Search results for "Politics"
showing 10 items of 2266 documents
From fringe to fringe: the shift from the clericalist League of Polish Families to the anticlericalist Palikot Movement 2001–2015
2017
The period between 2001 and 2015 brought two events in Poland that deserve to be called phenomena. In 2001 the rightist, clericalist League of Polish Families entered the Sejm. Ten years later, the leftist, anticlericalist Palikot Movement achieved spectacular success in the 2011 elections. These events give a picture of a radical shift in the Polish political scene: a rightist clericalist party disappeared from the right flank of the political scene, while a new, leftist-anticlericalist formation appeared. The article makes reference to a set of five explanations on both the causes and consequences (and permanence) of the observed changes. I argue that only a concurrence of a number of com…
Promoting neoliberal ideology in Finnish rural community development : the creation of new moral actors
2019
Today’s political ambitions are based on the neoliberal aspiration to diminish the state’s role and responsibilities, and to transfer those responsibilities to local communities and individuals in ways that idealise those communities, promising to ‘give power to the people’. Instead of highlighting individualism, neoliberalism now celebrates communities and participation. This article deals with the effects of this ideology with regard to Finnish rural policy objectives. Drawing on Finnish village action programmes as data, we argue that these ideological views aim to transform individuals and create new moral actors. Our research indicates that Finland’s rural policy objectives invoke acto…
Measuring Populist Attitudes on Three Dimensions
2018
Theoretically, populism has been conceptualized as a political ideology with three sub-dimensions: anti-elitism attitudes, a preference for popular sovereignty, and a belief in the homogeneity and virtuousness of the people. However, empirical research to date has treated populist attitudes as a unidimensional construct. To address this issue, we propose to conceptualize populist attitudes as a latent higher-order construct with three distinct first-order dimensions. A 12-item inventory was developed using two survey studies conducted in Switzerland in 2014 and 2015. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to test the construct validity of this measure of populist attitudes. …
The Gender Politics of Celebrity Humanitarianism in Africa
2011
This article examines Anglo-American news media through a discourse-theoretical framework to study first, how celebrities are constituted as gendered humanitarian subjects acting on behalf of African problems, and second, how the concept of ‘Africa’ is produced, not only as a place, but also as a purpose in the world system. The debate surrounding celebrities is at an impasse, where they are seen as either instrumental or detrimental to African development. To break this standoff, we begin by placing celebrities in their neo-colonial context. We argue that the legitimacy of Bono, Bob Geldof and Angelina Jolie as humanitarian actors is underpinned by particular reproductions of race, class a…
Through the Looking Glass: The Attitudes of Polish Political Parties towards the EU before and after Accession
2009
Abstract The objective of this paper is a comparison of the attitudes of parliamentary parties towards the European Union in terms of Poland's accession to the European Union. Therefore the parliamentary parties' attitudes after the elections in 2001 and 2005 have been analyzed and compared. Another significant aim of this paper is the identification of factors conditioning these attitudes as well as changes in them. The change from a candidate to a member of the EU forced the political parties to redefine their attitudes towards Europe since the character of the European issue itself also changed. This especially applies to those parties which strongly opposed Poland's accession to the EU.…
Local interest groups and the perception of power in Spanish cities
2018
Studies on local interest groups have generated a considerable number of theories on urban power that have eventually become the basis of far-reaching approaches on democracy and collective action. Such literature has been especially concerned with discovering who governs the city, paving the way for discussions on elitism, pluralism and urban regimes. Some approaches consider that the business elite dominates local politics, while other theories assert that interests other than business (neighbors, environmentalists, faith-based organizations, civic groups) have been gaining relevance and access to local government. The POLLEADER survey (2006) provided data on the influence of certain soci…
Real Humans?: <i>Affective imaginaries of the human and its Others in the Swedish TV series Äkta människor</i>
2019
According to the Swedish science fiction TV series Akta manniskor (Real Humans, SVT and Matador film 2012-2014), humanoid robots called “hubots” are replacing the human workforce in care work and assembly line industries. Against the backdrop of current debates about immigration and citizenship in the Nordic countries, this article does a close, contextual reading of the series, exploring how the hubots influence work and family life. We are particularly interested in how hubots tie in with the cultural circulation of affect in relation to Otherness and how responses towards the “not-quite” human or dehumanized Other are negotiated in present-day Nordic cultural imaginaries. What kinds of a…
The local appropriation of democracy: an analysis of the municipal elections in Parakou, Republic of Benin, 2002–03
2006
Ever since the ‘democratic renewal’ of 1989–90, Benin has been regarded as a model democracy in the African context. The holding of local elections in 2002–03 can be seen as the culmination of this turn to democracy. Donors attach high expectations to decentralisation and local democracy. Based on an empirical analysis of municipal elections in Parakou, the country's third-largest city, the paper tries to gauge whether these expectations have been realised. The paper argues that while multi-party democracy has been instituted under considerable pressure from the outside, the particular form it has taken derives instead from rationales of national and local politics which go back to the late…
Thomas Hobbes on fear,mimesis,aisthesisand politics
2011
Hobbes's theory of fear has two major implications for his political theory. One implication is how men's mutual fear is the source of a commonwealth by institution. The second implication is that sovereign power is the source of fear, and that sovereign power also uses that fear to govern people. These two implications have not been analyzed fully in past studies. In a way, a sovereign captures mutual fear reigning in a multitude and transforming it into a political tool designed for government of the subjects. Possessing the right and power to cause death, a sovereign takes the place of God on earth. A sovereign has certain expectations of citizens: they should obey and honour the soverei…
Museari, Educar en Arte LGTB para Superar la Homofobia y la Transfobia
2021
La presente investigación parte de un proceso de intervención en las aulas de formación del profesorado que pretende generar un acercamiento a las posibilidades educativas del arte LGTB, cuyo objetivo consiste en reflexionar sobre la oportunidad de utilizar piezas ar-tísticas, incorporando cuestiones como la diversidad sexual y de género, fomentando así la superación del odio, la homofobia y la transfobia. Como metodología se plantea un estu-dio de caso en el que se analiza un taller impartido a dos grupos de la Facultat de Magisteri de la Universitat de València, incorporando la Investigación Educativa Basada en Artes. La recogida de datos se lleva a cabo durante la práctica docente, usand…