Uniting the Enemy: Politics and the Convergence of Nationalisms in Slovakia

2004 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 651-696 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Deegan-Krause
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Important Case ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Large Share ◽  
The West ◽  
Slovak Population ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Over Time

Although aggregate popular support for particular nationalisms in Slovakia showed little change during the 1990s, relationships between nationalisms changed significantly. This article uses categories of nationalism derived from the relational typologies of Brubaker and Hechter to analyze surveys of postcommunist Slovak public opinion and demonstrate that popular nationalisms against Czechs, Hungarians, the West, and nonnationalist Slovaks bore little relationship to one another at the time of Slovakia’s independence but converged over time. With the encouragement of nationalist political elites, a large share of the Slovak population became convinced that Slovakia faced threats from all sides and that the country’s enemies were actually working together to undermine its sovereignty. The example of Slovakia thus provides an important case study for understanding how the complex and interactions between distinct nationalisms creates opportunities for the influence of political leadership.

Engaging with Public Opinion at the Micro-Level: Citizen Dialogue and Participation in German Foreign Policy

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Opitz ◽  
Hanna Pfeifer ◽  
Anna Geis
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
German Foreign Policy ◽  
Minor Importance ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Auswärtiges Amt ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Western Democracies

Abstract This article analyzes how and why foreign policy (FP)-makers use dialogue and participation processes (DPPs) with (groups of) individual citizens as a source of public opinion. Taking Germany as a case study and drawing on DPP initiatives by the Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt, AA) since 2014, we analyze the officials’ motivation for establishing such processes and find four different sets of motivation: (1) image campaigning, (2) educating citizens, (3) listening to citizens, and (4) changing the citizens’ role in FP. Our article makes three contributions. First, we provide a novel typology of the sources of public opinion upon which FP-makers can draw. Second, our study points to the importance of, and provides a framework for, analyzing how officials engage with public opinion at the micro-level, which has so far been understudied in FP analysis. Finally, our empirical analysis suggests that both carefully assessing and influencing public opinion feature prominently in motivation, whereas PR purposes are of minor importance. Recasting the citizens’ role in FP gains in importance over time and may mirror the increased need to legitimize FP in Western democracies vis-à-vis their publics.

Hanoi's Diplomatic Front in Sweden: Communist Propaganda Strategies in the Vietnam War

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Perry Johansson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Propaganda ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Political Freedoms ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Global Cold War

This article offers a new perspective on the Swedish protests against the Vietnam War by placing it in its broader global Cold War context. As a case study on ‘people's diplomacy’ and ‘united front strategy’, it acknowledges the importance of Chinese and Vietnamese influences on the peace campaigns in Sweden and aims, as far as possible, to reconstruct Hanoi's motives, strategies and actions to create and direct Sweden's policy and opinion on the war. With the extremely generous political freedoms granted it by official Sweden, Hanoi was able to find new international allies as well as organise political propaganda manifestations from their Stockholm base. In the end, North Vietnam's version of the war as being about national liberation fought by a people united in their resistance to a foreign, genocidal, aggressor won a large enough share of the opinion in the West to force the American political leadership to give up the fight. Hanoi's Diplomatic Front in Sweden was one of the important battlefields behind that victory

scholarly journals Sharia and the Press in Nigeria

2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-123
Author(s):  
John Boye Ejobowah
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
The West ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
The Press ◽  
Negative Representation

Over the decades, Nigerian political elites have devised various constitutionaland administrative arrangements to cope with the country's complexethnic and religious pluralism. Yet, peace and stability have been elusive,as the country continues to experience severe religious and communal conflicts.These are reflected in the highly polemical book in which AdoKurawatries to trace the origin and nature of what he calls the hostility ofwestern Christian representatives towards Islam.In the book, Ado-Karuwa attempts to argue that the secular publicspace is too inflected with Christian values to make a claim to neutrality,and he uses Nigeria as a case study. He begins by noting that historically,Islam in Europe was tolerant and accommodative of the Christian religion,but this was not reciprocated when the Crusades were launched and"Muslims ... received the worst treatment imaginable." According to him,the failure of the armed campaign prompted Christian clerics to embark onan intellectual attack that entailed the negative representation of Islam inscholarly writings. What emerged, according to him, was a body of knowledgethat explained the superiority of the West over the Islamic world.Contemporary global dominance by the West has also opened the door foracademic institutions in Europe and America to strangulate Islam under theguise of promoting universal science.Ado-Karuwa relates the above to Nigeria by noting that, within thecountry, both Christian intellectuals and some British-trained Muslims actas agents of the West by promoting a secularism that marginalizes Islam.After a lengthy polemic about orientalism, colonialism, and Americanimperialism, the author returns to the issue of secularism, which he discussesgenerally without relating it concretely to Nigeria. He does not showhow secularism in Nigeria marginalizes Islam; neither does he make effortsto show that secularism is tainted by Christian doctrines, in the mannerdone by Louis Dumont. Instead, he undermines his project by arguing thatChristianity declined in Europe after secularism was enthroned by theReformation and the Renaissance, and that in Sweden attendance in theLutheran Church is only 5 percent. If it is true, as he argues, that the ...

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Pride Brown
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
The State ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
The West ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Ebb And Flow

The conclusion summarizes the findings of the book, focusing upon the interplays of the field of power. These powers ebb and flow in relation to each other, creating interesting opportunities and ambiguities over time. Civil society holds social power, which is threatening to financial and political elites. In Russia, the result is a return of authoritarian state dominance, similar to the Soviet period, but adapted to modern conditions. However, the field of power need not only be dominated by the state. In the West, growing economic inequality could have a similar constraining effect on the field of power as a whole. Because the field is contingent and relational, there is always the opportunity for civil society to find a moment to exert its power. But if one power dominates the field in Russia indefinitely, then it is likely to produce the same deteriorating conditions that faced its Soviet predecessor.

Dual systems for all: Higher-order, role-based relational reasoning as a uniquely derived feature of human cognition

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Povinelli ◽  
Gabrielle C. Glorioso ◽  
Shannon L. Kuznar ◽  
Mateja Pavlic
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Reasoning ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Important Case ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Relational Reasoning ◽  
Dual Systems ◽  
First Order ◽  
Reasoning System ◽  
Role Based

Abstract Hoerl and McCormack demonstrate that although animals possess a sophisticated temporal updating system, there is no evidence that they also possess a temporal reasoning system. This important case study is directly related to the broader claim that although animals are manifestly capable of first-order (perceptually-based) relational reasoning, they lack the capacity for higher-order, role-based relational reasoning. We argue this distinction applies to all domains of cognition.

A Pleasing Odour for Yahweh

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-24
Author(s):  
Anne Katrine De Hemmer Gudme
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The West ◽  
Sense Of Smell ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Crucial Part

This article investigates the importance of smell in the sacrificial cults of the ancient Mediterranean, using the Yahweh temple on Mount Gerizim and the Hebrew Bible as a case-study. The material shows that smell was an important factor in delineating sacred space in the ancient world and that the sense of smell was a crucial part of the conceptualization of the meeting between the human and the divine.  In the Hebrew Bible, the temple cult is pervaded by smell. There is the sacred oil laced with spices and aromatics with which the sanctuary and the priests are anointed. There is the fragrant and luxurious incense, which is burnt every day in front of Yahweh and finally there are the sacrifices and offerings that are burnt on the altar as ‘gifts of fire’ and as ‘pleasing odors’ to Yahweh. The gifts that are given to Yahweh are explicitly described as pleasing to the deity’s sense of smell. On Mount Gerizim, which is close to present-day Nablus on the west bank, there once stood a temple dedicated to the god Yahweh, whom we also know from the Hebrew Bible. The temple was in use from the Persian to the Hellenistic period (ca. 450 – 110 BCE) and during this time thousands of animals (mostly goats, sheep, pigeons and cows) were slaughtered and burnt on the altar as gifts to Yahweh. The worshippers who came to the sanctuary – and we know some of them by name because they left inscriptions commemorating their visit to the temple – would have experienced an overwhelming combination of smells: the smell of spicy herbs baked by the sun that is carried by the wind, the smell of humans standing close together and the smell of animals, of dung and blood, and behind it all as a backdrop of scent the constant smell of the sacrificial smoke that rises to the sky.

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