Search results for "POLITICS"
showing 10 items of 2266 documents
Serving God in a largely theocratic society: rivalry and cooperation between Church and King
2009
Theocracy may be understood in different ways. The meaning mostly used is government by priesthood but we may call that “ecclesiocracy” or “hierocracy.” Here, theocracy will designate government according to God’s prescriptions and wishes—with the specification that the implementation or satisfaction of these prescriptions and wishes should be a public or political rather than a private affair and should involve some degree of coercion. The two meanings are different notably because, in the second, priests need not be the ones, or the only ones, who rule on God’s behalf.
European Politics of Food Origin. A Semiotic Analysis of Geographical Indications
2021
This chapter investigates the relationship between food products and origin places within the European Union food policies. In the 1990s, the EU established a Geographical Indication (GI) system, constituted of a set of food quality brands and a legal framework for food, wine and spirits. This system, defined as a sui generis model by insiders, entails a strong EU government participation in the typical food symbolic and material modelling. The sui generis model establishes a government monopoly on the place-based labels registration and institutes an atypical kind of intellectual property based on geographic marks. By proposing a semiotic approach toward the analysis of European Geographic…
Do Eurosceptic Parties Influence Their Party Systems?
2021
This book is written around—and anchored in—the Radical Party Hypothesis, which states that the success of Eurosceptic parties leads to changes of policy position/preferences by the other parties. In order to test it, it seeks to analyse whether the position changes of centrist parties on the issue of European Integration correlate with the electoral success of Eurosceptic Parties in those aforementioned parties’ countries, when controlling for a variety of factors, such as public opinion/sentiment on EU integration, socio-economic factors, time, as well as characteristics of those parties whose position changes this study measures: their size, their ideological orientation, their electoral…
The Current State of Social Media Research for eParticipation in Developing Countries: A Literature Review
2016
While there is an increasing interest for conducting research on the importance of social media within the eParticipation area, more emphasis is still needed within the context of developing countries. We address this need by presenting a literature review on social media within eParticipation in developing countries, to add to the understanding of how these technologies influence the political environment. We discuss trends, contributions and challenges within this area, and propose a future research agenda. Furthermore, we propose a model of social media for eParticipation from a process view perspective to guide future research in this field.
Arteriosclerosis and other diseases in heads of government and its consequences for the population.
2021
Abstract Heads of government with cerebrovascular arteriosclerosis and other diseases in key historical moments have led to decisions that have marked the destiny of countries not always in a beneficial direction. Severe diseases in political leaders in power have often been hidden from citiziens with the collaboration of personal physicians. The confidentiality of the patient-doctor relationship in special political circumstances should be re examined and subjected to debate. Legal provisions to ensure total transparency of medical information about the health of heads of government should be implemented. Transparency ensures the trust of citizens.
Representative bureaucracy and seconded national government officials in the European Commission
2015
The bureaucratic arms of modern international organizations increasingly consist of staff with ambiguous organizational affiliations. This article analyses the implications of this trend from the perspective of representative bureaucracy – using seconded national experts (SNEs) in the European Commission (Commission) as the empirical laboratory. Using a variety of datasets, we unveil Commission SNEs' profiles (to assess their passive representativeness) and link these profiles to their role perceptions (to evaluate their potential for active representation). This illustrates that Commission SNEs' background characteristics do not match those of their constituent population (i.e. the EU27 po…
Madagascar's independence jubilee: a nation's holiday in times of crisis
2013
The fiftieth anniversary of Madagascar's independence in 2010 took place in the midst of political crisis. The transitory government staged large public parties to mark the Jubilee. Despite a public discussion about legitimacy and justification of this fact, the national holiday was lavishly celebrated. In Madagascar, Independence Day is also an important family event and emphasis was put on private celebrations including family feasts and reunions. As a result, it enhanced the participants' emotional attachment to their personal and local face-to-face milieu. This article asks how the golden jubilee was celebrated against a backdrop of political illegitimacy. I contrast official state-led …
The PSOE's deliberation and democratic innovations in turbulent times for the social democracy
2020
In the midst of the great recession, the Spanish Socialists Worker's Party (PSOE) lost the Government and experienced a process of instability while trying to reconnect with its electorate. The party's strategic response was embracing highly inclusive deliberations on both key institutional and policy issues that eventually sparked tensions and division. These internal debates led to the introduction and implementation of other democratic innovations, such as direct votes and consultations that substantially transformed key features of the PSOE's organizational model. The article discusses the main features and problems of such deliberations and democratic innovations, and their wider conse…
Ethnic or Socio-Economic Conflict? Political Interpretations of the Rwandan Crisis
1996
AbstractRather than trace the political history of the conflict in Rwanda I will focus on the different interpretations of the conflict by the actors involved. The external identification of the Tutsi refugees as 'Banyarwanda' corresponds with the ideology and self image of the RPF who were recruited among the refugees and their descendants who fled to Uganda during and after 1959. The RPF presents itself as a democratic organisation speaking for all Rwandans and its anti-ethnic stance is designed not only to appeal to Rwandans but also to a Western audience. The RPF's opponent, the Habyarimana government in Rwanda, presented itself as the heir of the 1959 'peasant revolution' which had rep…
Imagined communities against the tide? The questioned political projection of nationalism
2017
This article deals with the validity of Anderson’s definition of imagined communities and the future of imagination typical of nationalism. It is based on bibliographic review and research on the case of Cerdanya. Three questions of Anderson’s definition are revised: the limitation of the nation, its supposedly inherent sovereignty and the sense of community among unknown people. In this last point, the text focuses also on the consequences that imagined community is embodied for known people every day. It concludes that the production of local identities and dynamics in global, local and regional level represents a challenge for the political projection of imagined communities. Nevertheles…