Political Opposition in the Contemporary World

1997 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 462-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Blondel

ALTHOUGH THE CLASSICAL WORK ON POLITICAL OPPOSITION IN Western Democracies, edited by Robert Dahl, was published decades ago, in 1966, the analysis of the characteristics of opposition, in democracies or elsewhere, has advanced rather less than other aspects of comparative politics. The word ‘opposition’ is used daily to account for a variety of developments; but its many meanings have not been systematically related to the differences among the political systems of the world. A number of comparative studies did appear after the 1966 seminal work, admittedly, including one by Dahl himself in 1973, as well as those by Ionescu and Madariaga in 1968, by Schapiro in 1972, by Tokes in 1979, by Kolinsky in 1988 and by Rodan in 1996; these volumes explore aspects of the concept which could not have been even referred to in the original study, since that study was confined to Western democracies and to the part played by political parties in the context of opposition. Yet the problem has still not been tackled truly comprehensively, as, with the exception of the 1973 Dahl volume, the works on the subject are comparative only in the sense that they deal with more than one country; but their scope remains limited to a region or to a particular type of political system. Meanwhile, many country analyses examine the nature of political opposition in each particular case, but the information which they provide has to be brought within a common framework before we can hope to obtain a general picture of the characteristics of opposition across the world.

Author(s):  
Irina Afanasyeva

At the turn of the third Millennium, significant changes have affected the global world. The contemporary world economy, the world order, international organizational and economic relations are all involved in the intensive process of global development. There is no country in the world that is able to form and implement foreign economic policy without taking into account the behavior of other participants within the world economic system. Scientific and practical analysis of the subject area of the existing research has predetermined the key objective of this article – to determine the factors of contemporary global development.


1992 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 495-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
C Katz

Feminism, decolonization, and ‘new social movements’ have decentered the geopolitical power of the ‘First World’ and ruptured the relations of exploitation, domination, and imperialism that undergird it and the authority of the white, male, ruling class, Western subject. The tensions and reorientations in the macrological sphere resonate in social and cultural discourse where feminist theory, poststructuralism, and subaltern studies have called into question the subject positions associated with these relations of power. Rather than making clear that all observers and commentators stand someplace, this ‘sea change’ left many intellectuals adrift, flirting with disabling relativism. Given the projects of representing how others stand and understanding the ground on which they stand, ethnographers have been late to recognize their complicity in masking their own positions as they construct the objects of their inquiry. As intellectuals operating in a postcolonial world, we must take seriously Spivak's admonition about representation as a staging of the world in a political context and begin to connect the ‘micrological textures of power’ with larger political-economic relations. In this expanded field, we can no longer valorize the concrete experience of oppressed peoples while remaining uncritical of our role as intellectuals. Neither can we presume to speak for or about peoples and nations as if they were outside of the contemporary world system, refusing to recognize that our ability to construct them as such is rooted in a larger system of domination. In this paper the author develops these themes by offering a critique of familiar modes and practices of representation and draws on ethnographic research in New York City and rural Sudan to argue that by interrogating the subject positions of ourselves as intellectuals as well as the objects of our inquiry we can excavate a ‘space of betweenness’ wherein the multiple determinations of a decentered world are connected. Appropriating this knowledge we may develop enabling analyses of power and difference to find collective paths toward change.


Author(s):  
Paweł Jankowski

The article presents the vision of the development of countries and societies as seen in threeworks from the 1990s: Francis Fukuyama’s End of History, Samuel Huntington’s The Clash ofCivilisations and Benjamin Barber’s Jihad vs McWorld. The author compares these visions to the contemporary world, together with their utopian and dystopian aspects, wondering whichof them more accurately predicted the directions of its development. Treating these works asan entry point, he considers the alternatives of the dominating liberal democracy, analysesthe features of the more and more popular neomedievalism and the flaws and advantages ofdirect democracy. Talking about direct democracy, he describes the only functioning exampleof such political system in Switzerland. Describing its details and specification, he wonders ifthe system analogous to the Swiss one could be useful somewhere else. By referring to thisproblem in the context of technological advancement, he considers the issue of developingdirect democracy with the use of electronic media. In the end, the again refers to the worksby Barber, Fukuyama and Huntington, expressing his regret for the lack of other, equally boldvisions of the world and political systems development in contemporary times.Key words: political system, liberalism, direct democracy, neomedievalism


Author(s):  
Daniele Caramani

This text provides a comprehensive introduction to comparative politics. Comparative politics is an empirical science that deals primarily with domestic politics. It is one of the three main subfields of political science, alongside international relations and political theory. Comparative politics has three goals: to describe differences and similarities between political systems and their features; to explain these differences; and to predict which factors may cause specific outcomes. This edition compares the most important features of national political systems and contains chapters on integration, globalization, and promotion of democracy in non-Western parts of the world. This introductory chapter explains what comparative politics is and discusses its substance as well as method.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Daniele Caramani

This text provides a comprehensive introduction to comparative politics. Comparative politics is an empirical science that deals primarily with domestic politics. It is one of the three main subfields of political science, alongside international relations and political theory. Comparative politics has three goals: to describe differences and similarities between political systems and their features; to explain these differences; and to predict which factors may cause specific outcomes. This edition compares the most important features of national political systems and contains chapters on integration, globalization, and promotion of democracy in non-Western parts of the world. This introductory chapter explains what comparative politics is, and discusses its substance as well as method.


Author(s):  
Mihails Chehlovs ◽  
Zoja Chehlova ◽  
Tatiana Rossolova

Humanization is the key educational strategy in a democratic society. According to the principles of the Council of Europe, the mission of education is to help everyone to develop his/ her individual potential and become a citizen of the European Community, to understand interconnectedness with Europe and the rest of the world. In accordance with the concept of common European culture, young people have to be able to understand the contemporary world and adapt to constant changes, work actively and creatively, continue learning, explore problems, cooperate and perfect themselves (Ross,2006). Scholars agree that the humanization of education is a necessary precondition in order to educate an active personality. The object of research - the models of teacher’s behaviour in the educational process. The subject of research – the humanization of the pedagogical interaction between the teacher and learners. The aim of the research – to determine conditions concerning the humanization of pedagogical interaction between the teacher and learners and to approbate them in practice in the classes of pedagogy. Research methodology – to use approaches: humanitarian, personal activity, cultural; methods: testing, questionnaire, interviewing, mathematical statistics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Babayo Sule

The current state of affairs in the Muslim Ummah called for concern by every conscious Muslim contemporarily. The Islamic civilisation which introduced the whole world into the world of research and development, political organisation, economic prosperity and equality as well as cultural enrichment is now languishing in backwardness and crises. This study analysed the current condition of the Muslim Ummah in the present world based on the predicaments that are bedeviling the Islamic world. The problem is the nature and situation in which all the values and promises of Islamic civilisation are not utilised by the Muslims which threw them into their current comatose condition. The research used secondary sources of data such as the Quran, Hadith, books, journals and reports and statistics from organisations and agencies. The data collected were analysed critically using statistical and descriptive-analytical method to discuss some important themes of the subject matter. The work discovered that the current state of affairs of the Muslim Ummah is undesirable. It is dominated and encircled by internal crises, leadership failure, disunity, economic, political, social, cultural, military and technological backwardness in comparison with their Western counterparts. This has not been natural. The Decline of leadership in the Muslim world, Crusades and colonialism contributed to the predicaments of the Muslim world. The work suggested that the previous generation of Muslims faced trials and tribulations but they persevered and faced the challenges until God have mercy on them and rescue their situation. The same should be adopted by the present Ummah in dealing with its problems


2016 ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Pier Giuseppe Rossi

The subject of alignment is not new to the world of education. Today however, it has come to mean different things and to have a heuristic value in education according to research in different areas, not least for neuroscience, and to attention to skills and to the alternation framework.This paper, after looking at the classic references that already attributed an important role to alignment in education processes, looks at the strategic role of alignment in the current context, outlining the shared construction processes and focusing on some of the ways in which this is put into effect.Alignment is part of a participatory, enactive approach that gives a central role to the interaction between teaching and learning, avoiding the limits of behaviourism, which has a greater bias towards teaching, and cognitivism/constructivism, which focus their attention on learning and in any case, on that which separates a teacher preparing the environment and a student working in it.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37
Author(s):  
Syarifudin Syarifudin

Each religious sect has its own characteristics, whether fundamental, radical, or religious. One of them is Insan Al-Kamil Congregation, which is in Cijati, South Cikareo Village, Wado District, Sumedang Regency. This congregation is Sufism with the concept of self-purification as the subject of its teachings. So, the purpose of this study is to reveal how the origin of Insan Al-Kamil Congregation, the concept of its purification, and the procedures of achieving its purification. This research uses a descriptive qualitative method with a normative theological approach as the blade of analysis. In addition, the data generated is the result of observation, interviews, and document studies. From the collected data, Jamaah Insan Al-Kamil adheres to the core teachings of Islam and is the tenth regeneration of Islam Teachings, which refers to the Prophet Muhammad SAW. According to this congregation, self-perfection becomes an obligation that must be achieved by human beings in order to remember Allah when life is done. The process of self-purification is done when human beings still live in the world by knowing His God. Therefore, the peak of self-purification is called Insan Kamil. 


2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-49
Author(s):  
Philip Harrison

Abstract The bulk of the scholarly literature on city-regions and their governance is drawn from contexts where economic and political systems have been stable over an extended period. However, many parts of the world, including all countries in the BRICS, have experienced far-reaching national transformations in the recent past in economic and/or political systems. The national transitions are complex, with a mix of continuity and rupture, while their translation into the scale of the city-region is often indirect. But, these transitions have been significant for the city-region, providing a period of opportunity and institutional fluidity. Studies of the BRICS show that outcomes of transitions are varied but that there are junctures of productive comparison including the ways in which the nature of the transitions create new path dependencies, and way in which interests across territorial scales soon consolidate, producing new rigidities in city-region governance.


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