The Seleucid Transformation of Iranian Sacred Spaces

2018 ◽  
pp. 170-187
Author(s):  
Matthew P. Canepa
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Successful Program

Chapter 8 argues that temple building played a key role in the Seleucids’ ambitious and successful program of claiming and reshaping the Achaemenid Empire’s political landscape. The dynasty systematically appropriated ancient cultic traditions by constructing new Seleucid temples for the cult even as they constructed innovative temples in their newly founded settlements It argues that in provinces without a deeply embedded tradition of temple architecture, or in their newly founded cities, the Seleucids introduced a new repertoire of temple architecture that deliberately blurred the lines between Greco-Macedonian and Western Asian traditions.

Party preferences and political participation: the emergence of the Turkish-origin German voter

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40
Author(s):  
Vera Eccarius-Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Green Party ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Turkish Origin ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Specific Interests

The article examines trends in voting preferences and voting behavior of Turkish-origin German voters. Despite only representing a small percentage of the total German electorate, Turkish-origin voters are gaining an opportunity to shape the future political landscape. While the Social Democrats have benefited most directly from the minority constituency so far, this author suggests that the Green Party is poised to attract the younger, better educated, and German-born segment of the Turkish-origin voters. All other dominant national parties have ignored this emerging voting bloc, and missed opportunities to appeal to Turkish-origin voters by disregarding community-specific interests. 

Bacurau as Science-Fiction Revenge Fantasy

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-86
Author(s):  
Jocimar Dias
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Colonial Violence

When Bacurau (dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, 2019) was released in Brazil, it was mainly received as a left-wing critique of the rise of the far right in the country’s political landscape. But some critics argued that the feature’s insistence on graphic violence was actually a celebration of barbarism, equating the oppressed villagers to their genocidal oppressors. This article refutes this view, borrowing from the analysis of science-fiction revenge fantasies and also following Foucault’s genealogical perspective. It argues that Bacurau actually reenacts Brazil’s foundational colonial violence through its complex temporality, in order to rediscover the forgotten past of real struggles that remain surreptitiously inserted in all levels of society, perhaps in the hope that new ways of resistance may flourish from its spectatorial experience.

Dictators and Democrats

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Haggard ◽  
Robert R. Kaufman
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Organizational Capabilities ◽  
Mass Mobilization ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Emerging Democracies ◽  
Regime Changes ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Transitions To Democracy ◽  
Multiple Routes

From the 1980s through the first decade of the twenty-first century, the spread of democracy across the developing and postcommunist worlds transformed the global political landscape. What drove these changes and what determined whether the emerging democracies would stabilize or revert to authoritarian rule? This book takes a comprehensive look at the transitions to and from democracy in recent decades. Deploying both statistical and qualitative analysis, the book engages with theories of democratic change and advocates approaches that emphasize political and institutional factors. While inequality has been a prominent explanation for democratic transitions, the book argues that its role has been limited, and elites as well as masses can drive regime change. Examining seventy-eight cases of democratic transition and twenty-five cases of reversion to autocracy since 1980, the book shows how differences in authoritarian regimes and organizational capabilities shape popular protest and elite initiatives in transitions to democracy, and how institutional weaknesses cause some democracies to fail. The determinants of democracy lie in the strength of existing institutions and the public's capacity to engage in collective action. There are multiple routes to democracy, but those growing out of mass mobilization may provide more checks on incumbents than those emerging from intra-elite bargains. Moving beyond well-known beliefs regarding regime changes, this book explores the conditions under which transitions to democracy are likely to arise.

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Smolkin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Experiment

When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Soviet power used a variety of tools—from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society. This book presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The book argues that to understand the Soviet experiment, we must make sense of Soviet atheism. It shows how atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the “sacred spaces” of Soviet life was not enough. Then, in the final years of the Soviet experiment, Mikhail Gorbachev—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into Soviet public life. The book explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.

The national question, identity and the crisis in South Sudan

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan Yanano Mangani ◽  
Richard Rachidi Molapo
Keyword(s):  
Political Identity ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Political Control ◽  
Social Patterns ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Liberation Movement ◽  
Nation States ◽  
National Question ◽  
The Government

The crisis in South Sudan that broke out on the 15th of December 2013 has been the gravest political debacle in the five years of the country’s independence. This crisis typifies the general political and social patterns of post-independence politics of nation-states that are borne out of armed struggles in Africa. Not only does the crisis expose a reluctance by the nationalist leaders to continue with nation-building initiatives, the situation suggests the struggle for political control at the echelons of power within the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement.  This struggle has been marred by the manufacturing of political identity and political demonization that seem to illuminate the current political landscape in South Sudan. Be that as it may, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) hurriedly intervened to find a lasting solution however supportive of the government of President Salva Kirr and this has suggested interest based motives on the part of the regional body and has since exacerbated an already fragile situation. As such, this article uses the Fanonian discourse of post-independence politics in Africa to expose the fact that the SPLM has degenerated into lethargy and this is at the heart of the crisis.

Facilities Standardization: Improving a Successful Program

1992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Hawkins ◽  
Alton Penz
Keyword(s):  
Successful Program

Proroguing the Parliament of Australia: The Effect on the Senate and the Conventions that Constrain the Prerogative Power

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-88
Author(s):  
Eliot Olivier
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
General Will ◽  
Real Possibility ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Constitutional System

Political controversies in New South Wales and Canada recently have focused public attention on the constitutional practice of proroguing parliament. They have also shone a light on two lingering areas of uncertainty that surround its operation under the Commonwealth Constitution. This article seeks to clarify these two muddy areas of the law concerning prorogation. The first is the effect of prorogation on the Senate and its committees. Since Federation, the Senate has purported to authorise its committees to continue to function notwithstanding a prorogation of the Parliament. However, it is argued that this practice is unsupported by the provisions of the Constitution and the Senate has no such power. Second, the article examines the operation of the conventions that constrain the Governor-General's power to prorogue. Prorogation generally is exercised on the advice of the Prime Minister. However, this article contends that where a Prime Minister seeks to prorogue Parliament to avoid a vote of no confidence, the Governor-General will have a discretion to reject the advice. It may also be open to the Governor-General to reject an advice to prorogue where the purpose is to avoid scrutiny of a fundamental constitutional illegality. In Australia, the uncertainties that surround prorogation, coupled with the now precarious political landscape in Canberra, create the very real possibility of a prorogation crisis at the Commonwealth level. This article provides a response to these uncertainties. In doing so it offers a solution to how a prorogation crisis can be resolved, whilst maintaining the fine balance of power in our constitutional system.

Geoffrey Sawer and the Art of the Academic Commentator: A Preliminary Biographical Sketch

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Coper
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Biographical Sketch ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
National University ◽  
Oral History Interviews

Geoffrey Sawer was the Foundation Professor of Law at The Australian National University, appointed in 1950 at the age of 39. He was a pioneer in the understanding of law in a broader context, especially at the intersection between law and politics, and his fluid and incisive writing has been a major influence on succeeding generations of academics, practitioners and judges. Drawing on Sawer's writings, oral history interviews and private papers, Michael Coper makes an affectionate biographical sketch of this outstanding scholar and warm and genial human being. In particular, he explores how Sawer's scholarship stands up today, when so much has changed in the legal and political landscape; what is enduring and what is transient in a life's work; and what lessons we can draw when we look at law and life through the lens of biography.

Rome’s Loca Sancta

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galit Noga-Banai
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Local Bonding ◽  
The Creation

This chapter focuses on the creation of holy sites in Rome that are comparable in their significance to those in Jerusalem—that is, touched by past sacred events and/or sacred bodies. It maps the reasons for the change of attitude toward Jerusalem in Rome, and makes the argument that once the locally connected holy sites projected into the urban space, especially the local bonding of the sites related to Peter and Paul, it was possible to include Jerusalem in the Roman decorative programs. The discussion concentrates on the dynamic involved in the commemoration of sacred spaces in Rome, from the architecture of the holy sites (Basilica Apostolorum, S. Paolo fuori le mura) to portable objects related to them.

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