scholarly journals Quiet Politics and the Power of Business: New Perspectives in an Era of Noisy Politics

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-16
Author(s):  
Glenn Morgan ◽  
Christian Lyhne Ibsen

This introduction summarizes the main contributions of this special issue titled “Quiet Politics and the Power of Business: New Perspectives in an Era of Noisy Politics.” The four articles in the issue use and extend Culpepper’s influential concept of “quiet politics” according to which business is able to shape policies and regulations when issues are of low salience to the public and politicians. The issue takes Culpepper’s analysis further in ways that respond to the rise of noisy politics over the last few years, often associated with new strident forms of left- and right-wing populism. Three contributions are made. First, the articles show that salience is not an inherent property of a policy area but is socially constructed. Second, a variety of strategies are described that business uses when trying to keep politics quiet. Third, strategies are affected by the structure of business, which varies across types of capitalism. Future research can use these insights to extend our understanding of the limits, strategies, and dynamics of quiet politics across political economies.

Ethnicities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146879682110124
Author(s):  
Alexander Harder ◽  
Benjamin Opratko

This article introduces the concept of cultures of rejection as a framing device to investigate conditions of acceptability of authoritarian populism among workers in Germany and Austria. After situating the concept in the current scholarly debate on right-wing populism and discussing its main theoretical points of reference, we offer an analysis focusing on experiences of crisis and transformation. Two elements of cultures of rejection are discussed in depth: the rejection of racialised and/or culturalised ‘unproductive’ others; and the rejection of the public sphere, linked to the emergence of a ‘shielded subjectivity’. These articulations of rejection are then discussed as related to two dimensions of a crisis of authority: the crisis of state or political authority in the field of labour and the economy; and the crisis of a moral order, experienced as decline in social cohesion. In conclusion, we identify possible avenues for further research, demonstrating the productivity of the conceptual framework of cultures of rejection.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey Е. Cohen

Antisemitism has long been found on both the political far-right and farleft. The recent rise in antisemitism worldwide raises the question of whether current antisemitism is found more with the far-right or far-left, the former a function of right-wing populism and the latter with what has been termed the new antisemitism. This paper uses data from the 2014 round of the European Social Survey in 20 nations to test for the connection between ideological selfplacement and antisemitic attitudes in mass publics. Analysis finds greater levels of antisemitism with the extreme far-right compared to the far-left, but extreme leftists appear slightly more antisemitic than moderate leftist. Further, there is less antisemitism than anti-Muslim and anti-Roma (Gypsy) attitudes at all positions on the left-right continuum. The conclusion puts the findings into context and suggests directions for future research.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 989-997
Author(s):  
Dorota Szelewa

The main sets of ideas that dominated discourses on market-making and democratization in Eastern Europe during the 1990s concerned: first, the superiority of market-led mechanisms of exchange and distribution with individual responsibility and entrepreneurship; and second, the conservative gender order, with women disappearing from the public domain, now being responsible for domestic sphere and the biological reproduction of the nation. Suppressed when these countries were on the path for joining the European Union, the ideas have been now recurring in a new form, representing the basis for the right-wing populist turn in several of the post-communist countries.


First Monday ◽  
2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin McGee ◽  
Jörgen Skågeby

This paper is included in the First Monday Special Issue: Music and the Internet, published in July 2005. Special Issue editor David Beer asked authors to submit additional comments regarding their articles. When we were asked to specify the licensing terms for publishing our article, the issue of gifting suddenly seemed personal: as authors of a research paper on gifting, we had to ask ourselves and each other some hard questions about gifting our own work. In an earlier day, the issues were somewhat simpler. Copyright was not automatically bestowed on all published works, the term of copyright wasn't a moving target, and the results of publicly-funded research were typically assumed to belong to the public. Although we have decided to explicitly gift our paper into the public domain, we each initially had different responses to the licensing question -- and the ensuing discussions revealed a number of different assumptions, beliefs, hopes and expectations. In this sense, it probably parallels many of the current debates worldwide about the relationship between public interest and copyright, trademarks, and patents. Hopefully, the larger debates can occur with due public oversight, representation, and accountability. In this sense, the debates and their consequences are personal for all of us. File–sharing has become very popular in recent years, but for many this has become synonymous with file–getting. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that people have strong giving (or gifting) needs. This evidence suggests an opportunity for the development of gifting technologies — and it also suggests an important research question and challenge: what needs and concerns do gifters have and what technologies can be developed to help them? In this paper, we discuss the existing literature on gifting, report on an initial study of gifting in an online sharing community, and suggest some ways the study results can inform future research into gifting desires — as well as the design of specific gifting technologies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karina Bénazech Wendling ◽  
Matthew Rowley

Populism, like nationalism, can be found on the right as well as on the left-wing of the political spectrum. However, current political debates demonstrate how in recent years, nationalist and populist movements have advanced the preservation of Christian “roots” against a global cosmopolitanism. Right-wing populism thus tends to present itself as a guardian of Christian culture, or Judeo-Christian culture. However, there is a struggle over the definition and the ownership of this religious heritage. Whilst it is certainly possible to identify sources within the Protestant tradition that may legitimise support for right-wing populism, the questions this struggle raises often relate to particular intersections of culture, theology, perspectives on history as well as political thought. This special issue explores and critiques these intersections, employing theological, historical, and sociological methods. While the main perspective is that of cross-disciplinary reflections on the fraught relationship between Protestantism and right-wing populism, it also examines the evolution of broader connections between Christianity and nationalism through time.


Author(s):  
Joyce P. Kaufman ◽  
Kristen P. Williams

Nationalism and the nation-state are both intimately connected to citizenship. Citizenship and nationalism are also linked to gender, as all three concepts play a key role in the process of state-building and state-maintenance as well as in the interaction between states, whether overtly or covertly. Yet women do not figure in the analysis of nationalism and citizenship in the mainstream literature, a gap that feminists have been trying to fill. By interrogating gender, along with the notions of masculinity and femininity, feminist international relations (IR) scholars shed light into the ways that gender is socially constructed. They also investigate the historical process of state formation and show where women are located in nationalist movements. Furthermore, by unpacking the sovereign state, feminist scholars have argued that while mainstream IR views the state as a rational, unitary actor, states are actually gendered entities. Two kinds of feminist literature in IR in regards to the state can be identified: women and the state (how women are excluded in terms of the public–private divide, and through citizenship), and gender and the state (gendered states). In general, feminist scholarship has led to a more complete understanding of the gender-citizenship-nationalism nexus. Nevertheless, some avenues for future research deserve consideration, such as the political and cultural exclusions of women and others in society, the inequalities that exist within states, whether there is such a thing as a “Comparative Politics of Gender,” and the concept of “global citizenship.”


2021 ◽  
pp. 247-268
Author(s):  
Mi Ah Schoyen

This chapter offers an in-depth look at health politics and the predominantly tax-financed public healthcare system in Norway. It traces the development of the Norwegian healthcare system, as shaped by policy decisions affected as much by tensions between the center and the periphery as by those between left- and right-wing political leanings. Since the late 1990s, improving efficiency through enhanced coordination across the primary and secondary care sectors and the expansion of patient rights legislation have been high on the agenda. As the chapter explains, despite a far-reaching 2001 hospital reform, achieving a good balance between local hospital services close to the patient and regional hospitals able to offer more advanced specialist treatments remains on the political agenda. Questions about the public funding of private providers, made possible via a treatment choice scheme, reflect both traditional left–right and center–periphery conflict lines.


2020 ◽  

The controversy about political correctness is being carried on in politics and the society, in science and culture; it affects the use of language and the presentation of images in general and the public opinion in concrete terms. From a linguistic point of view, the efforts regarding language corrections and in particular the discussions regarding a gender-correct use of language are of special interest. Yet, the discussion also arises in educational and religion-specific contexts as well as in the political dispute with and about right-wing populism. The public debate regarding taboos and the breaking of taboos in journalism as well as in literature and visual arts also belong to the issue. With contributions by Georg Albert, Frank Polzenhagen, Jan Georg Schneider, Svenja Hermes und Katharina Turgay, Franziska Carls, Elzbieta Adamiak, Thomas Müller-Schneider, Martin Lange, Timo S. Werner, Lothar Bluhm, Marie Schröer und Gregor Schuhen, Jürgen Raab, Markus Schiefer Ferrari, Alexander Linke


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Tobias Böhmelt

Abstract This article examines the impact of populism on environmental politics, focusing on countries’ outcome-level performance. I develop the argument that populist leadership likely undermines environmental quality. First, populist leaders tend to reject and refrain from implementing “green” policies, as these are usually promoted by “corrupt elites.” Second, populism erodes democratic institutions, thus offsetting a series of mechanisms that are related to better environmental outcomes. Empirically, I combine data from the Global Populism Database covering sixty-six countries and more than two hundred executive leaders with information on environmental performance at the outcome level. The findings suggest that populist leadership is strongly linked to lower environmental performance—also when controlling for a series of alternative influences and distinguishing between left- and right-wing populism. This research greatly adds to our understanding of the determinants of environmental policies, the role of regime type and ideology, and the literature on populism.


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