Understanding Of Politics Research Articles

Friedrich Engels’s view on theoretical thinking: innovative application by the Communist Party of Vietnam in the reform process

Marxism-Leninism has become a widespread ideological foundation that is consistently and firmly pursued by the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) in its leadership orientation for national development. This research aims to explore and identify the distinctive issues in Friedrich Engels’ theoretical thinking regarding the formation of theoretical thinking based on practical experience, the close relationship between theoretical and scientific thinking, materialist dialectical thinking and mastering the scientific principles of philosophy. These orientations have become methodological guides for the CPV to apply to its leadership activities. This research was conducted based on the analysis and synthesis of available sources, with the main sources being the Marx-Engels Collected Works and some classical works written independently by Friedrich Engels, along with a synthesis of related studies. The results indicate that Friedrich Engels’ theoretical thinking has been studied, supplemented, developed, and creatively applied by the Communist Party of Vietnam in the renovation process in Vietnam, especially since the CPV initiated the renovation policy in December 1986. To date, Vietnamese socialist theory continues to be supplemented by Friedrich Engels’ theoretical thinking, which in his time had not been able to be experimented, contributing significantly to the development of the CPV’s theoretical understanding of political, economic, cultural, and social leadership, becoming an important guiding tool for the CPV to firmly lead the implementation of the renovation policy. Friedrich Engels’ theoretical thinking also holds important value in the struggle against erroneous, eclectic, dogmatic, and mechanical views on human perception and practical action.

Music gonna teach: Decolonising IR through a musical exploration of knowledge

Abstract There is a growing body of literature calling for the decolonisation of International Relations (IR) theory. This literature, which includes perspectives from the Global South, Indigenous, and feminist approaches, has explained how the colonial thought and White supremacy of early IR scholars like Wilson, Reinsch, and Schmitt shaped the contemporary field and is still reflected in mainstream understandings of core concepts like peace, sovereignty, and security. The need to decolonise IR is well established, but the way to do so is not always clear. This paper explores how engaging with the global politics of Afro-Caribbean Rebel Music serves the decolonisation effort. We can understand Rebel Music as a form of knowledge that emerged in dialogue with, and continues to reproduce ideas embedded in, global and anti-colonial Black approaches to IR theory. Textually and sonically, Rebel Music critiques the nation-state as the primary agent of peace, security, and identity, imagines a transnational Black identity, and is one of the primary forms in which we can hear the voice of the marginalised communicate their understanding of world politics. Engaging with Rebel Music is thus one avenue to decolonising contemporary IR.

Special section introduction: epistemic politics in international and comparative political economy

ABSTRACT Economic orthodoxy has faced multiple challenges over recent years, ranging from the global financial crisis and economic populism to the Covid-19 pandemic and the spectre of stagflation. This has generated significant policy innovations, like quantitative easing and the furlough schemes, while heterodox economic ideas (briefly) gained notoriety. Yet these shifts have frequently been grafted onto pre-existing institutional and discursive templates, anchored by the assumption that they represent a temporary deviation from ‘normal’ equilibrium conditions. To make sense of these dynamics of crisis, change and continuity, this special section showcases an ‘epistemic politics’ approach that foregrounds the political life of economic knowledge. It is framed around three questions. What has been the role of economic knowledge and expertise in shaping policy and regulation over the past decade? To what extent have dominant economic ideas, theories and models been impacted by political conflicts and emergent issues? How have policy makers navigated economic crises and uncertainty through cognitive and discursive practices? This introductory paper sets out the ambition for the special section by defining our understanding of epistemic politics, before detailing the threefold contribution it makes to wider scholarship in IPE and CPE. It concludes with an overview of the five papers.

The Psychological and Social Underpinnings of Political Belief Development

In this study we will, examine the complicated psychological and social forces that produce political attitudes. The paper reveals the twofold nature of the cognitive processes; how emotive and cognitive biases influence reasoning about politics. The findings reveal that one of the common types of directional motivated reasoning is one in which the pre-held belief impacts the treatment of political information, which in turn results in biased assessment of political personalities and issues. Other than that, this research discusses the role of conversation and deliberation in the promotion of reflective political opinions. Discussion with others persuades a person to express an opinion and to listen to others that develop one's thinking of political matters. The paper also discusses the emotions, such as anxiety and anger, associated with political judgment, maintaining that such emotions distort and occlude any lucid judgment about political performance. It also reveals that scientific curiosity acts to offset such one-sidedness: "The more scientifically curious anyone is, the more open they will be to information that runs counter to pre-existing points of view, allowing them to reason more impartially." Findings underpin views that a critical thinking-open discussion environment will be highly instrumental in raising political awareness and understanding. The present study bequeaths an important understanding of the psychological mechanisms underlying the construction of political opinion and the social processes that can help consolidate or contest these opinions. Controlling these factors sets up a better ability to confront polarization and misinformation in modern political discourses

Time zones

In this response to the forum, I argue that if we think of zones not so much as spatial zones but as time zones, a new way of understanding the pixelated decentralization of politics comes into view. By explicit intention, the zone is designed to punch people out of a shared horizon or a space of capture in the quintessentially modern metrics of per capita growth or standard of living. While offering peculiar usable pasts often related to creative not to say anachronistic understandings of indigenous politics, the zone is also a better iconic scale for the end of history in the grand sense than the nation or even the world in its sloughing off the injunctions of mass politics and popular sovereignty.

Does Soft Power Look Different in Multinational Federations? International Education and Soft Power Politics in Canada/Quebec

Abstract While the study of soft power has gained significant scholarly attention, an understanding of soft power politics in diverse state models, and multinational federations specifically, is lacking. This study remedies this gap by exploring the connection between soft power and multinational federalism in the Canadian context, highlighting the tensions between the Canadian federal “majority” nation and Quebec's “minority” nation. Relying on the international education policy sphere and its soft power potential, the study extends the discussion of soft power beyond the typical unitary nation-state lens, elucidating the interaction of multiple (and contrasting) soft power rationales within one country. The study reveals that soft power politics can be exerted as much domestically as externally and can be pursued in a discorded fashion within a nation-state. Clearly, there is a need for a more nuanced understanding of soft power, which considers its contested manifestation, and the context-specific ways it is utilized.

Ambivalent citizenship: political cynicism, community engagement and belonging among youth in Brazil

ABSTRACT This article interrogates the role of urban peripheries in creating political imaginaries and understandings of citizenship among children and grandchildren of insurgent citizens in urban Northeast Brazil. The analysis draws on data collected through 10 ethnographically informed focus groups with youth between 18 and 35. The article argues that, contrary to beliefs that young people are apathetic about politics or enthusiastic to engage in progressive social movements, youth have an ambivalent relationship with the state, informed by everyday encounters with precarious infrastructure, awareness of previous forms of collective action that determines their civic engagement, and feelings of belonging to home communities. The article suggests revisiting the concept of insurgent citizenship considering new socio-political changes that framed the lives of young people living in urban peripheries in the past two decades in Brazil and proposes ambivalence as a productive theoretical angle to make sense of ruptures and discontinuities in political practices.

Some sound, some fury, signifying very little: Frantz Fanon and psychological scholarship in South Africa

Frantz Fanon has been an inspirational staple to a political, social, and economic understanding of South Africa for nearly 50 years. How, though, has South African psychology wrestled with, and appropriated, Fanon over the course of this time span? A review and analysis of all published references to Fanon in the South African Journal of Psychology, over a period of 40+ years, reveal a disappointingly superficial engagement with Fanonian theory, and a glaring neglect of clinical, research, and educational implications of Fanon’s praxis. Recommendations for a recommitted engagement with Fanon’s writings are provided.

The multivocality of the nation: political imagination and transformation in the emergence of African Nationalism

AbstractAt key moments in history, political understanding and action are irrevocably transformed. What makes such moments of transformation possible? This article examines the emergence of African nationalism in South Africa, following the multivocal appeal to African nationhood made by proto-nationalist leaders and intellectuals. In doing so I examine how new political imagination can reconfigure the structure of political relations and create powerful new possibilities for political organizing and action. African proto-nationalist leaders were ‘intermediary intellectuals’ who used African nationhood to speak to three different political logics of their key audiences: a ‘progressive nationhood’ to their white colonial audience, a ‘unifying nationhood’ to their missionary-educated African audience, and a ‘traditional nationhood’ to their rural African audience. African nationhood thus had a multivocal appeal which allowed proto-nationalist leaders to bring otherwise divided audiences to support a common political project. By bridging these divided communities, proto-nationalist leaders were able to combine resources and strategies from once separated domains into novel forms of political power. Transformation in political understanding was thus a critical enabler of innovation in organization and action because it built a political project where new connections between African and colonial worlds were made politically ‘thinkable’. Speaking to the scholarship on political repertoires and the sociology of anti-colonial intellectuals, this study has broader implications for the role political ideas play in political transformation.

Cognitive support for political partisans' understanding of policy data.

Political partisanship might lead educated adults-even the highly numerate-to reason selectively about numbers that are relevant to and support their ideology ("motivated numeracy"). In this pre-registered study, we sought to examine the replicability of motivated numeracy, and investigate whether cognitive support (number lines) that improves the reasoning of children might also improve the reasoning of political partisans. To test this, we asked 1000 adults about their political ideology and asked them to interpret fictional data, in a table or number-line format, about ideology relevant (i.e., the effect of gun control on crime) or irrelevant (i.e., the effect of skin cream on rash) issues. We failed to replicate motivated numeracy when political identity was used but observed motivated numeracy when prior attitude was used. Moreover, data presented on number lines elicited 75 percent greater accuracy than data presented in tables, regardless of whether the information was ideology-relevant, or whether data supported, was neutral to, or contradicted participants' political outlooks. Findings imply that political partisans require cognitive support to be more objective about policy data.

The Issue of Safety Amongst Undergraduate Students of the University of Delhi

In this paper we investigate what are the connotations of safety for students and in what way is college a safe space. In the questionnaire administered, there was no specific question on safety. However, the response to our first question—What does entering college mean to you?—saw a significant percentage (68%) of female students associating entry into college with entry into a safe space. Students’ expectations from college —as revealed in their responses to other questions—go beyond physical safety, not only do they draw attention to the multidimensionality and complexity of the concept, but in doing so they mark out and identify within the safe environs of college, temporally and spatially fluid islands of unsafety. Their responses problematized the notion of safety, thus alerting us to a political (including gendered) and expansive understanding of safety. In this expansion safety emerges as a cluster concept incorporating dimensions of gender, equality, justice, freedom and democracy. This paper makes two arguments, first that the college experience contributes to the students’ understanding of safety in its multidimensionality. The connotations of safety include both the physical and the socio-psychological dimensions. Second that in the articulation of this learning a student develops a critical understanding of social, political, and economic structures of power.

Towards a geographical political economy understanding of platformization

In the last ten years digital platforms have emerged as an important theme in academic discourse and various subdisciplines of geography and adjacent research areas. Whether in the fields of social media, urban transport, industry cloud services or gig work, platformization is therein often discussed as a more-than-economic phenomenon engaging in a conflictive relationship with public interest, sovereignty, regulation and the state. However, while the concept of the platform has become ubiquitous, the integration of and dialogue between various broadened definitions are less often practiced. In our short paper, we argue that for further addressing this intricate relation between platforms, power and sovereignty an engagement with the platform concept and its integration through a political economy understanding is key for two reasons: Firstly, an overarching concept of platformization transcending the political/economy binary is necessary to be able to problematize the reification of normalized economic practices lying at the heart of the phenomenon. Secondly, there is a pragmatic reason for developing a geographical political economy perspective on platformization as it can serve as a common ground for an engaged pluralism within and beyond the discipline of economic geography. Based on a systematization of existing definitions this paper therefore combines insights from political economy perspectives, urban platform research and research on platform labor to propose a working definition stimulating a reflection on the platform discourse thus far and strengthening strategical-relational thinking on platform power in future research.

Political Participation Among Scheduled Castes: A Study on West Godavari District, Andhra Pradesh

Political Participation Among Scheduled Castes: A Study on West Godavari District, Andhra Pradesh “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors”. ―Plato “Plato had no perception of the uniqueness of every individual, of his incommensurability with others, of each individual as forming a class of his own. He had no recognition of the infinite diversity of active tendencies, and the combination of tendencies of which an individual is capable.” ― Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste KONDAPALLI SRINIVASU, M.A. Research Scholar Department of Political Science and Public Administration Andhra University, Visakhapatnam PETETI PREMANANDAM M.A., B.L., B.Lisc., PGDSM., Ph.D. Professor and Head of the Department Department of Political Science and Public Administration Andhra University, Visakhapatnam ABSTRACT India's democracy is the largest among countries in the world. The National Election Commission Report of India listed 900 million eligible voters, 468 million male and 432 million female. These Indian voters were spread over 29 states. A notable element of the 2019, 17th Lok Sabha Election was the participation of 15 million first-time voters aged 18–19. Only 14.39 percent of the 2019 Parliament was female, with 78 MPs. In comparison, 85.61 percent of the group was male (464). General Elections 2019, the National Election Planner, reports 3,66,61,315 Andhra Pradesh voters. According to NEP data, AP has 18,123,437 men, 18,474,714 women, and 3,745 others as voters. The Electoral Roll 2019 contains 56,908 services and 2,511 abroad Indian electors. Female voters grew by 3,51,277, or 1.93 percent. Andhra Pradesh has 539,804 18–19-year-old voters. Political engagement and understanding are essential to any political system. These tools make voters efficient and link them to politics. The International Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences defines political involvement as the main way a democracy grants or revokes consent and holds power accountable to the people. It includes voting, acquiring information, discussing and persuading, attending meetings, donating, and communicating with representatives. Democracy and political participation are linked. Participation lets citizens express their interests. It fosters national stability and organization. It maximizes benefits for most people. Scholars define political participation differently depending on how they understand the different sorts of political activity. Growth generally requires involvement. The UNDP's "Human Development Report 1993" lists four interconnected forms of involvement: family, economic, socio-cultural, and political.

Pentadic Cartography and India’s Foreign Policy: Insights from Jaishankar’s GLOBSEC Forum Interview

ABSTRACT India’s rise as the world’s largest democracy and its challenge to the Western-defined global order have attracted significant scholarly, political, and media attention. Using Anderson and Prelli’s pentadic cartography to enhance discursive analysis in international relations, this paper looks at journalist Maithreyi Seetharaman’s interview with Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s External Affairs Minister at the GLOBSEC Forum in Bratislava, Slovakia. Depicting three interlocking maps of the symbolic landscape of the interview, we highlight the use of Seetharaman and Jaishankar’s scene-act ratio, situating India’s actions in its geopolitical contexts. Jaishankar’s dual use of materialist and idealist discourses presents India as both a reactive agent influenced by external circumstances and a proactive agent with its own distinct goals and ethical considerations. This approach offers a comprehensive understanding of international politics, balancing dominant empirical narratives in IR and emphasising a complex interplay of motives that drive state behaviour. Through this case study, we advocate for a broader application of pentadic cartography in international relations to uncover the deeper meanings and contexts that shape state actions, providing a richer, more textured understanding of geopolitics, global diplomacy and state interaction.

Reforms of Political Finance: Strengthening Democracy by Reducing the Impact of High-Cost Politics

This study has two objectives: First, to examine high-cost politics in Indonesian elections; Second, to propose measures to strengthen the Ministry of Home Affairs’ authority in political finance supervision and enhance regulations to promote electoral transparency, using the recent Indonesian elections as a case study. Indonesia’s political process is characterized by high-cost politics, where candidates often face pressure to raise substantial funds to finance their election campaigns. Consequently, elections, meant to serve as a democratic platform for all Indonesians, frequently become subject to abuse by individuals seeking to attain power. The primary goal of this study is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the high-cost politics in Indonesian elections and its impacts on democratic integrity. The study utilized a normative juridical methodology, incorporating statutory and conceptual approaches. The findings indicated that transactional and money politics, along with high-cost politics in Indonesia’s elections, pose a serious threat to democracy. The Ministry of Home Affairs and the General Election Supervisory Agency must strengthen their legal instruments to monitor political party finances. Furthermore, political actors must be encouraged to reduce high-cost politics.

“Ka Aina No Ka Poe o Hawaii”

Abstract This article examines the independent newspaper Huli, published at the birth of the modern Hawaiian sovereignty movement from 1971 to 1973 by the grassroots political organization Kokua Hawaii. Reading through the surviving issues of Huli available in institutional archives, the article considers the variety of perspectives promoted within its pages to position Kokua Hawaii in relation to international understandings of anticolonial liberatory politics of the Global South. Revisiting prominent critiques of Kokua Hawaii, it argues that insights provided by Huli trouble lasting understandings of the organization and underscore the periodical’s relevance for navigating rising waves of political struggle in Hawaiʻi today. Moreover, the article contends that Huli—a timely revival of Hawaiʻi’s politically engaged print culture that flourished during the nineteenth century—offers one foundation for constructing a counterhegemonic lineage of socially concerned artists and cultural workers in Hawaiʻi. Through an analysis of Huli’s content, imagery, and context of production, the article uses the name of the periodical and its call to “huli” as a means of tracking the influence of Kokua Hawaii’s politics and aesthetics into the present, with Huli acting as a medium for insurgent inspiration.

2차 미소공동위원회 당시 정치고문단의 창설과 활동

The Political Advisory Group(PAG) was organized based on the recognition that the U.S. Army Military Government in Korea(AMG) had no dedicated advisory body to consult on political issues in South Korea, despite the fact that AMG dealt with numerous political issues in South Korea in addition to its military duties. The creation of the PAG was the final destination of the ‘decentralized’ and ‘fluid’ organizational transformation of AMG’s political advisory machinery. AMG had previously utilized the military intelligence agencies, political advisors dispatched by the US State Department, Hodge’s personal political advisor, and the American delegates for U.S-U.S.S.R. Joint Commission as political advisory organizations. PAG was comprised of Korea experts and political analysts from AMG. PAG collected and analyzed political intelligence through continuous contact with South Korean political figures. Then, PAG framed and implemented AMG’s occupation policy In particular, PAG actively supported the American delegates for 2nd U.S-U.S.S.R. Joint Commission based on the political intelligence and understanding of South Korean political parties accumulated through its activities. Throughout the 2nd U.S-U.S.S.R. Joint Commission, PAG’s focus was on “creating a situation led by right-wing forces” in the list of Korean political parties and social groups that U.S-U.S.S.R. Joint Commission would consult. The existence and activities of PAG clearly show the way and perspective of AMG’s reorganization of South Korean politics at the time. In addition, the fact that the PAG was established as a permanent organization with a single function as a “political advisor” only in 1947 can be seen as evidence that the political advisory function of the AMG in the early days of the occupation was weak.

Neoliberalism, left behind Middlesbrough and levelling up: an intractable policy task?

ABSTRACT Proposing to narrow spatial inequalities in one of the most unbalanced economies in the developed world, the Levelling Up agenda was a key driving force behind the Conservative Party obtaining their largest majority since 1987 at the 2019 general election. The agenda, though, has been beset by various problems and has all but fallen by the political wayside. One key problem was that it lacked a political economic understanding of left behind places, especially Northern post-industrial locales that were lagging particularly due to deindustrialisation under neoliberalism. Many of these post-industrial places have endured persistent deprivation and entrenched social problems for around four decades. This paper is structured as follows. It begins by exploring UK neoliberalism, before briefly discussing the emergence of left behind places and the Levelling Up agenda. Focussing on the experiences of left behind Middlesbrough, in Teesside, UK, the article explores the area’s rise in light of the iron, steel and petrochemicals industries and its decline particularly in the neoliberal era. As the town’s demise is intimately connected to neoliberalism, the paper closes by discussing why it is highly unlikely left behind places such as Middlesbrough will be revived under the UK’s current form of capitalism.

Decolonising Australian Gold Rush Narratives with Critical Geopolitics

Abstract Settler-colonial futurity and colonial onto-epistemology are embedded across mainstream Australian public education institutions and schooling. While Country is central to Indigenous being, knowledges and pedagogy, Australian public and school education and curricula regularly fail to engage with Country and place in its historical, political, institutional, more-than-human, and relational dimensions. This paper investigates how colonial discourse and narratives permeate public and schooling education resources about mining and the Australian gold rush, including those presented in local Victorian gold rush museums. These support an influential story of Australia’s past/present that erases First Nations1 custodial relations with Country, strengthens settler-colonial futurity and celebrates and legitimises its colonising and extractive relations between people, Country, and ecologies. The paper presents an argument for attending to critical, relational geopolitics in education and environmental education to destabilise and shift these ways of understanding. It considers opportunities and challenges presented by Australian curricula in terms of their capacity to develop geopolitical understandings of past/present/future social and ecological in/justice, and to support new political understandings and sense of connection and belonging with Country.

Influence of social cleavage and media usage on political behavior: a case of Pakistan

Increasingly media provides ample opportunities for the audiences to make media choices and form different levels of exposure along political lines. Predominately, Pakistan’s media is recognized as an irreplaceable tool in sparking change in the political landscape, forgoing national-regional identities, and bridging social gaps. Due to recent technological advancements citizens’ media usage brought changes in the political behavior of citizens regarding party choices and voting behavior. Such changes in the political behavior of citizens affect decision making which is influenced by social cleavage of education, gender, and age. However, contrary to similar historical changes, these advances have widened rather than narrowed societal cleavages. The objective of the paper is to explore the influence of social cleavage and media usage on political behavior of students and faculty in Pakistan specifically NUML university, Islamabad. This research explores how social cleavage and recent advances in digital media access changed the political behavior of faculty and students of NUML university. The paper employed survey-based research with a sample of 250 faculty members and students of NUML, Islamabad. According to results, it is concluded that social cleavage of education, age, and gender plays a vital role in transforming the political behavior of both faculty members and students. Likewise, persistent use of social media portrays positive political participation along with accountable voting behavior, whereby males are more active in participating in political activities as compared to females. The paper has policy implications for a one-dimensional media approach for ignoring solutions to political problems and understanding citizenship rights. Focused and well-defined policies are required to bring youth back to broadcasting media.