Epilogue

Author(s):  
Rebecca Tarlau

The Epilogue reflects on the future of the MST’s political struggle—and that of the Brazilian left more broadly—in the context of the 2016 ousting of the Workers’ Party (PT) from the federal government and the 2018 presidential election of ultra-right conservative Jair Bolsonaro. Although Bolsonaro’s rise to power is a serious setback for the movement, the core argument of the book still holds: the MST’s thirty-five-year strategic engagement with the Brazilian state significantly expanded its internal capacity, including its organizational structure, resource base, and collective leadership, and the movement is unlikely to disappear in the near future. This long march through the institutions was only possible because activists engaged in contentious political mobilization, while also prefiguring their social and economic vision within a variety of state spheres and under a diversity of political regimes. Even in the new political context, activists will be able to defend many of their institutional gains, helping the movement withstand, if not fully deflect, this far-right resurgence.

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Sabina Magliocco

This essay introduces a special issue of Nova Religio on magic and politics in the United States in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. The articles in this issue address a gap in the literature examining intersections of religion, magic, and politics in contemporary North America. They approach political magic as an essentially religious phenomenon, in that it deals with the spirit world and attempts to motivate human behavior through the use of symbols. Covering a range of practices from the far right to the far left, the articles argue against prevailing scholarly treatments of the use of esoteric technologies as a predominantly right-wing phenomenon, showing how they have also been operationalized by the left in recent history. They showcase the creativity of magic as a form of human cultural expression, and demonstrate how magic coexists with rationality in contemporary western settings.


Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Faris ◽  
Hal Roberts

This chapter examines the claim that alt-right activists hacked the media ecosystem byinserting various destructive memes into the mainstream media that helped DonaldTrump win the 2016 presidential election. In particular, this chapter considers thepropaganda pipeline—the path from the periphery to the core through a series ofwell-known amplifi cation sites, most prominently Infowars and Drudge. Th e “spiritcooking” stories as seen on Infowars, Washington Times, and Sean Hannity perfectlyencapsulate the propaganda pipeline from the periphery to the core, drawingin the various suspects in producing information disorder. Th e chapter also showshow statements by marginal actors on Reddit and 4chan were collated and preparedfor propagation by more visible sites, and how this technique was exploited by bothalt-right and Russia-related actors successfully to get a story from the periphery toHannity.


Author(s):  
Paul D. Kenny

This chapter addresses India’s more recent experience of populism at the national level. While India has avoided a return to authoritarianism since the Emergency, populism has been a recurrent feature of Indian politics. The persistence of divided party rule between the national and subnational levels has meant an uneasy tension between two different modes of political mobilization for national office. National–subnational coalitions based on the distribution of pork have undergirded several Congress party governments. However, such coalitions remain inherently unstable given the autonomy of India’s subnational unit, and they are vulnerable to outflanking by populist appeals over the heads of state governments. The electoral success of the BJP under Modi in 2014 illustrates the appeal of populist mobilization in a vertically fragmented patronage-based system.


Author(s):  
Ralf Wilden ◽  
Timothy M. Devinney ◽  
Nidthida Lin

Some management scholars doubt the value of the dynamic capability view when compared to existing theories. The concern expressed is often related to unclear definitions of the core construct and the relationship among the components that make up that construct. The end result is potentially confused and conflicting interpretations of empirical findings and non-commensurate measurement. One solution is to formalize core components of the theory at hand. The purpose of this paper is not to discuss or argue for (or against) the theoretical status of the dynamic capability view, but to provide a simple, yet insightful, structured model of its core components. Specifically, this paper takes as its basis the perspective of dynamic capabilities as comprising the sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring processes that are deployed to create a resource base aimed at satisfying evolving market demand; it presents a simple but formal way of characterizing its components.


Author(s):  
John S. Huntington

Willis E. Stone watched aghast as mid-century liberals expanded the size and power of the federal government. Stone, a former industrial engineer and unbending anti-statist, believed this liberal surge obfuscated and abetted an imminent red tide of communism. He founded the American Progress Foundation and its flagship periodical, American Progress , to spread a hardline libertarian message, hoping to spark conservative resistance against federal power. In the pages of American Progress , Stone and a coterie of other right-wingers published conspiratorial, anti-statist diatribes and promoted Stone’s proposal, the Liberty Amendment, to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment. Right-wing business owners joined the fray, sponsoring American Progress through advertisements, and over time Stone’s movement expanded to form a collaborative network with other far-right groups. This article illustrates how American Progress served as an activist and ideological nexus for the broader ultraconservative movement, which helped establish a hardline brand of libertarianism that reverberated throughout the modern American Right. Furthermore, by analysing the scope and influence of radical right-wing publications, this article provides a critical counterweight to the traditional left-wing focus of periodical studies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-110
Author(s):  
Marta Balcerek-Kosiarz ◽  

The aim of the article is to indicate a new direction of research on the evolution of system models of local self-government in Germany in the perspective of communalization and de-communalization. Communalization can be used to explain legal regulations of a local government, which are similar to the South German model and, on the other hand, to explain how analogous regulations that strengthen the role of the legislative body, both in the municipal self-government and in the county self-government, function in the same federal states. De-communalization enables to investigate the role of starosta (Starost) in the organizational structure of county self-government. The core result of the study is the fact that on the basis of the three research criteria (geographic, historic, and the range of relations between legislative and executive bodies) the process of communalization of municipal self-governments and county self-governments in 11 federal states has been duly corroborated.


Author(s):  
Adam I. P. Smith

This chapter discusses the campaign strategies of the two main presidential candidates in the free states in the 1860 election, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. Both appealed to voters’ desire to contain the Slave Power and assure access to the West for free white settlers. The core difference between Douglasites and Lincolnites was over the role of the Federal government in resolving the crisis: Republicans wanted to take control in Washington to prevent the nationalisation of slavery; Democrats continued to believe that the most effective solution was decentralisation.


Author(s):  
Albena Antonova

Technologies continue to evolve and to largely transform business practices. In the near future, a few technologies, such as Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality (AR), additive manufacturing (3D printing), and robots, can substantially influence businesses. The reason to focus specifically on these technologies as leading factors for organizational change is twofold: first, there already exist many prototypes and pilot experiments; and second, these technologies have the potential to provoke substantial breakthroughs, leading to substantial business changes. The chapter proposes an overall vision about the impact of these four emerging technologies on business practices and how they will fuel substantial business transformation. The chapter starts with a short analysis how IT influences the core business models and value formation. Then, the authors present the state of the art in e-business technologies and current emerging trends. Finally, the authors propose a detailed overview and discussion of the newly emerging bridge technologies, illustrating with examples their role and economic potential.


Author(s):  
Debra Engel ◽  
Sarah Robbins

This chapter examines the evolution of the electronic resources librarian position within academic libraries as a result of increasing demands for electronic resources and the need for librarians devoted to planning, selecting, implementing, and evaluating electronic resources. The authors discuss the core competencies of electronic resources librarians and analyze the content of job advertisements for electronic resources librarian positions published in the College & Research Libraries News and The Chronicle of Higher Education between July 2001 and June 2006. The analysis reveals that electronic resources librarians are expected to be skillful communicators and collaborators as well as experienced with technology and versed in the issues surrounding electronic resources. Implications of these findings on the organizational structure are discussed.


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