Public Politics Research Articles

Bartolomé de las Casas, OP: History, Philosophy, and Theology in the Age of European Expansion

Bartolomé de las Casas, OP: History, Philosophy, and Theology in the Age of European Expansion

Methylmercury in Fish from the Amazon Region—a Review Focused on Eating Habits

Fish are an important food and economic source in the Amazon region. However, several researches report high levels of mercury, mainly methylmercury (MeHg), in these animals. MeHg is capable of biomagnifying in the ecosystem and negatively affect human health. Amazon region is recognized for its great diversity of fish species and high daily consumption of fish, extremely vulnerable to the toxic effects of MeHg. Therefore, this study aimed to carried out a systematic review on MeHg in Amazon fishes by their eating habits and estimate the human exposure of MeHg by fish consumption. The search was carried out according to registered search protocol in the electronic databases PubMed/Medline and Web of Science. After screening selection, only five studies were included in this review. Carnivore/piscivore fishes showed the highest concentrations of MeHg (0.51±0.37 mg kg−1), followed by planktivores/iliophages (0.45±0.32 mg kg−1). Herbivore fish have the lowest MeHg concentration (0.11±0.09 mg kg−1). Both indexes (estimated weekly intake-EWI and provisional tolerable weekly intake-PTWI) were higher among women. EWI/PTWI ratio was higher than 1 for all eating habits, suggesting a risk to MeHg associated with the consumption of fish in the region, with higher rates in carnivorous/piscivorous fish, which may cause serious health problems to Amazon population. Thus, it is necessary to establish public politics to minimize exposure to MeHg in this region and to guarantee food and nutritional security.

Mass Observation, Apathy, and Electoral Politics in England, 1937–1950

AbstractWhile various historians use Mass Observation sources to study popular engagement with politics in the 1940s, they tend to rely on file reports summarizing research or the writings of the national panel, which paid limited attention to how the public engaged with key aspects of electioneering. By contrast, we re-examine Mass Observation's various election surveys to explore people's assumptions about how election campaigns should be conducted, the qualities looked for in political parties, and their reflections on the records of governments. Our conclusions shed light on the transformation of British public politics after 1918. During the interwar years it became common thinking to assume that parties would centre their campaigning around a detailed programme for government. Whereas Mass Observation's employees often claimed that much of the public was apathetic about politics, a reanalysis of the survey results indicates that many people were eager to be seen to be able to offer a considered assessment of the veracity of the competing parties’ promises. Mass Observation's election studies were criticized for their supposed amateurism. However, they offer richer insights into how the public engaged with party programmes than the quantitative surveys that came to dominate election studies in the 1950s and beyond.

Theoretical and Methodological Aspects of Studying Public Politics’ Electoral Potential and Their Social Media Positioning

This study’s subject is the theoretical and methodological aspects of studying politicians’ electoral potential and their social networks positioning. This article aims to explore politicians’ activity in social media to identify its impact on their electoral potential. The authors of the paper used the methods such as analysis and synthesis to study the positioning of politicians in social networks, as well as a systematic approach to examine political, social, cultural, and economic factors affecting the characteristics of the manifestation of activity in the Internet space as a whole, and in social media in particular. The work used empirical and analytical methods to study open empirical data, methods of qualitative analysis to study content posted in virtual space. The authors consider the theoretical and methodological aspects of public politicians’ positioning in social media and their potential electoral impact. The article highlights the main methods and approaches to studying this problem and outlines the ways for further research. The findings and results can be used to research further the electoral potential of public politicians and their social media positioning.

Fascist foodways: Ricettari as propaganda for grain production and sexual reproduction

Food connects people and land, a link that the Italian Fascist regime exploited through their seizure of local culinary culture for the promotion of national demographic goals. This article traces the connections between the regime’s concurrent drives for food production and sexual reproduction. It will show the propagandistic potential of recipes, and also the limits of top-down dietary change under dictatorship. Ricettari, propagandistic recipe pamphlets, blended public politics and private practices into a heady cocktail, one that cast autarkic cookery and sexual reproduction as valuable contributions to the Fascist state. These documents establish a clear link between the regime’s demographic policy and the autarkic campaigns in favor of Italian grain production. Cooking, the professed subject of ricettari, conveyed political neutrality—it falsely marked the documents as feminine and innocuous. So too did design: small and light, these stapled leaflets could be easily rolled up and stuck in an apron pocket. Portability thus insured that these documents could cross the threshold from the public rally to the private kitchen. Once there, they could directly address women, and attempt to modify their daily habits in ways that would change the body from the inside out. At stake in the ricettari lies a broader contribution to Food Studies in terms of food and politics: this unique form of ephemera reveals that the Italian Fascist regime took a pronatalist approach to cuisine.

Leadership Legitimacy

Leadership Legitimacy

Patriotic Legitimation and Everyday Patriotism in Russia’s Constitutional Reform

Abstract Russia’s 2020 Constitutional reform was notable not just for the substantial institutional changes introduced, but also for the almost complete lack of public discussion of those changes in elite debates or the public campaign for the nationwide vote. Instead, proposals to write social and patriotic issues into the Constitution absorbed the lion’s share of coverage. These issues were not superfluous, but rather reveal the dynamics of patriotic legitimation and the role of everyday patriotism in Russian politics today. Among Russia’s elite, patriotic legitimation regulates competition, determines the boundaries of acceptable public politics, and provides access to regime patronage. For the public, the avoidance of politics and the appropriation of Russians’ everyday patriotism facilitated the mobilization of an apolitical electorate in the nationwide vote. While the reform may have strengthened the institutional basis of Putin’s rule, it potentially limits the regime’s adaptability and could affect its long-term survivability.

Public Political Participation in the 2020 Regional Head Election: The Case of Denpasar, Indonesia

Employing a qualitative approach, the present study outlooks the political participation of people in Denpasar, Bali, with regard to the 2020 regional head election in the city during COVID-19 pandemic. Data were garnered through observation and documentation. The findings of this study informed that societies participated in the election with the belief that their interest are accommodated by political parties. Although the election was done during pandemic, the stakeholders carried out strict health protocol of COVID-19 in order to prevent the virus dissemination among societies. Based on the findings, this study suggest that the regional head election has an impact on the relationship between political parties at the regional level and the central level, in which, the central executive board always exercises hegemony towards regional party administrators in providing support recommendations for regional head candidates.

What’s good to eat? Moral economy of children’s food in Poland’s capital

The heightened tensions around what children eat, that occur in many places of the world, signify a changing moral economy of children’s food. Together with food, many emotions and sentiments, as well as judgements and expectations, circulate among people and institutions. Particular food products become valued as good or bad because they are consumed by children. Children, and their mothers, are considered to be proper people because they eat specific food. This article identifies two processes that shaped the moral economy of children’s food in Poland: a shift from an economy of shortage to an economy of abundance during post-socialism, and an emphasis on healthism and healthy food during post-EU-accession. These changes shaped institutional approaches to and discourses on food, as well as people’s food practices, amplifying emotions around and tensions between different hierarchies of food values. And through processes of individualization and responsibilization they placed particular pressure on mothers. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Warsaw in 2012-13, and revisits conducted in 2018-19, the article connects public debates and large-scale politics to family foodways, showing how moral economy of food is enacted through adults and children’ daily practices.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Transitivity Variation between Genders in Selected Public Political Speeches: A corpus-based Study

This is a critical discourse analysis of selected political speeches of some females’ and males’ politicians from different cultures i.e. European, American, African and Asian. Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Julia Gillard, Halimah Yacoub are the representatives for the female gender, while Donald Trump, Michael D Higgin, Cyril Ramaphosa and Antonio Guterres are the male’s representatives. The speeches are chosen according to two main themes to be precisely examined. The first is the theme of accepting the nomination and the second is the theme of women role and feminine issues in society. This study aims to spot the light over the different verbal choices variation between males and females’ standard political speeches. It aims to explain how those verbal choices signifies different aspects. The study also shows that although the selected speeches are political ones that uses the standard form of the language; there is still a variation that occurs due to the difference in gender. A lot of studies were done examining the political discourses of those politicians; however, this study is different from the other previous studies in the sense that it focuses on examining the verbal variation between genders using corpus linguistics and in the light of Halliday’s transitivity. Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, Transitivity, Gender Variation, Corpus Analysis

All Hail to the Archpriest: Confessional Conflict, Toleration, and the Politics of Publicity in Post-Reformation England, by Peter Lake and Michael Questier

All Hail to the Archpriest: Confessional Conflict, Toleration, and the Politics of Publicity in Post-Reformation England, by Peter Lake and Michael Questier

The Politics of Publishing: A National Conversation With Scholars Who Use Their Research About Black Women to Address Intersectionality

What does it mean to expand the epistemological terrain in education research to improve educational equity? This feature article attends to this question by opening a national conversation with education researchers who take up intersectionality in their study of Black women in higher education, specifically, the application of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality dimensions—structural, political, and representational. We surveyed the authors of 23 peer-reviewed research studies that engaged intersectionality across Crenshaw’s dimensions. Findings showed that the majority of the studies were published in journals with low-impact factors. Additionally, authors indicated that they experienced pushback in the publishing process, including having to justify their work to journal editors and responding to reviewers who did not value their work. Implications are discussed.

Re-pensar al sujeto en el campo de las ciencias cognitivas

En el presente artículo se despliega una revisión documental que tiene como objetivo fundamental, analizar la relevancia de las ciencias cognitivas en articulación con el ámbito educativo. En aras de reflexionar sobre la noción de sujeto, se determina importante revisar el discurso del neoliberalismo y su inscripción en el enigma de la subjetividad. Resignificar el factor de la experiencia humana implica sortear los desafíos de la visión biológica-reduccionista, para privilegiar la máxima del saber inconsciente. El recorrido hermenéutico de este documento retoma un andamiaje interdisciplinario, cuya base es representada por disciplinas como la filosofía, las neurociencias y el psicoanálisis. En tal sentido, se considera necesario efectuar un cambio de paradigma que pondere la historia y constitución subjetiva, en contraposición de prácticas que degradan la singularidad del ser humano. Priorizar la influencia del entorno social en la vida de los educandos, aunado a salvaguardar su desarrollo mental, físico y psicológico, se perfila como un requisito clave para sostener un funcionamiento idóneo del sistema nervioso y construcción del psiquismo. Es imperativo extender el avance de las ciencias a los auspicios de las políticas públicas, vincular el conocimiento neurocientífico y condición subjetiva a los espacios de formación docente, supone un ejercicio de profilaxis educativa.

Una mirada interpretativa y constitucional de los derechos sociales: la reducción de las pensiones jubilares

This article analyzes the problematic of the reduction of the retirement pensions from the critical constitutional perspective of the democratic and guarantee-based State, which includes reasonable dialogical interpretations that possess the main objective to reassure the retirees the real satisfaction of their rights within the bureaucratic and judicial apparatus, which must be specified in the practice. On the contrary, this brings a regressivity on the normative and the jurisprudential activity. For that, this investigation is developed in three different sections. The first two sections, acknowledged from the theory and the practice of social rights, social security and retirement as an object of knowledge and reflexive coherence. For that, the following methods will be usage: the hermeneutic interpretative method and hermeneutic logical method. The third performs a systematic theoretical analysis of the problem of the decreasing element of the pensions, from which can be inferred that any regressive measure of this rights requires a reasonable justification; otherwise, it is constitutionally objectionable. In conclusion, the correct functioning and operation of the institutions through progressive lectures of the norms,principles and public politics that are pro of social rights, legitimate the general well-being lecture of society.

Peter Lake and Michael Questier. All Hail to the Archpriest: Confessional Conflict, Toleration, and the Politics of Publicity in Post-Reformation England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. 336. $47.95 (cloth).

Peter Lake and Michael Questier. All Hail to the Archpriest: Confessional Conflict, Toleration, and the Politics of Publicity in Post-Reformation England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. 336. $47.95 (cloth). - Volume 60 Issue 1

Gender ideology and gendered political dynamics shaping electoral fortunes of women politicians in Kerala, India

This paper analyses the 2019 general elections and the by-elections that followed in the state of Kerala, India, to discern the changing gender dynamics that produced certain kinds of ‘desirability’ and ‘approval’ around the candidature of women politicians. By tracing the historical trajectory of women's engagement in public politics in the state, this paper attempts to identify the coordinates of evolving gender dynamics that decidedly shape women's political representation. It identifies three specific frameworks such as ‘honorary masculinity, ‘‘relaxed honorary masculinity,’ and ‘welfarist feminine altruism’ in and through which three generations of women politicians entered into public politics and carved out their niches. However, what is striking is that the framework of ‘welfarist feminine altruism’, originated at the local level during the mid-1990s in the context of decentralisation, is getting extended to the state level. It incorporated specific markers of ‘desirability’ that accommodates the current caste and religious identity politics. This has led to effectively push women politicians further towards the margins of mainstream politics. The study thus raises the question of intersectionality in women's political leadership, which is relevant to the contemporary analysis of women's political representation.

"Sexuality and Public Politics": Temporality of the #MeToo Movement in Contemporary South Korea

"Sexuality and Public Politics": Temporality of the #MeToo Movement in Contemporary South Korea

Formation of digital competencies in the public policy sphere: the EU and Russia experience

Research background: Today information technologies occupy many spheres of human activity, including political government systems. The new digital reality requires a revision of the political and economic science methodology and a transition to a new paradigm that meets the challenges of information globalization. Purpose of the article: The article is devoted to the study of the European and Russian experience in teaching digital skills to citizens and civil servants. The need to improve existing digital competencies in the context of widespread digitalization is determined. Methods: The main research method is a comparative analysis of the European and Russian approaches to the digital competencies formation in the sphere of public administration and politics, emerging and transforming under the influence of widespread globalization and digitalization. Particular attention is paid to state strategies, programs and projects aimed at digital development and modernization of all areas of society. Findings & Value added: On the basis of the study, the authors formulated the European and Russian models of teaching digital competencies, focusing on the sphere of public administration and politics, highlighted the disadvantages of the Russian model and the advantages of the European approach, and also offered recommendations on the prospects for the spread of European practice in Russian conditions.

Behavioural aspects of decision-making and its application in Poland illustrated by the example of the public institutions

Abstract: The development of behavioural economics influenced significantly the progress of studies related to decision making. The acquis of behavioural economics could be used in the public sector worldwide and they are applied more commonly in public politics. In practice, as its proved globally, the cosmetic changes supported by the behavioural knowledge help administration work efficiently without making big reforms, financial or organizational costs. Those changes go together with the knowledge development of behavioural economics and thanks to the growing number of studies related to the exploitation of behavioural techniques in the public institutions around the world. The same situation is observed in the public institutions in Poland where the behavioural techniques are being applied. The article shows how the subject related knowledge is practiced in Polish public sector basing on The Polish Economic Institute’s report "Simpler, cheaper and more effective, in other words, how behavioural economics supports public policies in Poland". This report is an introduction to studies in this area. It shows that some behavioural techniques are used more often while others are rarely applied in Polish public sector. The article analyzes why the behavioural techniques in Poland are still rarely applied. It proposes solutions which could help to create the strategic behavioural public policy, following the example of other countries, first of all the necessity of strict cooperation of the Polish public sector with behavioural economics study experts and centers located in Poland and abroad. It would allow to know better new methodological approaches of behavioural public sector in the world to design and test interventions in Poland.

ПОЛИТИКО-ПСИХОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ АНАЛИЗ ЛИЧНОСТНОГО ПОТЕНЦИАЛА МОЛОДЫХ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКИХ ЛИДЕРОВ РОССИЙСКИХ ПАРЛАМЕНТСКИХ ПАРТИЙ

The article presents a systematic analysis the personal potential of young political leaders of contemporary Russian parties, which has been studied in recent years by an Associate Professor of the Department of Public Relations, Tourism and Hospitality of the Faculty of History, Political Sci- ence and Law of Russian State University for the Humanities. The research were was carried out according to political and psychological methods of a verbal and projective type, supplemented by training of public self-presenta- tion of young representatives of parliamentary parties among their potential voters. As part of the study, a political and psychological profile of each potential young party leader was compiled, highlighting their value orientations and readiness to work in public politics. The article reveals the basic motives contributing to choosing the politics by young people as a professional sphere for the formation of their own personality. Also, the values orientations of young party leaders are compared with their political self-identification. Fol- lowing the results of the research works, the author of the article concludes that the existing leadership potential of young representatives of Russian parliamentary parties is not always manifested in the public practice and requires serious adjustments in terms of training in specific communication techniques, and coming into politics is determined by the desire for personal self-realization.