Political Norms Research Articles

The rise of contract-intensive economic structures and democratic development: Are they related?

Does the rise of contract-intensive economic structures in an economy affect political norms and promote democracy? In this study we delineate how the economic structures of commercial contracting can yield the interests, values, and outlooks that favor the democratic rule of law for the enforcement of contracts. Analyses of most countries from 1950 to 2019 show that the increase in the intensity of contract flows has a significant impact on democracy. The results are robust across a range of specifications, measures, control variables, and with instrumental variable regression to check for reverse causality. A change from the tenth to ninetieth percentile in the institutionalization of commercial contracting corresponds with a substantial 58 to 105% increase in local average treatment effect (LATE) on democracy in the long run, depending on the measures examined.

Republicanism as Bad Religion

Since Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, it has become commonplace for his opponents to refer to him as a “cult leader.” The apparent fanaticism of his supporters inspires both awe and fear in observers. His propensity to disseminate conspiracy theories and alleged encouragement of the Jan 6 insurrection pushes Trump beyond the boundaries of political norms. In this article, I trace the elements of Trump’s rhetorical and political style that led to accusations of his being some sort of charismatic “cult leader.” The analysis broadens to discuss the complex interconnections between modern Republicanism in the US and Protestant Christianity, examining how a form of nationalist morality has come to uphold their claims to power. Both opponents and supporters of Donald Trump see him in a religious frame, either as a dangerous authoritarian leader or messianic saviour. What does this tell us about the definitions and boundaries of religion and politics? And why does Donald Trump seem to trouble those boundaries?

Realizing a Polite Society on Social Media: ASEAN and EU Perspectives

The flow of information technology development cannot be contained. Migration from the era of citizens to netizens is an impossible thing to avoid. This study aims to examine the relationship between the development of information technology in the digital era, especially on social media, and the Human Rights perspective. This research uses normative legal research methods to find ideal formulations and boundaries for netizens to become polite people interacting on social media. The results of this study show that Indonesian's right to an opinion on social media is a constitutional right that has been regulated in the 1945 NRI Constitution and the UDHR. However, freedom of speech does not mean that there are no limits. The limitations of freedom of speech on social media are through the limitations of norms, especially norms of politeness and decency, whose values are universal.

When Attentional and Politeness Demands Clash: The Case of Mutual Gaze Avoidance and Chin Pointing in Quiahije Chatino

Pointing with the chin is a practice attested worldwide: it is an effective and highly recognizable device for re-orienting the attention of the addressee. For the chin point to be observed, the addressee must attend carefully to the movements of the sender’s head. This demand comes into conflict with the politeness norms of many cultures, since these often require conversationalists to avoid meeting the gaze of their interlocutor, and can require them to look away from their interlocutor’s face and head. In this paper we explore how the chin point is successfully used in just such a culture, among the Chatino indigenous group of Oaxaca, Mexico. We analyze interactions between multiple dyads of Chatino speakers, examining how senders invite visual attention to the pointing gesture, and how addressees signal that attention, while both participants avoid stretches of mutual gaze. We find that in the Chatino context, the senior (or higher-status) party to the conversation is highly consistent in training their gaze away from their interlocutor. This allows their interlocutor to give visual attention to their face without the risk of meeting the gaze of a higher-status sender, and facilitates close attention to head movements including the chin point.s in Spanish and Quiahije Chatino are published as appendices.Se incluyen como apéndices resúmenes en español y en el chatino de San Juan Quiahije.SonG ktyiC reC inH, ngyaqC skaE ktyiC noE ndaH sonB naF ngaJ noI ngyaqC loE ktyiC reC, ngyaqC ranF chaqE xlyaK qoE chaqF jnyaJ noA ndywiqA renqA KchinA KyqyaC.

The Feasibility of Constructing a Greenhouse Gas Emission Assessment System in China and Its Legislative Path

In order to achieve the ambitious carbon peak and neutrality targets, China is in the process of revising Environmental Impact Assessment Law. This study is devoted to the proposition of how to incorporate activities regulating greenhouse gas emissions into the legal system of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). This study is inspired by the Embedding Theory, which provides the explanatory framework that allows economic activities to be regulated by political and social norms. This framework requires a relevance and cost analysis of the three indicators required to regulate economic activities: administrative support, technical support, and legal support. The results reveal that the structure of China’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Assessment (GGEA) system and that of the EIA system are closely related and that the generation and transaction costs involved in the process of institution embedding are low. This result satisfies the requirements of the Embedding Theory for achieving institutional coupling. In conclusion, this study provides an outlook on the direction of the revision of China’s EIA Law from the perspective of building a rule of law pathway for GGEA with “4EM-3CS-3RC” as the core.

Revealing indexicality in specialized writing

Writing proficiently in any language requires knowing about much more than grammar, lexis, register, genres, audience and rhetorical situation. It also requires that writers call upon implicit sociocultural and contextual inferences made via indexes. Indexes convey a wide range of sociocultural information about social background, professional and cultural identity, affective and epistemological positioning, gender and ethnicity. The ways in which this information is indexed, however, can vary significantly from one language to another, making indexicality a significant concern for international writers as they negotiate their positions through writing. This paper describes a novel method in writing research, indexical analysis, which is used to identify how French politeness norms are indexed in application letters written in English by first-language (L1) French students. It was found that although their writing was considered grammatically correct, divergences in terms of where and how politeness was expressed resulted in a negative evaluation by readers. Developing more conscious awareness of the implicit norms that organize thoughts and attitudes for both writers and readers may allow for better recognition of how indexes may differ across languages.

Institutions and Political Restraint

AbstractRecent political developments worldwide have focused attention on the fraying of political norms, often understood as informal restraints on opportunistic behavior. We present a model to study how norms of restraint interact with institutional checks and balances. In the model, an election determines which party holds office in each period over an infinite horizon. Each period presents the majority party with an opportunity to modify a status quo policy. However, informal norms and formal institutional barriers limit its ability to do so by providing soft and hard constraints to policymaking, respectively. We show that political cooperation can be easier to sustain in political systems with fewer checks and balances, when political norms are sufficiently stringent. Under optimal norms, increasing polarization makes norms easier to uphold, while also reducing welfare. Finally, norms maintained by minority parties are less sustainable, and voter optimal norms require minority concessions to achieve greater electoral competitiveness.

Is the myth of left-wing authoritarianism itself a myth?

Is left-wing authoritarianism (LWA) closer to a myth or a reality? Twelve studies test the empirical existence and theoretical relevance of LWA. Study 1 reveals that both conservative and liberal Americans identify a large number of left-wing authoritarians in their lives. In Study 2, participants explicitly rate items from a recently-developed LWA measure as valid measurements of authoritarianism. Studies 3-11 show that persons who score high on this same LWA scale possess the traits associated with models of authoritarianism: LWA is positively related to threat sensitivity across multiple areas, including general ecological threats (Study 3), COVID disease threat (Study 4), Belief in a Dangerous World (Study 5), and Trump threat (Study 6). Further, high-LWA persons show more support for restrictive political correctness norms (Study 7), rate African-Americans and Jews more negatively (Studies 8-9), and show more cognitive rigidity (Studies 10 and 11). These effects hold when controlling for political ideology and when looking only within liberals, and further are similar in magnitude to comparable effects for right-wing authoritarianism. Study 12 uses the World Values Survey to provide cross-cultural evidence of Left-Wing Authoritarianism around the globe. Taken in total, this large array of triangulating evidence from 12 studies comprised of over 8,000 participants from the U.S. and over 66,000 participants world-wide strongly suggests that left-wing authoritarianism is much closer to a reality than a myth.

How to feminist affect: Feminist comedy and post-truth politics

Under the shifting epistemic and political norms of post-truth politics, the conditions of feminist solidarity and agency are increasingly threatened. This article argues that feminist humour provides models for affective orientations that sustain feminist work and survival during such periods of political crisis. First, I explore a potential issue post-truth politics poses for feminists: That information overload can lead to truth burn-out that threatens intersectional feminist thinking and action. Next, I explain why comedy is well-suited to help maintain feminist work in the context of post-truth politics. I then present a reading of Sarah Cooper’s skit, ‘How to medical’ to explore Cooper’s work and demonstrate how it operates as parodic political critique. I conclude that the affective stance of a feminist comedian models how feminists can keep surviving in the midst of post-truth crises. Such work shows how oppressive power can be engaged closely enough that deep critiques can be developed but with sufficient affective distance that feminist engagement can be sustained over time, through a multiplicity of crises. Cooper’s engagement can thus be read to generate strategies for how to (effectively) feminist affect under post-truth conditions.

Owning the Libs: Symbolic Negation of #mybodymychoice as a Conservative Rhetorical Strategy

ABSTRACT The anti-vaccine movement’s appropriation of the reproductive rights mantra #MyBodyMyChoice has been remarkably successful despite overwhelming evidence in favor of vaccines and the historical precedent for vaccine requirements. I argue that this appropriation of #MyBodyMyChoice constitutes a symbolic negation which is indicative of a new conservative rhetorical strategy of Owning the Libs. This strategy emphasizes affective resonance over political reason and operates through three rhetorical moves. It first paints liberals as hypocrites while blaming them for conservatives’ own skepticism about the COVID-19 vaccine. It then elicits an affective response which manifests via right-wing arrogance and superiority on Twitter. Finally, it reconstitutes conservatives as the “true” patriots who are uniquely able to see through government corruption. This research speaks to a new form of right-wing advocacy that forefronts emotion and personal experience as the basis for group formation and sidesteps traditional political and deliberative norms.

TO THE QUESTION ABOUT THE PRAGMATICS OF POLITE DISCORD WITH A COMMUNICATION PARTNER (based on the German language)

In a dialogue, both the speaker and the listener have expectations on the transmitted information that require confirmation or refutation. The validity or unreasonability of these expectations is stated with linguistic affirmation or negation. In a verbal confrontation, each participant has the right to question the position of the partner and put forward their own point of view. At the same time, following the rules of politeness makes it possible to smoothen the sharp angles while expressing disagreement. The article aims to identify and to carry out a semantic-pragmatic analysis of how polite disagreement is expressed in German. The material of the study are versatile dialogues in German. One way to express polite disagreement in a dialogue is to use the modal modifiers leider, bedauerlicherweise, etc. in the response, expressing the speaker’s regret about disagreeing with the partners statement. These words enhance the emotional component of the response and soften the point-blank refusal, which can be considered as a kind of courtesy. Another way to express polite disagreement is to switch the interlocutor’s attention from the main topic to a secondary topic or build a response using the interlocutor’s verbal material and in compliance with the norms of politeness. The response statement can consist of two parts, an agreement with the previous statement and arguments in favor of the speaker’s own position, for example, Ja, aber… Standing apart is the adverb allerdings, which conveys opposite meanings (JA-allerdings and NEIN-allerdings) and signals readiness to continue communication.

What can Kantian philosophy do for humanity? From Leonard Nelson to phildialogues

In this essay, I argue that broadly Kantian philosophy – by which I mean philosophy inspired by Kant’s work, but neither dogmatically restricted to Kant’s own texts nor in any way committed to Kant’s own philosophical errors or personal prejudices – is profoundly relevant to the world of today, insofar as it can promoteradical enlightenment. Radical enlightenment, in turn, is daring to think, write, speak, and freely act for ourselves, not only as individuals but also collectively via our social institutions, in order to change the world for the better. This should be sharply contrasted withenlightenment lite, orshallow enlightenment, which restricts critical thinking to narrowly-defined, coercively controlled social and political norms, according to Frederick the Great’s famous dictum: “argue as much as you like about whatever you like, but obey!” In effect, then, enlightenment lite or shallow enlightenment is nothing but “free thinking” inside a barbed-wire playpen. My argument has three parts. First, from the standpoint of Kantian radical enlightenment, I critically analyze the early twentieth-century neo-Kantian philosopher Leonard Nelson’s account of Socratic dialogical method. Second, I formulate a broadly Kantian, radically-enlightened conception of philosophical conversation,phildialogues, that corresponds constructively to my critical analysis of Nelson’s account. And third and finally, I argue that contemporary Kantian philosophers not onlycanbutshouldimplement and practice phildialogues, for the betterment of humanity.

Exploring Nation and History: An Analysis of Chaman Nahal’s Selected Novels

The struggle for Indian independence spanned nearly a century and was an epic endeavor. The winds of change that swept across the Indian subcontinent after the 'Sepoy' Mutiny in 1857 left lasting imprints on the political and social landscape. The Indian nation had to overcome centuries of lethargy, transcend religious, caste, and provincial divisions, and move forward on the path of progress. This transformation occurred with the onset of the Gandhian movement, which disrupted established political and social norms, introducing innovative ideas and methods. Mahatma Gandhi's relentless pursuit of freedom marked significant milestones such as the non-violent non-cooperation movement of 1920-22, the civil disobedience movement of 1930-31, and the Quit India movement of 1942. The non-violent non-cooperation movement triggered an unparalleled awakening, shifting Indian nationalism from a "middle-class movement" to a widespread emotional movement. An exploration of Nahal's fiction reveals his alignment with the humanistic tradition pioneered by Anand in the thirties and carried forward by Bhabani Bhattacharya and Kamala Markandaya in the fifties and sixties. Nahal's themes encompass tradition versus Westernization, spousal relationships, internationalism, East-West interactions, satire on anglicized Indians, the three phases of India's epic struggle for freedom, the partition of India into India and Muslim Pakistan, and the resulting agony for millions on both sides of the border.

Legal Framework for the Regulation of Sanctions Measures in the European Union

The subject of this article is the legal basis of the mechanism for the adoption of sanctions (restrictive measures) within the European Union. The author traced the evolution of the application of sanctions since the creation of the European Economic Community (1957) to the present day, analyzed the relevant sections of the most important constituent acts of the EU and considered the features of the EU sanctions mechanism at the present stage. In recent decades, the practice of applying political and economic sanctions has significantly expanded in the system of international relations. At the same time, if earlier the initiator of international restrictive measures was usually the UN Security Council, now the world is dominated by unilateral national sanctions adopted on the basis of domestic political and legal norms. Somewhat apart in this process are the countries of the European Union, which are guided by collective sanctions measures approved within the EU. The purpose of this article is to study the specifics of the EU sanctions policy, to determine the legal nature of collective sanctions, as well as their compliance with the current principles and standards of modern international law. In the course of the evolution of the European Union as a subject of international legal relations, a special place was given to the formation of the common Foreign and Security Policy of the EU. The author comes to the conclusion that the gradual transformation of an economic association into a political union has led to the need for a unified coordinated policy in the international arena. According to the author, at the present time, the sanctions measures of the European Union have become an integral part of the PRSP, strengthening its role and importance as an important chain in the system of international relations. At the same time, the EU, not having its own armed forces, increasingly considers collective sanctions as an instrument of its political and economic influence in the world. The novelty of this study lies in the consideration of the EU sanctions mechanism from the point of view of the formation of a single common foreign policy of this supranational union.

Crisis of institutional trust in society under transformation of social memory values

The paper attempts to identify the connection between the crisis of institutional trust in society, which is formed amidst severe political and social censorship, on the one hand, and the transformation of social memory value in the public mind, on the other hand. Social memory serves as an important construct that incorporates social, cultural, religious, and political norms of the sociocultural past. We suppose that the relationship between social memory and a decrease in the level of institutional trust of society in the legal, social, and political systems is the most important problem and requires empirical and theoretical analysis. At the same time, a number of studies show that social memory serves as an adaptive and balancing factor in the public mind maintaining relative stability in society amidst declining trust in formal government institutions. According to our observations, the ongoing marginalization of public consciousness under these conditions requires additional experimental research, which became the basis of this article. Regarding the social sensitivity of young people to fluctuations in the socio-political system, which is projected in the minds of social memory, we made a survey on the most basic axiological attitudes of the individual. We tried to identify the significance of such constructs as national traditions and customs in everyday life, religion, family, homeland, historical memory, attitude to the past mistakes and merits of the nation. The purpose of our study was to analyze the level of the adaptive resource of social memory, the significance of its meanings in the minds of young people amidst a stable distrust of formal government institutions. The authors have come to the conclusion that the crisis of institutional trust forms a multi-vector process in the mind of the individual: on the one hand, it is subject to such psychological factors as anxiety, short social planning, expectations orientation mainly concerning the inner social circle of people. On the other hand, social memory continues to be a vital resource for maintaining spiritual security in a society that is experiencing the challenges of rewriting familiar meanings in a changing reality.

An Overview of Criminal Justice System to Uphold the Supremacy of Law in a Sovereign State: An International Perspective

Human kind is an integral part of every society. The establishment of a civilized balanced society cannot be regarded as accurate until the profound existence of the supremacy of law. Prevailing law and order situations worldwide are not only damaging human existence. Still, they are also a threat to a highly unembellished nature for the mainstay promulgation of political, social, and economic norms. The gradual increase in abnormal crime ratio in developing and developed sovereign states is due to flaws in the existing criminal justice system. A strapping criminal justice system is a ray of hope for immediate social rehabilitation. These flaws are similar hurdles to ascertaining sustainable development goals. Establishing a balanced society with justified promulgation of human rights by remedying the communal demerits and adapting these existing flaws is a mandatory requirement of the era. This review will analyze the criminal justice system of developing and developed states and the impact of existing defects on the captioned states' social, economic, and political affairs. This study will descriptively analyze the possible measures to reform the existing criminal justice system to secure the ends of justice so that the ascertainment of sustainable development goals can be made possible.

The Dynamics of Influence on Press Freedom in Different Media Systems: A Comparative Study

ABSTRACT This study focuses on contributing to the emerging international research agenda regarding press freedom, moving beyond the already established factors that relate to political and industrial norms as influences on press freedom. Its primary goal is to explore the dynamics of influence on press freedom in different media systems of the western world based on a quantitative analysis of data for 2008–2019 in 16 countries. Findings indicate that press freedom in democratic countries is severely challenged and in certain deeply worrying cases, it is steadily declining, whereas factors that influence this decline appear to be common in different, even contradictory, media systems. In addition, by examining the dynamics of influence on press freedom in different media systems, this work attempts to partially contribute to the discussion on the evolution of western media systems as regards their relationship with press freedom.

Power and culture in Peru: A sociological study from the perspective of representatives of the Frankfurt School

Today, political, social and economic norms constantly strive to reduce poverty, boost economic growth, achieve demographic improvements and promote equality and security within a population. However, the urban centralism observed in Peru does not meet these objectives at all levels. Despite the fact that rural communities represent about a third of the population, for many years and as the basis of a historical cultural agreement, they have been little talked about and their potential for development has been underestimated. The exploitation of indigenous labour was normalised under capitalism, making the population identify with this reality as a social norm. Thus, people began to identify with the lifestyle imposed by the culture industry. In the case of the urban population, they came to identify with the associated social factors, such as social status. And in the case of the rural population, they were indoctrinated by being passive recipients of a world that apparently cannot change. This study analyses this problem from an economic, political and cultural perspective under the thinking of the representatives of the Frankfurt School from the perspective of power and culture issues. It seeks to make Peruvian society aware of the need to create a continuing and adult education proposal that stimulates and transforms learning processes in vulnerable populations, as is the case in rural Peru, thus optimising their development as a community for the struggle for social recognition on a cultural and legal level, reducing oppression and achieving reconciliation between the urban and rural areas.

Rethinking digital media use for diasporic political participation: An investigation into journalism advocacy, digital activism, and democratic divides (Dissertation summary)

By presenting five studies on connected research questions, this cumulative dissertation develops a novel understanding of the concept of Hybrid Diasporic Public Sphere by examining how three groups of diasporic exiles, including journalists, activists, and ordinary refugees settled in democratic states, use digital media to engage in transnational conflicts and advocate for political and social change in their homelands. The study demonstrates that the roles of the three diasporic political actors are highly interactive, overlapping, and complementary and their digitally-empowered collaborations blur boundaries between their normative role distinctions creating new interchanging political logics, norms, and practices. The novel contribution of this thesis lies at three levels. First, it redefines diaspora journalism in conflict contexts by examining the Syrian journalists’ media advocacy strategies and digital networks that blend activism, human rights advocacy, and social movements. Second, it further identifies five barriers to the digital diasporic political participation of ordinary refugees demonstrating new forms of democratic divides. Third, the study develops the concept of connected diaspora activist identifying the current challenges that undermine the potential of social media use for mobilizing a political change in non-revolutionary times. The dissertation employs four qualitative research methods including digital ethnography, content analysis, metajournalistic discourse analysis, and a total of 94 in-depth interviews.

Living in the Shadow of Deportation: How Immigration Enforcement Forestalls Political Assimilation

Prior research demonstrates that acculturated co-ethnics of immigrant groups adopt restrictive immigration policy preferences akin to that of host country dominant groups. However, acculturated U.S. Latinxs still maintain relatively open immigration policy preferences despite their distance from the canonical immigrant archetype (e.g., Spanish-speaking, immigrant). To answer the puzzle, I draw on sociological perspectives and theorize that the increased societal integration of undocumented immigrants in tandem with an expanding interior immigration enforcement apparatus generates rebuff against Anglo political norms among acculturated Latinxs. Using 6 national Latinx surveys, I corroborate my theory and find perceptibly threatening immigration enforcement contexts forestall the adoption of restrictive immigration policy preferences via acculturation. Absent deportation threat, acculturated Latinxs adopt immigration preferences similar to white Anglos. I also replicate these findings for attitudinal dimensions outside immigration policy preferences. This paper suggests political assimilation is not preordained among acculturated immigrant co-ethnics in light of an unreceptive host society.