Political Center Research Articles

Governing through the nationally determined contribution (NDC): five functions to steer states’ climate conduct

ABSTRACT The Paris Agreement places states’ nationally determined contributions (NDCs) at the center of global climate politics. While previous research on the NDC has provided important suggestions for enhanced legitimacy and effectiveness of global climate governance, I examine the NDC not in terms of its content, but as an instrument for governing climate conduct in the post-Paris regime. By analyzing state submissions to post-Paris NDC negotiations, I identify five functions of the NDC: Progress Tracker, Trust-Builder, Influencer, Differentiator, and Gatekeeper. While the first three functions are informed by a techno-managerial rationality that posits effective climate action as a project of increased information-sharing, the last two highlight underlying political struggles of responsibility and fairness which are not necessarily solvable through intensified collaboration. I argue that these diverging views on the function of the NDC will become increasingly prominent as we move toward the first round of the global stocktake in 2023.

Investigating the spatiotemporal characteristics and medical response during the initial COVID-19 epidemic in six Chinese cities

In the future, novel and highly pathogenic viruses may re-emerge, leading to a surge in healthcare demand. It is essential for urban epidemic control to investigate different cities’ spatiotemporal spread characteristics and medical carrying capacity during the early stages of COVID-19. This study employed textual analysis, mathematical statistics, and spatial analysis methods to examine the situation in six highly affected Chinese cities. The findings reveal that these cities experienced three phases during the initial outbreak of COVID-19: “unknown-origin incubation”, “Wuhan-related outbreak”, and “local exposure outbreak”. Cities with a high number of confirmed cases exhibited a multicore pattern, while those with fewer cases displayed a single-core pattern. The cores were distributed hierarchically in the central built-up areas of cities’ economic, political, or transportation centers. The radii of these cores shrank as the central built-up area’s level decreased, indicating a hierarchical decay and a core–edge structure. It suggests that decentralized built environments (non-clustered economies and populations) are less likely to facilitate large-scale epidemic clusters. Additionally, the deployment of designated hospitals in these cities was consistent with the spatial distribution of the epidemic; however, their carrying capacity requires urgent improvement. Ultimately, the essence of prevention and control is the governance of human activities and the efficient management of limited resources about individuals, places, and materials through leveraging IT and GIS technologies to address supply–demand contradictions.

Relations between Siberian and Kazakh Khanates in 15th-16th Centuries

This study explores the stages of interaction in the 15th-16th centuries between two Turkic post-Golden Horde states: the Siberian Khanate and the Kazakh Khanate. The role of the Kazakh factor in the ethnic history of the Siberian Tatars is examined. Primary sources such as chronicles, charters, treaties, and other published documents are utilized for analysis. It is demonstrated that the common tribal composition of these states is linked to the maintenance of close relations between their polities and institutional mechanisms inherited from the previous Golden Horde period. However, the formation of political entities (the Kazakh and Siberian Khanates) in the mid to late 15th century initiated processes leading to the emergence of distinct ethnic communities (Kazakhs and Siberian Tatars) within these states. The traditional belief in historical literature that Kuchum was a ‘Kazakh prince’ is challenged. The author disputes the position of Kazakh colleagues regarding the significant role of the ‘Kazakh’ factor, including Sultan Urus-Muhammad, in the later period of the Siberian Khanate. The nature of Siberian-Kazakh relations in the 16th century was influenced not only by the interests of the khanates’ rulers but also by external challenges posed by the emergence of new powerful political centers and leaders. The research's relevance stems from the limited exploration of the topic and conflicting approaches to the history of the formation of the Siberian Khanate and the ethnic community of Siberian Tatars in modern historiography.

Introduction: social movements and radicalisation in Europe

ABSTRACT This Special Issue (SI) provides a nuanced understanding of the root causes of radicalisation among European youth with both nativist and religious affiliations. The contributions challenge the civilisational paradigm and the reductionist interpretations that often conflate it with extremism, terrorism, and violence. Our contributors contend that the rise of populist rhetoric across Europe, alongside the notable strengthening of grassroots resistance, has led to a pronounced polarisation of public opinion. Drawing on the literature in Social Movement Studies, each contributor provides an analysis of various processes of youth radicalisation across different European nations. They illuminate that both nativist and Islamist forms of radicalisation among European youth function as frames for justification and alternative political expressions – almost akin to a form of anti-politics. This serves as a means for them to protect themselves from the destabilising effects of deindustrialisation, discrimination, alienation, humiliation, and stigmatisation. The findings underscore that radicalised youth tend to employ unconventional forms of political expression to articulate their knowledge and garner public attention to their marginalised status. This stems from their lack of trust in political centers, which they perceive as failing to provide remedies for disenfranchised youths experiencing socio-economic, political, spatial, and nostalgic deprivation in the era of globalisation.

Экзистенциальная демократия как модель демократии для развития человеческой личности. Часть II: Основные теоретические принципы и практические предложения экзистенциальной демократии

The article represents the results of the second part of the research devoted to the development of an original model of democracy – existential democracy. The author hinges primarily on offering and analyzing original theoretical and philosophical principles and practical political proposals necessary for the realization of existen-tial democracy in life. In all 17 main provisions are given. Philosophical principles include placing the subject, the personality, and not the structure, at the center of society and politics, and also the creative action of each personality, aimed mutually at their own good and the Common good. And also – recognition of the importance of each human, regardless of his social status, economic position, and the equality of all people among each other in existential democracy. Concrete practical proposals are also made – democratization of society, free and creative formation of new social and state institutions, development of humanisticoriented education and protection of human dignity at work, constructing dialogical, equal communication in society and maintaining high well-being of all citizens, for their transition to values of self-expression, creativity. Thus, it is shown that existential democracy is not just an ephemeral construct, but can be implemented in practice for the good of human personalities and the whole society consisting of them.

Особенности становления российской государственности на Дальнем Востоке: идеологический, территориальный и политический аспекты

This article examines the peculiarities of the formation of Russian statehood in the Far East in several direc-tions. First, it is important to study the ideological features of the development of the Russian state to the east and identify the main causes of this phenomenon. Secondly, it was expedient to outline the key territorial ap-proaches to the expansion of Russia and identify the main stages of settlement of the Far Eastern region. Third-ly, the author concludes that a significant role was played by the formation of political centralization of power in remote regions of the country. In addition, the factors determining the uniqueness of the development of state-hood in the Far East and its connection with national processes are analyzed. Thus, the work deepens the knowledge about the characteristic features of the development of new territories, taking into account ideologi-cal and political factors.

The Stonehenge bluestones did not come from Waun Mawn in West Wales

This paper examines the hypothesis that Waun Mawn in West Wales provided the bluestone monoliths that were used at Stonehenge. Some archaeologists believe that the site supports the last remains of a giant stone circle or ‘Proto Stonehenge’ which was dismantled and transported to Salisbury Plain around 5000 years ago. It was claimed, after three excavation seasons at Waun Mawn in 2017, 2018 and 2021, that there is firm evidence of some standing stones which were later removed or broken up, but it has still not been demonstrated that there ever was a small stone circle here, let alone a ‘giant’ one. Furthermore, there have been no control studies in the neighbourhood which might demonstrate that the speculative feature has any unique characteristics. There is nothing at Waun Mawn to link this site in any way to Stonehenge, and this is confirmed by recent cited research. No evidence has been brought forward in support of the claim that ‘this was one of the great religious and political centres of Neolithic Britain’. It is concluded that at Waun Mawn and elsewhere in West Wales there has been substantial ‘interpretative inflation’ driven by the desire to demonstrate a Stonehenge connection.

Putting wage growth back on the table: Labour incorporation, political exchange, and wage-boosting policies in advanced peripheral economies

Growth model scholarship posits that wage-led growth has become increasingly difficult to achieve in advanced capitalist economies since the demise of Fordism. The constraints to the pursuit of policies compatible with wage-led growth strategies could be expected to be particularly stringent in peripheral economies, which often rely on price-sensitive exports, suppression of domestic demand, and labour disempowerment to compete in global markets. Yet, empirical experience shows that even advanced peripheral economies that adopted export-led growth strategies have successfully implemented policies intended to raise wages and expand social transfers. How to explain the emergence of such wage-boosting policies in the context of advanced peripheral, export-oriented economies? Drawing on the cases of Israel, Poland, and Spain since the Great Recession, we identify one common mechanism accounting for this unexpected outcome: the contingent political incorporation of organized labour through a cross-class political exchange in the coalition supporting a country’s growth strategy. We identify two scope conditions that enable the implementation of such policies in unlikely contexts. Domestic political instability, coupled with a contingent relaxation of prior economic constraints, leads governing parties of both left and right orientation to activate political exchange with unions, resulting in the implementation of diverse policies boosting household income. These policies also increase the role of domestic consumption as a key growth driver. Nonetheless, the depth and durability of such changes remain conditioned. The findings develop our understanding of the role of, and structural limits to, organized labour’s agency to promote wage growth in advanced peripheral economies.

Early studies of the arms and armour collection in the National Museum of Slovenia

The study of historical arms and armour has no firmly established tradition in Slovenian scholarship. This may be attributed to various factors – on the one hand, the widely entrenched notions of Slovenia’s past reduced to a mythologised nation of peace-loving country folk, and on the other hand, the lack of representative arms and armour collections belonging to noble elites, such as may be found in the neighbouring political centres. A rather unreflective approach to military historical heritage could be observed during the formative period of the Carniolan Provincial Museum in Ljubljana, the precursor to the later National Museum, where this particular field remained largely uncharted until the end of World War II. Ljubljana’s museum experts ultimately recognised the true value of their arms and armour collection only towards the end of the 1950s, to a considerable extent or even mainly thanks to the interest of outside observers and foreign connoisseurs like the Viennese curator Dr Bruno Thomas. Within the National Museum, this shift finally stimulated the creation of a curatorial post devoted to arms and armour. Its tasks were entrusted to Ferdinand Tancik, Slovenia’s first specialist in the military heritage of the premodern era and, despite his brief career, a surprisingly influential local pioneer in arms and armour studies.

Trying in Many Ways to Persuade: Agency and Local Politics in a Nineteenth-Century Iron Mining Scheme

Abstract: Relying on Chinese county gazetteers and contemporary publications by Western engineers working in China, this article examines the methods used by county officials to secure property needed for the Daye iron mine in Hubei Province. It focuses on a young scholar-turned magistrate, Lin Zuo, who grew up around the market city of Shanghai and the political center in Beijing under the dual clouds of imperialism and the Taiping Rebellion. Upon taking office in a remote but mineral-rich county along the Yangzi river, Lin Zuo was deputed to deterritorialize significant parts of the county’s rice fields and mountain farms to facilitate a modern iron ore mine and adjoining railroad that became part of the powerful Hanyeping Coal and Iron Company. To this end, he hired local gentry to coerce or force various landowners to give up lands that were deemed rich in minerals or suited for a proposed train track that skirted the southern face of Tieshan (Iron Mountain). Conversely, commoners utilized ingenious negotiating methods to fight back against the power of the imperial government, which led the county leaders to look elsewhere for properties and in some cases forced the government to pay much higher prices for the tracts they needed most. This article suggests that this significant modernization scheme was brought about in part utilizing the trappings of patronage-led county government policies but that even as it was designed to strengthen the empire, in fact it actually weakened the local community, leaving many landless if not impoverished. It therefore questions recent scholarship that looks more positively at late nineteenth-century industrialization attempts or critically at policies that undermined them.

Registering Race: Inclusion and Omission in Bolivian Military-Service Records 1900–1960

Through presence or absence, indigeneity has long been at the center of Bolivian politics, culture, and nationalism.1 It carries immense social import. Yet what Indigenous means and who gets counted as part of this umbrella category has never been clear or static. Although Bolivia's racial and ethnic categories seem as etched in stone as the Andes themselves, individual classification is fluid and situational based on sociocultural markers that change over time. These markers include occupation, literacy, dress, language, surname, and residence. Individuals may move through these categories (and not only in one direction) over the course of their lives. This fluidity, combined with changing meaning and the valorization of indigeneity at the national and international levels, has led to wild fluctuations in official statistics on race since independence. The social construction of these categories came to the fore in 2012 when the census reported that Bolivians who identified as Indigenous had dropped to 40 percent of the population, down from 62 percent only eleven years earlier. International observers were left wondering, where did all the Indigenous people go?2

Addressing the Resource-Based View: Determinants That Drive Chinese Universities to Offer MOOCs

This study involved 51 Chinese universities from the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Ranking 2021. With based the resource-based view (RBV) as a framework, it aimed to identify the determinants of human resource capital that were related to universities’ production of MOOCs. Three determinants were detected—size, lifelong learning, and proximity to the political centre. Both size and proximity to the political centre proved to be significant. The findings provide timely implications for university managers and suggest that the variety of management spaces be expanded to increase the portfolio of high-quality Chinese universities that facilitate the production of MOOCs. In addition, universities should increase their proximity awareness to remedy the disadvantages of uneven resource allocation due to geographical proximity.

Features of the economic development of ancient Russian and German cities in the XII – first third of the XIII century

The subject of the study is the economic life of the city of Ancient Russia and the medieval city of Germany. The object of the study is an ancient Russian and Western European city in the XII – first third of the XIII centuries. For more than a century, the debate has been going on about whether Russia is following its own special path of development, different from the Western one, or whether our country is developing in the general direction of the world historical process, lagging behind Western European states for various reasons. The appeal to the economic problems of the city is due to the exceptional importance of the economic sphere of life, it determines the course of all processes taking place in society, affecting the other subsystems of society. For comparison, we have chosen one of the dominant political centers of Russia in the era of fragmentation – the Vladimir-Suzdal Principality and the cities of Germany, which are a classic example of a medieval city in Western Europe. The work used a comparative historical method that allows us to identify common and specific features of the development of the economic sphere of the urban centers of Ancient Russia and medieval Europe in order to reveal the versatility of the phenomenon of the ancient Russian city. The ancient Russian and medieval German city in the XII – first third of the XIII century had a deep connection with the nearby agricultural district and were agrarian in nature. Despite this, the most important direction of the economic development of the cities of Vladimir-Suzdal land and medieval Germany was their development as trade and craft centers. Merchant associations operate in both countries, and active trade and credit operations are carried out. Both cities were distinguished by the differentiation of the craft and its narrow specialization. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that a comparative analysis of the level of economic development of a significant number of ancient Russian and German medieval cities was carried out. As a result of the study, it was concluded that in German cities of the High Middle Ages, a special urban world was developing, characterized by strict regulation of almost all aspects of the life of citizens. The ancient Russian cities, on the contrary, did not develop a specific urban law that would operate only within the city walls.

以诗文酬唱为视角看明朝与朝鲜的诗赋外交

This article takes the perspective of “Shiwen-Chouchang”, and interprets the poetry and prose diplomacy between the Ming Dynasty and the Joseon Dynasty, as recorded in the “Annals of the Joseon Dynasty” and “Huanghua Collection”, during their diplomatic missions. The envoys sent by the two countries in both directions not only have to fulfill their regular mission as envoys, but also shoulder various tasks in politics, economy, and culture. During the mission, through exchanges and exchanges in the fields of literature, language, writing, calligraphy, painting, books and classics, Confucianism, etc., the envoys demonstrated their talents and also demonstrated the country’s cultural and moral etiquette. The poetry and prose diplomacy proposed through “Shiwen-Chouchang” not only compensates for political exchanges between the two sides, better solves political conflicts, strengthens friendly relations, fundamentally guarantees the healthy development of the two countries, but also deepens cultural exchanges between the two countries, making contributions to the dissemination of their cultures.

Holocaust Analogies, Conspiracy Theories, and Far-Right Victimhood: Forum for Democracy and the Future of Holocaust Memory in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT This article examines the relationship between the Far Right and Holocaust memory politics in the Netherlands through an in-depth analysis of the antisemitic and conspiratorial discourse of far-right politician Thierry Baudet and his party, Forum for Democracy (FvD). While the FvD positioned themselves as a victim of establishment politics from the outset, the party used their opposition to government COVID-19 policies to bolster the image of themselves as victim of state power as well as Jewish conspiracies. This article argues that Baudet’s Holocaust relativization and his criticism of the evolving character of Dutch Holocaust memory are intimately tied to his and the FvD’s antisemitic worldview, in which Jews are to blame for the decline of a mythologized white, Christian Dutch nation. In this context, the FvD used Holocaust analogies on social media, in the Dutch parliament, and during rallies to simultaneously accuse Jews of exploiting a victim identity for moral legitimacy and to contest the government’s acknowledgment of Dutch collaboration and inclusion of Jewish experiences into a broader national narrative of the Second World War. In posing these challenges to the status of the Holocaust in contemporary memory politics, Baudet and the FvD attempt to rewrite Dutch history with the white, Christian population as the true bearers of Dutch heritage and identity. Examining the character and normalization of Holocaust relativization in a country still lauded internationally for its tolerance despite its delayed process of ‘coming to terms’ with its Holocaust past demonstrates the centrality of memory politics to far-right ideologies.

Too little, too vague: How populist parties talk about deliberation in Europe

Populist parties place the people at the centre of polity and politics. Such parties refer to direct democracy as a suitable avenue to involve people in the decision-making process but much less is known about their approaches towards deliberation. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature and analyses how populist parties talk about deliberation in their election manifestos. It tests empirically how much they speak about deliberation and whether they have a generic discourse as opposed to specific references to forms of deliberation and levels of implementation. Our qualitative content analysis draws on the election manifestos of 84 political parties from the Manifesto Project Dataset in 23 European democracies in the national elections between 1996 and 2021. The results indicate that populists talk considerably less and use vague language about the levels of implementation compared to non-populists.

Историософские аспекты отечественного народовластия: раннее и развитое государство: статья 2

The article presents the second part of the work on the historiosophical vision of Russian democracy. Based on the concept of stages of state genesis by L. Grinin, the authors analyze domestic manifestations of democracy at the stages of an early and developed state. Despite the fact that in the conditions of the early state the high-est authority had very superficial control over social processes, already in the Kievan period there was a clear tendency for the leading political subjectivity to transition to princely power. In subjective terms, the popular consciousness preferred the figure of a charismatic and militarily successful prince. Expressions of the peo-ple’s will often had an ochlocratic meaning, taking the form of a mass emotional outburst with ambiguous final results. At the stage of a developed state, internal political centralization adjusted the tasks of the highest au-thorities, giving them a mobilization meaning. At the same time, the general trend is that expanding state struc-tures are conducting a successful attack on the autonomy of stable institutions of democracy, at first widely us-ing tactics of maneuvering and compromise, and then preferring harsh suppression. At the same time, a num-ber of phenomena of democracy turned out to be a reaction either to the complete vacuum of the central gov-ernment (the Time of Troubles), or, conversely, to the growing pressure of the latter. At the same time, grass-roots expression of will could occur spontaneously, acquiring an ochlocratic meaning (urban riots); and acquire more organized forms of socio-political movements.

Alternative modes of governance: Clans and social instability in rural China

As one form of informal institutions, clans have played a significant role in driving Chinese socioeconomic development. However, there is currently no consensus on how clans are correlated with social instability in rural areas. This paper aims to explore the correlations between clans and social instability, utilizing village-level data from the 2015–2021 China Household Finance Survey. The findings reveal a positive correlation between clans and social instability in rural areas. Notably, this relationship follows an inverted U-shaped pattern when considering political distance. Mechanism analysis suggests that clans are accompanies by more social disputes and conflicts of interest in intermediate zones compared to areas located farther away or closer to the local political center. Further analysis indicates that both the decrease in legal governance and the increase in potential interests aggravate the negative correlation between clans and social stability. Additionally, it is observed that implementing the “yi jian tiao” policy in grassroots governance can help mitigate the social contradictions caused by clans and brings positive influence, but the existence of multiple clans is positively correlated with social instability. Our analysis implies that more attention should be focused on the intermediate zones, where an enormous number of conflicts between formal and informal institutions exist.

Regional inequalities among state universities in Chile: Perspectives on centralization and neoliberal development

Drawing on perspectives from top state-regional universities’ authorities (known as rectors) and public statistics on higher education, we discuss the sources of regional inequality in the Chilean university system. While there is scarce research on regional inequality for Chilean higher education, it is a well-recognized concern within global debates. In this study, the testimonies of rectors link perceptions of regional inequality to the historic, political, and managerial dimensions that have determined their institutions’ development. As the problem of regional inequality stems from a tradition of political centralization, the neoliberal transformations, imposed since 1981, were singled out by the rectors for institutionalizing patterns of marketization that reinforced “inequalities of origin” for state-regional universities. Since the 2000s, trends of massification, regulation, and student protests reshaped higher education, leading to sectorial reform in 2018. However, competitive disadvantages are seen to continue to hinder the public role of state-regional universities. Institutional development strategies emerged, under the direction of rectors, to compensate for such inequalities, differentiating between winners and losers of neoliberal higher education. This article characterizes the modes of reproduction and overcoming of regional inequalities among state universities under neoliberal policy.

Social media posts as source for political news coverage inside and outside election campaigns: Examining effects on deliberative news media quality

Journalists increasingly cite and/or embed social media posts in news articles. While social media posts have been found to be of little deliberative quality, we do not know whether this also affects the deliberative quality of the news. Against the background of a hybrid media system and deliberative news media standards, we answer this research question with a content analysis of news articles including or not including posts from X (formerly Twitter) in the twelve widest-reaching German news websites prior and after the German general election 2021. We were particularly interested in the differences inside and outside election campaigns as the interdependence of the mass media and the political sphere is particularly pronounced during campaign periods. Results show that posts are more often cited and/or embedded in news articles inside than outside election campaigns. Articles including posts feature a greater number of actors but are not more diverse as mainly actors from the political center are referenced. Moreover, articles with posts are associated with a higher position responsiveness but on the other hand a decreased civility of the represented political discourse. This pattern only emerged inside but not outside campaign periods. These findings add to our understanding of contemporary hybrid media systems and the nature of political journalism during contentious political periods.