Official Rhetoric Research Articles

Investigation of a post-mandate agreement above suspicion: the July 2018 MoU on readmission between Belgium and Tunisia

ABSTRACT In July 2018, Belgium and Tunisia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aimed at dealing with the expulsion of irregular migrants. The MoU would have been unnoticed had it not been stipulated after the Council granted the European Commission the exclusive mandate to negotiate a European Readmission Agreement (EURA) with Tunisia. This article examines the factors that have been conducive to the post-mandate conclusion of the bilateral MoU. Approaching informalization as a systemic and evolving process in European and international relations, this article makes four contributions. First, it questions the assumption that informal deals can be equated with a political act that is unimportant or legally non-binding. Second, the article argues that the July 2018 MoU is symptomatic of unprecedented deviations, at the EU level, that today consolidate the drive for informalization. Third, the analysis shows that the MoU has been, as it were, above suspicion, for its existence has been silently tolerated as a result of broader policy developments that normalize the use of informal instruments, especially in the EU–Africa context. Fourth, beyond the official rhetoric about flexibility and informalization, the case study reveals the limits of international cooperation on readmission.

‘We are at war’: securitisation, legitimation and COVID-19 pandemic politics in France

ABSTRACT This article makes a case for studying the legitimation of emergency politics from the vantage point of securitisation. To that end, it zooms in on politics during the COVID-19 pandemic – a many-sided crisis that generated a heightened insecurity environment. Based on a qualitative content analysis of the French official rhetoric on two COVID-19 emergency measures, it foregrounds how securitising speech acts construing a macro threat and notable shifts in hierarchical ordering of securitisations underpinned justifications for COVID-19 pandemic politics. Conceptually, this research bridges the literature on legitimation and securitisation by synthesising scattered securitising elements in typologies of legitimation and outlining the legitimating function of two securitisation dynamics – macrosecuritisation and securitising dilemma.

Introduction: The Cultures Of Global Post/Socialisms

ABSTRACT The introduction to this special issue outlines comparative approaches to cultural representations of post/socialism in order to move beyond the term’s association with the Soviet Union, the unevenly aligned or nonaligned nations in Central/Eastern Europe (CEE), and the period between 1917 and 1990. The histories and afterlives of state socialisms, and socialist globalization in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, are at the center of ongoing geopolitical realignments toward a multipolar world. The introduction explores the framing of these shifts as a “new Cold War” between the West and the nations of China and Russia, whose autocratic regimes are associated with remnants of totalitarian state socialism. Like the official rhetoric of many postsocialist nations, these discourses dismiss the far more diverse and progressive legacies of socialism. The introduction inserts cultural representations of Left Internationalism, the Non-Aligned Movement, socialist reformism, and committed art into the fields of comparative literature and media studies to contribute to theories of ongoing transformations and to provide alternative imaginaries for more equitable futures.

Naming the war: Russian aggression in Ukrainian official discourse and mass culture

ABSTRACT This article discusses the representation of Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, beginning in February 2022, in Ukrainian official discourse, media, and mass culture. A new stage in the war with Russia that has been ongoing since 2014, the invasion prompted a search for a new political and cultural vocabulary. If the Ukrainian state at first tended to use familiar Soviet models, mass culture responded with powerful memes, slogans, and images that mobilized the public in defence of Ukraine. The Zelens′kyi administration soon recognized the importance of modern mass culture and switched to borrowing successful symbols from it. In some cases, state institutions put potentially popular materials on social media to see whether they would work well and then re-appropriated them once they entered popular culture. Ultimately, it has been the test of popular culture that has determined the success or failure of official rhetoric.

SPORT AS AN OBJECT AND SUBJECT OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN MODERN RUSSIA

Recently, Russia has been showing increased attention to sports as a political tool. The country is striving to obtain the status of a ‘sports power’, hosting the most prestigious world-class competitions. The political impact on sports’ progress remains significant, as politics evidently "absorbs" traditional athletic habitat, using sport occasions as an instrument of influence. The significance of sports in political communication is becoming wider. A situation arises in which sport ceases to act as a sole object of politics, falling into the category of ‘means’ or ‘subject’, while representatives of the sports community become full participants in the political process in modern Russia. The article regards political aspects of sports and urges to trace its role within the framework of political communication. The authors develop the concept of ‘sports politics’, separating it from sports policy per se, or state policy within sports. Based on two models of political communication by G. Lassawel and T. Newcomb, principal forms of relationship between politics and sports in the matrix of communication are highlighted: an object, an instrument, a subject, and a communication channel. As a political tool, sport has been interpreted as a means of communication using the concept of the national idea of Russia. The rhetoric of top officials related to sports demonstrates its symbolic roots, based in patriotism. When considering sport as a subject of politics, the main attention is focused on sports personae and their representation in government bodies, governing structures - as proxies and opinion leaders, or invited experts. The research also considers biographies of sport leaders as their personal and professional "background", as well as their formal and informal interaction with decision-makers. The article concludes that, despite the intensification and growth of sports’ potential to its subjectivity, the key interaction model remains the one where it takes the place of a communication mechanism.

Bringing states back into commodity-centric environmental governance: the telecoupled soy trade between Brazil and China

Brazil and China share important vantage points in environmental fora, actively coordinating their positions within Brazil, South Africa, India, and China (BASIC) and Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS). Both countries have incorporated sustainability concerns in their multilateral stances, but their bilateral strategic partnership lacks a clear environmental orientation. This study analyses the discrepancy between multilateral commitments and the realities of their bilateral interactions. The low degree of priority of, or outright non-attendance to, environmental concerns on the operational level of Sino–Brazilian diplomatic relations illustrates the detachment of official rhetoric from effective engagements. We explore these contradictions and their repercussions for the commodity-centric governance of the telecoupled Sino–Brazilian relations, focusing on the soy sector and on its environmental impacts within Brazil. We caution against the trend of exclusively paying attention to private regulatory initiatives, and highlight the importance of bringing states back into the analysis.

The Apache Diaspora: Four Centuries of Displacement and Survival

The Apache Diaspora: Four Centuries of Displacement and Survival

The European Union’s development assistance for health (DAH) in Vietnam: any other purposes than health improvement?

ABSTRACT Development Assistance for health (DAH) has increased dramatically these last two decades. While according to the official rhetoric, it aims at ‘health improvement’ and ‘poverty reduction’, such apolitical purposes have been questioned by scholars who identified other major objectives. However, few studies have sought to uncover the motivations behind EU’s health assistance. To fill such academic gap, this article explores the main drivers that have guided the EU’s DAH in Vietnam where the EU celebrated in 2020 its 25 years of health cooperation. Opting for a ‘multiple sources of foreign aid model’ that considers that no single factor can explain foreign aid decision, and adopting a ‘holistic approach’ that focuses on the modalities, the narratives, the allocation, and the terms of health assistance, as well as the international and domestic contexts in which it has taken place, this study identifies five major purposes: (a) the confirmation of EU’s identities within the global health community. (b) the defense of the relevance of its approach of health assistance to influence international norms framing international health aid, (c) its support to the leading role of the WHO in global health, and (d) the facilitation of trade and investment opportunities for European companies.

The African Policy of Emmanuel Macron

The subject of consideration is the African policy of France during the presidency of Emmanuel Macron (2017-2022). The proclaimed slogans, the official rhetoric of the tenth president of the Fifth Republic, the political practices of the Elysee Palace during this period are reviewed in the context of the geopolitical changes taking place in West Africa. The purpose of the study is to find out the factors that in one way or another have influenced the African policy of Paris in recent years, to determine the obvious motives and latent aspirations of French diplomacy on the African continent. The article deals with very recent events that took place in Tropical Africa, and are therefore relatively little studied both in Russian African studies and in French political science and anthropology. The author comes to the conclusion that the Fifth Republic is rapidly losing its economic, political and military-strategic positions in African countries, which were quite recently a zone of its undeniable influence. He connects this process with the emergence here of new actors in international relations, which allowed Africans to diversify their foreign economic and political orientations.

Covid-19 pandemic – a new challenge for the national security of the Republic of Moldova on the transnistrian conflict settlement dimension

Ensuring national security of the Republic of Moldova on the Transnistrian conflict settlement dimension during the COVID-19 global pandemic determined the need to create and implement a new paradigm for tackling the settlement process of the conflict in the Eastern districts of the Republic of Moldova in the context of reshaping the geopolitical architecture of the security environment in the South-East Europe. The lack of substantial results of the talks concerning the identification of feasible and sustainable solutions for the Transnistrian conflict is due to Moldovan authorities’ mistaken vision concerning the real interests of the actors involved in these talks that diff er from the preferences referred to in the offi cial rhetoric. COVID-19 pandemic tempered the actions of all political actors involved in the „5+2” format negotiation process that have been limited only to some sporadic declarations on the need to settle the confl ict from the Eastern districts of the Republic of Moldova and on the importance to carry out the provisions of the initiative to enhance the confi dence-building measures between the two banks of the Nistru river, integrated in the „small steps” policy, actions that do not produced tangible results on the Transnistrian confl ict settlement. The research of the issue of the Transnistrian confl ict settlement process in the condition of the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought about the decrease of the level of stability in the security area, emphasizes the reduced geopolitical potential of the Republic of Moldova in the current negotiation format that defi nes the insuffi cient level of the institutional capacity of the national security system to ensure the territorial integrity jeopardized by the geopolitical confl ict in the Eastern districts.

Brothers, Arrivals, Refugees. South Sudanese as Subjects of Naming and Reporting Practices in Sudan’s Humanitarian Sector

When South Sudanese started to enter Sudanese territory after the outbreak of war in December 2013, they found themselves put into an uncertain gray area of definition. Lingering between aggressive rhetoric of Sudanese officials before the separation in July 2011 and the nominal bilateral agreement on four freedoms in September 2012, they were denied official refugee status until August 2016. This gap between their de facto and their de jure status added to their uncertainty and confronted humanitarian organizations with a number of intertwined semantic and logistic dilemmas. This article discusses how these dilemmas were experienced in northern Sudanese non-governmental organizations during the months leading up to August 2016. It illustrates how the organizations’ positioning towards South Sudanese refugees reflects asymmetries in the humanitarian sector as much as the consequences of ongoing attempts to increase governmental control over it. The case study thus highlights how losing rights as citizens and not gaining rights as refugees after crossing borders is enhanced when it overlaps with the neglect of individuals’ agency by their being simplified through quantification into a logistical problem. This points towards a need to complement humanitarian knowledge production with refugees’ own practices of support and connection, as well as emic notions of belonging.

XI Chan Kirgistanu. Kurmanbek Bakijew, rządy rodzinne i heroizacja przeszłości

XI Khan of Kyrgyzstan: Kurmanbek Bakiyev, Family Rule and Heroization of the PastThe aim of the article is to highlight mechanisms of the construction of the national past. The precommunist and communist times, the period of independence and the events of March 2005 were used to design the narration on the almost mythical heroism of current authorities and their predecessors. The paper also attempts to reveal strategies of legitimization through the commemoration of the Tulip revolution.Additionally, it tries to reconstruct and critically comment upon main arguments used in public speeches by the head of state, by his family and ideologues of the regime. The aim, however, is not to present the coherent structure of official thinking similar to ideology. Ambiguities, inconsistencies and ad hoc reactions constituted very important part of the regime’s official rhetoric. That is why the paper emphasizes strong tension between authoritarian and democratic strands of official discourse used accordingly to the ever-changing context in which Bakiyev’s regime operated.

Legitimating the Belt and Road Initiative: evidence from Chinese official rhetoric

This article examines how China sought to externally legitimate the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by means of official rhetoric. The BRI is a notable Chinese policy initiative with a focus on infrastructure provision. It has been gaining traction worldwide but is simultaneously dogged by controversies and contested by a widening array of actors. Departing from the predominant focus on the geopolitics and geoeconomics of the BRI and China, this research focuses on an important yet under-explored aspect: sustained and highly coordinated rhetorical efforts on the part of China with a view to asserting legitimacy for the BRI. Leveraging an analytical framework with fine-grained distinctions between legitimacy types and sources, the study conducted a fully integrated content analysis of 644 Chinese official texts on the BRI. It first identified inductively the set of recurrent legitimacy claims articulated by Chinese officials. A subsequent quantitative analysis showcased how different legitimacy claims featured in the official rhetoric and evolved over time. The findings have practical relevance for China’s external communications on the BRI and foreign actors’ (counter-)narratives and policy responses to the Chinese initiative.

Do Local Newspapers Mitigate the Effects of the Polarized National Rhetoric on COVID-19?

This analysis tests two distinct predictions regarding local newspapers’ coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. A public service view of local newspapers predicts that a robust local newspaper sector would mitigate the politicized national partisan rhetoric surrounding COVID-19; reducing the disparity in social-distancing behaviors between predominantly Republican and predominantly Democratic counties by increasing compliance in Republican counties. The alternative hypothesis, informed by a demand-side view of the market pressures local newspapers face, predicts that increased competition between local newspapers will increase the degree to which local newspapers amplify the rhetoric of national officials in line with the partisan composition of their community, further polarizing adherence to social-distancing behaviors across predominantly Republican versus predominantly Democratic counties. The results of this analysis offer strong support for the second hypothesis; but, an additional analysis of vaccination rates offers a more nuanced perspective than a simple public service versus demand-side dichotomy would imply.

Помощь развитию во внешней политике ФРГ

The article discusses the conceptual approaches and policies of Germany in the field of official development assistance (ODA). The FRG is the second largest donor country in terms of the absolute amount of financial resources that the government donates as ODA. However, there is an obvious gap between the official rhetoric and the actual practices of the German ODA policy. Development assistance has been actively used by Berlin to promote its political and economic interests and to address its security policy problems. Germany’s ODA policy is built primarily on a bilateral basis, the belief being that this form of cooperation allows a better control of financial resources and enables the donor country to more effectively articulate its interests. The fate of the most needy countries is of much less concern to the German authorities. The FRG, as well as the European Union, are trying to make their own priorities a platform for building cooperation with partners. The entry of the “Alliance 90/Greens” into a governmental coalition after the 2021 parliamentary elections will further shift the focus of Germany’s ODA policy towards combating climate change. However, the “Greens” are careful to avoid discussing what energy resources should become the basis of industrial development in least developed countries. Berlin is interested in maintaining its place among the world’s largest donors. In the arsenal of Germany’s foreign policy tools, development assistance serves to counter from afar new threats and challenges – terrorism, conflicts and illegal migration. It can be adapted to strengthen the position of the donor in the markets, political and public life of the recipient countries. With Germany having a significant influence on the formation and financing of the EU coordinating mechanisms, the FRG’s ODA policy can, when necessary, rely on the latter. However, the Germany’s ODA policy is not without vulnerabilities. Berlin often looks like a mentor who knows what to do and how to do it, although the reality almost always turns out to be more complicated than the speculative recipes. The main weakness of this policy lies in that its conceptual framework has been built according to European patterns and so is largely out of touch with the real needs of developing countries.

DEFICIÊNCIA, DIVERSIDADE E DIFERENÇA: IDIOSSINCRASIAS E DIVERGÊNCIAS CONCEITUAIS

ABSTRACT: Since 1980, the United Nations (UN) has played a leading role in disseminating international guidelines against violence, discrimination, and deprivation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Considering this, the Brazilian political and legal framework for inclusion has expanded considerably in recent decades, bringing transversal regulations in favor of specific identity groups, such as people with disabilities, women, and ethnic-racial collectives. Although they are part of the emerging agenda, when confronted by the complex framework of barriers and social exclusions, official inclusion and diversity discourses present idiosyncrasies and contradictions that can even camouflage political intentions, often disconnected from the struggles of the collectives focused by inclusion policies. In this context, this article aims to characterize conceptual differences between disability, diversity, and human differences. We conclude that the definitions and objects of analysis sometimes align with the critical perceptions of the discourse, while at other times reproduce the normative view of subjects-body-minds, camouflaging, often subtly, the asymmetric social construction of human differences in official rhetoric about inclusion and diversity.

The problem of human rights in US foreign policy

The issues of defending human rights abroad are a substantial part of the United States foreign policy. Nevertheless, over the last five years, the official rhetoric and to some extent practices of the White House have clearly unveiled the polarization of approaches of Trump and Biden administrations regarding these policies. By analyzing the U.S. foreign policy mechanism of defending human rights abroad, well as party platforms, strategic and policy documents, and the finances of human rights policies the author comes to the conclusion that this mechanism is a powerful tool, that allows the United States to influence foreign countries in order to accomplish practical strategic foreign policy goals. This potential protects the U.S. human rights defense policy from the ideological differences between Democrats and Republicans.

The Images of Power in the Public Space of Early Restoration England

The article deals with the main features of the public representation of the power images during the early Stuart Restoration. The problem is studied on the material of the solemn entry of the English King Charles II into London on the eve of his coronation, April 22, 1661. Prior to this event, four triumphal arches were built in the city center, using the main symbols and allegories associated with the restoration of the monarchy. Based on a wide range of sources (official descriptions of celebrations, engravings, poetic works and diaries), the authors study the characteristic features of the power images of the early Restoration. Firstly, an important role in the construction of these images was played by the use of the heritage of the Antiquity, mainly of the works of Virgil. England was represented as the new Rome, and Charles II was seen as the new Augustus. Secondly, like the early Stuarts, Charles II sought to present his rule as a new “Golden Age” — the era of prosperity and abundance. The latter, according to the architects of the arches, came to replace the chaos, desolation and discord of the civil wars and of the Interregnum. The symbolism of the arches helps us understand, how the legacy of that period was refracted in official rhetoric and in the minds of the Englishmen of the Restoration era. Finally, the images on the triumphal arches reflected the plans and aspirations of the new government, being a kind of “manifesto” of the new monarchy.

Costume Tropology of Socialist Realism: Shifts in Vestimentary Semantics in the Texts of High and Late Stalinism

The article examines major modes of costume as a trope in the cultural texts of high and late Stalinism, primarily in journalism and official literature. Successive changes in these modes can be traced through shifts in vestimentary semantics. As the analysis of the texts shows, each period in the history of Stalinism is characterized by one dominant costume trope. Schematically, the evolution of costume tropology in the second half of the 1930s — early 1950s. follows the trajectory: costume as a metaphor for achievements in the period of high Stalinism — costume as a metonymy of socialism in the period of late Stalinism. The thesis is argued that the history of the Stalinist discourse of fashion can and should be considered as a branch of cultural policy, since the evolution of the official rhetoric of fashion correlated with changes in the political agenda and formed a vestimentary projection of the power discourse. Despite the significant differences in costume semantics in different periods of Stalinism, a single axiological basis of the costume in Stalinist culture is revealed: a combination of the state pride and personal modesty. It is also concluded that in the years of high and late Stalinism, the costume and the institution of the official “Soviet fashion” functioned in culture according to the principles of socialist realism and were, in fact, one of its offshoots. In other words, the costume was not merely a cultural text, but a socialist realist text of Stalinist culture.

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