Political Trends Research Articles

Neoliberalism in rural South America: political trends in peasant-led unionization (2000–2020)

ABSTRACT This article asks to what extent the political mobilization promoted by peasant organizations in Argentina, Chile and Brazil can be inscribed in new forms of “peasant unionization.” Based on a qualitative and ethnographic approach to the organizational trajectory of the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo-Vía Campesina (CLOC-VC), this paper seeks to provide theoretical and empirical contributions to the issue of rural trade unions in South America and peasants’ organization experiences over the last twenty years. The article concludes that the peasant movements of the CLOC-VC have created new institutional opportunities for union articulation and organization to better channel class interests in South America.

Conflicting Perspectives on the Internationalization of Higher Education: Evidence from the Turkish Case

The internationalization of higher education (IHE) has become a key policy issue for governments, a research field for scholars, a strategic priority for universities, and a career orientation for administrative staff. Yet, with recent social, political, and economic trends heavily embellished by globalization and neoliberalism, the term IHE has resulted in conflicting perspectives. Although there are numerous analyses on IHE, these analyses seldom focus on conflicts among different constituencies of the university (leaders, academics, administrative staff). This study aims at exploring the perspectives of key constituencies on the common conception and practice of IHE. The study was designed as basic qualitative research in which the data set was collected from four flagship universities in Türkiye. The results indicated a variety of academic, economic, political, and socio-cultural conflicts by different constituencies. These conflicts are mostly related to the association of IHE with neoliberal values while the progressive values remain invisible.

An Analysis of the Post-370 Revocation Trends in Kashmir: Issues and Concerns

This article is an exploratory study of social, political, economic, governance, and militancy-related trends in the Kashmir region after the abrogation of Article 370 (5 August 2019), i.e., Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, and based on that, makes a strategic forecast about the overall security situation in Kashmir. However, the period of two years and ten months is not sufficient to undertake a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the impact of abrogating Article 370 in the aforementioned domains; hence this article limits its scope to an analytical review of the developments in the last two-and-a-half years.

Introduction to special issue < political trends in East Asia's corporate governance >

Introduction to special issue < political trends in East Asia's corporate governance >

Lejana y rosa by Rosario Izquierdo

Reviewed by: Lejana y rosa by Rosario Izquierdo Ana M. López-Aguilera Rosario Izquierdo Lejana y rosa Barcelona. Comba. 2021. 290 pages. CARMEN, a thirty-six-year-old professor, visits her hometown, Tarsis, a mining town in the province of Huelva in southern Spain. The return brings back memories of the summer she turned seventeen, a summer marked by the accidental death of her father, her first forays as a writer, as well as her conflictive love relationships with Julián, school boyfriend, and Álvaro G., famous writer residing temporarily in the area. Carmen’s return offers her the opportunity to make peace with those events and move on with her life. Lejana y rosa (Far and pink) is more than a novel about the personal problems of a woman in crisis. It recovers the working-class memory of the region with its history of class conflicts, fights for emancipation, and working-class solidarity. Through the experiences of a teenaged Carmela (Carmen’s nickname as an adolescent), the book discusses two key moments in the history of Spain: the decade of the 1920s that prepared the way for the advent of the Second Republic in April 1931, and [End Page 75] the change from Franco’s dictatorship to a liberal democracy in the 1970s (a period known as Transición). On one hand, the conflicts in the 1920s between the British Company, owner of the mines in Tarsis, and the Spanish miners become the background of the novel that Carmela starts to write that summer. The mining conflicts make up the subject in the essay Álvaro is writing and the memories her abuela Concha shares. The stories of love, adultery, and suicide that Carmela researches for her novel serve to foreground social and political issues such as ownership of resources, foreign interference in the Spanish economy, political corruption, environmental degradation, and poverty. On the other hand, the young Carmela lives the Transición, when Spain moves from a dictatorship to a liberal democracy. While Carmela’s relatives and neighbors contemplate such change with unrestrictive optimism, her lover and mentor, Álvaro G., offers a more sober view. During his conversations with the protagonist, in articles and interviews mentioned in the novel, Álvaro points out the limitations of the Transición to satisfy the demands of the populace for changes leading to a more equal distribution of wealth and power in Spain. Lejana y rosa combines personal and social history in a fiction that defines a social and political conflict. In doing so, Izquierdo aligns with a political trend in contemporary Spanish literature alongside authors such as Rafael Chirbes, Isaac Rosa, and Belén Gopegui. After the publication of Diario de campo and El hijo zurdo, this third novel by Izquierdo confirms her literary trajectory as a politically committed author. Ana M. López-Aguilera Bemidji State University Copyright © 2022 World Literature Today

COVID-19 and democratic resilience.

The COVID‐19 experience has sharpened debates about democracy's future worldwide. In reflecting on these debates, this paper does three things. First, it assesses how resilient democracy has been in the COVID‐19 emergency. Second, it examines the effect the pandemic has had on the pre‐existing trends in democratic politics. And third, it suggests ways in which the COVID‐19 crisis both requires and possibly opens the door to democratic rejuvenation.

Counseling psychology and participatory justice: “sharing the university”

ABSTRACT What is a participatory justice approach to counseling psychology, and what actions would express its inclusive intentions? We propose that a participatory justice framework for counseling psychology practice and training would complement social justice perspectives by emphasizing university-community collaborations and resource-sharing; it also privileges public, community-based knowledge creation as exemplified by participatory action research. In this way, a participatory justice approach offers a counterbalance to current political trends toward private ownership of social assets and resources. This article 1) expands upon these theoretical foundations, and then 2) presents three current practice-related project examples to show how these foundations can tangibly translate to academic and professional activities. Finally, the article 3) relates these activities to the training of students by concluding with suggested curricula by which to prepare graduate students and others for participatory undertakings.

Four Waves of Feminism: A Blessing for Global Humanity

This paper tries to analyze the development of waves of feminism. In the human civilization, “Feminism” is considered as a mass movement, which has commenced by women of all groups to remove all forms of feminist oppressions by men that are prevailing in a patriarchal society. The world has already experienced four waves of feminism that act against women’s abuse and oppression. The first wave of feminism arises in the United States and Europe during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and concerns with the achieving voting right, equal opportunities, and other legal rights of women. Second wave of feminism has initiated by both white and non-white women of Western countries as well as in developing countries, starts in the 1960s and ends in the 1990s. It works for equal education and employment opportunities, maternity leave, birth control and abortion rights, etc.; and fights against domestic violence issues, marital rape issues, sexual harassment and rape, etc. Third wave of feminism presents a dynamic critique to the previous feminist political trends, and extents from the 1990s to 2000s. In this movement, women find themselves as strong and rebellious, and working women in various occupations are not subjected to a sexist patriarchy. Fourth wave feminism starts around 2012, which offers a new feminism that depends on online social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc. After the development of waves of feminism, various laws have been established in many countries of the world to support the participation of women in all activities of the society. This study takes attempts to discuss aspects of four waves of feminism elaborately.

Sport (ni)je iznad svega: Olimpijada u Moskvi 1980. godine u percepciji nesvrstane Jugoslavije

In the context of studying the Cold War, based on Yugoslav archives, relevant domestic and foreign literature, as well as examples from the Yugoslav press, the paper perceives the position of the Yugoslavia and its correlation with the blocs at the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980. The analysis of the participation of Yugoslav athletes in the Olympics gives us the answer to the extent to which Yugoslav sport has followed the current political and ideological trends in the world, that is, causally depending on it.

Shifting the digital paradigm: Towards a sui generis competition policy

EU digital competition policy is in the process of a paradigmatic transformation. The main legal instrument, epitomising the rationale of the reform is the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA). This article conceptualises the broader theoretical foundations of EU digital competition policy and law, illustrating the developed hypotheses by examining the selected procedural novelties of the DMA. The main normative proposition, underpinning this article is that the emerging more proactive approach to digital markets reflects an objective socio-economic and political trend. This implies that the purified, inwards-oriented perception of competition policy will be gradually converting towards a more polycentric modality. An earlier version of this article has been awarded the prize by the Portuguese Competition Authority 2021 “Competition Policy Award for academic work in Competition Policy”.

Battered by Geopolitical Winds, Bulgaria Struggles to Restart Much Needed Reforms

Battered by Geopolitical Winds, Bulgaria Struggles to Restart Much Needed Reforms

On the Typology of the Negative Image of an Anarchist in Graphic Art at the Turn of the XIX-XX centuries.

The subject of the study is the thematic and iconographic directions of the negative interpretation of the image of an anarchist in the printed culture of the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. The object of the study is graphic works published in periodicals of various ideological trends and devoted to the representation of the image of an anarchist. Three main directions of such interpretation are identified and described, namely, the criminal-terrorist, the mentally ill and the immigrant, whose iconographic features are analyzed in the light of socio-political and historical-cultural conditions of each specific context. Among the reviewed publications should be mentioned: L'Assiette au beurre, Le Petit Journal (France), Freie Jugend (Germany), Het Volk (Netherlands), La Obra, El Peludo (Argentina), Star (New Zealand) and The Washington Post (USA). The scientific novelty of the work consists in the fact that for the first time in modern art criticism, the process of forming the negative archetype of an anarchist is considered and analyzed on the basis of its graphic representation. Thus, a methodological basis is being created for studying the types of classification of the anarchist image. The methods used in the work are as follows: source studies, iconographic, artistic and stylistic analysis. The results of the study reveal the specifics of one of the interpretations of the image of an anarchist of the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, which has its roots in both right and left political trends, whose approaches to anarchism are based on socio-legal and medical sciences, among which criminology stands out. The latter, led by Cesare Lombroso, played a primary place in the mythologization, which is still active today, of the image of an anarchist as a carrier of chaos.

Resource Nationalism in Emerging Markets: Protecting the Environment and Local Communities or Imposing Protectionist Measures that Impact Foreign Investment?

Recent global trends show that new waves of resource nationalism are often associated with governments’ attempts to live up to modern ESG standards and to protect the rights of indigenous local communities. While states of course have the sovereign right to regulate within their territory in the interest of their population, this power is not absolute. Disproportionate or pretextual resource nationalism measures will likely negatively impact the investment climate and give rise to violations of international law protections granted to foreign investors through a specialized body of legal rules and norms found in international investment treaties. Such treaties generally allow investors to vindicate their rights through international arbitration claims directly against the state. The clash between states’ sovereign powers and international law investment protections remains acute. Foreign investors should beware of national and regional political trends that could potentially affect their foreign investments and should consider their options for international law recourse.

The modern face of right-wing populism in Brazil

The right-wing populist phenomenon has become one of the main trends in world politics. Its spread in the “old” and “new democracies” forces researchers to reconsider the categorical apparatus by means of which they analyzed world processes in the very recent past. Characteristic features, manifesting themselves in different countries, inevitably acquire a local flavor. The surge of right-wing populism in Europe was provoked by an external factor – migration flows, but in Brazil there were purely internal reasons and motives that created fertile ground for the right-wing populist leader to come to power, while in the USA it was a mixture and interweaving of both internal and external factors. The author analyzes the Brazilian version of modern right-wing populist ideology and political practice, embodied in the “Bolsonaro phenomenon”. The author examines reasons and circumstances that made possible the emergence and implanting of right-wing populism on Brazilian political terrain. The paper indicates main features of right-wing populism in its “Bolsonarist” version. It is shown that the Brazilian right-wing populism of the beginning of the 21st century reflects both the modern world trend and all the classic signs of populism, and at the same time has its own unique national characteristics. The “Bolsonaro phenomenon” brings forward many debatable problems.

AFRICA: UKRAINIAN INTERESTS VS RUSSIAN INFLUENCE

The article examines the political trends in the African region in the context of Ukraine's national security, and provides recommendations to improve the situation. According to the latest version of Ukraine’s National Security Strategy, the priority in the African region has been placed on diversifying markets and strengthening Ukraine’s political support in the face of Russian aggression. A significant threat is the growing presence of the Russian Federation in the African region with its extensive usage of both force and soft power tools, which was particularly evident at the Russia-Africa summit in October 2019 and the rapid spread of demand for the Russian “Sputnik V” vaccine against COVID-19 in 2021. Another related issue is the low level of support for Ukraine’s declarations in the UN General Assembly condemning human rights violations in occupied Crimea. The UN vote on occupied Crimea is one of the main factors in assessing relations with African governments, which Russian experts clearly point out. This reality highlights the need to increase Ukraine’s diplomatic presence and political weight in the African region in order to better contain the influence of the Russian Federation. Another important task is to monitor the destructive activities of the Russian Federation often aimed at fueling chaos, which could encourage local governments to establish closer bilateral relations with Moscow. At times, Russian policy has gone as far as supporting military coups that help to increase the level of Russian military and political presence in some states (for example, the cases of Mali in May 2021 and Sudan in October 2021).Strengthening the diplomatic level of representation in the region is a priority of Ukrainian foreign policy. In addition, the separation of economic and military-political factors is a problem for Ukraine. Trade is developing mostly with the stable countries of the eastern and southern parts of Africa, while the turbulent landscape of the west and center (except Nigeria) is poorly covered by the activities of Ukrainian enterprises. However, Ukrainian peacekeeping contingents have been active in these countries for a long time (primarily in the DRC).

Internal Drivers – The Nexus between Domestic Politics and Bilateral Relations: Exploring India-Pakistan, Pakistan-China, and China-India Dynamics

ABSTRACT Foreign policy is an extension of domestic politics in myriad ways. However, no meta-theory offers a framework of analysis that could explain the nexus between domestic politics and foreign policy within the bilateral relations of three politically and culturally distinct states i.e. India, Pakistan, and China. In this paper, I explore the nexus between domestic politics and foreign policy to explain what do the contemporary domestic political trends in each state indicate about the future of bilateral relations. For this purpose, I first identify what in my view is the most relevant and important domestic political driver of bilateral relations in each case. I then discuss how it affects the bilateral relations in the respective dyads and what that means for the future of bilateral relations between India – Pakistan, Pakistan – China and China – India. I argue that the situations in which a small elite dominates both the discursive trends and policy making may result in malleable notions of national identity. This provides the elite, flexibility in shaping and reorienting foreign policy (when they want). On the other hand, the situations in which foreign policy is contingent upon national identity conception as articulated by the mainstream political parties with a strong support base among the masses are highly susceptible to the electoral pressures, shrinking the space for major shifts.

Ethnic Conflict, Politics and Pakistan's Security Dilemma: What Went Wrong

The ethnic political card has been influential in Pakistan’s political history. Political and military leadership, in the past, have been dealing with political issues on the basis of ethnicity-for political objectives.Pakistan’s four provinces have their own ethnic identity; they promote regionalism instead of nationalism.Balochistan, the most troubling area, is experiencing unrest due to constant insurgency based on ethnicity.Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), a new ethnic group, has taken root since 2018. PTM has been posing a new challenge to the state and security establishment. This paper examines the adverse impact of ethnic conflict and politics on national politics and security in the country. The new movement under PTM in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa(KPK) and one of the national political parties in Sindh have posed a grave challenge to the state and its security establishment. The central question of this paper is; why does ethnic conflict pose a security threat? And what are the new trends in ethnic politics?

An Appraisal of Cases under Section 9(c) of The Control of Narcotic Substance Act 1997 and the role of Forensic Evidence

The role of forensic and chemical expert evidence is increasingly vital due to technological and scientific advancements changing the social, economic, political, and cultural trends. This paper considers exploring the role of forensic and chemical expert's evidence under the control of narcotic substance laws as prevail in Pakistan.The analysis is conducted on cases involving section 9(C) CNSA 1997 from the last five years, 2017-2021. To further narrow down the research, the cases were limited to the petitions filed for leave to appeal in the Supreme Court for the reappraisal of evidence which afforded an opportunity to see how the superior courts in Pakistan have been dealing with the cases involving forensic and chemical analyst's reports. The result of the analysis suggests that the legal framework for control of narcotics is well developed, and judicial policy is to consider expert evidence in corroboration with other material facts otherwise the expert evidence is excluded.

Democracy and principles of socio-economic development

The article examines the existing political and economic trends: democratic and authoritarian forms of government. An attempt is made to describe the essential content of the values of democracy, as well as their implementation in the economic sphere. All this justifies the role of e-technologies only as a quantitative factor in the development of democracy. It is shown that the form of government is primarily based on personal value choice, which leads to effective or ineffective socio-political equilibrium states. It is shown that the construction of supporting democratic institutions does not implement the principles of power: service and hierarchy. Therefore, the transition to a new qualitative state is possible through education, awareness of the principles of power, their free acceptance, but cannot be carried out artificially, through a system of institutions introduced from the outside.

Религиозный ресурс позиционирования президента Республики Татарстан в социальной сети Instagram

The relevance of the research is determined by the increasing role of Internet communica-tion as a marker of political change and the urgent need to understand the place of a new form of political interaction at the elementary level. The article examines the religious aspect of the position-ing of the President of the Republic of Tatarstan (RT) on Instagram social media platform, taking into account the subject and regional presentation. The research is based on network analysis – a contactless method of digital sociology – taking into account the visual and content aspects of the presentation of objects under study. For the analysis, publications from the personal page of Rustam Minnikhanov, President of the Republic of Tatarstan, on Instagram social media platform for the period from January 1, 2020 to March 13, 2022 inclusive, as well as media data were taken. The re-sults of the study demonstrate the importance of a religious resource for the regional positioning of the Republic of Tatarstan. The President of the Republic of Tatarstan aspires to demonstrate the same attitude towards the main confessional communities of the republic, which does not negate the observed Islamization of various spheres of socio-political life. In the near future, religious (in-cluding Islamic) positioning resource of the republic is unlikely to lose its significance. The pro-spects for further development of the situation are determined by internal political processes in the region, the alternation of regional power and global political trends.