Archives - Page 2

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  Vol. 21 No. 3 (2021)

  Missing Cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean: Greek- Turkish Securitizations and their Impact on Regional Collaboration (Luca Doll)

  One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand: Exploring Identity and Electoral Performance of Italian Southernist Parties (Marco Improta)

  Sustainable Development in Middle Powers’ Governance Arrangements: The Cases of IBSA and MIKTA (Camila Saute Torresini)

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  Vol. 21 No. 2 (2021)

  Published almost exactly twenty years after the release of the journal’s inaugural issue, this new edition of IAPSS Politikon features five original contributions to the fields of Political Science, International Relations, and European Studies.

  Carol-Ann Rouillard and Mireille Lalancette argue for improvements in political representation via an analysis of media speeches on gender parity in Canada. Esther Ng K. H. sets out to demonstrate that a better understanding of state decisions to retain its existing practices rather than adopt new ones can be gained via the concept of ontological security. Building on insights from deliberation theory, Oxana Pimenova delves into the subsidiarity principle in the EU as an opportunity for enhanced dialogue and understanding between EU and national institutions, provided that some improvements to the principle are implemented. Fernando Ursine Braga Silva provides preliminary empirical support for a new explanation for the split of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Paul Fricker presents an up-to-date picture of the cooperative as well as conflictual patterns of interaction between China and the US in Djibouti.

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  Vol. 21 No. 1 (2021)

  From among the five contributions in this issue, three articles comprise a special section on 'Populisms, Hybrid Regimes and Political Change'. They represent memoirs from the first edition of the Leonardo Morlino Lecture Series that was organised in Mexico in November 2019. They are followed by a study of the prospects and pitfalls of a South African developmental state in regional comparative perspective, and by a book review on the perils of corruption and state capture in South Africa. Hence, the issue brings together Latin American and South African perspectives in particular. 

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  Vol. 20 No. 3 (2020)

  While the COVID-19 pandemic may be the first reference point for a "contemporary challenge," climate change has anything but disappeared in 2020. While the immediate effects of the pandemic might not persist in the long term, climate change remains an undisputedly central point of focus for social science research and thinking. Thus, Vol. 20 No. 3 of IAPSS Politikon contains a special section on "Paths to Climate Justice", consisting of two articles and a research note.

  Melina Kotsinas studies disaster management and stakeholders working in this field in a Small Island Developing Nation, Antigua and Barbuda, following Hurricane Irma and how they understand and respond to crisis. Lisa Carroll discusses the fact that the current international legal system cannot ‘effectively manage and sufficiently protect’ people moving due to climate and that the issue surrounding the definition of people undertaking this type of movement is doctrinal as well as definitional. Lisa Nowag reviews past research on the links between environmental changes and violence as well arguments for and against the controversial climate-conflict nexus. 

  In addition to the special section, Chloé Bernadaux provides insights into the operation of consociational systems in Northern Ireland and Lebanon from the perspective of their capacity to prevent conflicts along ethnonational lines.

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  Vol. 20 No. 2 (2020)

  Following an Editorial Note that summarizes an IAPSS Politikon webinar on 'Research and Education in Times of Pandemic', this issue contains three original articles and a book review. The first half of the issue consists of two articles employing interpretive methods (Ceren Çetinkaya) and critical theory (Ander Arredondo Chopitea). Çetinkaya studies one domain of the Turkish government’s efforts to reconstruct ‘a neo-Ottoman identity’, that of Ottoman-themed soap operas, juxtaposing this reconstruction to Turkey’s European identity that seeks affinity between Turkey and the European Union. Arredondo Chopitea contributes with an article asking whether development policies, in fact, can meet their intended aims to contribute to equality and global justice. 

  Subsequently, Hakan Sönmez analyses how various democracy indices capture democratic backsliding. He argues for approaching democracy indices with caution since they are based on complex measurements entailing a range of conceptual and methodological choices. The issue closes with Chetan Rana’s book review of an edited volume analysing the status quo and prospects for the ‘Indo-Pacific axis’.

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  Vol. 20 No. 1 (2020)

  IAPSS Politikon is committed to demonstrating that Political Science has a lot to contribute to the analysis of the phenomena and issues in a world in turmoil. Volume 45 presents research into aspects of some of the most pertinent developments of our age, using the full range of publication formats (articles, review essays, research notes, book reviews). 

  Beyza Sarıkoç Yıldırım analyses municipal action plans that address climate change in Turkey. Ilia Viatkin invites us to reflect on the variables that explain the unexpected increase in voting for the German Green party during the 2019 European Parliament elections in the German East and the West. Peter Wedekind presents a review essay which emphasises the usefulness of the principles of liberalism in order to safeguard liberal democracies. Clara Ribeiro Assumpção's research note explores the tense relationship between intelligence services and democracy, which appears more conflictive in contexts in which there has been a shift from authoritarian regimes to consolidating democracies. In another research note, Serena Alonso García reflects on the 2014 Hepatitis C crisis that occurred in Spain, as a case in which the collective interest gave way to private interests. Sukhayl Niyazov reviews Harry Frankfurt’s book On Inequality.

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  Vol. 20 No. 1 (2020)

  This issue can be symbolically divided into two sections. The first one features contributions from Jessica Nuske and Justinas Lingevicius. Nuske revisits the concept of representation in contemporary times when the ‘electoral connection’ between citizens and representatives alone is woefully inadequate to capture the complex relationship between these two subjects. Lingevicius, similarly to Nuske, departs from constructivist premises in his effort to make sense of the changes in Lithuanian foreign and security policy after the Crimean annexation. He reads the growing emphasis on Lithuanian independence in this discourse as an indicator that state identity in foreign policy can change due to relevant external events. 

  The second section focuses on African politics. Pieter Labuschagne studies new political parties in the South African party system, concluding that, in this respect at least, South African elections does not identify significant differences compared to ‘consolidated democracies’. Thomas Ibrahim Okinda, Benson Oduor Ojwang, and Charles Ongadi Nyambuga use survey data from female voters in one of the counties for the Kenyan general elections to investigate how socio-democratic and attitudinal variables correlate with their electoral participation. Their findings argue in favour of female electoral participation facilitating gender equality in general. The study of the relationship between election management systems and peaceful alternation of power in Ghana and Nigeria by Harrison Adewale Idowu and N. Oluwafemi ‘Femi’ Mimiko is a qualitative explorative analysis arguing that the credibility of the election management system has been conducive to the peaceful alternation of power in Ghana while other factors facilitated the same outcome in Nigeria. Finally, Idris Buta reviews the book 'Violence in African Elections', praising it for its scope as well as the capacity to recognise the uneven distribution of electoral violence across the cases studied, but highlighting the need for more recommendations focused towards domestic rather than international actors in eliminating electoral violence. 

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  Vol. 19 No. 4 (2019)

  Volume 43 once again features timely contributions from different subfields. If one were to identify ‘labels’ for them, they would fall into political philosophy, public policy and the study of political institutions. First, Verónica Gutman’s content analysis spanning two decades of the United Nations Climate Change Conferences generates a range of hypotheses for further research that may provide novel empirical support for theories of the influence of global governance bodies and of the transnational legal process. Second, Luigi Cino analyses the case of the Tunisian revolution through institutionalist lenses, trying to apply a number of typologies from existing literature in order to better understand the characteristics of the institutional change that took place after the Arab Uprisings. Third, Samantha Trudeau goes back to the ever-fruitful discussions of Greek philosophy, placing under scrutiny the rarely discussed (in political science at least) Plato’s dialogue ‘Lesser Hippias’. Her article makes an interesting read for political communication enthusiasts as well, even more commendable in times of growing popular concerns about a ‘post-truth world’. Fourth, Yankı Doruk Doğanay offers an unconventional analysis of the sources of support of the contemporary Turkish government. He uncovers how several components of the Turkish political leaders’ discourse contribute to cementing their support, even though conventionally they would be seen as sources of weakness. In addition, readers may find it stimulating to think about the review of Francis Fukuyama’s book on 'Identity' written by Joshua Makalintal.

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  Vol. 19 No. 3 (2019)

  Volume 42 opens with a special section with two articles presented at the 2018 IAPSS Academic Convention (Convention Panels Coordinator: Katsiaryna Lozka). Here, Francisca Sassetti examines the effect of crowdsourced elections monitoring on transparency and quality of the electoral process. She finds that crowdsourcing techniques have a causal effect on electoral transparency by encouraging a more peaceful and democratic electoral process. Baptiste Brodard analyses the impact of the initiatives promoted by Islamic grassroots organisations in Switzerland, providing empirical evidence for the claim that social participation of Islamic organisations can have a positive value by rethinking and redefining social work practices. In the first of two regular articles included in the issue, Andrew Devine identifies China’s approach to promotion of its preferred norm of internet governance known as cyber sovereignty. Using a combination of frames, this form of global internet governance is being advanced especially towards developing countries in opposition to the currently prevailing ‘multistakeholder model’. Next, Velomahanina Tahinjanahary Razakamaharavo uses an innovative methodology to determine how grand narratives she calls ‘metanarratives’ shaped the dynamics of domestic conflicts in Madagascar. Collecting and coding a diverse pool of data, she conducts a qualitative comparative analysis of conditions for different dimensions of conflicts. The resulting study provides valuable insights into the recent political development of Madagascar, among others.

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  Vol. 19 No. 2 (2019)

  Volume 19 No. 2 begins with the contribution by David Guignion, which critically assesses some of the central theses of the well-known contemporary thinker Jordan Peterson. Departing from the context of a particular piece of Canadian legislation, Guignion mounts an ambitious ‘counter-critique’ to Peterson’s critique of the notion of science in contemporary society. Next, AJ Golio’s article combines theory and empirics by identifying the ‘human costs’ that accompany the “fortress design” preservation policy of national parks which carries severe restrictions on land use including by local rural communities. The South African case, with its regime transition, enriches the understanding of how opening up this policy area to more public participation, in particular through electoral accountability, may help reduce its negative side effects on the communities that existentially depend on the land. Bernardino Leon-Reyes gains inspiration from the Weberian conceptualization of rationality in studying how a critical take on terrorism seems to have missed the centrality of (a certain type of) rationality in the conduct of terrorist actions. In a research note, Maxim Chupilkin advocates a more intense focus on inequality in political economy. He argues for a bi-directional study of social mobility, looking at both those who achieved a better economic position than their predecessors and those whose position worsened. Lastly, Marzio Di Feo reviews the popular book by Yuval Harari Homo Deus.