Regional Political Culture Research Articles

Проблема типологизации региональной политической культуры национальных субъектов Российской Федерации

The article considers political culture of the national regions in Russia as part of the all-Russian political culture. The authors examine existing typologies of political culture as a scientific tool for the study of national regions. The goal is to identify typologies applicable to the analysis of regional political culture and capable of explaining the dynamics of the national regions’ development. The methods used are systematic, comparative, and typological approach, G. Almond and S. Verba’s explanatory scientific paradigm of the political culture. The parochial-subject type of political culture, which combines clan values with passive political participation, reflects the modern socio-political reality in national regions. The political culture of national regions develops based on the peculiarities of Russian statehood. Among the modern political culture typologies, most suitable for the study of national regions are G. Almond and S. Verba’s parochial-subject type of political culture as well as W. Rosenbaum’s integrated political culture type.

Partisan polarization, historical heritage, and public health: Exploring COVID-19 outcomes.

When the COVID‐19 virus first arrived in the United States in early 2020, many epidemiologists and public health officers counseled for shutdowns and advised policymakers to prepare for a major pandemic. In 2020, though, US society was rife with major political and cultural divides. Some elected leaders promoted policies at odds with the experts, and many people refused to heed the public health‐based communications about the coming pandemic. Additionally, the capacity to respond to a pandemic was distributed in the country in a highly unequal fashion. This paper analyzes the noteworthy geopolitical patterns of COVID‐19 illnesses, subsequent demands on hospitals, and resulting deaths. This description is based on a snapshot of archival data gathered in the midst of the pandemic during late January and early February of 2021. Demographic data, indicators of political party support, indicators of citizen attitudes, and public health compliance behaviors are combined in a multivariate analysis to explain COVID‐19 outcomes at the local government (county) level. The analysis suggests strongly that regional political culture and local demographics played a substantial role in determining the severity of the public health impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic.

Deportacja w pamięci historycznej i praktykach kommemoracyjnych Karaczajów

This article deals with the problem of the collective memory of the Deportation of the Karachays. The repressions carried out by the Soviets in 1943 left a deep mark on the people’s consciousness. This study focuses on several aspects of popular beliefs about the deportation and its consequences.The author considers the main reasons for the eviction that have remained in the national memory. It is noted that they continue to have a certain influence not only on the regional political culture, the system of interethnic relations, but also on the organisation and conduct of research into the history of the Karachays during World War II. This article also describes the evolution of the ideological and practical approaches of the regional authorities to the coverage and interpretation of this problem after the repatriation of the Karachays. It also deals with the established forms of national memorial practices that help preserve the collective memory of the deportation, the time spent in places of settlement and repatriation.

Literature and the Culture of Elections and Electioneering in Eighteenth-Century England

Abstract The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed the rise of contested elections as an important aspect of political life, and an outpouring of literary texts concerned to represent, and intervene in, the electoral process. This article recovers this rich, wide-ranging, and ideologically diverse genre, and argues that, interacting and overlapping with other forms, literature both reflected and helped to shape electoral culture. Popular literary varieties (from ballad opera to mock-heroic verse) were reworked to serve topical electoral purposes. This literature contributed to the culture of elections, making available particular, generically shaped representations and potentially increasing forms of electoral participation and partisanship. Like election rituals and other forms, literary texts encouraged engagement with elections among voters and non-voters. Indeed, through their formal qualities and modes of dissemination, literary texts could have pronounced power to engage varied audiences, and fuel a culture of contested elections, even when many seats were not contested and many could not vote. The election miscellany highlights links between election literature and regional printing, political, and literary cultures, and the growth of a market for this writing. At the same time, the authorship of election literature afforded diverse individuals a form of political expression and participation. Furthermore, the article considers the significance of the divergent, generically inflected views of candidates, elections, and the electoral activity of particular groups such literature advanced—for wider political culture, as well as specific elections. It proposes that texts from rousing ballads to vividly critical satires energized the divisions key to adversarial electoral culture, and could play into different calls for ‘reform’.

Political culture and ducal authority in Aquitaine, c. 900–1040

AbstractThe development of ducal authority in tenth‐century Aquitaine was a major change in the region's political culture. The emergence of a regional, aristocratic polity was a shift from the Carolingian past, and historians have proffered several explanations for it. This article examines several models for the development of principalities: as the expressions, however compromised, of ethnic separatism; as the evolved forms of ninth‐century administrative structures; and as aristocratic power constellations no different from any other. It traces the history of Aquitaine from the first duke, William the Pious, in the early tenth century, to the Poitevin dukes of the mid‐eleventh century. The post‐Carolingian duchy of Aquitaine, it is argued, is best understood not as an ethnic or an institutional formative, but as the distinctive expression of a changing regional political culture.

Where can cycling lift the common good? Regional political culture and fossil capitalism play a role

This article contributes to the study of critical vélomobilities by exploring an understudied aspect of cycling justice, namely the political and cultural contexts that support cycling as a common good. The common good refers to the advancement of collective rather than individual interests. I analyze whether or not Canadians support cycling as a common good, drawing on a survey conducted by Angus Reid in 2018. My analysis focuses on whether such moral support for cycling varies by region in Canada and the possible role played by the country's deeply regionalized political cultures. These cultures, rooted in diverging histories, competing ideologies and conflicting relations with fossil fuels, may shape this moral support alongside other factors which I control for and explore, such as gender and social class. The article concludes that, beyond the effects of these other factors, divisions between eastern and western political cultures in Canada form a salient context for cycling justice and the assembly of cycling as a common good.

Trends of Russian political regional studies’ development as a scientific branch in 2010-s

The article is devoted to clarifying the latest trends in the development of political regionalism as a direction of political science in modern Russia. The author argues that there is no direct correspondence between political regionalism in Russia and “regional science”, as well as “area studies” in Western countries, pointing out the reasons for these differences in scientific traditions. The main attention in the article is paid to the definition of the category “political region” and the substantiation of the author’s interpretation of the structure of political regionalism as a scientific direction. Given that the previous stages of development of political-regional studies have already become the subject of reflection, the author has focused on changes in priorities and conclusions of the work of the 2010s. It confirms the lack of integration between such scientific areas as the study of federalism and other territorial-political systems; center-regional political relations; regional policy as a strategy for territorial development; regional political systems and regimes; regional political elites and interest groups; political parties and public (ethnic, religious, other) organizations; regional political cultures and identities; subnational political processes and conflicts. At the same time, the improvement of methodologies and methods for analyzing the political reality of the regions has been established. The interaction between geopolitical, political-geographic and political-regional research was intensified. A comparative analysis of Russian and foreign regional actors, institutions and processes are becoming productive. The influence of the confrontation between the West and Russia on the subject of political and regional research is noted: an increase in the number of works on transnational integration, modern empires and new states.

Property rights in land and output growth in Russia

AbstractThis paper tests whether the implementation of a key market‐oriented reform in post‐Soviet Russia, property rights in land, proxied by the percent of privatized land by region, affected the pace of sub‐national economic growth during two unprecedented expansion periods: 2001–2008 and 2010–2014. Individuals gained the Constitutional right to own land in 1993, but implementation was stalled. The pace of land privatization can be explained by arguably exogenous factors such as distance to Moscow, as well as climate and also regional political culture, proxied by concentration of votes in the 2004 presidential election. We show that this rate of land privatization in Russia's regions was significantly associated with output growth in 2010–2014, confirming the policy importance of this measure for developing economies. Regions where private holdings expanded most rapidly with the enforcement of property rights in land, gained a competitive advantage in the growth process through increased investment in fixed assets and private consumption.

A Tale of Two Regionalisms: Improving the Measurement of Regionalism in Australia and Beyond

Brown A. J. and Deem J. A tale of two regionalisms: improving the measurement of regionalism in Australia and beyond, Regional Studies. Studies of regional identification are integral to the role of regionalism in political development, but how does one study regionalism when subnational political scales and regional political culture may be out of alignment? This question is tackled using Australia, a federation theorized as having possibly hit a regionalization ‘ceiling effect’, but which empirical study using a moderate relational approach shows to have not one regionalism but two within its political culture: formal ‘state-regionalism’ reflected in its federal system and a more organic ‘region-regionalism’ only thinly reflected in political structure, albeit apparently still consistent with federalism. Both are identified as politically salient and reflected in institutional preferences, but as also reinforcing debates that regionalization from a devolutionary perspective is far from complete, as manifested in citizen support for new regional government. The results better inform reform debates and provide departure points for research.

Practical vs. identity regionalism: Australia's APC initiative, a case study

On 4 June 2008 Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced his ‘vision for an Asia Pacific community’ (APC). Though failing to win support among Asian countries, the initiative offers a useful case study. This article does not focus on the motives and interests of the various governments responding to the proposal but rather on the different (and sometimes conflicting) understandings of regionalism that underpinned those responses. In its diplomatic advocacy of the APC, the Australian government stressed ‘practical regionalism’ – emphasizing the capacity of such a new ‘community’ to deal with security, economic, environmental and other challenges faced in recent times in the Asia-Pacific region. The Australian campaign gave little attention, however, to the influence of cognitive and emotive factors in community planning: it neglected ‘identity’ regionalism. In particular, it did not seem to take seriously the possible role of non-Western perspectives in shaping the development of post-colonial inter-state relations. Through the investigation of key Asian-language terms – relating to the English terms for ‘region’ and ‘community’ – this article seeks to demonstrate the importance of the identity dimension in both policy development and academic analysis. It argues for an analytic and diplomatic skillset that goes beyond the disciplines of international relations and economics and draws upon expertise in linguistics and regional political cultures.

El gasconismo: surgimiento de una cultura política regional

En el presente artículo se analiza una cultura política regional de izquierda: el gasconismo en Nayarit (en alusión a Alejandro Gascón Mercado, figura emblemática de la izquierda de este estado de México durante cerca de tres décadas). Esta cultura política se convirtió, gracias a la exitosa e influyente gestión del Partido Popular Socialista al mando del XXVI Ayuntamiento deTepic (1972-1975), en una matriz simbólica que alimentó la constitución de las identidades políticas de izquierda no sólo entre los miembros del partido político en que surgió, sino también entre amplias franjas de la población del municipio y del estado. Así, en un segundo momento del análisis, se estudiarán los componentes y las operaciones de la configuración identitaria a la que la cultura gasconista dio vida.

Chiefs, priests, and praise-singers: history, politics, and land ownership in northern Ghana

In his new book, the eminent anthropologist Wyatt MacGaffey provides an ethnographically enriched history of Dagbon from the fifteenth century to the present, setting that history in the context of the regional resources and political culture of Northern Ghana. Chiefs, Priests, and Praise-Singers shows how the history commonly assumed by scholars has been shaped by the prejudices of colonial anthropology, the needs of British indirect rule, and local political agency. The book demonstrates, too, how political agency has shaped the kinship system. MacGaffey traces the evolution of chieftaincy as the sources of power changed and as land ceased to be simply the living space of the dependents of a chief and became a commodity and a resource for development. The internal violence in Dagbon that has been a topic of national and international concern since 2002 is shown to be a product of the interwoven values of tradition, modern Ghanaian politics, modern education, and economic opportunism.

A Diversion from the New Leisure: Greyhound Racing, Working-Class Culture, and the Politics of Unemployment in Inter-war South Wales

This article examines the development of greyhound racing in inter-war South Wales and its relationship to the prevailing economic conditions of the coalfield, regional political culture and popular aspiration. Making use of recently recovered archival sources, company records and newspapers, it builds upon existing historical work and argues that greyhound racing gained popularity not only for its commercial novelty and the release it provided from day-to-day hardship but also because it created new jobs and brought new investment vital to economic recovery.

O projeto pastoral de Edir Macedo: uma igreja benevolente para indivíduos ambiciosos?

Neste artigo, discute-se a singularidade do projeto pastoral de Edir Macedo, líder da Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus. Esse projeto tem em vista um modelo de regulação social altamente sedutor em sociedades neoliberais com larga presença de economias informais. De um lado, o modelo supõe o desenvolvimento de uma instituição que divulga um discurso moral que refuta o individualismo "narcisista" e "corrupto", e oferece, como alternativa, rituais que promovem o empreendedor sacrificial, disciplinado e voltado para a família. De outro lado, supõe que a elite clerical ofereça acesso a "bens sociais" para a grande maioria dos freqüentadores. Nesse sentido, argumentam as autoras, a natureza autoritária da igreja é sustentada por uma expectativa de tutela por parte das populações. Apoiadas em dados coletados em Brasil, Portugal e Angola, as autoras ponderam sobre a relação entre ideal de responsabilidade social, cultura política regional e manutenção de um poder pastoral hierárquico e autoritário como o da Igreja Universal.

Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760-1900 (review)

Reviewed by: Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760-1900 Ismael M. Montana Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760-1900. By Kristin Mann. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. 488 pp. $55.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper); $46.75 (e-book). Urban space provides useful grounds for examining the dynamic interactions between the global, regional, and local processes over time and space. In the context of the Atlantic slave trade, research on port cities, maroon settlements, and the development of urban ghettos has inspired scholars to consider the repercussions of the Atlantic slave trade on North and South Atlantic settlements and cities. While many of these studies have revealed varying degrees of ramifications of the Atlantic commercial system and the African slave trade on the Americas, the relationship between the Atlantic slave trade and urbanization in West Africa has received comparatively very little attention. Kristin Mann's book Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760-1900 is a major contribution that addresses this gap through a study on the rise of Lagos and a critical assessment of its relationship with the long-term changes in the local and regional political economy and culture of the Atlantic world. Mann is primarily concerned with the transformation of Lagos as a tiny polity that sprang "from a crossroads of regional trade and the village capital of a small and comparatively insignificant kingdom into one of Africa's most important cities" (p. 2). Mann argues that during the mid nineteenth century, Lagos became one of the most important port cities north of the equator. It outpaced its sister cities such as Ouidah and other important port cities that thrived as a result of their involvement in the Atlantic slave trade in West and West Central Africa. According to Mann, factors contributing to Lagos's sudden rise to preeminence were its unique and lucrative commercial exchange and its linkages with the international commercial slaving empires, such as Brazil and Cuba. Yet, in seeking to unravel the full range of [End Page 857] multiple factors that influenced the rise and transformation of Lagos, Mann also stresses the importance of local political economy by highlighting Lagos's links with networks of lucrative regional trade opportunities. Thus in assessing how Lagos rose from a "small and marginal state on the crossroads of regional trade into a major commercial and political power on the coast connecting the interior with the Atlantic world" (p. 4), Mann is careful to avoid the paradigmatic interpretations that are common in several studies dealing with the Atlantic slave trade and underdevelopment theories in Africa. Instead, Mann considers how Lagos achieved unprecedented growth in the Bight of Biafra by considering the role of multiple factors within the framework of Lagos's interaction with the broader Atlantic world and the continuous developments brought by changes in the Atlantic commercial system after the banning of the slave trade in the early part of the nineteenth century. Mann also aptly shows that a key to Lagos's success lay within the structure of Lagos's oligarchy and political economy. Lagosian "bigmen," along with obas (the kings) and the new class of entrepreneurs, capitalized on the emergent cash crop revolution that followed the cessation of slave trading (p. 52). According to Mann, not only did Lagosians consciously position themselves to gain from the changing commercial dynamism in the Bight of the Biafra region following the banning of the slave trade and its replacement with the so-called "legitimate commerce," but they also redefined the terms of labor to adapt to economic and political changes by introducing cash cropping into the region. A major contribution of the study concerns the ramifications of the economic changes on the households and urban landscape of Lagos. In documenting the rapid growth of Lagos, Mann employs a "wealth-in-people" paradigm (p. 3) and explores how this growth coalesced with land, labor, and production processes. As settlements grew and expanded along the Bight of Biafra and its hinterland, economic growth culminated in the socioeconomic expansion of Lagosian households. Men took more wives to augment the productive capacity of their households, and prominent market women who...

The Politics of Soviet and Nazi Genocides in Orange Ukraine

This article examines policies and public attitudes concerning the issue of Soviet and Nazi genocides in Ukraine after the ‘Orange Revolution’. The central question is whether such factors as regional political culture affect contemporary policies and public attitudes towards these important historical issues. The article uses a 2008 survey conducted for this study by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology to analyse determinants of public attitudes concerning the question of whether Soviet and the Nazi policies were genocidal. It finds that regional political culture is the most significant factor affecting policies and attitudes towards the Soviet genocide in Ukraine.

Re-thinking Putnam in Italy: The role of beliefs about democracy in shaping civic culture and institutional performance

Robert Putnam is a key figure in the democratic decline debate that suggests declining political engagement represents a threat to democracy. His famous studies of the United States draw their intellectual framework from his Italian study Making Democracy Work. This paper returns to the Italian study and argues that Putnam mis-theorized the findings, and that a more cogent theoretical approach would have led him to identify different causal factors driving shifts in political culture. It proposes a re-theorization of his findings that re-interprets the Italian study. When these new conclusions are applied to the broader debate they suggest a different line of explanation for the changing patterns of civic engagement occurring across many Western countries. The paper argues that ideological debates about the nature of democracy affect citizen's political behaviour and lead to changes in democratic practice. In the Italian case, it argues that the variation in regional political cultures reflected different local beliefs about the nature of democracy. These beliefs were played out and re-made through ideological debates between political parties.

Cleft Countries: Regional Political Divisions and Cultures in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova, Ivan Katchanovski (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2006), 286 pp.+maps, illustrations.

Cleft Countries: Regional Political Divisions and Cultures in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova, Ivan Katchanovski (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2006), 286 pp.+maps, illustrations.

Cleft Countries: Regional Political Divisions and Cultures in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova. By Ivan Katchanovski. Foreword, Francis Fukuyama. Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, no. 33. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2006. 286 pp. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Figures. Tables. Maps. €29.90, paper.

Cleft Countries: Regional Political Divisions and Cultures in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova. By Ivan Katchanovski. Foreword, Francis Fukuyama. Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, no. 33. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2006. 286 pp. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Figures. Tables. Maps. €29.90, paper. - Volume 66 Issue 3

Social Identification versus Regionalism in Contemporary Ukraine

Because of the historic separation of western and eastern Ukraine under Polish and Russian spheres of influence, respectively, regional subpopulations have been seen as an important factor in Ukrainian politics. Arel and Wilson argue that the division on the all-important “Russian question” in Ukraine (relations with Russia and with the Russian-speaking minority) is increasingly regional: east and south versus the center and west. Hesli calculated the level of russification and industrialization in the various regions of Ukraine and concluded that both, together with geographic location, although interrelated, have their own bearing on variation in public opinion. Markus, however, has argued that despite economic, political and ethnic differences among Ukraine's regions, these differences pose less of a threat to reform than has sometimes been suggested. She further points out that speculation that the Donbass wants to unite with Russia “stems more from Russian claims to the area than from genuine indigenous sentiment.” Miller and colleagues, on the other hand, dispute the notion of regional differences independent of the socio-demographic characteristics of the local populations, challenging the conventional wisdom that there are regional political cultures that supersede any underlying demographic differences. They argue that national, political, economic and class identities represent the important cleavages in post-communist societies. The regional divide in Ukraine is thus not a foregone conclusion but a factor that bears closer examination.