Political Divisions Research Articles

Transatlantic Relations in the Light of the US’s Withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal

The article presents an analysis of the political divisions between the United States and its European allies concerning the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on the Iranian nuclear program. The first section of the article elucidates the key aspects of the research program, which is grounded in the theoretical framework of neoclassical realism to interpret the goal-setting and motivations of European participants' actions. The subsequent section delineates the circumstances surrounding the U.S. departure from the Iranian nuclear agreement, while the third part outlines the context and manifestations of foreign policy responses by European participants of the JCPOA, offering initial conceptual insights into challenging the U.S. exit from the Agreement. The article suggests that emerging contradictions stem from varying assessments by partners regarding the international-political ramifications of the JCPOA's breakdown and conflicting interests among involved parties. The response of European allies (EU/E3) was influenced by specific conditions at that time, shaping responsive actions and reaction forms based on a set of political and economic factors. In these circumstances, European participants aimed at a) maintaining constructive politico-diplomatic relations with Iran and fostering multilateral cooperation; b) sustaining mutually beneficial trade and economic ties, alongside established infrastructures for engagement with Iran.

Twitter and Fake News: Implications for National Security in Nigeria

The emergence of new social media platforms such as Twitter has revolutionized the means of communication and dissemination, providing unprecedented networking avenues for immediate news spread. But this ease has also increased the spread of fake news which is a concern faced by many nations including Nigeria. Fake news simply deceives, suppresses facts relevant to political life or spreads information intended only to harm, having a direct impact on national security. For Nigeria, a country rich in ethnic, religious and political prejudice, the effects of fake news can go as far as inciting violence, destroying the social fabric or even causing instability. This study investigated the prevalence, characteristics and consequences of fake news on Twitter during critical events in Nigeria, using a qualitative methodology to understand how false information is spread and what potential threat it poses to national security. The paper uses secondary data from the extant literature and Twitter-Archive for investigating how fake news spreads, consequently shaping public opinion, damaging social solidarity and threatening national security. It lists the top drivers of misinformation in Nigeria – including poor media literacy, political divisiveness and over-dependence on social media as sources of news. It also puts forward solutions to address the risks posed by this kind of content on Twitter, including government legislation, fact-checking mechanisms, media literacy initiatives and consumer take-backs. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between Twitter, fake news, and national security in Nigeria, highlighting the urgent need for proactive measures to protect the country’s stability and well-being.

Devolved education policymaking in the UK: a four jurisdictions perspective

This short paper addresses the pace, ebb and flow of policy moves in education in the context of the continuing process of political and administrative devolution in the UK. The concept of policy making is explicitly approached as a process. Given the potentially broad policy arena, the focus is necessarily selective and restricted to policy for schools. The paper identifies areas of policy mobility and immobility drawing on the concepts of ‘policy mortality’ ‘drift’, ‘paralysis’ and ‘reversal’ (Gunter and Courtney, 2023; Béland et al., 2016; Gallagher, 2021). This brief review aims to show how policy possibilities in the four closely-linked jurisdictions are influenced by varying degrees of coordinative capacity, ministerial influence, policy styles and advisory systems, and the power and influence of potential veto players. Critical attention is afforded to the enactment of the principle of subsidiarity in relation to education change. Rather than progressive linear advance, the paper notes three alternate moves: continuing tension between central control and local autonomy in education governance in Wales and Scotland, paralysing policy drift from political division in Northern Ireland, and rapid acceleration of market-oriented change in England.

The (Neo-)Romantic Roots of Austria’s Politics of Pessimism

ABSTRACT This article explores some historical and ideological conditions of possibility underpinning the two most widely debated and strongly politicized topics in Austrian public discourse over recent years: in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, an “anti-vaxxer” sub-culture, which is less internally coherent than one may assume; and prominent, if controversial positions vis-à-vis Russia. My focus leads to the extrapolation of a common denominator that I locate in the longue durée legacy of romantic and neo-romantic ideas. Following an initial contextualization, a methodological rationale, and summary of existing literature on the history of (neo-)romantic thought on the territories of present-day Austria, the crux of the argument is that a cultural-cum-political pessimism, often articulated through (inadvertent and selective) neo-romantic tropes and topoi, constitutes the shared argumentative terrain between the two thematic clusters in question (i.e. the Querdenker phenomenon and Russophile positions). In a more tentatively formulated vein that awaits sustained empirical exploration, I also suggest that while this (neo-)romantic pessimism is particularly pronounced on the (far)right end of the spectrum, some of its elements cut across political divides in Austria today.

Consensus Over Political Divisions: Polish Input in the Debate on Multiculturalism and Immigration to the European Union

Multiculturalism as an ideology holds that Western societies ought to become mosaics of races, ethnicities and religions. At least from the mid-1980s, multiculturalism has set out the contents and limits of public debate and policy on immigration in Western democracies. That ideological supremacy has been effectively questioned only by the public reactions to the 2015 EU immigration crisis. Political rhetoric on immigration has changed more than actual policy. Meanwhile, in Poland, its deep political divisions notwithstanding, the mainstream elites of power and opinion have remained quite uniformly sceptical about the generally lax Western approach toward immigration, both regarding its ideological underpinnings and resulting policies. The scope of the Polish debate on immigration seems also much less constrained by the strictures of political correctness than has been the case in the West. The present article documents that transpolitical consensus, tracing its roots back to the historical experience specific to Poland and Central Europe.

MAS Relations with Social Movements: The Yungas Cocaleros and the 2019 Crisis

The Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) emerged from a diverse coalition of social movements centered on cocalero unions and their participatory organizational structure. Some scholars argue that the MAS became a top-down ruling party that relegated and weakened social movements. This article challenges these predominate claims about MAS relations with social organizations. Based on a case study of the Asociación Departmental de Productores de Coca (ADEPCOCA), the article develops two main claims. First, it examines the political divisions within the cocalero sector, which contradict a common view of cocaleros as united with the MAS, and which therefore presented a governance dilemma for the MAS. Second, the article considers how, in the ADEPCOCA case, rural social organizations were able to both remain autonomous under the MAS and confront government power. These findings have implications for understanding how the MAS shaped Bolivian political development leading up to the 2019 crisis; namely, that there was significant tension between the MAS’s commitments to state-building and participatory governance, and that this tension contributed to resistance from within the MAS coalition, leaving the regime vulnerable to overthrow in 2019.

Sectarian, religious and political divisions in a professional accounting body: The case of Lebanon

This article explores how political, religious and sectarian divisions influence the functioning of the exclusive professional accounting body in Lebanon. This article shows that this body is characterised by significant divisions among different groups of members, which has ultimately politicised the electoral processes as well as the functioning of its boards, over the years. In turn, this has drawn this body into broader divisions that are historically inherent to the Lebanese society. This article illustrates that the functioning of professional accounting associations in diverse contexts entails establishing conditions under which the coexistence of different groups is protected. Whether the difference is based on religion, sect, class or gender, confrontation should not be eliminated because it organises coexistence under potentially conflicting conditions.

How natural disasters and environmental fears shape American climate attitudes across political orientation

Climate change remains a polarizing issue in the United States, with conservatives expressing greater skepticism regarding its risks. We investigate how fear shapes climate attitudes across political orientations. Utilizing data from a 2023 online survey, results support hypotheses that conservatives demonstrate lower climate concern and that fear of natural and environmental disasters increases climate concern. Interaction results show that fear of anthropogenic environmental disasters elicits greater climate concern amongst conservatives. At high levels of ecological fear, the political divisions diminish as all orientations converge on higher levels of acknowledging climate risks and causes. Practically, this relationship highlights messaging opportunities by focusing on relevant environmental threats that aid in influencing conservatives to build collective support across political divides. Theoretically, these findings challenge expectations of dominant paradigms related to threat perception and political orientation, contributing to the ongoing development of new models that more thoroughly represent the relationship between these multifaceted constructs.

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and Election Postponements: Trends, Socio-Economic Effects and the Future of Nigeria’s Electoral Process

Election postponement has gradually crept into the political lexicon and is fast becoming a tradition in Nigeria’s electoral process that has sequentially marred the conduct of elections in the country as evident in 2011, 2015, 2019 and 2023 general elections among others. This has raised serious concerns as to the integrity of the electoral process and the preparedness of INEC to conduct free, fair and credible elections in the country. The essence of this paper was to assess the trends and socio-economic effects of election postponements and its impacts on Nigeria’s electoral process. The paper is historical and descriptive in nature and utilized relevant data obtained wholly from documentary sources which were analysed within the context of structural functional theory. From the analysis, it was gleaned that the electoral umpire has not learned from its previous sloppy preparations and mistakes, despite significant condemnation from Nigerians across political divides. Moreover, the paper established that security challenges, logistics inadequacies and court verdicts contributed to the postponement of elections, which resulted in severe socio-economic losses for the voting public, electoral commission, political parties, security agencies, election observers, and media outlets. Accordingly, the paper recommended, among others, that the government and other stakeholders in Nigeria’s electoral process should work to ensure that adequate pre-emptive measures are put in place in advance of future elections. Again, the Electoral Act 2022 should be amended to provide for electronic registration and voting, to accommodate Nigerians in diaspora.

Populist and Anti-Populist Discourses in Nigerian and Turkish Presidential Elections: Populist Zeitgeist Debate Revisited

Today, many scholars question whether populism has indeed become the zeitgeist detriment of democracies around the globe. This study compares populist discourses in Nigeria and Türkiye during their 2023 presidential campaigns. Utilizing Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), it explores how did the victorious presidential candidates employ digital media platforms to disseminate their populist and anti-populist messages? This research reveals that Bola Tinubu’s anti-populist discourses mitigated polarization and led to a smooth electoral success in Nigeria. In sharp contrast, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s populist discourses exacerbated political divisions in Türkiye. It concludes that populism neither universally dominates global trends nor guarantees electoral victory, even in polarized Eurasian-African context. Nonetheless, whether labeled as populist or anti-populist during electoral campaigns, such characterizations do not necessarily translate into corresponding policy actions once in office.

Why Civilizations Collapse: The Cruciality of Social Solidarity and the Dangers of Its Absence

This essay examines the complexities of civilizational collapse, proposing that it is not a singular event but a prolonged process driven by internal conflicts and external threats. It begins by defining the concept of collapse and uses historian Jared Diamond’s perspective to analyze how internal strife, such as loss of cultural identity, conflicting ideologies, and political division, can initiate the decline of a civilization due to a fragmentation of social solidarity. The essay then uses historical examples of the Islamic and Roman Empires to illustrate the importance of social solidarity for the survival of civilizations. It also discusses the internal challenges faced by modern civilization, including issues brought about by globalization, political polarization, East-West conflicts, global supply chain shortages, and how these factors can erode solidarity, posing a risk of collapse to the contemporary “world civilization.” The essay concludes by highlighting that internal conflicts and the absence of social solidarity are the primary causes of civilizational collapse, a theory that remains relevant for understanding the challenges faced by the global civilization today.

Studying the Implementation of Equity Projects in Science Education in Divisive Political Contexts

ABSTRACTThe implementation of equity‐oriented reforms is never simply a technical matter: it involves directly engaging with the norms and politics responsible for reproducing inequitable opportunities and outcomes, and with efforts to promote educational justice. To date, there has been little research on how leaders in science education navigate the political environments of schooling to engage in equity work in their local contexts. The current political divisions within and among states regarding teaching about racial equity provide an important and timely context for such study. This study examines equity projects that science education leaders engage in and how these relate to recently passed legislation in several states regarding teaching about race and its ongoing role in shaping American society and institutions. It relies on survey data from science education leaders in 33 states, focusing on their familiarity with and involvement in different kinds of equity projects in science education, along with their perceptions of what supports and what hinders their equity‐focused work. Employing a mixed methods approach, including descriptive analysis, hierarchical linear modeling, and thematic analysis, we found that engagement in equity projects varied widely across and within states. However, in states with laws promoting equity, leaders were engaged in more racial equity‐related projects than in states with legislation that restrict discussion of matters of race, so‐called “gag orders”. These findings underscore the significance of the broader political environments in shaping science education leadership and present opportunities for researchers in the field to support leaders in navigating them.

An Efficient Fusion Network for Fake News Classification

Nowadays, it is very tough to differentiate between real news and fake news due to fast-growing social networks and technological progress. Manipulative news is defined as calculated misinformation with the aim of creating false beliefs. This kind of fake news is highly detrimental to society since it deepens political division and weakens trust in authorities and institutions. Therefore, the identification of fake news has emerged as a major field of research that seeks to validate content. The proposed model operates in two stages: First, TF-IDF is applied to an entire document to obtain its global features, and its spatial and temporal features are simultaneously obtained by employing Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory with a Gated Recurrent Unit. The Fast Learning Network efficiently classifies the extracted features. Comparative experiments were conducted on three easily and publicly obtainable large-scale datasets for the purposes of analyzing the efficiency of the approach proposed. The results also show how well the model performs compared with past methods of classification.

Countering Political Polarization Through Conscious and Unconscious Integrative Complexity

Political polarization has been growing in many countries, including the United States, within recent years. Scholars note how, if not addressed, growing trends can compromise fundamental pillars of a functioning democratic society. While efforts have grown in researching how integrative complexity can successfully mitigate polarizing tensions in political divides, there is a lack of scholarly attention on how conscious and unconscious dimensions of integrative complexity affect such processes. This article proposes a framework to ground future research in this direction as well as inform depolarizing interventions on this topic.

Effects of Armed Conflicts on The National Security of Post Conflicts States, A Case Study of Juba County in Central Equatorial State, South Sudan

This paper assessed the nature of existing armed conflicts and their effect on security management, established the influence of the local and regional dynamics of conflicts on security management and finally examined the effect of the emerging security threats on security management strategies in Juba County, South Sudan. The study was guided by two theories; Conflict Transformation and National Security theories. The study used descriptive survey research design and Purposive sampling technique to enlist 210 respondents for this study. The main method of data collection was the interview. Content analysis was used to analyze qualitative data and reported in narrative form. The study established a dichotomy of existing armed conflicts; external and internal conflicts in Central Equatorial State, South Sudan that had serious implication on both Security Management and National security. The second objective established the influence of local and regional dynamics that affected security management that included; Interlocking political and tribal division aspects of conflict, the influence of insurgents and armed cross border militia groups; greed for livestock by political elites that saw them arm their tribal militia with modern guns and military hardware for ease of livestock theft, amongst others. The third objective established the effect of several emerging security threats on Security Management strategies in Juba County, which included migrant migration for domestic and international child soldiering recruitment in the context of the on-going civil war and also for soldiering elsewhere outside the country. This paper establishes a regional policy concern that South Sudan is largely unsafe, and by implication the whole region is unlikely to be safe. This calls for an immediate action by all security stakeholders, UN agencies, Non State Actors, security pundits and think tanks to brainstorm and chart a way forward for South Sudan and the entire region.

The Moderating Role of Affective Polarization on Party Cues: The Case of the Prostitution Ban

Affective polarization is a recent yet widespread phenomenon in democracies that significantly impacts various aspects of politics. In this paper, we argue that it can also shape citizens’ political beliefs through party cues. Using a panel survey experiment in Spain, we examine the extent to which partisan signals influence citizens’ attitudes toward a non-party- branded issue, specifically the ban on prostitution, and how affective polarization moderates this effect. Our results underscore the role of affective polarization in moderating the influence of partisan cues, particularly among highly polarized individuals. These findings highlight the capacity of affective polarization not only to deepen political divisions but also to expand the scope of partisan influence to non-politicized and neutral issues, offering new insights into its potential impact on attitude formation and decision-making.

Testing the social pressure hypothesis: Does in-party social pressure reduce out-party empathy?

Empathy is considered one of the most critical components for bridging political divides and reducing animosity between political groups. Yet, empathy between political opponents is rare. There is a growing concern that partisans do not empathize with out-partisans because they feel social pressure from fellow in-partisans not to do so. This article examines this social pressure hypothesis and draws two conclusions. First, on the surface, the hypothesis seems plausible: citizens perceive fellow in-partisans as comparatively disapproving of and reluctant to engage in out-party empathy, and naïve cross-sectional analyses suggest that this perception translates into lower empathy towards out-partisans. Second, however, experimental data suggest that this relationship is not causal. Expecting disapproval from fellow in-party members for empathizing with out-partisans does not lead to a significant reduction in intentions to empathize with out-partisans. Rather, exploratory analyses suggest that social pressure by the in-party increases empathy toward out-partisans and triggers disappointment toward in-partisans. This implies that partisans can resist social pressure from the in-party and might even compensate for in-partisans' lack of out-party empathy. The results are supported by original cross-sectional and experimental survey data ( ) collected in the United States, an arguably most likely case for in-party social pressure to shape partisans' intentions. The results have important implications for understanding the causes of and viable strategies for building empathy across political divides.

The Myth of a Bipartisan Golden Age for U.S. Foreign Policy: The Truman-Eisenhower Consensus Remains

Abstract Scholars and practitioners of U.S. foreign policy commonly describe the early Cold War as a lost golden age of bipartisan consensus. This article uses public opinion data, congressional voting patterns, and party platform statements to refute this conventional wisdom. In fact, the core internationalist principles that enjoyed bipartisan agreement during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations retain widespread approval from Democrats and Republicans today. Enduring support for this Truman-Eisenhower consensus is concealed by the way that recent presidents have enlarged the United States’ foreign policy agenda to pursue policies that historically did not generate bipartisanship, such as fighting climate change or conducting decades-long projects in armed nation-building. Rising political divisions in U.S. foreign policy are thus primarily a result of Democrats and Republicans deploying global influence in new ways rather than renouncing traditional international commitments. These findings refute widespread claims that political polarization has undermined traditional conceptions of U.S. global leadership or depleted Washington's usable power.

Fractured Patriotism: General Tsai Ting-kai and the Divided Allegiances of Chinese Australians in the Early 1930s

Most studies of nationalism among Chinese Australians in the 1930s have focused on China or on diasporic community politics. By studying the visit of General Tsai Ting-kai to Australia in 1934–35, this article highlights the impact of China’s war with Japan on the development of Chinese diasporic nationalism. The planning of Tsai’s visit sparked political divisions among Chinese Australians that different political factions exploited for their own agendas.

Exploring key determinants of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among individuals: An exploratory study globally.

SARS-CoV-2 virus gave rise to COVID-19 in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, and it quickly spread over the world to become a pandemic. The virus, which is mostly carried by respiratory droplets, spread at an unprecedented rate, causing a large number of deaths and extensive illness, necessitating lockdowns, travel bans, and social distancing policies by governments across the globe in an attempt to stop the spread, which severely disrupted daily life, the healthcare system, and economies.COVID-19 vaccines are biological materials designed to offer protection against the organism that causes the COVID-19 pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 virus, played a crucial role in stopping the virus's spread and lowering the burden on healthcare systems around the globe. Although Covid-19 vaccines offers benefits which includes the prevention of severe illness and death through the reduction of the chance of COVID-19-related serious illness, hospital stays, and death, it was met with hesitancy by some population on the basis of a complex web of interrelated causes, such as political division, misinformation, socioeconomic inequities, and past mistrust of healthcare systems.Vaccine hesitancy contributed to lower-than-expected vaccination coverage in many regions, preventing the achievement of herd immunity and allowing the virus to continue spreading. Exploring this key determinants of Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy among individuals all over the world and possible solutions, is the focus of this research.