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Aim of this article is to analyze politician Bernie Sanders, who tried win nomination of theDemocratic Party to the White House. Sanders autoidentity is democratic socialist, he is admirer ofFranklin Delano Roosevelt presidency. This persona is strictly connected with an alter-globalistmovement, especially Occupy Wall Street. Sanders made great effort to promote in Americasocialdemocratic ideas.
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Migrant women are often stereotyped. Some scholars associate the feminization of migration with domestic work and criticize the “care drain” as a new form of imperialism that the First World imposes on the Third World. However, migrant women employed as domestic workers in Northern America and Europe represent only 2% of migrant women worldwide and cannot be seen as characterizing the “feminization of migration”. Why are migrant domestic workers overestimated? This paper explores two possible sources of bias. The first is sampling: conclusions about “care drain” are often generalized from small samples of domestic workers. The second stems from the affect heuristic: imagining children left behind by migrant mothers provokes strong feelings of injustice which trump other considerations. The paper argues that neither source of bias is unavoidable and finds evidence of gender stereotypes in the “care drain” construal.
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In this article the author argues that contemporary political practice supersedes political theory and political philosophy that are still not able to comprehend and articulate its movement. The author argues that what is lacking is not only „the name“ for political subjectivity but understanding of its meaning and possibility of appearance. Contrasting biopolitics – as antipolitics proper – to the political, in the second part the author discusses current theoretical trends of biopolitics (neoliberalism and postmodernity) and traces the conditions necessary to answer it.
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The article is a twofold attempt: at re‑reading the category of a topos after the Shoah and at interpreting the particular record of the oral history in the context of the liminal metamorphoses the notion of the topoi – crucial in European culture and literature – has undergone. In the first part of the text, the author recapitulates the studies on the aforementioned category – from Aristoteles to the twentieth century scholars (Curtius, Lausberg, Ziomek, Abramowska, Panas); in the second part, she tries to apply it in interpretative practice.
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Left-right self-placement on a unidimensional scale is a standard question in many social and political surveys to measure respondents’ ideological orientation in a minimalist way. Although the left-right scale is a standard question, the scale design is not standardized across surveys. One aspect of scale design is the offer of a midpoint. This paper is about design effects on central left-right scale placement in a cross-national context. How do respondents answer if there is no true midpoint: Do respondents who want to express a middle position, in the case of a 10-point scale, use scale middle categories as a substitute for a true midpoint? Are findings consistent across countries? Offering a midpoint is much debated among researchers and quite often, a midpoint might serve as a hidden “don’t know” or a missing attitude. Does nonresponse increase when non-attitudes cannot be expressed by choosing the neutral midpoint to hide nonresponse? If middle categories in the 10-point scale work as substitute for a true midpoint in the 11-point scale, nonresponse will not differ. We tested these questions in a split-half experiment where either a 10-point or an 11-point scale was asked in an experimental web survey fielded in six countries. Our results seem to confirm the idea that respondents who favor choosing a scale middle find a virtual center in the 10-point scale. However, results are inconsistent in cross-national perspective.
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AN ANALYSIS OF CONTEMPORARY RADICAL PARTIES IN EUROPE
The paper provides a comprehensive overview of European radical parties. The main aim of this paper is to examine whether there are common patterns regarding these parties, and to analyse the implications of this phenomenon. In order to achieve the above, the paper proceeds as follows: Firstly, the phenomenon of political radicalisation in contemporary Europe is explored. This leads to mapping the radical political landscape in Europe. Finally, the paper concludes with the analysis of the possible outcomes of radicalisation of European politics including the possible societal effects. By doing so the paper argues that a fresh theoretical approach to comprehend the phenomenon is necessary.
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‘Almost certainly we are witnessing a shift to...a market individualism of neoliberalism where the self is shaped as a utility maximiser, a free and contractual individual, who is self-constituted through the market choices and investment decisions that he/she makes....In the face of increasingly technical and functional forms of literacy and of schooling, we might inquire whether school in an age of consumerism promotes a relation to the self based on truth-telling or whether this relation has been replaced by another primary ethos: happiness, security, survival, success, ‘self-improvement,’ wealth.’ (Besley and Peters, 2007: 18)
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The labels we attach today to distinguish political regimes have histories. Applying them without understanding these histories is sometimes anachronistic and ethnocentric. I have little new to say about “democracy” and “dictatorship”, so that the discussion of these concepts is just a reminder. “Authoritarianism”, however, is a dubious neologism. I advance two claims: (1) In all regimes the power to command and be obeyed entails some dose of reason-giving, (2) What distinguishes regimes is the form and the extent to which the authority of rulers is monopolised by physical force. I conclude that the concept of “authoritarianism” adds little to the distinction between democracy and dictatorship.
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The article offers an overview of the position of the Visegrad Group in the history of Central-Eastern Europe. The Group emerged in the 14th Century as a coalition of three medieval kingdoms: Poland, Bohemia and Hungary. Towards the end of the century, Poland favoured an alliance with Lithuania, motivated by the conflict of both states with the Teutonic Order. The shift involved a personal union under the Jagiellonian dynasty, which in the course of time evolved into an actual union (the Union of Lublin, 1569) creating the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów). Nationalist ideology, which emerged after the partitions of the Commonwealth towards the end of the 18th Century, resulted in the disintegration of entire Central-Eastern Europe into nation states formed on the basis of ethnic differences. The present study have aimed to verify the potential of the cultural contribution of the Visegrad Group and the Eastern Alliance for the development of European integration processes. The influence of these groups of countries in the external environment in the development of European civilization has been presented in terms of historiosophical. Today, the former medieval partners are members of the European Union, where they revive the Visegrad Group in order to pursue their narrow interests, thus affecting the progress of European integration. Unlike the Visegrad Group there is Easter Alliance perceived as a bloc of countries with a potential for introducing progressive ideas for a constructive development of the European Union.
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On the borderline between political theory and moral philosophy it is usual to bring up the question of Truth in Politics (writings of Hannah Arendt are important in this respect). If we invert the question and try to discover the nature of lying in politics, we immediately face the discursive nature of politics. In this respect, the oral nature of politics introduces “lying” as part of e political action. This means a fundamental change of framework because the moral aspects are de-emphasized and in discursive restraints appear in the foreground and shape the political actions. The study examines some circumstances of the discursive nature of the politics, such as politicization, the question of the populism and of the objectivity.
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Since 2012, several European countries have seen the rise of conservative and, in part, fundamentalist social movements fuelled by the animosity against the perceived threat of „gender ideology” or „gender theory”. Being opposed to women’s rights, LGBTQ issues, certain administrative policy instruments (such as gender mainstreaming) as well as the public financing of gender studies departments, the advocates of these platforms tend to regard all political and non-governmental actors, administrative staff and scientific researchers who focus on these issues as a single homogeneous group and an organised lobby. This is partly manifested in grassroots or religiously-affiliated movements and partly in the agenda of right-wing and populist parties. More and more researchers are convinced by the transnational character of the movements as well as the broad impact of discourses and practices reaching across national borders and issues that we are not dealing with isolated cases, but a coherent phenomenon. Contrary to the three most frequent interpretative frameworks, i. e. the national/local political context, the discourse/mobilisation of the Roman Catholic Church, and the conservative backlash, I discuss these movements in the context of the rise of right-wing populism and on the basis of theoretical explanations seeking to grasp the demand side. On the one hand, I argue that the study of this phenomenon provides important clues for understanding the reasons behind the gain of populist forces in Europe and beyond. On the other hand, I propose that „gender” is not the final target for these movements which should primarily not be understood as mobilizations against equality. Rather, the emergence of these movements is a symptom of a larger crisis, and their ideologies are the surface, where „gender” is a symbolic glue. These mobilizations are rather the throes of a contest for redefining liberal democracy where, in the interpretation of its adversaries, „gender ideology” embodies numerous deficits of the established global power order and the so-called progressive actors, and they react to these by re-politicizing certain issues. Therefore, the interpretations limited to a ‘fight between values’ are rather an obstacle to understand the phenomenon, by repudiating or obscuring this important structural realignment. Based on Chantal Mouffe’s concept of ‘consensus’ and her critique of the established hegemony of consensus in liberal democracy, I discuss the contribution of three phenomena that are characteristic of the so-called progressive actors (including the feminis and LGBTQ actors), namely the neoliberal consensus, the human rights consensus and the consensus about liberal progress, to the rise of the movements against ‘gender ideology’.
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This politico-philosophical paper presents the libertarian theory of threat. It is claimed that the concept of threat is logically dependent on the concept of natural property rights. First of all, the common account of threat, according to which the difference between threats and offers depends on decrements and increments in the subjective well-being of an individual, is dismissed as untenable. The authors demonstrate, in a logical and deductive manner, that threat and property rights or, more specifically, violation of these impact each other logically and therefore the libertarian theory of threat or, more broadly, the natural rights account of threat is the only possible consistent theory of threat. The second section presents the so-called common account of threat (CAT) and the third section criticizes CAT as counterintuitive and based on an unsound background theory. The fourth section characterizes the so-called libertarian account of threat (LAT) and shows that it matches our considered moral judgements better than CAT. The theory of natural property rights is identified as the background theory of LAT and it is demonstrated that LAT is the only consistent account of threat. These investigations are conducted using the method of reflective equilibrium.
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This article aims to make a contribution to the recent debate in the pages of SocialAnthropology about the neoliberal approach towards the state. In my response to thearticles by Wacquant and others in this debate, I focus on idea of why neoliberalism canbe treated as a political project, and how it incorporates numerous political projects. Inmy analysis I put emphasis on the revamping of the state, on the political commitmentsof those creating neoliberalism, and on the reorganisation and potential relocation of the political. I then turn to a specific political project not yet discussed, namely how radicalsocialist movements can appear as one of the shaping powers of neoliberalism. Here Idescribe the contribution of these movements to the creation of the new possibilities forelites to practise new forms of accumulation by dispossession - while they fragment andco-opt these movements themselves
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If we want to understand how politics really works and/or open up new ways for the criticismof regimes replacing democratic ideas by institutionalism, it is worth to take a lookat the logic of populism. This is the leading statement of Ernesto Laclau, prominent figureof post-marxist political philosophy. The Argentine political theorist’s most importantbook is the Hegemony and Social Strategy (1985) co-authored with Chantal Mouffe. Intheir work they focus on political indentities and discursive strategies of social movements,developing sharp divergences from the dogmatic Marxian class theory. Laclau’slatest book, On Populist Reason, has similar ideological bases. In his approarch populismis neither a social movement nor an ideology. In his book he tries to liberate populismfrom preconceptions and redefine it in a discursive way. Laclau pays special attention tothe populist discourses, in the aspect of how they are created by a democratic demandand to ’the plebs’, wich defines themself as ’populus’ fighting with the hegemonic power.His book published in 2005 has been translated to Hungarian last year. This delay let usdeeply consider how can his theoretical framework help us to interprete the ideology ofthe radical movements rising after the global economic crisis.
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Review of: Peter C. Ordeshook “A Political Theory Primer”; Routledge, New York, London, 1992. by: Zdravko Petak
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Political realism claims that politics can be understood only on its own terms. Realist political theory attempts to have the autonomy of politics recognized and to emancipate politics from the authority of other domains such as ethics, economy or aesthetics. After the democratic transition, Hungarian political theory has claimed autonomy of politics as opposed to technocratic and other deterministic approaches. The study discusses two texts of Hungarian political theory which, differing from the mainstream, conceived the problem of the autonomy of politics in the context of the relationship between politics and morality. János Kis’ ‘Politics as a Moral Problem’ and István Schlett’s answer to that book, ‘Morality as a Political Problem’ represent the two main standpoints in the realist – moralist debate described by contemporary realist theory, however, neither of them fi ts into those positions perfectly. The differences analysed in this article emerge regarding the autonomy of politics. As a conclusion, it is supposed that the concept of the autonomy of politics cannot account for a realist approach to politics.
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The present article draws from a wider research project conducted in the months of February and May 2015 in Tor Pignattara, one of the twelve urban zones constituting the V Municipality of the city of Rome. The project, which takes the shape of a multisensory, posthumanist microethnography of multiculture, mainly attempts to investigate how affective urban materialities are capable of organizing and co-participating in the iterative reconfigurings of everyday experience with/in the locale. In particular, it looks at how material social practices such as racialization, gendering and classing intra-act (Barad 2007) in the production of constitutive in/exclusion(s) with/in it. After a brief introduction about the context of the research and the process of gendered racialization by which it is currently invested, this article proposes feminist new materialism as a theoretico-methodological framework that counters the epistemological identity politics responsible for the essentialization and reification of constituencies in the locale. By conceiving identity structurations as more-than-human assemblages given by the intra-action of human and nonhuman actants, feminist materialism challenges their assumed discreteness and poses them as co-constitutive, dynamic and overlapping historical formations rather than as pre-existing givens. In fact, it accounts for the enactment of the nonhuman in the materialization of what there is. This article proposes a feminist new materialist reading of food and kitchen odors in Tor Pignattara as a tool to denounce the arbitrariness of the dichotomous thinking that structures life in late western modernity.
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