Political Future Research Articles

The Issue of Independence in Opinion Polls in Wales in 2017–2023

This study presents and analyzes the results of public opinion surveys conducted in Wales in 2017–2023 regarding the political future of the region. Using quantitative, comparative and systemic methods, the political solutions proposed by the Welsh were identified. The aim of the study is to answer the question whether current centrifugal tendencies may lead to Wales gaining independence in the foreseeable future.

Российская революция 1917 года и трансформация представлений активистов карельского национального движения о перспективах политического и экономического развития Российской Карелии

The article is based on the documents of the National Archive of the Republic of Karelia, the Scientific Archive of the Karelian Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the National Archive of Finland, as well as published sources dating back to the period of the Russian revolution 1917. The author considers one of the most important aspects of the history of the Karelian national movement –– the preferences, expectations and miscalculations of its leaders in the context of the transformation of their program installations in 1905–1917. The evolution of the ideas common to movement activists on the political future and economic life of Russian Karelia, the emergence of new public institutions and the renewal of political programs in the context of the democratization of Russian society are shown. The reasons for the sharp strengthening, divergence and further confrontation of multidirectional forces in the Karelian outback in spring – autumn of 1917 were noted.

Dynamics of Jambi Malay Ethnic Group in The Political Contestation of Jambi Mayor Election

Primordial loyalty that breeds fanaticism is often used by politicians as a shortcut and easy way to gather support. By using primordial interests, politicians do not need to work hard to gain support from the people. This research seeks to explain why Jambi Malay ethnic loyalty, as the dominant group, was not formed in relation to the Mayor Election in Jambi City. What are the factors that cause Malay ethnic sentiment not to appear. The data in this study were obtained through in-depth interviews, documentation, and news in the mass media. It is possible for the results of this study to be replicated in areas outside Jambi City to see whether the ethnic Malays elsewhere also have the same cultural roots, political attitudes, and habits, or vice versa. The results of this study will provide an explanation of the theoretical implications of the political events that occurred in the city of Jambi. The results of this study can be used to predict the future of Malay ethnic politics in the midst of an electoral democratic political system that is taking place in Indonesia.

Reflections on Unwritten Letters and the neorealism of contingency

Reflections on <i>Unwritten Letters</i> and the neorealism of contingency

The Key to Democracy: Mandatory Pre-Legislative Consultation

India’s policy of public consultation in the legislation process is currently not mandatory. The concept of pre-legislative scrutiny and inclusion of the public has proven to be an invaluable addition to the democratic process, and the absence of the same has led to instances of widespread protest and discontentment. The policy of pre-legislative scrutiny was introduced in 2014. However, certain bills passed post-2014 have witnessed public outcry over its lack of consultation and majority stakeholders’ adverse effects. This paper aims to highlight the importance of pre-legislative scrutiny and provide for a mandatory method to be followed while implementing a mandatory process of pre-legislative scrutiny. A democratic political structure is one that is based on the rule of law. Without the rule of law, there will be no political future. The aim of this paper is to examine the status of the rule of law in the current political environment, with the rule of law as the dependent variable and fundamental rights, inequality, an open parliament, and an autonomous judiciary as independent variables. The requisite data was gathered from written and online media in order to assess the rule of law. Only the rule of law and effective state institutions will enable a federal democratic republic to thrive.

Scientific Evidence of a Clash between Das Sollen and Das Sein in the book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P Huntington

Conflicts between nations that adhere to distinct worldviews will continue to shape the course of world politics in the foreseeable future. Culture, not politics or economics, will drive future wars on a global scale; these two factors are becoming increasingly irrelevant. This battle, in turn, will be the most significant symptom that replaces the polarization of world ideology into communist and capitalism, together with the collapse of the governmental system in the vast majority of Eastern European countries. The following are some of the factors that, according to Huntington, would cause conflicts between different civilizations in the future of world politics: 1). Differences in culture, tradition, and ethnicity, as well as differences in people's perspectives on how humans should relate to God, are all part of what distinguishes one civilization from another. These philosophical differences are at the root of the fact that people of different civilizations have different perspectives on how humans should relate to God. 2). In the sense that the interaction between various peoples and civilizations is continuing to rise, we might say that the world is continuing to become a smaller place. When people connect with one another on a deeper level, their knowledge of their own civilization grows, and they become more attuned to the distinctions that exist between their culture and those of other civilizations. 3). People all across the world have been uprooted from their deep-seated roots of local identity as a consequence of the process of economic modernization and social development. This has occurred as a result of globalization. 4). The Western world has played a dual role, which has contributed to the development of civilization consciousness. This may be understood as a stronger sense of love for a belief in the identity of civilization that has been going on for a long time.

Striving towards democracy? Political participation in post-Soviet countries

ABSTRACT The formation of political systems in the post-Soviet region remains a relevant topic even thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Due to social, economic, and cultural factors, the political regimes continue to move from the general communist in the past towards different political futures dominated by either authoritarian or democratic frames. This study aims to investigate the patterns of political culture and participation, focusing on the binary categorization of political regimes prevalent across post-Soviet countries and the application of media trust and the freedom index to outline the patterns of political participation. It focuses on eight post-Soviet countries, four authoritarian and four hybrid political regimes, using WVS/EVS 2017–2020 survey data. The findings specify the importance of media trust in the formation of political participation habits across countries with unconsolidated democracy. It shows that the levels of media trust exert diverging impacts depending on the type of political participation. The freedom index has also been integrated as a moderator due to the importance of freedom for the media to mobilize society. The moderation analysis revealed the distinctive patterns of political participation in countries with lower and higher levels of freedom.

A ‘radical reinterpretation’ of South African struggle mythology: from non-racialism to black nationalism

ABSTRACT The Economic Freedom Fighters has, since its creation in 2013, attempted to attract Vot voters from the African National Congress (ANC) by presenting itself as the true hero of the South African struggle for freedom. This article indicates how political mythology can be used to unify a group behind a cause or a hero, or against an enemy. Hereafter a case is made for the use of political mythology by the ANC since 1952. Finally, the EFF's positioning towards the ANC and its reinterpretation of struggle mythology is proposed. This article wishes to contribute to the conversation on South Africa's political future, by analysing the relationship of the EFF and ANC at the deepest level, that of their shared and contested political mythology. The contemporary importance is that these two parties that might well be involved in coalitions at the highest level of South African politics in the near future.

Some are Empty Shells without Groundnuts

In view of the low levels of women’s representation in political office in Zimbabwe after the 2018 elections, questions arise regarding whether young people can, or will support female candidates in future elections. The youth is seen as a critical group that may shape the future of politics in Zimbabwe. We conducted a qualitative study to explore the views young people have of female political candidates, through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with participants aged between 19 and 24 in the city of Masvingo. Drawing on social constructionism, poststructuralist feminism, and intersectionality analyses, the study found that young people in urban Masvingo have a predominantly negative perception of female candidates, although this is mediated by factors such as gender, class, sexuality, disability, and education. Nonetheless, some of the youth in Masvingo appear to be redefining or countering gendered societal norms and values, as they appear to accept women as political candidates.

Andrzej Bobkowski and Józef Czapski

Andrzej Bobkowski and Józef Czapski

Review: Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements, by Deva Woodly

Review: <i>Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements</i>, by Deva Woodly

Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America by Tanya Harmer

Reviewed by: Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America by Tanya Harmer Ángela Vergara Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America. By Tanya Harmer. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020, p. 370, $34.95 (cloth). Beatriz Allende has a special place in Chile's painful memory box. The second daughter of Salvador Allende, the country's first socialist president, Beatriz was a medical doctor like her father. But if she embraced Allende's political project and joined the government during the Popular Unity (1970–1973), she was also on the far left of the Socialist Party and deeply influenced by the Cuban Revolution and Che Guevara. Married to a Cuban intelligence agent, Luis Fernández de Oña, Beatriz was forced to leave the country after the military coup and settled in La Havana. Mother of two children, the youngest born a few months after the coup, she became the public face and tireless leader of Chile's solidarity movement in exile. And then, in 1977, at only 35 years old, she killed herself. As the Cuban media reported, she could not keep living with the "psychological wounds" of the coup (262). In this beautifully written and well-researched biography, Tanya Harmer reconstructs the personal and political life of Beatriz while also shedding light on the turbulent history of Chile during the long 1960s. Beatriz Allende, the author recognizes, is "not particularly easy or straightforward subject to get to know intimately or otherwise" (5). Indeed, while her political life was visible, Beatriz's private feelings remained, for the most part, hidden. To build a biography, Harmer conducted impressive and genuinely transnational research that included personal papers, interviews, and archives from Chile, Cuba, and other parts of the world. The sources vary, and, many times, we can only hear Beatriz's voice from third parties. The exception is Beatriz's correspondence with Luis Fernández de Oña, which includes love letters and political analyses of the country's conjuncture. Through these letters, the reader can grasp the lived political and personal experience of a radical young woman. The book touches on three significant moments in Beatriz's life. First, Harmer looks at the radicalization of Beatriz throughout the 1960s. Her father's political career and contacts influenced this process, but so too did her experience as a medical student in Concepción in the early 1960s, her professional work in a clinic serving low-income families, and the local and international political debates of her time, especially during the Eduardo Frei administration (1964–1970). As the daughter of Allende, she had access to a political world usually unattainable to women of her age, traveling with her father to Cuba and the Soviet Union and meeting with world leaders. Then, there is Beatriz during the Popular Unity and married to a Cuban agent. She left her medical practice to work in the government and played a crucial role in Chile-Cuba relations and negotiations with Chile's far left. She also became a mother, but there is little about [End Page 357] her feelings and experience in the book. The last chapters cover Beatriz in exile and leading the solidarity movement from La Havana. The work had a personal toll, and she became "increasingly pessimistic" about the political future (254). These last chapters are exceptionally well-done, as the author fully grasps the disillusionment, the trauma, and the feeling of defeat that permeated the life of Chileans in exile. One of the main accomplishments of the book is the author's ability to intersect Beatriz's life and the history of Chile and Latin America during the long 1960s. Throughout the book, we learned about the Global Cold War and the influence of the Cuban revolution and Che Guevara on the Latin American youth. For example, when explaining Beatriz's radicalization, Harmer states the importance of understanding the "environment in which it was nurtured" (94). In her descriptions of Chilean politics and the global events that impacted it, Harmer demonstrates to be a leading historian of the Latin American Cold War. In many ways, this biography builds on her previous work on Chile...

WHERE IS THE FUTURE? Geography, Expectation and Experience across Three Decades of Malaysia's Vision 2020

AbstractIn 1991, the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, announced Vision 2020 to make the country ‘fully developed’ by that year. Launched during a period of rapid economic growth, Vision 2020 legitimized Mahathir's developmental penchant for spectacular urban megaprojects and ambitious technological experimentation. While hopes of reaching Vision 2020's crude GDP targets were dashed even before the end of the 1990s (largely as a result of the Asian financial crisis), and Mahathir stepped down from office in 2003, the year 2020 retained significance as a horizon of expectation for a generation of Malaysians. In this Interventions essay I look back at three decades of Vision 2020 from the temporal vantage point of 2020. The lead‐up to that year saw political, popular and artistic retrospection on Vision 2020, spurred in part by nonagenarian Mahathir's return to power. Contextually, ‘Where is the future?’ articulates unrealized technological and developmental expectations from peak Vision 2020. Conceptually, the essay offers a critical geography of political futures past—demonstrating the constitutive spatiality of future expectations and the diverse ways in which elite developmental visions are engaged in life geographies, spaces of experience and representational practices.

Power hedging and faith fetters: The factors of tribe and religion in Afghanistan's state building

In recent years, Afghanistan has experienced sustained political instability that is rooted in a relatively low level of modern nation-state building. The traditional tribal and Islamic conservationists are too powerful and restrict the process of nation-state building in Afghanistan. The logic behind a traditional tribal society and a modern nation-state is different, and their power has inherent contradictions in terms of attributes, vectors, and fields of action. The religious conservative tendency fetters the modernization of Afghanistan in different aspects, and the absolute religious right negates national power in concept. In reality, the localization of teaching law eliminates national ability, and fundamentalism stifles the vitality of society. The tribal and religious policies of the new Taliban government will shape the future of Afghanistan politics.

Review: Creating the Creation Museum: How Fundamentalist Beliefs Come to Life, by Kathleen C. Oberlin

Review: <i>Creating the Creation Museum: How Fundamentalist Beliefs Come to Life</i>, by Kathleen C. Oberlin

Unfinished Business: Visuality, Space, and the State in (Post) Socialist Venezuela

ABSTRACT This article proposes (post)socialism as a conceptual lens to read the temporal dislocation and affective currents that define Venezuela’s current political and social reality and its relationship to the twenty-first-century socialism former president Hugo Chávez promised in 2006. It argues that this version of socialism, which claimed to be different from the ones that came before in Latin America and elsewhere, was translated into the country’s urban landscape in a visual display that served to smooth over its contradictions and blind spots and that made Chávez essential to the discussions regarding what shape it could take in Venezuela. The connection between Chávez and socialism lingered after his death, leading to an explosion of visual representations of him that included the reproduction of his signature on the walls of the apartment buildings constructed by the housing program Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela. The article argues that, by creating the illusion that Chávez remains visible, present, and essential for the operations and conceptualization of the Revolution’s socialist agenda, the signature—and the other visual forms Chávez’s afterlife has publicly taken—reduces socialism to a crisis of imagination that prevents critical debates and the possibility of envisioning new political futures for the nation.

Political Communication in the Age of Populism and Mediatization

The loss of mainstream political parties’ credibility, the mistrust over the traditional sources of information, the rise of social media in the public scenario, and the ideological polarization splitting states into different sides seem to be the most recent personality of our democracy. Through this study, we will understand to what extent populist rhetoric affects our decisions in both the civic and personal sphere. Are we owners of our mindset, or are we just victims of the filter bubble? After investigating the basic concepts of political communication and explaining the factors of populism and mediatization that we are experiencing today, we must go further to study whether this ideological fragmentation of states should concern us, and more importantly, whether it is going to increase in Spain. For this, a very important factor is the youth, since are the new generations on whom the future of politics and ideological bias depend.

Emerging Trends and Influential Factors in the 2022 Punjab State Elections

This study explores the emerging trends and factors that influenced the Punjab Legislative Assembly Elections in 2022, shedding light on the evolving dynamics of electoral politics in India. The research employs a comparative analytical approach, utilizing data from various sources such as published literature, online resources, and databases to examine voter preferences, party strategies, and electoral outcomes. The 2022 elections witnessed an unprecedented victory for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), highlighting the shift in voter priorities towards development, unemployment, health, and sanitation. Key findings include the growing importance of social media and digital campaigns in shaping voter preferences, the increasing significance of women and youth voters in the electoral landscape, and the decline of traditional political forces. These results have crucial implications for the future of Indian politics, emphasizing the need for political parties to address changing voter priorities, engage with digital platforms, and cater to the concerns of women and youth demographics. This study provides valuable insights for political parties seeking to navigate the shifting landscape of the world's largest democracy.

Regional identity and the sense of political belonging in a disputed land: the Golan Trail as symbolic socio-political initiative

ABSTRACT The long-distance hiking Golan Trail in Israel is a local socio-political initiative established in the internationally and locally disputed land of the Golan Heights, facing an uncertain political future. As uncertainty increased sharply in the 1990s, the leadership of the Golan region pushed for a comprehensive conceptual strategy change, intended to build local and public solidarity and a sense of spatial-political belonging. Our findings suggest that in the early 2000s, the establishment of the trail was initiated as an integral part of the conceptual strategy change, and upon its inauguration (2007) the trail was incorporated in educational and social programmes for the Golan settlers. The article analyses social and political discourse derived from documents and interviews, to illustrate the intention of using the trail for the purpose of ‘landscape normalisation’. The trail was to present the Golan as a safe and attractive destination of natural and human beauty, in addition to being a strategically important and integral part of the State of Israel. We argue that the creation of the trail and its use are an act of political symbolism, intended as a regional unification facilitator, and serving to downplay political uncertainty by boosting the perception of the Golan as geographically, socially, and politically normalized land.

Allegory and Articulation in Geographies of Climate Fiction

The contemporary genre of climate fiction can be thought of as the stories we tell ourselves about our changing global climate. Thus, it is important to understand the dynamics behind the production and circulation of those stories. This article first reviews how geographers have begun to analyze these questions with regard to climate fiction. Some analyses reflect a certain “ideology critique,” similar to Fredric Jameson’s theories of allegory, while others foreground the agency of fiction in prefiguring political futures. This article also shows how recent suggestions that Gillian Hart’s theorization of articulation bridges the classic disciplinary divide between historical materialist and poststructuralist accounts, in addition to work in the subfield of literary geography, are relevant in this case. After discussing examples of “ideology critique” and what I term the “fiction-as-change-agent” critique, I examine how theorizing articulation can help show the dialectical relationship between ideology and fictive agency in the context of contemporary climate fiction. I do this in reference to two recent works of climate fiction: Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island (2019) and Lydia Millet’s A Children’s Bible (2020).