Political Consent Research Articles

Mediating role of viral communication in the effect of political marketing on political consent: a cross-sectional study

mediating role of viral communication in the effect of political marketing on political consent: a cross-sectional study

Revisiting the rhetorical construction of political consent

Abstract How political leaders construct consent is a constant theme of studies in political rhetoric and theories of persuasion. We explore how populist linguistic strategies combine with traditional consensus-building to align populations with the speakers’ messages. We observe similarities and differences in discourse strategies across two contrasting polities, the UK, a foundational modern representative democracy and Russia, which is considered more autocratic. The data comes from speeches given by Boris Johnson and Vladimir Putin during the Covid-19 crisis. They were analysed using Corpus Linguistics, compared in qualitative analysis that identities key lexico-grammatical features. The findings show a convergence in some of the strategies and linguistic styles, but also key differences which, we suggest, depend on cultural factors specific to the two nations. The results contribute to our understanding of the operation of these resources in modern political discourse, highlighting the way cultural factors influence rhetorical styles in very different political structures.

Consenting to Early Modern Empires: Introduction

This text offers an introduction to the special theme section on Consenting to Early Modern Empires, guest-edited by the author. The contributors to this section seek to explain the prominent place given to consent in Spanish-American and Portuguese-Asian imperial records. This introduction points out that the politics of consent in early modern empires did not reside primarily in a struggle between freedom and unfreedom. Indigenous strategies of using consent to place checks on the Spanish and Portuguese had the effect of integrating them further into European empires.

Three Ways of Consenting in Sixteenth-Century Goa

In this essay, I explore three instances of political consent by the local elites of Goa towards Portuguese governance in the sixteenth century. I delve into how these forms of consent evolved into an increasingly subconscious and ingrained acceptance. I argue that this progression stemmed from the broader effects of the local elites' micro decisions at three pivotal junctures: the formulation of the Foral de Mexia in 1526, the enactment of the 1541 document formalizing the redirection of local temple revenues towards Christian worship, and the establishment of the Foral/Tombo in 1554, which recorded the properties and assets associated with these temples and their officials. Initially motivated by pragmatism to maintain the social order and the elites’ status, these decisions had short-term objectives. Nevertheless, their cumulative impact bound these elites to imperial authority, leading to the transformation of their identity and solidifying Portuguese dominion. This article is part of the special theme section on Consenting to Early Modern Empires, guest-edited by Sonia Tycko.

Against a nation state of emergency: how climate emergency politics can undermine climate justice

In recent years, eco-activist groups, academics, industry groups, governments, and other organisations have called for, or declared, a climate emergency. These declarations offer discursive and political consent for emergency climate actions. Without refuting the urgent need to take meaningful action to limit and adapt to climate change, in this paper we argue emergency declarations can have effects that may ultimately work against climate justice. To do this, we contextualise climate injustice as part of a much longer history of colonial racial capitalism, and suggest that discourses and declarations of emergency often serve as tools through which the political conditions and histories that shape and sustain injustices, including environmental and climate injustices, are erased. Working from the present conjuncture and the aftermath of the ‘crisis’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, we show how discourses of emergency and crisis serve as tools through which the coercive and controlling powers of the state are sustained, maintained, and legitimised. Reading across a vast history of crisis colonialism, we show how emergency measures enable the expansion, consolidation, and militarisation of colonial settler states, linking existing anticolonial critiques with ideas of disaster capitalism and fossil fascism to offer a cautionary intervention into movements for climate action that persist with logics and discourses of emergency and crisis. We warn that declarations of emergency are not only ineffective tools in the pursuit of climate justice, but may be actively dangerous.

Traffic, Money, and Political Consent: Explaining the Growth of Commercial Cyber-Nationalism in China

This article aims to explore how non-state actors have commercialised nationalism in China. A mixed-methods approach is used to examine how the influential “we media” (or “self-media” or zimeiti) construct a nationalistic discourse in the case of the Russia-Ukraine war. It was found that in the case of the Russia-Ukraine war, nationalism is most closely related to anti-USA sentiment, followed by pro-Russia, patriotic, anti-Ukraine, and anti-West sentiments. In addition to an explicit expression of dislike and disapproval of the USA, the influential “we media” also set the agenda centred on the USA rather than on Russia or Ukraine. Drawing from recent research on Chinese cyber-nationalism and the political economy of China’s social media industry, a model of the symbiotic triangle is proposed to conceptualise how non-state actors and the party-state interact to enable the commercialisation of nationalism to sustain itself as a profitable business. It is concluded: first, that the commercialisation of cyber-nationalism is a traffic-driven business in which the “we media” practitioners and social media platforms extract profits by pandering to popular appetite under political consent; and second, the party-state and non-state actors have formed reciprocal triangular relations to serve their respective interests.

«Калмыки ныне с Крымом в твердом миру…». Калмыцко-крымские отношения в конце XVII в.

Introduction. The article deals with a little-known — though noticeable — episode in the history of late seventeenth-century Kalmyk-Crimean relations. The period remains somewhat understudied, and there are still unpublished sources on the topic. Goals. The paper aims to introduce some newly discovered archival materials discussing a most interesting period in the history of relations between the Crimean and Kalmyk Khanates characterized by a short-lived close political interaction. Materials. The work examines materials stored at the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, the former largely contained in collections nos. 111 (‘Don Affairs’), 119 (‘Kalmyk Affairs’), and 123 (‘Crimean Affairs’). Results. The conducted insights into archival sources have yielded some new data pertaining to mutual ambassadorial contacts between the two khanates that essentially clarify and extend the existing historical knowledge of the then Kalmyk-Crimean relations. Conclusions. The mutual political approach between Kalmyks and the Crimean Khanate in the 1680s–1690s proved short-lived, and had primarily been ignited by a dramatic deterioration in Russian-Kalmyk relations. That was a significant success of the Crimean diplomacy that took every advantage of the then dissentions between Kalmyks and the Tsardom of Russia. The mentioned political consent was paralleled by mutually beneficial horse and cattle trading activities. However, the frequent power shifts in the Crimea never facilitated any long-term interaction, the latter having been aggravated by another worsening in the ‘Nogai question’ when in 1696 Nogai subjects of Kalmyks fled to Kuban requesting the Crimean Khan’s protection. It was then that the confrontation between Kalmyk chieftains and Crimean officials — that finally led to an armed clash — arouse.

«Калмыки ныне с Крымом в твердом миру…». Калмыцко-крымские отношения в конце XVII в.

Introduction. The article deals with a little-known — though noticeable — episode in the history of late seventeenth-century Kalmyk-Crimean relations. The period remains somewhat understudied, and there are still unpublished sources on the topic. Goals. The paper aims to introduce some newly discovered archival materials discussing a most interesting period in the history of relations between the Crimean and Kalmyk Khanates characterized by a short-lived close political interaction. Materials. The work examines materials stored at the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, the former largely contained in collections nos. 111 (‘Don Affairs’), 119 (‘Kalmyk Affairs’), and 123 (‘Crimean Affairs’). Results. The conducted insights into archival sources have yielded some new data pertaining to mutual ambassadorial contacts between the two khanates that essentially clarify and extend the existing historical knowledge of the then Kalmyk-Crimean relations. Conclusions. The mutual political approach between Kalmyks and the Crimean Khanate in the 1680s–1690s proved short-lived, and had primarily been ignited by a dramatic deterioration in Russian-Kalmyk relations. That was a significant success of the Crimean diplomacy that took every advantage of the then dissentions between Kalmyks and the Tsardom of Russia. The mentioned political consent was paralleled by mutually beneficial horse and cattle trading activities. However, the frequent power shifts in the Crimea never facilitated any long-term interaction, the latter having been aggravated by another worsening in the ‘Nogai question’ when in 1696 Nogai subjects of Kalmyks fled to Kuban requesting the Crimean Khan’s protection. It was then that the confrontation between Kalmyk chieftains and Crimean officials — that finally led to an armed clash — arouse.

Para una política económica democrática

Many Western citizens feel disenchanted with the economic policy that has been practiced in recent decades. Not only have they not helped to solve their daily problems, but they have aggravated them, increasing inequality, the lack of good jobs and the absence of opportunities. The consequence is that capitalism has stopped working for the benefit of all. This essay analyzes the causes of this derailment of capitalism. The need to build a new social contract for a more effective and equitable democratic economic policy in its results is sustained. The polycrisis we are experiencing opens a window of opportunity for that social contract. It is concluded that when economists offer policies to improve things they should pay more attention to political consent.

The making of sustainability: ideological strategies, the materiality of nature, and biomass use in the bioeconomy

The bioeconomy, a recent addition to the political project of ecological modernization, is largely premised on the widespread use of biomass. Biomass is presented by bioeconomy proponents as renewable and, therefore, sustainable. However, a large body of academic and non-academic literature questions this sustainability, citing the negative socio-ecological aspects of biomass use. Given this contradiction, we ask how the key institutions of the innovation system (government, science, and industry), construct and uphold the image of sustainability of biomass use in the bioeconomy. Through an analysis based on ideology critique, we look at the broad field of biomass policy in Germany, including official bioeconomy strategies and biomass potential calculations, expert portrayals of biomass use in the bioeconomy-themed Year of Science, and an iconic biomass-based commodity. We identify four central ideological strategies that uphold the image of sustainability and contribute to creating political consent for the political project of the German bioeconomy: seeking managerial solutions, relying on technological innovation, relegating solutions into the future, and obscuring the materiality of nature. We discuss how these strategies are upheld by the wider discourse and institutions of ecological modernization and argue that particular attention should be given to the biophysical materiality of living nature in this context. The materiality of nature represents both an obstacle to the ideological strategies identified, and a starting point for envisioning alternative society–nature relations.

Between technocracy and politics: How financial stability committees shape precautionary interventions in real estate markets

AbstractImplementing precautionary measures that have obvious distributional consequences today but often only invisible future benefits is politically difficult. It requires that policymakers reconcile technocratic expertise with political consent. This paper traces attempts to enact such measures, focusing on countercyclical policies to limit the systemic risks of housing booms as proposed by financial stability committees in Germany, France, and the Netherlands from 2015 onwards. These committees bring together technocrats and political authorities in order to overcome the inaction bias inherent to these measures, seeking to forge both epistemic and political consensus on the need for action. We find that the work of these committees is characterized by lengthy processes of consensus‐building, during which technocrats amass evidence and search for politically acceptable solutions. We argue that whether this leads to meaningful steps crucially depends on the committee's institutional set‐up. What particularly matters is its capacity to engage the Ministry of Finance in binding discussions and the governance arrangements for the activation of precautionary instruments, which shape whether a shared framing of the problem and appropriate response emerges.

Hobbes and the Indirect Workings of Political Consent

Abstract This paper brings to light an unexplored aspect of Hobbes’s argument that political authority rests upon subjects’ consent. Consent enacts a transfer of subjects’ right of nature to the sovereign, yet she already possesses a natural right to everything. What moral difference, then, does this make to her possession of power, and how? In my reading, the difference lies in the rise of new obligations befalling the sovereign by means of an indirect mechanism: That many individuals, hoping for safety, transfer their right of nature to the sovereign triggers an obligation for her to accept the role of a ruler and perform the duties attached to it, for the sake of the peace enjoined by the laws of nature. This reading should also confirm the possibility of a consensual foundation for the Hobbesian right to punish and shed new light on Hobbes’s notion of tacit consent.

Razvoj klimatske diplomatije i njen značaj za savremene države

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges encountered by modern states and humanity on the whole. It has a huge impact on almost all foreign policy challenges in the 21st century. Scientists and experts have reached agreement about its significance. However, there is no political consent and formulation of an efficient political response. Since climate change occurs globally, the political response to it must be international, regional and local. In order to respond efficiently to climate change, it needs to be properly understood and adequately analyzed, and states must have the capacity to successfully deal with that challenge in their respective foreign policies. In other words, states must build internal capacities for successful conduct of climate diplomacy that, since the emergence of this challenge on the international agenda, at the beginning of the 1990sm has become the main foreign policy instrument in the development of the international climate regime. From the first global UN Summit in Rio (1992) to the most recent one in Glasgow (2021), the climate regime was developed more or less rapidly, depending on the major or minor successes of climate diplomacy. Nowadays, with the consequences of climate change being more evident and with citizens raising their voice, states cannot allow themselves to be amateurs in that area of foreign policy activity. The modified concept of international relations that has also brought along the modified concept of security has a broader view than the exclusive orientation to the state. All this also includes the countries of Southeast Europe which are able to make an actual contribution through successful climate diplomacy, as well as improve mutual regional cooperation and strengthen their economic development.

Elizabeth Bowen and the Politics of Consent

As a novelist preoccupied with the sexualized gothic conventions haunting Irish fiction since the eighteenth century, Bowen persistently turns to the fraught concept of British and Irish women's consent during periods of twentieth-century political violence. This article considers Bowen's use of gothic tropes of consent in The Last September (1929) as well as a more sustained engagement with the Irish gothic, citizen-subjecthood, and the political valence of consent in her WWII thriller, The Heat of the Day (1948). It argues that in formulating consent in relation to knowledge, and in articulating the necessarily contractual nature of consent, Bowen seeks to define the ethics of individual rights and responsibility during and after World War Two.

Attuned Consent; Birth Doulas, Care, and the Politics of Consent.

Doulas-birth practitioners without medical responsibility who provide support to birthing people-have become popular over the past few decades. Drawing from two years of ethnographic research in the United States during which I trained and practiced as a doula, I argue that they are "consent workers" who do complex emotional labor to facilitate the consenting voice of their client. In effect, doulas serve as a bridge between the intimate care and support for choice-making associated with American midwifery before its professionalization and the "informed consent" of medical institutions and contract law. They do so via what I describe as "attuned consent," which acknowledges ambiguity and complexity, is highly embodied, and is noncoercive without presuming equality. This draws attention to the limits of conventional, defensive models of consent, calling the paradigm of consent into question even as it draws from it to accomplish its work. Attuned consent can shed light on why the rather strange hybrid figure of the doula evolved in this historical moment. It can also provide a productive reflection of other contemporary cultural studies critiques of consent, notably Joseph Fischel's discussion of the limits of sexual consent and Audra Simpson's analysis of Indigenous refusal to either consent to or resist fundamentally hostile relations.

Jane Addams, Mohandas Gandhi, and the Promise of Soul Force

Jane Addams (1860–1935) and Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948) are rightly regarded as two of the 20th century’s great leaders advancing social justice and peace and through nonviolent means. Although they never met in person, they engaged similar ideas and social issues spanning nearly fifty years. In the decade and a half following World War I, they addressed one another’s work and briefly corresponded. This essay newly examines the admiration and deliberative engagement that developed between Addams and Gandhi, while highlighting their distinctive interpretations of “soul force.” I argue that each rhetorically engaged the others’ ideas and practices in ways that advanced their own approaches to nonviolent social transformation and the challenges of political consent: for Addams, moral suasion and pragmatic consensus‐building, and for Gandhi, absolute nonviolence and physical self‐suffering through acts of noncooperation and civil disobedience. This study acknowledges their shared commitment to the principle of moral goodwill toward opponents, in international and anticolonial contexts, while highlighting ways in which culture, religion, and temperament shaped their divergent nonviolent methods. Addams and Gandhi leave distinctive legacies that offer inspiration and critique for new generations addressing power and injustice.

Detroit five years after bankruptcy: From coercion to consent

Critical scholarship has characterised the 2013–2014 bankruptcy of Detroit – the largest municipal bankruptcy in history – as a fiscal ‘state of exception’ which undermined the democratic foundations of urban citizenship. From this perspective, the imposition of emergency management and declaration of bankruptcy were acts of raw coercion. Drawing upon Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and empirical evidence, including interviews with civic leaders shortly after the bankruptcy, a survey of public attitudes towards the bankruptcy and public records from the bankruptcy court, this article charts a different interpretation of evolving public opinion in the five years post bankruptcy. We present evidence of a popular narrative among Detroiters which retroactively depicts the bankruptcy as a necessary evil, akin to a market clearing signal at the bottom of a business cycle. Far from bankruptcy being viewed as purely coercive, we suggest that this narrative has operated as an important mechanism of civic and political consent.

The Law and Politics of Consent: Legal and Political Subjectivity

The Law and Politics of Consent: Legal and Political Subjectivity

Building Domestic Support for West Germany's Integration into NATO, 1953–1955

Konrad Adenauer's government in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) engaged in a large-scale media campaign to create political consent for the FRG's integration into the West, a policy that rested to a large extent on rearmament and entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. To counter public criticism of rearmament, the West German authorities used Mobilwerbung, a company that maintained a fleet of mobile film screening vans. Clandestinely financed by the government, Mobilwerbung brought government-commissioned films and political speakers into the FRG's remotest areas. Based on archival records on deployments in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, this article traces Mobilwerbung's role as a government unit that reacted dynamically to competing events. Through highly detailed reporting on audience reactions, Mobilwerbung served both as a public relations vehicle to foster consent and as an analytical tool that allowed the mapping of public sentiment regarding rearmament.

The Politics of Free, Prior and Informed Consent: Indigenous Rights and Resource Governance in Ecuador and Yukon, Canada

What are the institutional arrangements required to implement a genuine process of free, prior and informed consent (fpic)? This article provides a comparative perspective on the politics of consent in the context of relations between Indigenous peoples, states and extractive industries in Canada and Latin America. The case of Ecuador is presented as an emblematic example of a hybrid regime in which Indigenous communities have the right to free, prior and informed consultation, not consent, concerning planned measures affecting them, such as mineral, oil and gas exploitation. In the case of Yukon, Canada, the settlement of a comprehensive land claim with sub-surface mineral rights has provided the institutional basis for the implementation of a genuine fpic process, one that includes participatory decision-making power over natural resource development projects. The article concludes with a discussion on the necessary conditions for moving governments from a consultation to a consent regime.