Political Project Research Articles

Digital diplomacy against international stigmatization: the Bukele case

Abstract The article addresses the diversity of digital diplomatic strategies used by governmental actors to fight international stigmatization. Faced with structural limitations, the leaders of small states use it to defend their political project's image or reputation when they come under international criticism for deviating from or transgressing international norms. Borrowing from Erving Goffman, I draw on the idea that social networks can be conceptualized as orders of interaction, in which digital diplomatic strategies can be put in place and international politicization and normative debates can develop. An examination of Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele's Twitter posts from January 2019 to May 2022, during a period of increasing international criticism regarding the authoritarian–populist drift in El Salvador, improves our knowledge of the diversity of digital diplomatic strategies. Consequently, this enlightens us on the constitutive elements of how small states manage their relationship with external actors, their image and status, and eventually how they challenge the international order, international norms and powers.

‘Seizing the Moment’: Arab-Israeli normalization, infrastructure as a means to bypass politics and the promotion of an Israeli-Jordanian transit trade-route

ABSTRACT This article explores efforts at Arab-Israeli normalisation in Jordan. By mid-2011 the escalating violence in Syria had closed the overland trade route connecting Europe and the Arab Gulf. Despite the emergence of an alternative route via the Suez Canal, several (inter)national NGOs have since attempted to establish a transit trade route via Israel and Jordan. Due to the non-public nature of most attempts at normalisation, research on the topic is rarely empirically grounded. Exploring what happens when trade routes stop, this article offers an empirically-grounded discussion of attempts at normalisation via infrastructure as a means to bypass politics. It argues that such efforts are part of a deeply political project aimed at the selective regional integration of Israel, premised on the reinforcement of existing and the creation of new forms of violent containment. It explains infrastructure’s popularity in efforts at normalisation by focusing on its spatial, temporal and material duality.

School Policies and Primary School Architecture in the City of Annaba (ex Bône), Algeria, 1830–1962

This study investigates the history of the French colonial architecture of schools in the city of Annaba (ex Bône) in Algeria by spotlighting the buildings and their characteristics to identify the links between educational colonial policies, primary school architecture, and the context of their creation. This historical perspective enhances our understanding regarding the evolution of the architecture of Bône primary schools. Although the construction of public infrastructure at that time followed the movement of building Algerian cities to occidental standards, the issue of education and the construction of primary schools was extremely political, since French public instruction in Algeria was an integral part of the political project of colonial conquest. Primary school was a powerful tool of moral conquest; it began with a civilising mission then shifted to assimilation and integration. The evolution of the production of primary schools testifies to the seal of the various colonial educational policies, laws, and successive reforms that spread over this period, which influenced the school and its architecture.

Monsters, catastrophes and epistemic violence in the Anthropocene. For a postcolonial feminist understanding and political project

My critique of the Anthropocene explores European and Western imaginaries of natural disaster, mass migration and terrorism through a postcolonial inquiry into modern conceptions of monstrosity and catastrophe. Established monstrous icons in popular visual culture and news media help trace the genealogy of modern fears of human/environmental catastrophe. Widely investigated in many fields, including art, literature, philosophy, history, cultural studies, and feminist and queer studies, monstrification in my analysis coincides with a historically produced discursive process that may reveal the relationship between the violence of the Anthropocene and its legitimation across time and space. Yet my inquiry does not stop at unveiling the inherent violence of the Anthropocene but goes on to propose a feminist, post-developmental and ecologist epistemology and a political project that embraces a new conception of the political.

Designing in the times of AI: Co-Creation as a Strategy Towards Emergent Learning Design

This paper explores co-creation as a strategy for emergent learning design in developing a new postgraduate diploma in blended and online learning (BOLD) at a large South African university. In this conceptual paper, grounded both in theory and critical collaborative autoethnography, we examine how co-creation functions as an epistemological, ontological, and political project in learning design. The “Designing with AI" design process illustrates the complexities and uncertainties inherent in emergent learning design. Our reflections reveal that co-creation challenges traditional notions of expertise disrupts established roles and processes, and addresses issues of social justice and equity in education. We propose a set of principles for co-creation in emergent learning design, including the affirmation of multiple knowledges, embracing entangled processes, and recognising the importance of affect and power dynamics. The paper highlights the potential of co-creation to navigate the uncertainties of rapidly evolving fields like AI in education while acknowledging the challenges and tensions inherent in this approach. We argue that co-creation when applied thoughtfully, can lead to more flexible, inclusive, and responsive learning designs. However, we also recognise that institutional contexts and individual positionalities within higher education may influence the ability to engage in such emergent practices.

Քաղաքակրթական քաղաքական նախագիծը որպես ընդարձակված օրակարգով անվտանգության ապահովման հիմք / The civilizational political project as a foundation for ensuring security with an expanded agenda

The article examines the layering of perceptions of the concept of “civilizational political project” by way of an interdisciplinary method. This gave the opportunity to recommend an approach implying that in order to prevent the mechanical modernization, characterized by indefiniteness and turbulence in reality, it is necessary to base strategic security management on the principles of the “scientific-analytical” paradigm. Justifications for the inappropriateness of conducting analysis using the “cut-and-try” method make it possible to put forward the hypothesis that in conditions of global turbulence, the security of the “nation–state–society–individual” chain is vulnerable if cooperation with centers of power does not anchor on the natural modernization of the civilizational political project. Ethnic cleansing, forced deportations, accompanied by genocidal policies, and violent acts of a different nature that “metropolitan states” commit against the populations of a number of unrecognized states, give proof of the above said. The authors believe that in the modern world, working out models for the strategic development of the defense capability of states, and creating game theory based scenarios for their political development, should be done by considering the civilizational political project as a foundation for ensuring security. Hence, the model for the strategic development of a “smart state, smart society, a citizen endowed with political, civil and national identity” can be presented as a result of the application of “scientific and analytical” paradigm. Consequently, this model with its structural layering ensures the modernization of military-political, geopolitical, socio-cultural and human resources of the civiliza­tional political project. In case this idea be implemented in relation with the Republic of Armenia, we can assume that it is only owing to strategic thinking will be possible to develop guidelines for ensuring security with an increased level of consolidation and viability of the Armenian civilization and state. Only in such a setting it will be attainable to ensure the competitiveness of the Armenian civilizational “I” by way of creating cyber troops in order to successfully counteract in cyber wars, which are the main component of modern hybrid warfare. At the same time, in order to manage the high development level of Armenia’s competitive capabilities in the future, in view of the civilizational political project as the foundation for an expanded security agenda, it is necessary to reflect in this project the threats of the past, the challenges of the present, and the vision of the future.

Mary Astell's Female Retirement: Feminist Pedagogy and Politics in A Serious Proposal to the Ladies

AbstractMary Astell's female retreat is a political project, dedicated to the full self-realization of students in a world that diminishes them and thwarts the development of their potential. Newly analyzing the pedagogical tools and distinctive setting of her seminary, I reveal its most progressive promise. In this political reading of A Serious Proposal, Astell emerges as an early figure in the broad political tradition of female resistance to patriarchal domination. She enables a subordinated group of women to arrive at new and oppositional ways of understanding themselves, each other, and even the world, and to act for change. The methods and tactics she employs in her retreat bring to light some surprisingly democratic and feminist dimensions of Mary Astell.

Славянская идея и ее формы в публицистике представителей Русского Зарубежья в 1920-е гг.

Introduction. The article studies the reflections on the Slavic idea in Russian émigré political journalism in the 1920s. Materials and Methods. The source base for the article are the journalistic works of a number of representatives of various ideological and political movements of the Russian postrevolutionary emigration: A.S. Izgoev, P.B. Struve, P.N. Milyukov, N.A. Firks, E.V. Spectorsky, A.L. Pogodin, V.I. Lebedev. Analysis. The author examines the features of views among different trends of Russian socio-political thought on the Slavic world and interSlavic relations in the new political conditions that formed after the First World War. In particular, the results of the war included the subsequent processes of national-political reorganization of CentralEastern and South-Eastern Europe, as well as the revolutions that took place in Russia (1917) and Austria-Hungary (1918). These events and processes facilitated the reconsideration of previously established views on the Slavic idea, as well as the prospects for its application in political projects in the region. Results. The discussions about the Slavic idea that arose in the Russian émigré environment touched upon important issues: the future of the Slavic world, the place and role of Russia among the Slavs, the Bolshevik factor and Slavism, the correlation between the forms of the Slavic idea and the national political projects of the young multi-ethnic states, primarily Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes / Yugoslavia.

Архетипы в иудейском образе будущего Ф. Полака

This article is devoted to the analysis of the Judaic image of the future by F.Polak and the identification of archetypes in it that reflect collective ideas and influence on the formation of subsequent images of the future. The discovery of these archetypes provides a new opportunity to reconsider the «spiritual primordial forms» of collective thinking in the light of modern social and political projects.

Национальная политика и обеспечение этнобезопасности Российской Федерации

The paper presents a vision of the problem of the relationship between state national policy and ethnosecurity based on the instrumentalist approach. The aim of the study is to analyze the ethnic aspects of public security in its systemic content and political interpretation using the example of modern Russia. At the same time, national policy is considered as a combination of nationbuilding as a political project and ethnopolitics as a concept of ethnocultural equality of all peoples of Russia. In turn, ethnosecurity is defined as a systemic characteristic of the ability of a multi-ethnic society to maintain its normal functioning in the face of external and internal influences. According to the authors, in order to successfully achieve ethnosecurity, it is necessary to adopt formalized methodologies and techniques for building a political security model that would include a range of conditions and requirements necessary for the functioning of the Russian ethnosystem and having a significant impact on it, that is, being significant. The paper presents specific directions and recommendations for improving the state national policy in modern Russia to achieve and maintain systemically significant parameters of its ethnosecurity. The focus is on the risks and threats posed by migration impact on the conditions for maintaining ethnic security in modern Russia.

Racing Religion in the Palestine-Israel Discourse

Race is a Western political project. Religious freedom is a Christian political project. The linkages between the two enabled European nations and their settlers across the globe to condemn natives, slaves, and non-European immigrants to inferior status, and in turn legalize control of their lands and bodies.1 The consequent race-religion systems of power and privilege, which inform Rabiat Akande's thesis, offer valuable insights into the racialized boundaries of contemporary Palestine-Israel discourse in the United States.2 Specifically, the racialization of Muslims and Arabs as terrorism supporters and presumptively anti-Semitic subjects them to censorship, harassment, and discrimination when they advocate for the human rights of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. This essay argues that infringements on Muslims and Arabs’ dissenting speech and political activism is another way in which the racialization of religion produces a mutually constitutive form of discrimination.

СДЕРЖКИ БЕЗ ПРОТИВОВЕСОВ: ИДЕЯ «СМЕШЕНИЯ МОНАРХИИ И ДЕМОКРАТИИ» В «РИМСКОЙ ИСТОРИИ» КАССИЯ ДИОНА

In the third century AD, the historian Cassius Dio Cocceianus, in his "Roman History," proposes a blueprint for an ideal political constitution: the state that combines monarchy and democracy. Book 56 characterizes such regime as "a mixture of monarchy and democracy." Modern authors may draw an analogy with the concept of plebiscitary democracy. This paper, however, is aimed at preventing such analogies as despite the external similarities, the institutional content of the two models is different. The paper reveals the functions of the monarch, the people, and the Senate in the mixed constitution of Cassius Dio in two aspects: how they were intended to be presented to the addressees of the project, and the actual set of powers of each institution. The political project is examined in the context of Dio's ideas on the worst situations in politics such as civil war and 'dunasteia'. The author compares Cassius Dion's mixed constitution with the Caesarist model. The results show that while modern plebiscitary regimes involve two parts of the system - the elected ruler and the acclamating people - Dio's model consists essentially of three elements: the monarch, the people, and the Senate.

The Apollo-Soyuz Experimental Flight as a Political, Scientific and Technical Detente Project (On Materials from Russian Archives)

The Détente Era — as political defusing of international tensions in the 1960s and 1970s — represents an interesting period in World History. The study of this era has a special appeal in connection with the experience of positive political, scientific and technical interaction between two superpowers: the USSR and the United States, — an experience that lacks at present days. One of the brightest symbols of the Détente was the joint Soviet-American space experimental program “Apollo-Soyuz Test Project” (ASTP), within the framework of which joint docking of spacecraft in orbital space was carried out. Based on documents from the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History and other published sources, including American ones, the article examines the history of the ASTP program as an important element of cooperation between superpowers in space during the years of detente. Special attention is paid to the factors that led to the beginning of cooperation, as well as the reasons why the docking of Soyuz and Apollo was not followed by projects comparable in scale and brightness. The authors come to two key conclusions. Firstly, the ASTP program, which arose as a purely scientific and technical project arising from the urgent tasks of developing manned space exploration, was inscribed in 1972 into the general agenda of bilateral relations between Moscow and Washington and became a politically significant project for both sides, the value of which was not directly related to its scientific and technical content. Secondly, the history of the ASTP clearly reflected the specifics of bilateral relations in the context of detente — both sides sought cooperation, but at the same time had clear limits of permissible actions and concessions, for which they did not go over.

¿Son los libros de Alfonso X obras utópicas

This paper addresses the question of the utopian character of the book, of Alfonso X’s action and of his political and cultural project. To try to establish whether the works of this king can be considered utopian, three aspects will be analysed: the actual creation of the codices, as the embodiment of a reform project; the unfinished nature of this project, which seems to ascribe the utopian to the unrealisable; and the shift of the utopia from the work itself to its maker, the king

Особенности репрезентации понятийного поля «Глобализация» в англоязычной политической риторике 2000-х годов

The article examines a problem of the conceptual framework for Globalization in English-language public political discourse in the early 2000s. This framework correlates with different phases of Globalization as a political and economic project. The study identifes strategies for representing the conceptual framework in public political discourse based on typical Anglo-American rhetorical style and it takes into account current geopolitical situation and psychology of the target audience for American politicians at the beginning of the 21st century. It is worth mentioning that globalization, grounded by the theory of neoliberal economic development, was the process where economic interests of Anglo-Saxon elite intersected with political ones, claiming to build a new model of the world order. In the context of rapid and growing changes in public consciousness and the political situation, certain strategies were developed to influence public opinion all around the world and make people believe that Globalization is a purposeful process that brings clear and confdent leadership against the background of general instability and chaotic changes. The purpose of the study is to identify the specifc features of the conceptual framework for Globalization in the lexical system of the English language that resulted from a new type of social construct having been developed, followed by modifcation in discursive practice of political communication. Thus the paper goes into the mechanisms of how social experience changes being informationally assimilated through linguistic signs, as well as the way the information received through cognitive activity communication is modifed. Conclusions are drawn regarding the world picture being reflected in Anglo-Saxon political communication. In particular, it is noted that typical Anglo-Saxon political discourse in the early 2000s was replenished with new concepts of global studies, processed in accordance with the desire of the elite to lead at the cross-border level, to remove class conflicts from view, and to turn the world development towards the interests of invisible capital travelling without barriers.

Compreensões da história e da docência em narrativas de professores capixabas durante a ditadura militar (1964-1985)

The article analyzes understandings of history and teaching that permeated the experiences narrated by teachers who taught History during the Military Dictatorship (1964-1985). Seven teachers who worked in public schools in Espírito Santo participated in the study. Based on Bloch (2001) and Ginzburg (2002, 2007), the analysis reveals that changes stemming from the political and educational project of the period had an impact on the professional practice of the teachers, such as the increase in the number of students, low salaries, little pedagogical guidance, unsatisfactory student performance, and control over their practices.

ВИБОРИ ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКОГО ПАРЛАМЕНТУ 2024 РОКУ: ІСТОРИЧНІ ТЕНДЕНЦІЇ ТА ДИСПОЗИЦІЯ ПОЛІТИЧНИХ СИЛ

The article is devoted to the analysis of the results of the 2024 European Parliament elections. The research methods correspond to the research task. This is a comparative method (provided an analysis of the positions of various political forces), a chronological method (made it possible to highlight the historical dynamics of the European Parliament elections in the first quarter of the 21st century), a statistical method (contributed to the demonstration of the dynamics of the results of the leading political forces that received representation in the Parliament). The scientific novelty of the study is determined by the analysis of the competition trends of liberal-conservative political forces, European skeptical political subjects, left and right populists. The result of the European Parliament elections showed a relative weakening of the centrist political forces. Conclusions. Populist diseases of liberal democracies are actively used by autocracies to discredit the democratic experience of political life. The process of development of European integration has reached a strategic dilemma. The first scenario of the development of events concerns the synchronous continuation of the qualitative filling of integration (the development of joint policies in the field of migration, the common market, the strengthening of the Monetary Union) and the expansion of the European Union to the Western Balkans, Moldova, and Ukraine. An alternative scenario of the evolution of the European Union concerns the rejection of the rapid accession of the candidate countries, the introduction of stricter migration policy rules. The European Union remains a liberal political project. The political strengthening of European skeptics is due to the slowdown in the development of the leading economies of the EU member states and means the intensification of political competition. The European Parliament of the 2024-2029 convocation is the arena of such a political struggle, which determines the medium-term prospects of the European integration process.

Fairy Tales in Service of Political Projects: "Hansel and Gretel" in Changing Political Regimes

Fairy Tales in Service of Political Projects: "Hansel and Gretel" in Changing Political Regimes

Antigos marcadores sociais, novas abordagens políticas

The themes of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and religion, often referred to as identity issues, emerged in the public debate of Western countries in the second half of the 20th century; since then, they have been surrounded by controversy. This emergence is the result of the collective action of social movements that invested in dialogue (not always peaceful) with the State in search of a resolution to their demands for recognition and for social and political rights. Thus, second-wave feminist movements were successful in redefining the relationship between the public and private spheres, denouncing that the relationships produced in the private sphere had strong contours of a political project. In turn, civil rights movements presented forms of pressure to combat racial inequalities and to create fair legislation. The LGBTQIAP+ movements gained visibility from the 1980s onwards in the context of the fight for social rights and respect for expressions of sexuality. However, this emergence in a political debate in the second half of the 20th century led one to believe that they were recent issues. In fact, they are historical social markers and fundamental for understanding social relations. Furthermore, as defended by counter-hegemonic perspectives such as intersectional studies, postcolonial and decolonial analyses, these are not merely themes, but rather organizing elements of the world. They objectively configure social relations by establishing hierarchies of power, domination and prestige; and, in the same way, they organize work, education and other elements of quality of life, defining access and exclusion. Thus, it is not possible to read the world without considering them.

«Европейская комиссия сейчас подобна ЦК КПСС». Беседа с журналом «Логос»

In his conversation with the editors of Logos about the key plots and the context of the book Endgame Europe. Why the Europe Political Project Has Failed and How Can We Dream of It Again (2022) its co-author, Hauke Ritz, emphasizes that it was induced by a reflection on the reasons of the European Union project’s failure at the time of the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Maastricht Treaty. This failure has both an internal political — the failure of democracy and republicanism in the internal structures of the EU, and a foreign dimension — the deterioration of relations between Germany (Europe), the West and Russia and, of course, the conflict in Ukraine. Moreover, the internal political failure in the implementation of the European peace project, largely associated with the choice of an extensive path of its development (EU enlargement, coupled with NATO expansion to the east) at the expense of intensity (deepening political integration) leads to deep foreign policy complications and is aggravated by them. The fact that the EU project, which has not made progress in its domestic political (democratic and republican) content and is artificially limited through the exclusion of Russia from the European world and the common security architecture, has turned out to be instrumentalized, along with support for the US position on Ukraine, according to Ritz, constitutes a betrayal of Europe. The problem is compounded by the disregard of the university community and the mainstream media for this catastrophic state of affairs. However, new, alternative media are emerging and gaining popularity all over Europe, critically and responsibly exploring these topics and contributing to the formation of reflective European solidarity.