A History That Dare Not Be Told: Political Culture and the Making of Revolutionary Cuba, 1946–1958

Author(s):  
Lillian Guerra

This introductory chapter briefly illustrates Cuba's underground revolutionary culture and the challenges it faced during Fulgencio Batista's regime. It argues that the “New Cuba” that allegedly emerged in January 1959 did not rise from the ground up. The seeds of revolutionary Cuba were not just planted in the years before, they had sprouted and flourished. This Cuba began to flourish in the late 1940s and came to fruition in the last months of 1958 when Cubans consumed, constructed, and helped craft the image of a generous, accountable, morally pure, and messianic revolutionary state that Fidel Castro was committed to lead. In addition to this, the chapter also delves into the political culture of 1940s Cuba.

Author(s):  
Roman David ◽  
Ian Holliday

In the 2010s, Myanmar embarked on a transition away from half a century of authoritarian rule. In the process, however, positive signs of democratization contrasted with negative political developments, including ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims. Deep challenges of political democratization and transformation of the political culture thereby emerged. These challenges generate the central research question of this book: what are the prospects for liberal democracy in Myanmar? This introductory chapter situates this research question in the context of the democratization literature, describes the survey and interview methodology used in the search for an answer, and outlines the plan of the book.


Author(s):  
Jennifer Davey

This introductory chapter examines why historians have often overlooked the pivotal role Lady Mary Derby played in mid-Victorian politics. It argues that, despite the processes of political reform, the Victorian aristocracy still retained their political status. It explores how this status combined with particular features of political culture to help facilitate the political careers of aristocratic women. As such, it suggests that by paying close attention to Mary’s activities, we are afforded a fuller picture of Victorian political culture than might otherwise be the case. It then considers Victorian understandings of political femininity, exploring how contemporaries sought to explain, delineate, and confine female political influence. Finally, this chapter closes with an outline of the chapters that make up the rest of the book.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 45-69
Author(s):  
Benoit Challand ◽  
Joshua Rogers

This paper provides an historical exploration of local governance in Yemen across the past sixty years. It highlights the presence of a strong tradition of local self-rule, self-help, and participation “from below” as well as the presence of a rival, official, political culture upheld by central elites that celebrates centralization and the strong state. Shifts in the predominance of one or the other tendency have coincided with shifts in the political economy of the Yemeni state(s). When it favored the local, central rulers were compelled to give space to local initiatives and Yemen experienced moments of political participation and local development.


MUWAZAH ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 96
Author(s):  
Nurbaity Prastyananda Yuwono

Women's political participation in Indonesia can be categorized as low, even though the government has provided special policies for women. Patriarchal political culture is a major obstacle in increasing women's political participation, because it builds perceptions that women are inappropriate, unsuitable and unfit to engage in the political domain. The notion that women are more appropriate in the domestic area; identified politics are masculine, so women are not suitable for acting in the political domain; Weak women and not having the ability to become leaders, are the result of the construction of a patriarchal political culture. Efforts must be doing to increase women's participation, i.e: women's political awareness, gender-based political education; building and strengthening relationships between women's networks and organizations; attract qualified women  political party cadres; cultural reconstruction and reinterpretation of religious understanding that is gender biased; movement to change the organizational structure of political parties and; the implementation of legislation effectively.


Author(s):  
Douglas I. Thompson

In academic debates and popular political discourse, tolerance almost invariably refers either to an individual moral or ethical disposition or to a constitutional legal principle. However, for the political actors and ordinary residents of early modern Northern European countries torn apart by religious civil war, tolerance was a political capacity, an ability to talk to one’s religious and political opponents in order to negotiate civil peace and other crucial public goods. This book tells the story of perhaps the greatest historical theorist-practitioner of this political conception of tolerance: Michel de Montaigne. This introductory chapter argues that a Montaignian insistence that political opponents enter into productive dialogue with each other is worth reviving and promoting in the increasingly polarized democratic polities of the twenty-first century.


Author(s):  
Ross McKibbin

This book is an examination of Britain as a democratic society; what it means to describe it as such; and how we can attempt such an examination. The book does this via a number of ‘case-studies’ which approach the subject in different ways: J.M. Keynes and his analysis of British social structures; the political career of Harold Nicolson and his understanding of democratic politics; the novels of A.J. Cronin, especially The Citadel, and what they tell us about the definition of democracy in the interwar years. The book also investigates the evolution of the British party political system until the present day and attempts to suggest why it has become so apparently unstable. There are also two chapters on sport as representative of the British social system as a whole as well as the ways in which the British influenced the sporting systems of other countries. The book has a marked comparative theme, including one chapter which compares British and Australian political cultures and which shows British democracy in a somewhat different light from the one usually shone on it. The concluding chapter brings together the overall argument.


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