Political Power Structures Research Articles

Lenin and Revolution: A Critique—Yesterday and Today

ABSTRACT Lenin’s theories and tactics are specific to the early twentieth century and cannot be repeated. His project should be considered in terms of its methodology, its understanding of capitalism, the political agency of the working class and the geo-political structures of economic and political power. Lenin combined political economy, geo-politics, political organisation and a sociology of social structure to form an innovative revolutionary praxis. He was correct in his appraisal of the social forces in support of revolutions in Russia. But he provided an over-optimistic prediction for the disintegration of monopoly capitalism and a partial analysis of the working classes in the advanced capitalist countries. His political approach requires a redefinition of countervailing forces and class alliances and a shift of focus away from the semi-periphery to the “strongest links” in the capitalist chain. His proposals for a “party of a new type” and the “dictatorship of the proletariat” require revision. A “renewal” of Lenin has to consider the contradictions of global capitalism and the re-territorialisation of classes. The author considers that a “return to Lenin” is not to adopt his policies but a prompt to reinvent a socialist political and economic vision derived from Marx’s analysis of capitalism.

L.N. Tolstoy: Enstrangement, Politics, Religion

ABSTRACT This article describes the device of enstrangement in relation to L.N. Tolstoy’s religious–political ideas. We focus on discussing the connection between enstrangement as a literary device and Tolstoy’s use of it to criticize the social and political power structure. Our research shifts the optics from politics to life, to man’s spiritual and practical world. We direct our attention not to Tolstoy’s most self-evident critiques of the power structure, but to his religious anthropology, which is aimed at returning man to the space of life’s primordial meanings, including by use of enstrangement. This article shows how Tolstoy comes to an understanding of the false artificiality, of the illusory nature, of the world of culture and man’s cultured “Self” through representation of the cultural environment as symbolic and ideological, automatizing people’s lives and manipulating their consciousness. Having lost the living substratum of life in the secular, “cultured” world, Tolstoy finds it in the new Word of God, enstranged from automatization, and in a new practice of living “according to Christ.”

Bigger than Bitcoin: A Theoretical Typology and Research Agenda for Digital Currencies

AbstractCurrency is the fundamental economic technology that makes promises credible among actors within and across societies. From shells, to metals, to paper, the technology of money has continually evolved to meet the changing needs of human society. The twenty-first century is witnessing yet another evolution in the technology of money: digital currencies. Although political economy scholarship has begun to focus on digital currencies, this research has largely focused on single early examples like Bitcoin. I argue that this generally narrow focus has obscured important degrees of variation among digital currencies and, by extension, has omitted important lines of research on digital currencies as a familiar evolution in the technology of money. In this article, I revisit the history of digital currencies with explicit attention to not only economic inefficiencies but also political power structures and offer a new typology for theoretically organizing digital currencies along dimensions relevant to practitioners of political economy. I illustrate that variation along these typological dimensions produces important differences among different digital currencies and, relatedly, I explore the implications this has for digital currencies’ externalities and governance demands. Drawing on this typology, I conclude with a proposed research agenda for the political economy of digital currencies.

Development of the Civilizational Perspective in Sociological Analysis in the Last Decades

The article is devoted to the rethinking and rediscovery of “civilization” and “civilizations” as a theoretical perspective in contemporary sociology. In a broader historical context, the trajectories and interactions of social sciences with the civilizational concept are traced, within which the self-determination of sociology has taken place, as well as the construction and transformation of its research programs. The new development of the civilizational dimensions in sociological analysis, which began after the 1970s, stands out, based on the classical sources of the French and German schools of thought, and further developed as an alternative to the one-sided “cultural” and “social” reductionism and determinism in sociology. The article draws attention to the important contributions and the original theoretical concepts of S.H. Eisenstadt and J.P. Arnason, which have wide international recognition, but are relatively little known in Bulgaria. Overcoming the dominance of culture as a civilization-forming factor allows these authors to develop broader theoretical and interpretive models. They are centered on the relationship between culture and other fields of social life, including the structures of political and economic power, and are considered in the specific temporal and spatial context of the accompanying intercivilizational encounters. The place and importance of the problems of civilizations in different analytical perspectives and theoretical directions are outlined, as well as the opportunities it offers for the study of contemporary processes and political realities.

PaReSoGo: Dataset on party representation of social groups for 25 countries, 2002–2016

Whereas social scientists have devised various ways to measure representation gaps between the political elite and the masses across nations and time, few datasets can be used to measure this gap for particular social groups. Minding the gap between what parties social groups vote for and what parties actually attain seats in parliament can reveal the position of social groups in the political power structure. We help to fill this gap with a new publicly available dataset, Party Representation of Social Groups (PaReSoGo), consisting of 25 countries and 150 country-years, and a method for its construction. We used the European Social Survey 2002–2016 and ParlGov data for this time span to create a Dissimilarity Index. To demonstrate the utility and flexibility in the combination of cross-national surveys and administrative data, we chose social groups of gender, age, and education, as well as intersectional groups based on gender and age, and attitudinal groups. We conclude this research note with empirical illustrations of PaReSoGo’s use.

INTRODUCTION: THE LEGACY OF ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT (1769–1859). A CRITICAL REAPPRAISAL 250 YEARS ON

INTRODUCTION: THE LEGACY OF ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT (1769–1859). A CRITICAL REAPPRAISAL 250 YEARS ON

Memorialization as a Mechanism of Power in the Present: The Creation and Contestation of National Narratives in the Wake of Internal Armed Conflict

ObjectiveThe objectives of this article are to understand how national narratives are created and maintained, which discourses are utilized, and what inhibits people from understanding perspectives divergent from their own within the context of postarmed conflict processes of transitional justice. Through examining these objectives, I outline what studies of transitional justice can contribute to understandings of Confederate memory in the United States.MethodI conducted 14 months of ethnographic research with conflict victims after a decade‐long internal armed conflict in Nepal.ResultsI argue finding new ways to conceptualize and discuss that Confederate monuments in the United States require acknowledgement of the economic and political power structures that constrain equitable access to public memory projects.ConclusionI conclude that how memorialization processes obfuscate, rather than illuminate, marginalized histories in the present, and legitimate ongoing inequalities must be questioned and redressed.

Legislature Speakers of Subjects of the Russian Federation: Recruitment Paths and Career

This article analyzes the channels for recruiting speakers for the legislatures of subjects of the Russian Federation, as well as the specifics of their career, both before election and after resignation. The empirical basis of the study is a biographical database of chairmen of regional legislative assemblies of all convocations from the time when the last councils of people’s deputies were disbanded and until February of 2019. It is shown that speakers tended to be strongly rooted in the political power structures of Soviet society, but over time the share of nomenklatura among them – primarily party cadres – saw a significant decline. The most important channel for recruiting speakers – which was also their place of work after resignation – was representative bodies, primarily regional legislatures. Electing relatively experienced professional deputies as speakers might indicate a certain autonomization and institutionalization of legislative bodies, but this tendency is rather limited: close ties with influential external forces that control the legislature often serve as a powerful driving factor for a legislative career, freeing speakers from the need to first go through “political apprenticeship” in parliament. One of the main channels for recruiting speakers is administrative bodies, primarily regional and local, which, in many respects, reflects the dependence of the formation and functioning of legislatures on governors, who strive to appoint persons from their clientele to run said legislatures. Less often speakers work in administrations after resigning, primarily as governors. A significant source for recruiting speakers is business, but there’s a relatively small number of people who came directly from that environment (most often from large firms by regional standards), which may reflect both the importance of preliminary political professionalization in order to attain the post, and control over legislatures by governors, for whom private businessmen may seem too independent of figures to be speakers. Speakers are much less likely to end up in business after resignation, and their return to the enterprises where they previously worked is common.

Economics as ideological discourse practice: a Gramsci-Foucault-Lacan approach to analysing power/knowledge regimes of subjectivation

ABSTRACT Ideology analyses play an important role in Cultural Discourse Studies because they investigate complex meaning production within various political systems and power structures. The notion of ideology can be analysed in different dimensions. Whereas Marx and Engels proposed a negative as well as a positive conception of ideology, sociologists such as Mannheim understood ideologies as sets of ideas and general world views. Some scholars in Discourse Studies seem to follow a conception of ideology that is located in-between Mannheim’s conception and Marx’s negative idea of ‘false consciousness’. In this paper we define ideology as a political discourse practice devoted to exerting power and influence. Following Marx’s positive notion, ideology is seen as a modality that regulates the relationship between the subject and a specific system of knowledge related to political action. Here, ideology refers to discourses as knowledge/ power regimes where the political-power aspect is suppressed through the subjectivation process itself. Following Gramsci, Foucault and Lacan, our theoretical framework helps us to analyse ideological discourse practices as different modalities of subjectivation. We propose three types of ideological subjectivation: oppressive forms, normalizing forms and resisting forms. Finally, these forms are illustrated with examples from economic expert discourses from Italy and Germany.

Proposing a social identity theory of interspecies dominance

Traditional conservation scientists approach biodiversity from a resource-management perspective, in which both wildlife and non-living natural resources are managed to balance the interests of competing human stakeholders. Here, I argue for viewing biological conservation as part of a larger competition of the powerful and their interests against humans and wildlife alike. Drawing on social dominance theory to apply lessons on intergroup conflict to ecological networks, I propose that those political power structures that marginalize human populations, denying voice and inclusion, also perform poorly regarding wildlife species. Accounting for nonhuman species as a collection of agentic beings seeking to satisfy their own survival interests and that of their respective “social” group, I argue for connecting the literatures on social justice and ecological justice through common challenges rooted in the social psychology of power.

Women Participation and Empowerment System under Government Institutions and Constitution from 1971-2020

This study focuses on the vital points of women participation and empowerment system under government institution and constitution through exploring previous hypothetical strategic women empowerment model. Women's Empowerment is one of the most challenging steps in our society. They are deprived of political leadership opportunities at all levels of the government. Their equal participation in governance and all other sectors is not only a matter of participation or democracy but also it is natural that women’s interest to be taken into account as a strong issue. For the sake of the true development of a society women’s participation in every section of life is a must. And most of the countries of the world have understood the fact that by keeping half of the population idle at home, progress is not possible and at the same time women will be deprived of their human rights. As human beings, they have equal rights like men to lead a life with dignity and they have the same potentiality to do something for the betterment of this world. Environment and facilities must be increased so that women can enhance their confidence, develop their skills and personality to play a vital role in the development of society as well as a country. Their rights must be included and preserved by the constitution of a country. In Bangladesh, the constitutional safeguard can be seen as a milestone for ensuring women's equal access and increased participation in political power structure for ensuring their participation, strengthening the government as well as for the sustainable development of Bangladesh. Undoubtedly, the elected reserve seats for women by the constitutions help to promote participation and women's access to the decision-making process. Through their participation is not practically much ensured, reserve seats promote women empowerment. But it is a matter of sorrow that, due to social, political, and cultural barriers, elected women members in government institutions cannot play their effective role. This study seeks to critically evaluate the extent of women’s political participation and empowerment under government institutions and constitution from 1971-2020.

The False Promise of Progress: Human Rights and the Legitimation of Inequality

Modernity’s social betterment programs such as human rights depend upon a narrative of progress. Progress sustains the ideology that the problems of the non-Western and non-white world are caused by a lagging behind in time that prevents the embrace of the norms that deliver social progress and not by unjust structures of global political and economic power. Progress frames the problem of inequality as cultural rather than political. This occlusion of power means that human rights do not attempt to address important power differences between the Global North and the Global South. Because human rights discourse is undergirded by progress, material human rights frames and institutions actually prevent radical change and reproduce imperial domination. Human rights, therefore, cannot deliver on their promise of equality. This promise must instead be entrusted to an eschatological hope that rejects progress and is disruptive of ongoing oppressive power arrangements.

From Exception to Norm? Analysing Gated Housing in Sofia and Kiev since 1989

Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 it is time to start a broader reflection on one of the most debated types of housing in Eastern European urban studies. Gated housing was almost unknown in the 1990s but started spreading rapidly at the end of the 2000s in different Eastern European and Post-Soviet countries. However, the 2008–2009 global financial crisis led to a sharp decrease in housing construction in general and of gated communities in particular. In recent years, housing construction as well as housing prices have increased again. Gated communities are part of this recovery. Instead of providing insights from a certain period of boom or crisis, this paper looks at three decades of housing production in general and gated communities in particular. It tries to uncover the institutional and economic background of housing development over the last 30 years. Moreover, it relates these developments to two (South)-Eastern European capital cities (Sofia and Kiev [Kyiv]) and their pathways of housing and gated community production. We focus on politico-economic and socio-spatial relationalities in these two different context conditions and scrutinise why and how gated communities emerged as well as how supply and demand changed over time. Both cases represent rather peripheral, capitalist economies concerning their national background. However, both cases are capital cities, which absorb the majority of capital investment. The polarisation and concentration of political and economic power structures lead us to discuss different actor-constellations regarding this on-going flight to privatopia, reflecting on the role of urban planning as well as glocal housing markets. Last but not least, this paper shows that gated communities are “urban assemblages” of wider processes of peripherialisation.

Донбас як об’єкт деукраїнізації з боку адептів «русского мира»

The purpose of the article is to try to understand the phenomenon of the ideological component of Russian hybrid aggression, to investigate how an alternative reality is formed in the occupied territories, built by the Kremlin whose main goal is the total Ukrainization of the region. of Donetsk and Luhansk regions through various sources. An important role in shaping the anti-Ukrainian identity of the population of the occupied Donbass was given to visual propaganda. The ideological treatment of the population of the «people's republics» is based on a centralized system of information space management. The authors note that the focus of both Russian and local political technologists and power structures of the «people's republics» remains the promotion of the concept of «special Donbass identity», the use of prepared facts of events, which contributes to further de-Ukrainization of the region. Instead of the history of Ukraine, the so-called «history of the Motherland» has appeared in the educational institutions of the «people's republics», in which the history of the region is combined with the history of Russia. A new educational subject has appeared in the curricula of educational institutions – «lessons of citizenship of Donbass». The content of this course is based on the narratives of Russian propaganda and aims to deprive children and young people of historical memory. There is an integration with the Russian educational space. Conclusions: Thus, the information and propaganda component of the conflict in Donbass is one of the most important tools for leveling the all-Ukrainian identity in this region. The ideological occupation of Donbass is carried out, first of all, through the promotion of the idea of non-Ukrainian identity of the population of the region. Practical meaning: the main provisions can be used to study the history of the occupation of the Donbass region. Originality: features of the hybrid Russian-Ukrainian war, namely its virtual component is covered. Scientific novelty: for the first time an attempt was made to conduct a comprehensive study of the ideological occupation of Donbass by Russia.

Research on the Impact on the Local Economy from the Perspective of Welfare Economics by the Collusion of Grassroots Governments, Interest Groups and Bank Branches

China's economic development is disconnected, not only between local governments, but also the local and the central government. Because of the performance appraisal and the status quo of political power structure, grassroots governments and local interest groups must be closely connected, and at the same time, they also form an alliance with the local bank branches that did not belong to any of the above branches, forming a trilateral conspiratorial economic development model. This model has far-reaching and perilous impacts on local economic development.

Power struggles: Governing renewable electricity in a time of technological disruption

Until recently the regulation, ownership and governance of the electricity sector was subject to long-standing debates between those advocating for a state-owned monopoly at one end and those for market liberalisation at the other. However, this debate has now been disrupted by dramatic developments in low-carbon technologies which pose a potentially radical challenge to the centralised system of electricity and have huge implications for the nature of electricity markets, policy and planning. Within this dynamic we explore how rapid technological shifts and processes of electricity governance and procurement are interacting over time, across scales, across technologies and within the different national political economies of Germany and South Africa. We find that while the nature of Germany's regulatory framework introduced in the early 1990s prioritised decentralised renewable energy systems with a strong role for community ownership, the design of South Africa's national programme for the procurement of renewable electricity two decades later has privileged generation projects at the utility-scale, and in turn the large-scale corporate and financial actors that operate and own them. Yet as such dynamics have continued to evolve, more recent policies in Germany have given greater encouragement to large-scale projects built by corporate actors, while in South Africa, small-scale distributed generation has been installed by wealthy consumers in the absence of appropriate legislation rather than because of it. In exposing these complexities, we challenge the assumption that radical low-carbon technological change will automatically result in a reconfiguration of political, economic and social power structures.

The ‘Feudal Revolution’ After All? A Discussion on Four Recent Books

The article discusses four books published during the 2010s, which address – directly or indirectly – the problem of the ‘feudal revolution’; that is, the break-up of the Carolingian structures of political power that is said to have taken place all across western Europe at some point between the early and the central medieval period, leading to the creation of localised lordships. This interpretative framework was seriously challenged in the early 1990s, when Dominique Barthelemy and other historians argued that the sharp distinction between Carolingian ‘public order’ and ‘feudal’ lordships was ill-conceived. The article shows how the books by Charles West, Alessio Fiore, Nicolas Schroeder and Maria Elena Cortese have contributed – and might further contribute – to this debate.

Contexts of State Violence: Jewish Expulsions in the Holy Roman Empire

AbstractPolicies excluding ethnoracial and religious minorities reinforce the power of political elites. This study addresses an extreme case of exclusion: urban expulsions of Jews in the medieval western Holy Roman Empire. Expulsions were official edicts proclaimed by Christian princes, lords, or town councils, whomever ruled a territory. Changing religious and political culture, in the form of new value on community righteousness and the beginning of territorialization, provided incentives for polities to expel their Jewish residents. Using a new database of Jewish settlement and city development in the Western Holy Roman Empire 1000–1520 CE, I show that the relational structure of political power between Christian elites could insulate or expose Jewish communities to political contests of the time. Jews were derided, lesser members of Christian society, but in spite of increasing focus on Christian piety and legislating community purity, most cities did not expel their Jewish residents. City rulers that did expel were attempting to solve challenges for sovereignty through their policies toward Jews.

“We Don’t Need Another One in Our Group”: Racism and Interventions to Promote the Mental Health and Well-Being of Racialized International Students in Business Schools

This article is grounded in the premises that racism is a significant predictor of mental health outcomes and that racialized international students experience a great deal of race-based discriminatory treatment. In highlighting how this takes shape in the context of business schools and describing some pedagogical interventions, our purpose is to invite management educators to reflect upon the ways in which they engage with racialized international students and to encourage educators to cultivate approaches that are relevant to their own specific positionalities and institutions. This is especially important as international students comprise a substantial percentage of total enrollment in many business schools and student health and well-being are intimately tied to academic and achievement outcomes. Pedagogical interventions require an understanding of the precarity and exclusion experienced by students while acknowledging the economic and political power structures that are at play as students move around the world to study in countries such as the United States, Canada, and Australia.

Hegemony, Exclusion and Equivocal Identities: Reflections on Israel’s Arab Minority in Sayed Kashua’s Dancing Arabs

Social consciousness forms in allegiance with the moral and political hegemonic power structures. Gramsci’s organic ideology defines this condition of hegemonic system where societal leadership is practised by the dominant class. With the emergence of cultural studies the prevailing hegemonic discourses are challenged, but defining liminality in this spectrum is still an ongoing process. In this context, the essay aims to demarcate the problematic aspects of personal and national identities against the hegemonic power structures, specifically with the case of the Arab minority in the State of Israel. Apart from the fundamental facets of hegemony, the aberrant conflict between nationalism and citizenship emerging from Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish democratic State, places the Arab Israeli identity in question. These arguments are validated through the fictional life narrative of Israel’s prominent Arab writer Sayed Kashua. His novel Dancing Arabs (2002) recapitulates the reality of being an Arab in Israel. The impeccable representation of identities in question hinges the repercussions of hegemony and social exclusion on both subjective and national levels. Standing on the critical platforms of Gramsci’s political theory of “hegemony” and Stuart Hall’s cultural theory of “identity”, the text is closely read as an artefact of resistance with emphasis on personal, political and philosophical discourses on the identity of the Arab minority in Israel. The essay traverses through the ethnocentric status of Israel’s social structure which disorders the recognition of Arab identity and identifies the conflict as a potential hindrance to peaceful coexistence in Israel’s near future.