Socio-political Space Research Articles

State atrophy and the reconfiguration of borderlands in Syria and Iraq: Post-2011 dynamics

Circumstances in the MENA region invite us to redirect our attention to geographic areas that emerged as primary sites of power-contest. This paper looks into emerging trends in the unraveling of bounded sovereign territoriality in borderlands by examining the contest over military, economic, and socio-political spaces in the wake of the devolution of the monopoly of violence and the rise of a multitude of new and old actors to local prominence. Since 2011, borderlands in the MENA region transformed into considerable sites of contested power by a plethora of actors. The paper points out emergent patterns of deterritorialization and reterritorialization of power in its various forms and manifestations in borderlands. The dynamics of ‘place and performance’ in the borderlands of Syria and Iraq showcase the variety of ways borders were instrumentalized under circumstances of state atrophy and their destructive tendencies for borderlands.

Deterritorialising the Jungle: Understanding the Calais camp through its orderings

Research on refugee camps and camp-like institutions has gained momentum over the last few decades, as camps have been spreading everywhere in Europe under the impact of the massive increase of migrants stuck at border zones. While early conceptualisations are based on the paradigm of the exception, some scholars have recently posited camps as socio-political spaces which are negotiated and reproduced by the everyday entanglements of the multiple bodies that contribute to their making. This article aims to make a contribution to this strand of literature by understanding camps as the temporary result of spatial and material processes of ordering. By grounding my reasoning on fieldwork in Calais, I explore the countless negotiations and the attunement of multiple rhythms that organised and segmented the Jungle. I focus on the territories built by aid groups, the state and stuff, namely the supplies that flew into the encampment, how their assembling produced orderings and control, and how those orderings shaped the political space of the camp. This territorial account aims to stress the role of the affective and the material in mediating encounters that may produce new orderings while opening up to lines of flight and the configuration of political matter.

Revolutionary Spaces in James Stephens's The Insurrection in Dublin

Revolutionary Spaces in James Stephens's The Insurrection in Dublin John T. Crawford (bio) At roughly one o'clock on Monday, April 24, 1916, James Stephens, a young author and the registrar of the National Gallery of Ireland, left his office near Merrion Square to return to his home at 42 Fitzwilliam Place for lunch. In the hour that preceded his entry into the city, Irish Volunteer (Óglaigh na hÉireann) and Irish Citizen Army (ICA) battalions had commandeered nearly a dozen strategic locations throughout Dublin, and by 12:45, Pádraig Pearse had appeared on the front steps of the General Post Office and declared, as provisional president, the foundation of the free Irish Republic, thereby marking the sudden and confusing beginning of the Easter Rising. Like many of his fellow Dubliners, Stephens first encountered the onset of the Rising as an unwitting spectator. However, as a journalist and novelist, he felt compelled to document the momentous event in hopes of making some sense of what seemed, to many, to be a hastily staged and performed military resistance to British control in the Irish capital. That day-by-day record of the rebellion became The Insurrection in Dublin , which was published later that summer. About the hours leading up to the insurrection and his first entry into the occupied city, Stephens explains: "On the morning [of April 24] I awoke into full insurrection and bloody war, but I did not know anything about it. It was Bank Holiday, but for employments such as mine there are not any holidays, so I went to my office at the usual hour. … Peace was in the building, and if any of the attendants had knowledge or rumour of war they did not mention it to me." 1 Significant in Stephens's account is his ability to communicate the presiding public sentiment of surprise in response to the sudden onset of armed rebellion. He describes his experience as a sudden shift from "peace," not only in his building but also in the city at large, to being confronted by that same city, very suddenly, as a space of "insurrection and bloody war." The Dublin that he unexpectedly encounters in that first moment is a space that, for him, had unexpectedly become violently disengaged from its political and social status quo. It was [End Page 59] a city that demanded representation, especially as it found itself embroiled in a moment of historical and military revolution that for many, including Stephens, defied logic. While existing scholarship on Stephens's book has focused primarily on its journalistic qualities, often appreciating it more as a "contemporaneous account" of the Rising rather than a literary and philosophical engagement with the event, it is important to understand the ways in which The Insurrection in Dublin struggles to come to terms with what Stephens saw as a crisis in conceiving of a unified Irish nation or people, specifically in regards to geographical and sociopolitical space. 2 The rebellion creates for Stephens a feeling of alienation and isolation that divides not only his experience but also that of the Dublin citizens whom he encounters from the acts of political resistance being performed that week on their behalf and in the name of the newly declared Irish Republic. As a result, Stephens's account repeatedly juxtaposes the seeming "peaceful[ness]" of the colonial city with the disorienting and dislocating "surprise" brought on by the Volunteers' violent insurrection, thereby suggesting something akin to the incongruity that Yi-Fu Tuan identifies between definitions of "space" and "place." Tuan describes space as a "blank sheet on which meaning may be imposed"; it has "no trodden paths and signposts. It has no fixed pattern of established meaning." Place, in contrast, is "[a] closed and humanized space"; it operates as "a calm center of established values." 3 Within that radical division between the allegedly "established" comfort of place and the unknowability of space lies what Tuan calls the threat of a "loss of power to order things … from one's unique perspective." 4 In many ways, Stephens's experience with the Dublin of Easter Week 1916 communicates that sense of uneasy becoming and unknowability, suggesting a spatial...

The Failed “Right-Wing March” of the Parliamentary Parties: Bulgaria and Romania in the Inter-War Period

The article dwells on the stages in the inter-war development of the right-wing parliamentary spectrum in two Balkan states, namely in Bulgaria and Romania. The author's conclusion is that due to the complex of existed peculiarities in the socio-political development of both countries during the 20s — 30s of the 20th century no strong right-wing parliamentary political parties capable of resisting radical and authoritarian forces have been established. The formation of the latter took place on the verge of confrontation between the right and left spectrum of the political life in Bulgaria and Romania. This gave them a chance to present themselves in the socio-political space as a kind of “third” force, which differed from the so-called traditional parties that existed within the framework of existed party systems. The article draws particular attention to fluctuations in the degree of support for the right-wing parties, whose “grassroots electorate” gradually refused to view them as reflecting their interests.

Migration of Violence, Violence in migration. The Vulnerabilities of Central American Populations Going North

Central American migratory journeys take place in risky geographical and socio-political spaces, where situations involving danger and vulnerability take many forms. Based on observation of experiences and contexts of mobility, the author examines expressions of violence as one of the motives for migration, as a constraint affecting the implementation of migration projects and finally, as an effect of migration policies of containment. He postulates that forms of violence are intertwined, often cumulative, and that their persistence constitutes a component of migration phenomena in the region today. The article aims to examine the ways in which a ‘continuum of violence’ creates marginal status and generates situations that, in turn, fuel forms of vulnerability where risks are trivialised, while the migratory presence is socially, legally and politically undervalued and rendered invisible.

СОЦИАЛЬНО-ПОЛИТИЧЕСКИе характеристики женского депутатского корпуса Дальневосточного Федерального округа

The relevance of the study is determined by the institutionalization of gender imbalance in the representation bodies of the Russian Federation, the lack of significant improvements in the aspect of women’s integration into the political management system. It is obvious that the two forms of women’s active and passive participation in the political process are disproportionate and, as a result, they have limited access to political influence and power, which suggests a weak articulation of their interests in various spheres of socio-political and economic space. The object of study – the current composition of the representative bodies of subjects the Far Eastern Federal District (FEFD) at the regional level and bodies’ representative of local government administrative centers. The subject of the study is the female deputy corps of the subjects of the FEFD. The purpose of the study: description and comparative analysis of the morphology of the female deputy corps of the subjects of the FEFD at the regional and municipal levels. The main task is to fix the level of representation of women in legislative bodies and local self-government bodies of the FEFD in comparison with all-Russian indicators. The main method of research is the method of statistical typological grouping of primary statistical material, on the basis of which summary indicators are identified according to the criteria for analyzing the main characteristics of the female deputy corps of the FEFD (quantitative, education, socio-professional experience, age, political affiliation, etc.). The sources of the study are the official websites of the representative bodies of 11 subjects of the FEFD, election commissions of the subjects, websites of the electoral information service, and party information systems. In the organs of representative offices of the FEFD remains a significant gender imbalance and gender pyramid, the level of participation of women in bodies of representation the FEFD is higher than the average for Russia. The morphology of regional and local representation models differs in quantitative terms, but the socio-demographic and socio-political characteristics are almost identical. The lack of dominance of representatives of the public sector is recorded, the business community is equally represented, but the institution of NGOs is practically not used in the political promotion of women. The relative social openness of the women’s deputy corps of the FEFD is noted: there is no overwhelming majority of senior organizational management, there is a cluster of non-executives

ЛИЧНОСТНОЕ ИЗМЕРЕНИЕ СМУТНОГО ВРЕМЕНИ В РОССИИ (к постановке проблемы)

This paper considers the phenomenon of personal identity development and democratization of the history of Russia during the Time of Troubles. D.S. Likhachev’s opinion on the discovery of a personality in the Russian literature of the 17th century is discussed. It is demonstrated that the problem of personal identity in the socio-political space of Russia was raised for the first time during the Time of Troubles. Hunger, devastation, deprivation, underestimation of the value of human life paradoxically promoted the development of a view on the personal identity as an important element of life. The historical and anthropological problem of studying the formation and development of self-identification in Russia under the influence of destructive and tragic events of the Time of Troubles is formulated. The above problem can be solved by carrying out a mass biographical research based on numerous sources and using the methods of prosopography and historical anthropology. The unremitting wars that took place in the second half of the 16th century favored the development of personal identity at the public level. A generation of nobles accustomed to making decisions under the war conditions emerged. In the Time of Troubles, other social groups adopted the behavioral strategies of the nobility. As a result, imposture, unregulated (both traditionally and legally) leadership in the Cossack hosts, robber gangs, and self-organized grouping became common. Under these circumstances, people were willing to actively participate in the events of the Time of Troubles and in the changes of the political course. Therefore, the historical sources confirm that the history of Russia exhibited the first sings of democratization during the Time of Troubles.

Fake News Detection: Do Complex Problems Need Complex Solutions?

Nowadays, information is crucial in the configuration of the socio-political space. Data relevance in both decision making and decision taking has exponentially increased. Content examination, social network analysis, information propagation (including epidemic and statistical modeling analysis), or sentiment analysis based techniques are currently used to classify and curate information. Nonetheless, mis- and dis-information are among the major current cybersecurity challenges, as it is hindering the very health of our democratic system. As a result, there is an urge to devise and implement technical solutions to detect and deter the propagation of unreliable information. In this work, we consider a specific case in the taxonomy of the complex scenarios of mis- and dis-information phenomena, the so-called fake news. In short, we used labeled data set containing fake news, which are going to be detected by means of traditional natural language processing techniques and advanced deep learning approaches. Our intention relies on comparing the accuracy of simple methods (namely, traditional natural language processing) with respect to modern and complex techniques in the deep learning family. The study of the above mentioned dataset hints that adopting complex techniques may not always guarantee achieving better classification performances.

РЕГИОНАЛЬНОЕ СОЦИАЛЬНО-ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОЕ ВЗАИМОДЕЙСТВИЕ: СУБЪЕКТЫ И РЕПРЕЗЕНТАНТЫ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ КУЗБАССА)

Socio-political cooperation determines the quality and content of relations between the state, society and people, including at the regional level. The purpose of the article is to assess the nature and content of socio-political cooperation, the possibilities of nominating representatives in the region. The article defines the subjects of that cooperation and their representatives in the socio-political space of the region. It is noted that the cooperation of subjects and representatives, unites all interested groups in the implementing decisions of local authorities in the region, creates conditions contributing to the realization of the population potential for its real participation in regional transformations in various fields. Based on the materials of a questionnaire survey conducted in the Kemerovo region, the authors identify issues that maintain the cooperation between the authorities and the population, the expression of interests and participation in it, the opportunities for nominating representatives. In conclusion, the authors infer that there are different degrees of expression of interests in socio-political cooperation among social groups (men and women, youth), the willingness to delegate the solution of their issues to representatives. Those representatives act as a real driving force in expressing the intentions and interests of the authorities and the population, they contribute to the effective participation of various social groups in the transformation of the region.

South-Eastern Russian Church Council in 1919 in light of the legacy of the All-Russian Local Council of 1917–1918

The article is devoted to identifying the place of the South-Eastern Russian Church Council of 1919 in the social and church life during the period of the Russian Civil War. The author notes a significant increase in public and scientific interest in its legacy in recent years, explained, in particular, by the awareness of the Southern Russian Council with the Sacred Local Council of 1917–1918, which can be traced in the article. The processes that took place during this period in Russian Orthodoxy must be considered as a council-centric process, of which the South-Eastern Council was also a part. The Council sought to preserve both the conciliar character of solving Church problems, which had just been restored at the Local Council, and the approach to finding ways to develop Church life, which released the accumulated huge creative potential of the Church people. The continuity of the issues raised, as well as the procedural and structural relationships between the two Councils is traced in the article. The Southern Russian Council sought to continue the work of the Local Council on administrative and territorial changes in the dioceses (in this case, the South of Russia under its control), and tried to implement the parish charter. The South-Eastern Council is also interesting because it was the first experience of determining the position of the Church in the socio-political space of the White South, against the background of a complex political struggle, even in the camp of the White movement itself. While maintaining the priority of moral values, the South-Eastern Council sought to distance itself from the political struggle. However, in its proclamations, the Council certainly condemned the civil conflict and revolution, which it saw as a reflection of the moral decay of society.

Youth policy development in Ukraine - experience of the European Union

«Youth policy» as an independent term is defined in the scientific literature in the 1960s., which in many ways «was associated with the formation of youth as an independent social force and its self-determination in the socio-political space». By the 1970s XX century youth policy in the vast majority of developed countries is transforming an independent direction of national policy. Youth is a complex, multidimensional and rather controversial social phenomenon. Modern youth acts as the most active and mobile social group, which requires special attention from state institutions in need of socialization and adaptation. At the same time, it is youth that is increasingly viewed today as the most important and promising part of society. It is no accident that already in the mid-60s of the XX century, in the practical activities of a number of international institutions, in particular the UN, a specialized area of cooperation began to develop, in the field of education and social support for the young generation. It should be noted that in the world there are more than 1 billion 800 million young people under the age of 25, which emphasizes the importance of effective youth policy by members of the international community. In the post-bipolar period, youth policy has become one of the priority areas of state policy of most developed countries. A striking example in this regard is the activities of the countries of the European Union (EU) and its structures. Europe is making significant efforts to create a single space in which not only common political institutions, but common values for all Europeans should be formed. And in this process, it is youth that acts as the key object on which measures are aimed at the formation of a pan-European identity. In recent years, the European Union has significantly stepped up youth policy. Its mechanisms were developed (open coordination method), special institutions were formed. It seems extremely relevant to analyze the EU’s activities in this direction, to consider concrete steps taken at the European level to consolidate measures in the field of youth policy. Despite the fact that integration processes in Europe continue, nevertheless, a number of problems have already been accumulated there today, the success of the entire European project will depend on the solution of these problems. In many ways, these problems are connected precisely with the young generation of Europeans, to whom the EU leadership has special hopes. As noted in a recent communique of the European Commission, “social and human capital of youth is one of the greatest European assets of the future». Among the studies affecting various aspects of working with young people, one can single out works of S.V. Aleshchenko, V.P. Baskov, Yu.R. Vyshnevskyi, Yu.V. Volkov, T.I. Zaslavskaia, I.M. Ylynskyi, E.Sh. Kamaldynova, A.I., Kovalova, O.A. Koriakovtseva, V.T. Lysovskyi, V.A. Lukov, O.A. Rozhnov, B.A. Ruchkin, S.K. Savin, V.I. Chuprov and several other authors. However, the young generation of Europeans faces serious challenges. The growth of unemployment, absenteeism, deprivation, the growth of radicalism, cultural indifference (including religious) – main youth problems that today require urgent solutions. Moreover, in different EU countries, these problems have varying degrees of severity. Continued heterogeneity continues to be a serious obstacle to pan-European unity. It is likely that youth policy may be another very painful issue for the future of the EU. Thus, it seems necessary to analyze the national and supranational levels of youth policy in the European Union in order to identify their degree of coherence, common goal-setting and specific implementation methods.

Из истории калмыцко-тибетских контактов XVII–XVIII вв.

Introduction. The article is devoted to one of the most important areas of the foreign policy of the Kalmyk Khanate in the XVII – XVIII centuries. — interaction with Tibet. Goals.The purpose of the article is to introduce into the scientific circulation new archival documents and information about the specifics of formation, main directions, periods, significant historical figures and the results of Kalmyk-Tibetan interaction in the 17th-18th centuries. Results. The interaction of the Kalmyk aristocracy with Tibet takes shape shortly before the formation of the Kalmyk Khanate as part of the diplomatic and educational activities of the missionaries of the Gelug Buddhist school in the Oirat Union. The clerical elite of Tibet was interested in spreading Buddhist teachings, developing a national Buddhist tradition and a Buddhist church in the Kalmyk Khanate. The secular elite of the khanate, interested in legitimizing their own status, integrating into the socio-political space of Central Asia, actively supported the adoption of Buddhism by the Kalmyks and the spread of the Buddhist church under the patronage of Gelug. Creation of national legislation and national writing in the 40s. XVII century with the active participation of the Buddhist clergy, it played an integrating role in the Oirat Union and became a culture-forming factor for the sociocultural and socio-political life of the Kalmyk Khanate. Since the end of the XVII century. Tibetan investment, including the title, the throne name of the Kalmyk khans, the seal and the banner, determined the legitimacy and authority of the ruler of the khanate. Buddhist pilgrimage was the main form of Kalmyk-Tibetan communication in the XVII-XVIII centuries. Control over pilgrimage trips of representatives of the Kalmyk aristocracy by the Russian state since the beginning of the 18th century becomes a lever of influence on the domestic policy of the Kalmyk Khanate. In the second half of the XVIII century. Kalmyk-Tibetan interaction was regulated by China, which used it to organize the migration of Ubashi Khan in 1771.

Political content management: new linguistic units and social practices

Continuous transformations of the socio-political space are affected by digital technologies, which are created by the representatives of the “digital immigrants” and communicated by the “digital natives” as various social projects. This trend offers new implications and innovative forms to conventional technologies (political, social) by transforming them into complex multicomponent systems; besides, this requires from the researchers revolutionary innovative analytical methods and tools, based on hybrid research approaches. Socio-political and linguistic methods in particular, are to be developed in order to analyze the current reality. Political culture transformation as affected by the digital technologies results in post-truth politics and fake news dissemination, which demands that the researchers study particular linguistic units (neologisms and hashtags produced by digital personalities), capable of modifying the information and news space which determines the socio-political agenda, and of inducing social action offline. Regarding new linguistic units from the point of view of political science and linguistics would allow for identifying the principle of the revolutionary new relationships between citizens, truth and social action. Many people using the online space as a primary source of political content reject critical thinking regarding the sources of this information and are affected by the “filter bubble,” which results in destructive practices of social engagement and manipulation of mass consciousness. Thus, there is a strong demand for modern mechanisms of political content management, since the causes, methods and mechanisms, as well as the participants of the process of information production and dissemination are very different from the ones that existed before the revolution in the information and communication technologies and the onset of Internet and social network technologies.

‘Waiting for my red envelope’: discourses of sameness in the linguistic landscape of a marriage equality demonstration in Taiwan

ABSTRACTAt the end of 2016, Taiwan witnessed a string of massive protest demonstrations held by both ends of the ideological debate on marriage equality. These public demonstrations can be seen as linguistic landscapes where the mass employment of signs, banners, flags, and other genres of protest signs discursively construct a highly visible socio-political space for public conversation around marriage equality. This study looks specifically at the protest signs from the 10 December pro-marriage equality demonstration in Taipei and applies critical discourse analysis to examine what identities and ideological positions are represented in the linguistic landscape. I argue that the protest signs construct a linguistic landscape that strongly emphasizes sameness with heterosexuals as a key characteristic of LGBTQ individuals, thereby depicting equality as taking part in the social practices and gender roles of heterosexual relationships and excluding a cross-section of the LGBTQ community who do not support the assimilationist ideology underlying marriage equality.

PARTISIPASI POLITIK DAN DINAMIKA DEMOKRASI DI TIDORE-MALUKU UTARA

<p><em>Political Participation and the Dynamics of Democracy in the City of Tidore Islands provide an interesting picture in political studies in Indonesia. In political contestation along with the passing of Direct Local Election, the people of Tidore Islands have been educated in political participation and democracy. Increased level of community political participation in the 2019 Concurrent Election. Strengthening of community patrenalistic politics with the weakening role of political parties in educating the political community. The political culture of openness with the role of political actors emerged as a civil society group that was able to influence bureaucratic policies or be involved in determining who deserved to sit in the government or in the legislature. Political dynamics characterized by the circulation of new elites in the socio-political space illustrates the future of democracy by conducting analytical descriptive research in order to understand the process of political participation and democratization which is the most important learning for people in politics.</em></p><p><strong><em> </em></strong></p><p><strong><em>Keywords</em></strong><em>:Democracy, Concurrent Election, Political Culture, and Elite Circulation</em><em></em></p><p><strong> </strong></p>

Event Construction of Reality: Social and Political Opportunities

The article deals with the problems associated with the events and their role in the formation of the concept of reality. The issue of event-driven construction of reality requires a new ontological understanding in connection with the transition to the information society, in which most of the events that affect the concept sphere, is not casual, but human-made. During the formation of the post-industrial society, the event was not just an event, but a “special” event, an occasion for news. In the context of dynamically developing digital technologies, special events go beyond a convenient marketing tool and become unique elements of creating a range of new and hybrid realities, being in an interdisciplinary field. The purpose of the study is to consider the little-studied evolution of the event into a special event on the example of its role in the formation of the modern socio-political space. Also, there was a need to determine the role of events as a function of managing the generation of realities, functions able to overcome interdisciplinary barriers and link different levels of stratified social reality on the example of the study of the level of power. For the study, the author used the traditional methods of philosophical analysis and reflection, logical-dialectical analysis of the subject, the post-classical principle of complementarity of descriptions. As a result of consideration of the problem, it was possible to determine the main functions of special political events in the construction of socio-political reality, to determine their ability to integrate reality, divided by subcultural barriers. Special political events, as communication channels of a new type, can help to solve the crisis that has arisen as a result of the mutual isolation of the Humanities and Natural Sciences, can promote integration, joint institutionalisation and development in the information society.

International assemblage of the security of tenure and the interaction of city politics with the international normative discourse

The article approaches the development of security of tenure as a core component of the international human right to adequate housing through the assemblage theory. The concept of security of tenure has been assembled through institutional processes led by UN-Habitat, UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Adequate Housing, the World Bank and others. These international institutions have developed a plurality of approaches to the tenure security. In addition, through international regime interaction these different approaches eventually became linked and started influencing each other. In such a way, the security of tenure developed from underdeveloped and separated human rights norm, developmental goal, and attribute of freehold title to a house or land, to a complex and pluralistic concept. Furthermore, the recognition of the complexity and the plurality of forms of tenure security have been related to the semiformal nature of international processes led by UN-Habitat and others, which connected the international level with the local conditions around the world. Through these processes, a pallet of actors with local experiences made international institutions recognize the uniqueness and complexity of the urban/local space as crucial for approaching the tenure security. Acknowledging the specificity and the pluralism of local – urban – socio-political spaces by international institutions shows how interlinked international and urban levels of policy-making have become.

Regional political parties in the context of the study of the process of nationalization (based on the results of the local elections in 2015)

The article is devoted to the study of the characteristics and typology of regional political parties in Ukraine, the assessment of the connection of the nationalization of the party system of Ukraine, the deviance (non-typology) of electoral behavior of the regions with the development of regional parties in the state by the results of local elections in 2015.In the course of the study, the main scientific approaches to the characterization and typology of regional parties in Ukraine were considered. It has been established that scholars identify the following categories of regional political parties, namely: ideological parties, political parties-projects of prominent personalities, ethnic parties, administrative parties (pro-government political parties). It is proposed to expand existing typology by introducing such categories of regional parties as projects of local elites, regional parties oriented on pro-Russian politics in Ukraine, technical political parties, which are beginning active activities before the elections, helping to ensure passing to local bodies of self-government to certain persons. It was found that regional political parties, based on the results of the local elections in Ukraine in 2015, were two pro-Russian political forces, four parties that focused on supporting the interests of local elites and one ethnic party. It is noted that the support of regional political parties is low. This is confirmed by the results of the electoral vote at the national level. It was noted that against the backdrop of a high level of nationalization of the party system for the period of 2014–2015, calculated on three approaches (the nationalization index was calculated according to the approach of M. Johns and S. Meinwering, G. Holosov and author’s modified approach), these parties did not have significant influence on the electoral picture of the country. It is also determined that since the third author’s modified approach allows to take into account the results of elections to local self-government bodies, it is relevant for the study of regional parties. Therefore, its use is most optimal for similar analytical purposes.Among the factors that had the greatest influence on party nationalization over the period of 2014–2015 were the electoral system, the transformational factors in the socio-political space, the change in the form of government, decentralization (de-volition) associated with the reform of local self-government and the territorial organization of power in Ukraine Accordingly, it has been proved that the latter of these factors has become an important prerequisite for the emergence of new regional political parties at the local elections of 2015.

Surveillance, Spying and Disciplining the University: Deployment of State Security Agents on Campus in Zimbabwe

This article examines the deployment of government spies and state security agents on a university campus in Zimbabwe and the implications this has on knowledge production at the university. The campus is presented as a socio-political space in which everyday political struggles are fought. I argue that surveillance is an intractable part of the rhythms of everyday life on campus, and a very specific form of ‘bio-power’, ‘biopolitics’ and violence meant to discipline students and lecturers, as well as the ways in which knowledge is produced and sedimented. Habitualisation of surveillance and fear of surveillance generate Foucauldian ‘panopticon’: producing ‘self-censorship’ on campus.

МІЖНАРОДНИЙ ДОСВІД ІНФОРМАЦІЙНОЇ БЕЗПЕКИ

In our state there are a number of complex problems in the field of information security that require urgent and radical solution. That’s why theoretical, methodological and political research of the problem of information security in Ukraine, which is experiencing a crisis phase of its development, is becoming especially relevant today. In order to develop an effective system of national information security, a detailed study of the experience of the leading countries of the world, which carry out effective information protection of their states and citizens, is necessary. Today there are national information security systems that have really proven their effectiveness and structural and functional perfection. Indeed, the successful development of a democratic state and civil society is possible only if the information resources are properly used and the state policy is implemented, which would ensure a high level of national information security. In the modern world, the basic principles and tools for the formation of effective information protection of the national security space have been developed already. At the same time, Ukraine needs to apply adequately the foreign experience of the most successful countries in this regard, correctly transforming it taking into account national specificity and the unique role of Ukraine in modern geopolitics. As an important indicator of the protection of citizens, society and state, information security is an integral part of national security. Therefore, its determination mainly focuses on preventing harmful effects that may result in various information threats, as well as eliminating and overcoming those effects with the least possible harm to society and humans. In this aspect, the study of not only the philosophical and phenomenological and socio-psychological determinants of information security of citizens, but also political and legal resources and mechanisms of protection of the information space of the state in the conditions of the functioning of the global information society acquires a special significance. А content analysis of the notion «information security» as a form of national security aimed at ensuring human rights and freedoms in relation to free information access, creation and implementation of secure information technologies and protection of the property rights of all participants of information activities, includes consideration of possible diversions in this area, especially at the international level. Today there is a situation of incompleteness of formation and fragmentary filling of the information space content of the country and the legislative base in our society. The efficiency of the information weapon itself has increased too quickly due to the rapid information circulation and the spread of information networks. As a result, mass media forms the «mass» person of our time, in turn this fact displaces traditional direct contacts, by dissociating people and replacing them by computers and television. At the same time it gives rise to apathy, uncritical attitude and indifference, it complicates the adequate orientation, causing the social disorientation. Informative safety has the human measuring. Therefore an important role in opposition to destructive external and internal informative influences is played by education of citizens. Her proper level called to provide the state and civil society. An in fact uneducated population easily is under destructive influence of informative threats of the modern global world. Unfortunately, Ukraine, does not have sufficient resources and technologies for adequate opposition to the external threats. Taking into account it strategy of forming of the national system of informative safety of our state can be only the maximal leveling of destructive influences from the side of external informative threats. To the end it is necessary to carry out democratic reforms Ukraine, generate civil society, to provide functioning of the legal state and increase of political and civil culture of population. At the same time it is necessary to bear reformers in a mind, that global nature of informative society predetermines rapid transformation of external threats in internal, converting them into permanent calls which are opened out within the limits of national in a civilized manner-informative and socio-political space. Besides modern global informative systems, mass medias, network facilities do a limit between external and internal threats almost unnoticeable.