Political Entities Research Articles

Languages, Scripts, and Chinese Texts in East Asia

Languages, Scripts, and Chinese Texts in East Asia

GEOGRAPHY AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO DECISION- MAKING IN FOREIGN POLICY(RUSSIA AND UKRAINE MODEL) ((RESEARCH ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF GEOGRAPHY WITH OTHER SCIENCES))

Geography is the science that studies all natural and human phenomena in one place Geography studies the natural factors that affected the land inhabited by man, Describes human populations in terms of their relationship to the environment Political geography is the study of political units and their problems from the point of view of geography, The survey studies the relief and climate areas that affect the conditions of states and the phenomena in them. As for the political decision, it is very measure that the state takes to prevent any interference in the affairs of its society, and the political decision is formulated in a thoughtful way to solve a specific problem or crisis that passes in the country The process of making and implementing decisions goes through multiple stages، starting with the preparatory stage, identifying the variables related to the problem to be studied, then choosing the goal and drawing the strategy (identifying alternatives)،then comes the decision-making stage،i.e. translating the decision into practical reality through actions، activities and work programs, Responsibility for the decision-making process is borne by a group of official and nonofficial bodies، the official bodies the constitution, then the legislative and executive authorities As for the unofficial bodies ، they include political parties, pressure groups، and public opinion،for political decisions to be correct, they must serve the public interest, be built on scientific foundation، and take in to account the objective circumstances..objective circumstances. Ukraine experienced a state of internal crises after the dissolution of the Soviet Union، as crises became represented by the dissolution of parliament and re-elections،which are frequent and accelerating events ،As the international Monetary Fund provided aid to reform the economic conditions of Ukraine after the transitional period it passed through،Ukraine became the coveted country and an open field for occupation by powerful countries. This is due to the weakness of Ukrainian politics. Ukraine distinguished location, which made it control the center of land and sea transportation between Asia and Europe،Russia decided that it was difficult to leave Ukraine to the west so Russia intervened militarily under the transfer from the Russian parliament on 28\2\2014 to protect Russian minorities and maintain influence in the city of Sevastopol, which is the last base in Crimea, The motive of the attack was to protect the region from the interference of other countries، to realize the dream of Russian to get on ports in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, and to save world trade routes where Russia's ships have been frozen for months in the Arctic annually. Russia made the decision to attack Ukraine، and the first thing it started was the bombing of the Donbas region، which is located in eastern Ukraine، which is characterized by its mineral wealth and the presence of coal mines ، and thus Russia worked to create a state of paralysis in the airports located in eastern and northern Ukraine. Keywords: Geography, Foreign Policy, Russia and Ukraine

경주 탑동 목관묘 출토 청동기로 본 대외관계와 피장자의 성격

The wooden coffin tombs at Tap-dong are the first tombs of outstanding elites to have ever found in downtown Gyeongju, the capital of Silla. This is also where Oreung(五陵) - the tomb of Park Hyeokgeose, who is the founding monarch of Silla - is located. The Tap-dong burial sites consist of 3 wooden coffin tombs dated in different periods, numbered 1 - 3, respectively.
 There are hints from the digs at the Tap-dong site that: 1. the kind of wooden coffin tomb appeared around 57 BCE, exactly at the same time when Silla started off as a small city-state by the name of Saro-guk.
 2. the bronze and iron artifacts and other ornaments from this site suggest that the ruling class of Saro-guk was the association of native Jin people and displaced people whose expansionist attitudes served militarily and socio-economically as intermediators between China and northern peoples and Silla, and even further Japan.
 3. all of these findings could be archaeological evidence that the earlier historical records of the origin of Silla in Samguk Sagi proves plausible.
 The three tombs at the Tap-dong site were built in three differentiated periods and occupied by three differentiated owners in terms of social status, but they all represented early phases of the emergence of a centralized monarchy at the heart of the capital of Silla, not in the neighboring place. The tombs were numbered 1 - 3 as they were found, and yet Tomb No. 3 is the oldest of the three, followed by Tomb No. 2. and Tomb No. 1 backwards chronologically.
 Tomb No. 3 produced no distinguished prestige goods of bronze except some earthenware, by the chronological dating of which this tomb is presumed to have been built around 57 BCE. It marks the beginning of the construction of wooden coffin tombs in this area.
 Tomb No. 2 can be thought of a prelude to a new political entity of Gyeongju beginning its journey to the Unified Kingdom. It is the first of a series of tombs where the Chinese bronze mirrors were deposited by those who ruled downtown Gyeongju in the late 1st century AD, about the same time as Tomb No. 38 at Joyang-dong, Gyeongju. Tomb No. 38 at Joyang-dong, however, produced 4 Chinese bronze mirrors and a fragment of a reprocessed Chinese bronze mirror, which means that the deceased as a stronger manager who boasted his financial power capable of possessing valued items, such as Chinese bronze mirrors, was competing against the Tap-dong tomb owner nearby, about 8 km or only a 2-hour walk apart in Gyeongju at the time.
 The finds from Tomb No. 1 at Tap-dong can be interpreted that at least two groups of separate interests had a rational division of function along the supply chain of iron artifacts in present-day Gyeongju around the mid 1st century AD: One was in charge of producing ironwork and the other was responsible for trading them, organizing guild-like professional associations; The first group consisted of people who were able to bury their leader with a good number of highly valued iron artworks in his grave. On the other hand, the second group consisted of people who boasted their prestige and authority by placing multiple decorative bronze items, such as swords, buckles, buttons, and bracelets, in their leader’s burial. Sarari people as locals would have settled down here in Gyeongju from the beginning of the Bronze age and been familiar with dealing with iron. Alternately, Tap-dong people could be the displaced refugees who had fled from the Northern part of Korea after the fall of Wiman Joseon. That’s why they could have been flashily dressed like one of them and engaged in foreign trade with Northern nomadic people.

Instagram and Political Communication - Visual Elements in Political Campaign “Budućnost Srbije”

For more than a decade social media have been an important medium of political communication, more accurately since 2008 and the campaign of Barack Obama. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were primarily used for political communication; however, the rapidly growing popularity of Instagram has conditioned political entities to adapt to the visual concept of communication with the citizens. One of the additional problems of this form of communication with the public is prominent political populism. Moreover, this trend is present in the Republic of Serbia, where more and more individual and collective political entities are joining Instagram. Also, the profile with the highest number of followers and posts on the Serbian political scene is the profile of the President of the Republic of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić (@buducnostsrbijeav). As far as the empirical research is concerned, the authors analyzed the posts published on this profile in the first month of its creation and the realization of the political campaign "Future of Serbia" (February 5 – March 5, 2019) and applied the methodology of Maria Grabe and Erik Bucy (2009), which includes nine visual categories characteristic of populist political campaigns. The results of the research indicated that out of 550 visual contents, 434 photographs and 22 videos can be classified into eight out of a total of nine suggested categories. According to the obtained results, the authors concluded that the communication of the President of the Republic of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić with the public through social media Instagram is based on visual content that Greib and Busy define as populist.

El cabildo indígena: un escenario que contribuye a la trascendencia cultural de la comunidad muisca de Bogotá

Historically, the indigenous peoples have fought for the vindication of their civil rights, through the recognition of their own language, traditions, uses and customs, which have been key to the preservation of their ancestral memory as original peoples of the American continent. This is why the Muisca indigenous people have generated a great cultural and territorial appropriation, which materialized in the constitutional struggle that resulted in the establishment of the Cabildo Indígena, as a political and territorial entity that shelters them as subjects of law and possessors of the land, as well as provides them with a strategy in the preservation of their own knowledge and contributes to the cultural transcendence. Thus, allowing the indigenous people to have complete freedom in the public manifestation of their cultural identity through the exercise of their own government. Consequently, the Political Constitution stipulated a series of regulations that tend to protect those who call themselves Muiscas.

“Twins in Spite of Themselves”: Spanish and Ottoman Empires’ “Issues of Decline” in XVIIIth Century

Spanish and Ottoman empires had more similarities that could be found at first glance. Both experienced the take-off as leading force in Europe and Asia respectively, being for a while the most fearful and powerful states during XVI, faced economic and political blunders in XVII century and slightly ended with stagnation in XVIII century (as conventional wisdom says). Using comparative method and cultural analysis, article tries to answer a question – how unique or regular was that issues which stroke Spain and Ottoman Empires, how deeply they were engaged in so called decline narrative, created in XIX century European historiography and is it possible to create common trend for empire`s stagnation using not only historical sociology method (sociology of revolution used by Jack Goldstone and Teda Skocpole) and world-system analysis provided by Immanuel Wallerstein, with emphasis on history of ideas or begriffsgeschichte by Reinhardt Kosseleck. Main results are going to provide a more correct view on the status of Spanish and Turkish Empires during the XVIII century. Despite that Ottomans and Spaniards had obvious differences in political distribution, economic capabilities, warfare tactics and external actions, almost simultaneous decline was based on clear and exact reasons: lack of industrialization (production with high surplus value), hush incorporation of Ottoman and Spanish Empires into World-Economy, lack of defending tariffs, ineffective fiscal system and policy, devastating and lasting wars, decreasing price for agricultural products, down warding Kondratieff cycle, rigid political and social units, which constrain strict political actions. These gaps made the Empire’s decline possible notwithstanding those problems which they had previously. Oppositely, major European states (England, France, Prussia) had made reversed actions, which took a long time, but made European “take-off” inevitable, assured their economical breakaway to further domination over the Ottomans and Spaniards as well.

Military Jihād against Muslims: ‘Abd Allāh b. Yāsīn and the Foundation of a Saharan Political Unit that Would Conquer the Maghreb and al-Andalus (Eleventh Century)

ABSTRACT In 1095, at the Council of Clermont, Urban II delivered a speech that roused the crowds against the infidels. 1 Soon thereafter, the Christian sovereigns rallied the troops, targeting Jerusalem. Even in the Iberian Peninsula, the population went into raptures at the prospect of taking up arms, 2 and had to be appeased by the Pope so as not to undermine the military efforts against Muslims. Urban II viewed the First Crusade as a triptych composed of the conquest of Sicily (1091), the successes in Iberia, which included the taking of Toledo (1085) and Lisbon (1093), and the conquest of Jerusalem (1099). 3 However, the winds of war changed in 1086, when the Almoravids won the Battle of Zallāqa. 4 The Berbers, who expanded their power over al-Andalus until 1095, 5 saw themselves as defenders of the community against Christians. However, in the foundation of their movement they engaged in military jihād against Muslims.

Wagar and Motley “Archaic” Vestiges: A Postmodernist Reading of Contemporary Somali Fiction

The advent of the modernist dream resulted in the universalisation of culture, which entails deliberate effort to abandon traditional ways of life that foster difference and instead embracing national cultures to bring different communities together. Colonialism in the Horn of Africa, for instance, brought different Cushitic communities under single political entities and most of them adopted Islam to find a common ground. Other communities in East Africa had to convert to Christianity to find a universal cultural bridge. This has resulted in the assumption that most African peoples are homogeneous given that past traditions that elevated difference have been eradicated by unifying factors such as modern states and conventional religions such as Islam and Christianity. A critical reading of some literary texts, however, demonstrates that such claims are partly unfounded because there exist aspects of pre-Islamic Somali religion along with the fundamental beliefs of Islam, which bolster difference. This article is a postmodernist reading of selected contemporary Somali fiction to investigate the influence of pre-Islamic Somali religion on contemporary Somali culture. Using the ideas of Jacques Derrida and Joseph Campbell, the study demonstrates the impact of myth and the ancient traditions on migration and contemporary culture in Nadifa Mohamed’s Black Mamba Boy and Nuruddin Farah’s Secrets.

''Trialling… and erring'': a historical overview of housing in Petrograd, Leningrad, and Saint Petersburg

This article provides a historical overview of housing in Saint Petersburg from the late Tsarist Empire, to the Soviet Union, and the successor Russian Federation. It is divided into five parts: an introduction, three sections that treat the distinct housing models enacted by the three political entities which have handled the city of Petrograd, then Leningrad, and lastly, Saint Petersburg, and a conclusion. These three entities are, respectively, the Russian empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation. In this manner, the first part gives insight into Petrograd’s housing before the First World War and throughout the 1917 and 1918 Revolutions and the Russian Civil War, treating the deterioration of the housing stock. The second section looks at the housing situation in more generally the Soviet Union but also Leningrad, examining the housing policies carried out in times of Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Mikhail Gorbachev. The third one assesses the process of housing privatisation in the Russian Federation, dissecting the reasons for its imperfect development. Finally, the conclusion suggests that none of the tree housing models mentioned above has been able to successfully cope with the housing shortage and points out Nikita Khrushchev as the leader who did the most to relieve the housing shortage.

Negotiating Vertical Urbanization at the Public–Private Nexus: On the Institutional Embeddedness of Planning Committees

<p>While the planning and development of dense and high-rise neighborhoods are commonly perceived as primarily technical procedures, the past several decades have highlighted the growing social complexity of these processes. Neighborhood initiatives opposing development, as well as an increasing variety of public and private stakeholders involved in these processes, have led to the continual emergence of organizations that facilitate the production of urban density and verticality. Committees are founded to operate at the nexus of public and private development, while simultaneously promoting urban growth and public interests. Although they often are not formally recognized as political entities, they are constituted by political acts and hence influence planning processes. However, despite all the research into dense and high-rise neighborhood developments, academic interest has so far neglected the role of committees in these processes. This article aims to fill this gap by presenting an analysis of 23 committees engaging with high-rise housing and neighborhood developments in the three German-speaking countries of Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. First, it reveals the heterogeneity of committees, delineating four components for the institutionalization of committees. This is followed by an in-depth analysis of two committees in Austria and Switzerland, to demonstrate how these structural components influence the development of neighborhoods.</p>

From Secret Fashion Shoots to the #100projectors

From Secret Fashion Shoots to the #100projectors

An updated assessment of past and future warming over France based on a regional observational constraint

Abstract. Building on CMIP6 climate simulations, updated global and regional observations, and recently introduced statistical methods, we provide an updated assessment of past and future warming over France. Following the IPCC AR6 and recent global-scale studies, we combine model results with observations to constrain climate change at the regional scale. Over mainland France, the forced warming in 2020 with respect to 1900–1930 is assessed to be 1.66 [1.41 to 1.90] ∘C, i.e., in the upper range of the CMIP6 estimates, and is almost entirely human-induced. A refined view of the seasonality of this past warming is provided through updated daily climate normals. Projected warming in response to an intermediate emission scenario is assessed to be 3.8 ∘C (2.9 to 4.8 ∘C) in 2100 and rises up to 6.7 [5.2 to 8.2] ∘C in a very high emission scenario, i.e., substantially higher than in previous ensembles of global and regional simulations. Winter warming and summer warming are expected to be about 15 % lower than and 30 % higher than the annual mean warming, respectively, for all scenarios and time periods. This work highlights the importance of combining various lines of evidence, including model and observed data, to deliver the most reliable climate information. This refined regional assessment can feed adaptation planning for a range of activities and provides additional rationale for urgent climate action. Code is made available to facilitate replication over other areas or political entities.

Minimizing surface run-off, improving underground water recharging, and on-site rain harvesting in the Kathmandu valley

Nepal’s political institutions and administrative units were thoroughly restructured in 2015 with the promulgation of the new Constitution. Several rural areas were combined to meet the definition of urban threshold criteria to classify rural areas into urban categories. Accordingly, over 3,900 local political and administrative units were amalgamated into 753 units, of which, 293 units are classified as urban. Within these newly defined urban areas, many natural environments have been converted into impervious surfaces such as paved roads, sidewalks, and building roofs. These impervious surfaces have drastically increased the amount of surface run-offs—often termed as “urban floods” --under increasing precipitation caused by global climate change. These incidences have negatively impacted to the groundwater recharge processes in the urban areas.
 Data on groundwater recharge rates are needed in the context of global climate change to understand the status of groundwater recharge processes in the urban areas of Nepal. However, due to various limitations, this study only focuses around the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal to understand: a) how the expansion of urban, peri-urban, and associated areas have resulted in decreasing groundwater recharges; b) how groundwater is affected by the year-to-year variability of precipitation amount (low and high intensity) with the conversion of the natural landscape into built-up areas; and c) how the changing trends in precipitation and evapotranspiration may impact future groundwater availability. This study is based on a review of the literature and the analysis of secondary data available from the government and various social media and authors' professional experiences. The study ends with some recommendations based on experiences from other parts of the world on groundwater recharge processes.

Hierarchy position & personality predict politicians’ choice of information sources

Political leaders need to stay informed about their constituents’ needs and the pros and cons of any course of action. Reviewing information from a variety of sources would be expected to result in decisions that best serve those constituents. In a study involving 269 Belgian politicians, we examined whether the information sources they used differed according to individuals’ position in the political hierarchy or their personality. We found that both factors could predict a politician's consultation of certain sources over others. Notably, elite political leaders (those with the most power and status) turned significantly more to sources produced by politically neutral groups (such as civil services or scientific institutions) than did politicians known as “backbenchers,” who have less clout. We document several such patterns and argue that these tendencies are problematic. Political parties and government entities interested in good governance should provide training to teach politicians and their staffs to explore varied perspectives.

State–market entanglement: some implications for the theory of public finance

This article is concerned with the way economists conceptualise the relationship between state and market within their theories of public finance. It is customary for them to treat polity and economy as comprising separate domains of human activity. In contrast, the recently developing notion of entangled political economy treats the state–market dichotomy as an abstraction, whereas political and economic organisations are deeply entangled with one another. While property and its distinction between mine and thine is a universal quality of the human species, specific and particular rights of property are always contestable through entanglement among political and commercial entities. Entanglement calls attention to the processes through which rights of action are established and challenged within an entangled system of political economy. What results from our exploration of entanglement and public finance is recognition of the high analytical potential of reviving Antonio de Viti’s initial interest in transforming the focus of public finance from the practice of public finance into a scientific theory, thereby joining public finance and public choice to form political economy.

Sweden, Inc.: Temporal Sovereignty of the Realm and People from the Middle Ages to Modernity

Sweden, Inc.: Temporal Sovereignty of the Realm and People from the Middle Ages to Modernity

Relations of the Kazakhs and Russian Empire in the first half of the 18th century in the inventories of fund 248 “The Senate and its institutions” RGADA

The inventory 3 of fund 248 “The Senate and its institutions” of Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA), containing data on regions bordering Kazakh lands is analyzed. The inventory consists of 150 books, each includes from one to several dozen. Totally, above 170 cases with data on history of Kazakh Russian relations in modern times were studied. The research results showed relevance and diversity of archival documents of 248 RGADA fund, its source potential on history of relationships of Kazakhs and Russian Empire in the first half of the 18th century. Analysis of the headings of inventory cases made possible to determine a specific range of issues on history of bilateral relations based on available archival data. Four groups have been singled out taking into their subject specifics. The first group is related to Orenburg and its administrative and political entities: expedition, commission, line of fortifications. The documents of the second group contained data on military-political contacts of Kazakh khans and foremen with representatives of Russian administration. The third contains materials on Kazakh-Russian relations in trade sphere. In fourth, cases are concentrated on relations of Kazakhs with other nomadic peoples, whose contacts were in sphere Russian Empire interests

Emergence of the BJP and Erosion of the Congress: A Critical Evaluation

The historical scenario of Indian politics marked a period of One Party dominance, which pertained to the Indian National Congress' supremacy in the years following India's independence in 1947. This party played a crucial role in the struggle for freedom and garnered considerable backing throughout the nation. The waning of the Congress Party's control led to a more diversified political landscape in India, where numerous parties and coalitions competed for authority. Despite remaining a significant political entity, the Congress Party's influence became more localized, and it encountered opposition from both national and regional parties. It's worth noting that the concept of one-party dominance has evolved recently due to the emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a predominant force in national politics, as discussed earlier.

Разбуженный капитализм: как американские олигархи «спасают» демократию

The article is a continuation of the series on US presidential campaigns. The latest of these, “A Shadow US Presidential Campaign”, revealed that the donor consortium Democracy Alliance sponsored a secret campaign against candidate Donald Trump in favor of the Democratic candidate, ostensibly “to save democracy”. The alliance-funded political infrastructure has given itself a mandate to transform the electoral system in 2020 under the pretext of ensuring safe voting amid the pandemic. The article describes the history of the emergence of oligarchic alliances in the United States and the extent of their influence on the political life of the country, and in particular, how private foundations directly interfere in elections and donate millions of dollars to organize and finance official counting of votes at the presincts, as happened in 2020. It is noted that the academic study of the influence of oligarchs on the electoral system is difficult due to the secrecy of this activity and, as a result of it, the insufficiency of the sources. The reasons why the classifications of oligarchies available in the literature do not clarify the essence of this problem are analyzed. The author gives a new interpretation of oligarchs and donor political consortiums as independent political subjects. The conditions and limitations of the compatibility of the oligarchs and their consortiums with democracy are discussed. The oligarchs are not divided into Republicans and Democrats, although they have to decide from time to time for which team (party) they are going to play in the next election cycle. There are currently two main opposing consortiums of donors in the US: conservatives and liberals, or “right” and “left”. The article describes the characteristics of consortiums as political entities distinct from other donor entities. The author analyzes a separate cycle of political philanthropy, as well as the political infrastructure of both consortiums. The conditions and limitations of the compatibility of the actions of the oligarchs and their consortiums with democracy are discussed. The article analyzes what exactly are the specific threats to democracy from the oligarchs, their consortiums and political structures sponsored by them, as well as where the actions of the oligarchs come into direct conflict with democratic institutions. The author discusses various deoligarchization strategies in the US and their effectiveness.

An essay on the new frontiers for facilities management: conceptual insights

Purpose – Facilities Management - FM, has been the subject of international analysis and research, mainly over the last five decades, from the perspective of its contribution to the operational efficiencies of organizations. Considered a support area for operations, it is responsible for the physical infrastructure of the building and, consequently, the quality of the environment for their users. Note that in recent years the area has changed given the externalities that are discussed throughout the essay.Design/methodology/approach – The theoretical essay is based on a literature review of landmark studies that point out new externalities on the subject in the practical and theoretical field.Findings – New exogenous demands shape FM, making it an integrating and political agent for private and public physical infrastructure through the introduction of the concepts of ESG - Environmental, Social and Governance, urbanism, smart cities connected to building infrastructures, industry 4.0 and its applications, the development of ISO standards, the advancement from operational positions to strategic levels and the reconfiguration of workspaces resulting from the impact of a pandemic.Research, Practical & Social implications – The essay sheds light on the need for changes in the field of management, as well as the need for new and more in-depth studies in the academic field on the factors mentioned, which not only impact the individuals in a company, but also the community from a political perspective.Originality/value – Few studies in the field of Operations deal with FM. This essay brings interdisciplinary and contemporary aspects to both areas of knowledge.Keywords: Integrated Facility Management, Externalities, Political Entity, Political Competences.