Political Culture: Why the West Coerces

2014 ◽  
pp. 29-30
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
The West

Building borders in a borderless land: English colonialism and the Alam Minangkabau of Sumatra, 1680�1730

2021 ◽  
Vol 9s4 ◽  
pp. 58-89
Author(s):  
David Veevers
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
West Coast ◽  
East India Company ◽  
The West ◽  
The People ◽  
The Creation ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
European Colonialism ◽  
Trading Networks ◽  
Kinship Ties

This article adopts the concept of securitisation to understand the failure of the English East India Company�s attempt to build a territorial empire on the island of Sumatra in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Securitisation formed a key component of European colonialism, involving the creation of fortified and militarised borders both to exclude groups from entering newly defined territorial spaces, but also as a way to control goods, labour and resources within those spaces. Ultimately, this form of imperialism failed on the west coast of Sumatra, where a highly mobile society participated in a shared political culture that made any formal boundary or border between Malay states too difficult to enforce. Trading networks, religious affiliations, transregional kinship ties, and migratory circuits all worked to undermine the Company�s attempt to establish its authority over delineated territory and the people and goods within it.

Peasants and Danes: The Danish National Identity and Political Culture

1992 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uffe Østergård
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
West Indies ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Africa ◽  
The North ◽  
Rare Situation

From a cultural and historical-sociological perspective, the Danish nationstate of today represents a rare situation of virtual identity between state, nation, and society, which is a more recent phenomenon than normally assumed in Denmark and abroad. Though one of the oldest European monarchies, whose flag came ‘tumbling down from heaven in 1219’—ironically enough an event that happened in present-day Estonia—Denmark's present national identity is of recent vintage. Until 1814 the word, Denmark, denominated a typical European, plurinational or multinational, absolutist state, second only to such powers as France, Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and perhaps Prussia. The state had succeeded in reforming itself in a revolution from above in the late eighteenth century and ended as one of the few really “enlightened absolutisms” of the day (Horstbøll and østergård 1990; østergård 1990). It consisted of four main parts and several subsidiaries in the North Atlantic Ocean, plus some colonies in Western Africa, India, and the West Indies. The main parts were the kingdoms of Denmark proper and Norway, plus the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. How this particular state came about need not bother us here.

Communists and Democrats: Democratic Attitudes in the Two Germanies

1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell J. Dalton
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Research Unit ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Cultural Socialization ◽  
German Unification ◽  
Cultural Inheritance ◽  
The West ◽  
Democratic Attitudes ◽  
Democratic Norms

German unification has revived earlier scholarly debates about the nature of the German political culture and the ability of the nation to rise above its cultural heritage – now focused on the cultural inheritance from the German Democratic Republic. This article examines popular support for democratic attitudes as a prerequisite for successful political unification and the development of democracy in a unified Germany. Our evidence focuses on a study of democratic attitudes conducted in West Germany and East Germany by the Mannheim Research Unit for Societal Development in early 1990, with supplemental data from more recent surveys. We find that East Germans voice support for democratic attitudes that rivals or excels the expression of democratic norms in the West. The correlates of these opinions suggest that democratic norms in the East developed from an on-going process of counter-cultural socialization and from judgements about the relative economic strength of the Federal Republic.

Radicals and the State

1988 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
GREGG O. KVISTAD
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
The State ◽  
West Germany ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
German State ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The One ◽  
State Employee ◽  
Political Battle

This article argues that ideas of the state are crucial for understanding contemporary politics in so-called “state-societies” like West Germany. It argues that the recent protracted and divisive political battle over state employee personnel policy in the Federal Republic needs to be understood as a conflict involving the power of two nineteenthcentury ideas of the German state, on the one hand, and the general modernization of the West German state and transformation of West German elite and mass political culture, on the other.

scholarly journals Les dépenses militaires soviétiques ou le fardeau de la défense soviétique

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 535-548
Author(s):  
Carl G. Jacobsen
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
The West ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Military ◽  
Defence Expenditure ◽  
Independent Calculation

Our understanding of the Soviet defence burden remains woefully inadaquate. The official Soviet defence expenditure figure is not helpful. It is not inclusive. There is no concensus on what or how much is covered by other budget accounts. Soviet statistics do not allow independent calculation. Official Western estimates, on the other hand, are equally dubious. They reflect more on Western political dynamics than on Soviet reality. The Soviet defence industry is not immune from the vicissitudes of the economy at large. The Soviet military do not enjoy carte blanche. They contribute extensively to civilian needs, both in terms of goods and services. But, in turn, they extract benefits from a wide range of civilian endeavors. The military-political culture, rooted in an older Moscovy, and reinforced by Lenin's Clausewitzian leanings, is quite different from that which prevails in the west. There is no military-industrial complex threatening the Soviet State. In the USSR the military is OF the State, integral to a wider establishment. The military burden cannot be specified, for much is inextricably fused with the burden of State, and culture. It is systemic. It will be sustained. Because it is OF the System. Western debate is ethnocentric. We need new research, new under standing.

scholarly journals Constitutional Patriotism in Lebanon

1997 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 63-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurus Reinkowski
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
The West ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
Constitutional Patriotism ◽  
Political Concept ◽  
Political Vocabulary

In this paper I will discuss the options of political identity the Lebanese have at their disposal against the background of the German experience. Germany and Lebanon, states at first glance completely different from each other, show some similarity in their historical experience. In the context of this comparison I will discuss constitutional patriotism, a political concept in circulation in Germany over the last fifteen years or so, and its potential application in the Lebanese case. Constitutional patriotism, unlike many other concepts originating in the West, has yet not entered the political vocabulary of the Middle East. The debate on democracy and the civil society is widespread in the whole of the Middle East, including Lebanon. Lebanon's political culture, polity and national identity, however, show some peculiar traits that might justify the introduction of the term constitutional patriotism into the Lebanese political debate.

THE POLITICS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FROM PETER GAY TO JONATHAN ISRAEL

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 785-805 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNELIEN de DIJN
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
The West ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
New Form ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Jonathan Israel ◽  
Anglophone World

ABSTRACTAccording to the textbook version of history, the Enlightenment played a crucial role in the creation of the modern, liberal democracies of the West. Ever since this view – which we might describe as the modernization thesis – was first formulated by Peter Gay, it has been repeatedly criticized as misguided: a myth. Yet, as this paper shows, it continues to survive in postwar historiography, in particular in the Anglophone world. Indeed, Gay's most important and influential successors – historians such as Robert Darnton and Roy Porter – all ended up defending the idea that the Enlightenment was a major force in the creation of modern democratic values and institutions. More recently, Jonathan Israel's trilogy on the Enlightenment has revived the modernization thesis, albeit in a dramatic new form. Yet, even Israel's work, as its critical reception highlights, does not convincingly demonstrate that the Enlightenment, as an intellectual movement, contributed in any meaningful way to the creation of modern political culture. This conclusion raises a new question: if the Enlightenment did not create our modern democracies, then what did it do? In answer to that question, this paper suggests that we should take more seriously the writings of enlightened monarchists like Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger. Studying the Enlightenment might not allow us to understand why democratic political culture came into being. But, as Boulanger's work underscores, it might throw light on an equally important problem: why democracy came so late in the day.

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