourists and travelers

Sexual exploitation of children in the context of travel and tourism (SECTT) has been described as a serious and growing problem. This study critically analyzes political debates and policy measures proposed by the Dutch government between 1995 and 2020 to combat SECTT. To understand how SECTT is framed in Dutch political discourse, Bacchi's ‘what's the problem represented to be?’ approach guided a systematic critical discourse analysis of over 200 political documents. Our analysis shows that SECTT has, over time, predominantly become framed as a crime problem. Offender detection, international cooperation, awareness raising, public–private partnerships, and prevention targeted at known sex offenders are the most commonly proposed solutions. Despite the focus on apprehending offenders, the political discourse offers no concrete clues as to who they are; still, conducting research or evaluating policies' effects is seldom proposed as a response. This problem representation overlooks the connections of SECTT with structural issues, such as victim vulnerabilities, colonization, and global inequality on the one hand, and mental health, sexual expression, and cultural values on the other.

From qualified to conspirative Euroscepticism: how the German AfD frames the EU in multiple crisis

ABSTRACT Research on Euroscepticism tends to portray parties opposing European integration or criticising the European Union (EU) as a family of Eurosceptic parties (either hard or soft). Recent literature, however, offers empirical evidence on the ambivalence and diversity of the EU critique. What is still unclear are the reasons behind the chameleonic nature of Euroscepticism and the implications that this may have for the EU critique and the changes proposed about EU policy or institutions. The present article addresses this question exploring the role of EU crises to capture the changing nature of Euroscepticism and suggests that it is related to contextual pressures on the political debate around the EU. The paper develops this argument and illustrates it through the analysis of the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, covering the EU crises of the last decade, including the recent period of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine invasion. Drawing on a corpus of party manifestos and speeches between 2013 and 2022, this study shows that there are three main frames used by the party to criticise the EU. It also concludes that these frames involve distinct political implications for the EU critique and the alternative proposals presented by the party.

The event-driven nature of online political hostility: How offline political events make online interactions more hostile.

Hostile interactions permeate political debates on social media, but what is driving the long-term developments in online political hostility? Prior research focuses on individual-level factors such as the dispositions of users or network-level factors such as echo chambers. Moving beyond these accounts, we develop and test an event-oriented explanation and demonstrate that over the course of the 2020 election year in the United States, all major shifts in political hostility on the social media platform Twitter were driven by external offline events. Importantly, these events were magnified by Twitter users within the most politically hostile and most ideologically homogeneous networks. Further contributing to the individual and network-oriented accounts, we show that divisive offline events mobilized individual users not already disposed for hostility and may have helped facilitate the formation of echo chambers. The dynamics of online interactions-including their level of hostility-seem crucially dependent on developments in the offline world.

Reviewing the Legal Framework Applicable to Cross-border E-commerce Transactions in Brazil

E-commerce transactions increased substantially over the past three years, including the cross-border movement of goods that were acquired using the internet. From the customs legislation point of view, such new reality means a huge volume of import transactions of goods using the post or courier companies, having individuals as importers, and which values are quite low if compared to ordinary importations made by companies. The flood of small packs not only clogged the old logistic system involved in this kind of transaction but also evidenced the failure of the current legal framework. On top of this issue, local producers argue that products acquired from the generically called ‘Asian e-commerce marketplaces’ are artificially cheaper, and they claim for controls, restrictions, and more equal conditions in terms of tax treatment. The debate pointed out above is global by nature, and it is a hot topic in Brazil. The goal of this paper is to present the political debate regarding e-commerce cross-border transactions, and the recent developments in terms of the legal framework, challenges, and opportunities.Isabelle Ruiz Guero* Brazil, International Trade, customs, cross-border transactions, postal and courier imports, e-commerce, tax reform

Neoconservatives’ Reading of Catholic Social Teaching The political debate over the encyclical Centesimus Annus

Pope John Paul II’s 1991 publication of the encyclical Centesimus Annus sparked a lively debate that lasted for years. Neoconservative Catholics promptly showed great enthusiasm for the encyclical, which they saw as the Church finally embracing economic liberalism. On the other hand, progressive Catholics rejected the neoconservative analysis and put an entirely different interpretation on the encyclical. This article examines some of the main neocon interpretations of John Paul II’s social thinking, primarily focusing on the encyclical Centesimus Annus. We consider the analyses of Michael Novak and Richard Neuhaus, who show partisan bias in their interpretation of Centesimus Annus. John Paul II’s encyclical soon became a battlefield on which the conflict between neoconservative and progressive Catholics was played out, and a landmark in the debate on Catholic social teaching and its various interpretations.

Feminist Separatism Revisited

Conflict over who belongs in women-only spaces is now part of mainstream political debate. Some think women-only spaces should exclude on the basis of sex, and others think they should exclude on the basis of a person’s self-determined gender identity. Many who take the latter view appear to believe that the only reason for taking the former view could be antipathy towards men who identify as women. In this paper, we’ll revisit the second-wave feminist literature on separatism, in order to uncover the reasons for women-only spaces as feminists originally conceived them. Once these reasons are understood, those participating in debates over women-only spaces will be in a better position to adjudicate on whether shifting from sex to gender identity puts any significant interests at stake.

An Analysis of Pragmatic Sarcasm in Political Debate

This study investigates the pragmatic use of sarcasm in the Brexit discussions of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The choice of this subject is based on the presumption that sarcasm has become an important component of political discourse. The objectives of the study are to identify the most prevalent pragmatic structures for using sarcasm in political discussions, to ascertain whether or not using sarcasm in political debates constitutes an act of negativity, and to demonstrate whether or not there are distinctive patterns in the formulation of sarcasm. The following is hypothesized in light of the objectives established: Assuming that the speaker adheres to the CP, several speech acts materialize to produce sardonic statements. 2- Some of the recommended pragmatic sarcasm structures are heavily used in Boris' political debates. 3- Sarcasm is constantly used as a cutting verbal weapon in political debates and is always manufactured on purpose. Sarcasm reflects bad impacts. The data was gathered from political debates in which British Prime Minister Boris Johnson participated, and the sarcastic analysis model was based on the speech act model developed by Searle in 1969, the pragmatic structures of sarcasm model developed by Camp in 2012, and the classification of pragmatic functions of sarcasm developed by Attrado in 2001. The study comes to some notable conclusions, such as the fact that sarcasm can convey a variety of signals, including a negative attitude, and that particular sarcasm structures are employed more frequently than others.

Transitioning to more sustainable food systems that support health and wellbeing

Food is central to our health and well-being, yet many aspects of our food systems have become unhealthy and unsustainable. Our food systems today contribute significantly to, and are being destabilised by, the environmental crises we are facing. An increase in the consumption of low-quality diets is the leading cause of death and a major contributor to the burden of non-communicable diseases in Europe. Dietary guidelines issued by governments do not align at all with what is being produced, consumed, and exported. Food systems have also contributed to creating, entrenching and widening health inequalities across Europe, as subgroups of the population have little access to and ability to choose healthy and sustainable food. In addition, the benefits of current food production and consumption systems go to large transnational companies rather than small companies and primary producers; the average EU farmer for example earns 50% of the average worker in the economy. Major external shocks such as COVID-19 and the Russian war against Ukraine have reflected the vulnerability of our current systems of food production and redistribution, as experienced through growing levels of food inflation, food insecurity and hunger in Europe, and even more so in other parts of the world. Ambitious intersectoral and systemic approaches are needed to address current contradictions in our food systems, and to make them more sustainable and resilient. Public health professionals need to step up their action to highlight the impacts of unhealthy food consumption, advocating and engaging in political debates. Promising policies at the EU level, such as the Farm to Fork Strategy, Sustainable Food Law, and on Food Security, set out planned measures to make food systems more environmentally friendly, fair and healthy. Ensuring that such policies are actually implemented, and that environmental, health and social considerations are valued in equal measure as economic ones, remains however a major challenge. This plenary session will focus on what measures are urgently needed and must be prioritised to ensure more sustainable food systems and to improve health and well- being across Europe. The plenary will also discuss the challenges, and the role of health professionals in helping to achieve this critical shift. Moderators: Suzanne Costello, CEO, Institute of Public Health, Ireland Caroline Costongs, Director EuroHealthNet Video address: Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General Keynote speaker: Tim Lang, Emeritus Professor of Food Policy, City University of London, UK Panellists: Francesco Branca, Director of the Department of Nutrition for Health and Development, WHO Gunhild A. Stordalen, Founder and Executive Chair EAT Foundation, Norway Holly Cairns, TD for Cork South-West and Leader of the Social Democrats and party spokesperson on Agriculture, Food and the Marine; Rural Development; Social Justice; and Disability, Ireland Anant Jani, University of Heidelberg, Germany and Fellow Oxford Martin School, Oxford University, UK

Disintermediation and disinformation as a political strategy: use of AI to analyse fake news as Trump’s rhetorical resource on Twitter

The communicative effects of disintermediation caused by social media promote the expansion of personalist and emotional political discourses that reach the audience directly and evade the traditional journalistic filter. This phenomenon leads to new political communication tactics, but also exposes citizens to potentially fraudulent, contaminated or polarised content. In this context, framed in post-truth, the term ‘fake news’ gains relevance as a way of referring to disinformation and as a political and performative argument that can be weaponised. This research aims to analyse such use in the discourse of the former president Donald Trump during his presidential term (2017-2021), focussing on Twitter as the main platform in his political communication strategy online. To analyse this, we resort to a methodological triangulation of content, discourse, and sentiment analysis, with the latter combining both lexicon and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques through machine learning on the basis of deep learning and natural language processing, which is applied to his messages published with the term ‘fake news’ (N = 768). The analysis of the sample, provided here in an open dataset, employs self-developed software that allows each unit of analysis to be filtered and coded around its predominant themes, sentiments, and words. The main results confirm that Trump’s attribution of ‘fake news’ focusses on three main topics: the media (53%), politics (40%) and his cabinet (33%). It also shows how the former president resorts to a personalist agenda, focussed on the defence of his proposals and his team (80%) by delegitimizing his opponents and the press, with a negative tone (72%) loaded with derogatory terms, confirming a weaponised strategy of the term ‘fake news’ as a political argument of disinformation and disintermediation.