scholarly journals Can Science be a Political Agent without a Race for Power?

2021 ◽  
Vol V (4) ◽  
pp. 44-56
Author(s):  
Evgeny Maslanov

The article is an attempt to answer the question on the political subjectivity of modern science. It is hardly possible to speak of the specific political subjectivity of science and scientists as a conscious participation in the struggle for power. First, the race for power itself is not a major purpose for them: scientists concentrate on studying the world and creating new technologies. Second, even if they participate in such a race, they are not different from other social groups which protect their interests in political process. Changing the point of view on the political subjectivity of science enables to see its specific position in the space of the political. During discipline power and biopower formation and governmentality development, science became a basic element of public administration and politics. It forms the ideas of the objects managed, possible ways of interaction with them and creates the space of the political and management decisions implemented. In this case, social sciences and humanities obtain special political subjectivity. This also applies in a specific way to natural science and technical sciences. New scientific theories and technological solutions become representatives of non-human actors in the human world. They result in changing our ideas on “Nature”, a “scene” for history and political actions. The emergence of new non-human actors can cause the technological revolution which can influence the ways of political action implementation and provide new opportunities to execute political projects. This is an important element of the political subjectivity of science.

2021 ◽  
Vol V (4) ◽  
pp. 15-33
Author(s):  
Vladimir Porus ◽  
Valentin Bazhanov

The goal of the article to assess and comprehend the legitimacy, advantages, and disadvantages of the idea of “post-normal” and “citizen science”, the problem of treating science as a political actor, as well as the potential “democratization” of contemporary science. The nature and epistemological status of “post-normal” and “citizen” science, their place, and potential role in political decision-making in situations of significant uncertainty of the future (which is especially characteristic of ecology) discussed. We are prone to emphasize the importance of the traditional criteria of rationality, dominant among scientists working under the milieu of the norms and principles of “normal” science. Despite the transdisciplinary nature of the problems and the format of decision-making that are at the core of post-normal science. Nevertheless, the political subjectivity of modern science far from being full-fledged. Science does not participate in politics in an independent actor acting on the same plane and on a par with other political actors (parties or other political structures). The acquisition by the science of the status of a political subject or the loss of such largely depends on the nature of the political climate of the society. Political subjectivity is an imitative political atmosphere that cannot be the immediate goal and value of science. Aspiration for political subjectivity as a norm for post-normal science implies a radical change in its “self-consciousness”, socio-cultural status, and thus, increasing its political weight. However, this aspiration has any reasonable theoretical and practical sense only as an integral part of the movement towards true civil society and democracy.


Author(s):  
Kenneth D. Wald

Lacking sovereignty, a well-developed theology of politics, and a central organizing mechanism, the Jewish political experience is unique among the three Abrahamic faiths. Apart from research on the political content implicit in Jewish scriptures, there has been little scholarship on what Jews do when they engage in political action. Using a contextual framework, this article examines the politics of Jews by reviewing both single-country studies and the few extant cross-national analyses. In considering why Jewish political behavior differs from one place to another, political process theory and Medding’s theory of Jewish interests guide the analysis. Medding argued that Jewish politics is primarily a response to threats perceived in the political environment. The ability of Jewish communities to resist such threats depends largely on the rules governing the political environment, the political opportunity structure. Where Jews are a majority and control the rules, as in the state of Israel, they have adopted a regime that prioritizes the Jewish character of the state against perceived threats from the country’s Arab citizens. Where Jews are a minority, as in the United States, their ability to control the political environment is limited. However, the political rules of the game embodied in the U.S. Constitution have levelled the playing field to the advantage of religious minorities like Jews. Specifically, by rejecting “blood and soil” citizenship and denying the religious character of the state, those rules provide Jews and other minorities a valuable resource and access to sympathetic allies in the political system. Hence American Jews have been able to counter what they perceive as the major threat to their political interests—a replacement of the secular state by a confessional regime. Focusing on threats, the political opportunity structure, and political context helps to anchor Jewish political studies in research on ethnic political cohesion and to bring such research into the scholarly mainstream.


Author(s):  
Hamsa Qahtan Khalaf

The research has been tackled about the emerging democratic political process in Iraq since 2003 , especially it has not received much attention from specialists in political, social and legal reform. So the Iraq’s situation has been subjected to various  successive crises which matched with too much differences as well as the continuation of the administration of governance in accordance with the theory of power-sharing between the three presidencies, had brought it to all positions by the responsibility which witnessed a big  suspicions;  because of the political corruption in both administrative and financial sides .The invitations for procuring the comprehensive reform and empowerment within democracy needed to be the latest phenomena as a part of the policy that declined in previous period, which took place the democratic political process until we found it unable to renew itself and revive its contents from inside owing to the condition of the reliance on the consensus and political quotas by their sectarian, national, ethnic components in the political society . Furthermore , the process of re-revision in order to implement the  reform and empowerment in democracy’s process became an urgent need to re - model the experience with a real and effective measures for the experience that can overcome the past and present to looking forward the future, and among these requirements and needs of several trying to be consistent with them according to the requirements of this stage in light of the trend to assess the overall political situation , and others to achieve a specific comprehensive review that does not harm the democratic political process consequently . So that , every country couldn’t get into the political reform without a hierarchical way to re-build the condition of democratic empowerment , although the power-holders make the right choices to secure their presence in the authority by ensuring their electoral supremacy in the democratic political process constitutionally and legally alike .The rules of participatory democratic political action; and the continuation of formal political reforms are considered  a cause of crisis with the option of stumbling path reform in the final outcome and this does not serve the whole political experience in Iraq . In spite of the effectiveness of the Iraqi society, which is characterized by effective social mobility and even political at the popular levels, especially in the levels of The middle class itself and others, which began to do so in general, by stimulating  the choice between the alternatives offered , to overcome this general problems by the political reform movement that is going on at the level of the ruling political class (National settlement options) or so – called The  National Historic distressed under a state of political stagnation which suffered by the most of the partisan forces that relied just on their method visions . That change does not happen on its own, but through the behavior of individuals and their actions that based on the condition of a admixture between the theory of change and actual practice overlapping ultimately the incentives , to move effectively toward the transition into the best , and between the various structural factors contribute to the conditions of overall revision , which requires attaching aspirations to fulfillment action through reformist movements and to rebuild the national peace , stable and continuous pattern of change that starts from the bottom up to the top and not vice versa. Because the recent (reverse) reform structure may lead to abrupt and unexpected results as well as the state of decline in the institutional structure of society .   Finally, The previous scenes we found were working in accordance with the current consensuses and alliances based on the profits and rewards, by exercising the authority without relying on the legitimacy of achievement and containment the whole components together. So in the next stage will be confronted a full of crises and with new challenges, which will undoubtedly be affected by failures of traditional parties or otherwise as long as they are part of the democratic political process, because the previous election experiences could not break the barriers and penetrate the equations of the reality within the current political assumptions, So that the limits of the authority itself would not have willing to seek the mission of rebuilding the nation-state or re-building into maintain its existence in a stable, orderly and balanced systematically , despite of the attempts of some leaders and renewal (senior) leaders to move somewhat away from the symbolic model of leadership and management alike . All of that , it depends on the quality of reform and review to accomplish the empowerment in political democracy , and to overcome all the differences among political governing elites presently and for the future , by procuring an active democratic process consequently .


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
О. В. Лагутин

The paper considers the problem of empirical search for models of online mobilization of the youth protest movement in the modern Russian metropolis. In the political practice of many countries, young people have become one of the most important objects of influence of various political actors, both internal and external. Also, in Russian political protest, young people are traditionally the driving force. In the last decade, the online environment has become the most effective and operational communication field for the construction of the political process. The greatest political impact was achieved by the online organization of protest actions, the key element of the strategy of which was the mobilization of the masses. The objectives of the study are to use multidimensional methods of analysis to identify the features that influence the formation of online mobilization models, and to give a descriptive description of each of the models. To study the problem, an online survey of representatives of the younger generation in all megacities of the Russian Federation was conducted, during which latent factors of political action in the online environment, online mechanisms for attracting the attention of users of social networks to political problems that play the role of a protest trigger, and types of political participation were identified. With the help of classification methods, the obtained factors were obtained four models of online mobilization of the political prosthesis of the youth of modern Russia.


Author(s):  
Suzana Žilic Fišer ◽  
Sandra Bašic ◽  
Dejan Vercic ◽  
Petra Cafnik

Modern communication technology in principle makes political participation feasible. Information, consultation, and participation of citizens in the working of their highest political body – a parliament- should be easier than ever. This chapter analyses if this is really so on the case of Slovenia and its parliament, the National Assembly. Parliamentary website of the Republic of Slovenia is studied in terms of usability, usefulness and utility those are the key criteria in discussion about website performance. The analysis of e-democracy takes into account citizen participation in the legislative procedure, enabling direct communication with the members of the parliament, possibilities for citizen initiatives, and procedure and content transparency at each stage of the decision-making process. The chapter reports on limits of the current website of the National Assembly of Slovenia and proposes guidelines for better use of new technologies in the political process and for improving user experience.


Author(s):  
ELAINE DE ALMEIDA BORTONE

O artigo analisa dois documentários produzidos pelo Instituo de Pesquisas e Estudos Sociais (IPES), ”O que é os IPáŠS” e ”História de um maquinista”. Os curtas foram criados para serem utilizados como instrumentos de ação polá­tica, com os objetivos de interferir no processo polá­tico e doutrinar a opinião pública contra João Goulart. Palavras chave: IPES. Ditadura civil-militar. Propaganda ideológica.  ACTION POLICY INSTITUO DE PESQUISAS E ESTUDOS SOCIAIS (IPES) THROUGH DOCUMENTARY Abstract: The article analyzes two documentary produced by the Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Sociais (IPES), "O que é o IPES" and "História de um maquinista". The shorts films are designed to be used as instruments of political action, with the objective of interfering in the political process and indoctrinate the public against João Goulart. Keywords: IPES. Civil-military dictatorship. Ideological propaganda.  LA ACCIÓN POLITICA DEL INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIÓN Y ESTUDIOS SOCIALES (IPES) A TRAVES DE DOCUMENTARIOSResumen: El articulo analiza dos documentarios producidos por el Instituto de Investigaciones y Estudios Sociales (IPES), "O que é os IPES" y "Historia de um maquinista ". Los curtas fueron creados para ser utilizado como instrumentos de acción polá­tica, con objetivos de interferir en el proceso polá­tico y doctrinar la opinión pública contra Joao Goulart. Palabras clave: IPES. Dictadura civil militar. Propaganda ideológica.


1987 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-14
Author(s):  
James M. Buchanan

Abstract Wicksell deserves the designation as the most important precursor of modern public-choice theory because we find in his 1896 dissertation all three of the constitutive elements that provide the foundations of this theory: methodological individualism, homo oeconomicus and politics-as-exchange.As the basic Wicksellian construction is shifted to the choice among rules or constitutions and as a veil of uncertainty is utilized to facilitate the potential bridging of the difference between identifiable and general interest, the research program in political economy merges into that of contractarian political philosophy, both in its classical and modern variations.Because of his failure to shift his own analytical construction to the level of constitutional choice, Wicksell was confined to evaluation of the political process in generating current allocative decisions. Pure distributional questions remain outside the Wicksellian evaluative exercise. With the shift to the constitutional stage of politics, however, this constraint is at least partially removed.The whole contractarian exercise remains empty if the critical dependence of politically-generated results upon the rules that constrain political action is denied. Normatively, the task for the constitutional political economist is to assist individuals, as citizens who ultimately control their own social order, in their continuing search for those rules of the political game that will best serve their purposes, whatever these might be.


1973 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Furedi

The absence of popular participation in the political process of post-independent Kenya should be seen as the outcome of a political tension, which has its roots in the colonial period. The growth of Nairobi, a colonial urban centre par excellence, provided unequal opportunities for its African population. The majority of the Nairobi Africans came to constitute the African crowd—domestic servants, the majority of workers in private and public employment, and petty traders. This group should be distinguished from the Nairobi African middle class which formed the ‘political élite’. The African middle class possessed a fairly high level of education and had remunerative positions with government or were wealthy traders. By the mid-'forties, this group had become well integrated within the colonial system.The different, and often contradictory, interests of these two groups of people was strikingly manifested on the level of political action. The ‘popular movements’ of the African crowd were direct and often extra-constitutional. Their organizations, e.g. the 40 Group, were characteristically militant, and were often based on mass support. The ‘élite politics’ of the African middle class were strictly constitutional and moderate. Their goal—to consolidate their position within the colonial system—had obviously only limited appeal. The conflict between these two social groups was resolved by the elimination of the African crowd as a political force.


Author(s):  
Sid Bedingfield

This study examines the role of the black and white press in the cultural and political struggle over civil rights in South Carolina in the mid-twentieth century. In the 1930s, when black newspapers in the Deep South were mostly cautious and conservative, John McCray and his allies at South Carolina’s Lighthouse and Informer challenged their readers to “rebel and fight” for their rights – to reject the “slavery of thought and action” that created “uncle Toms and aunt Jemimas” and become “progressive fighters for the emancipation of the race.” As black activism spread, journalists at the state’s daily newspapers assumed leadership roles in the white resistance movement. They crafted new narratives designed to undermine black activism, but they also engaged directly in the political process to help implement the policy of massive resistance. When that strategy began to fail, the same journalists ignored their profession’s new norms of impartiality and joined the fight to create a new political home for white segregationists in a conservative Republican Party in the South. By moving the press from the periphery to the center of the political action, Newspaper Wars asks readers to reconsider the role of journalists during times of social, cultural, and political change in their communities.


Author(s):  
David Michael Vincent

This chapter addresses Dickens’s career-long engagement with the ills of mid-nineteenth-century society. It stresses the importance of the 1832 Reform Act in determining Dickens’s limited engagement with the political process and creating a broad, socially conscious readership for his novels. Dickens neither created an agenda for reform nor achieved specific legislative change. His engagement with reform was less a campaign than a dialogue, enlarging the knowledge of his readers and increasing their commitment to change. He subverted the emerging structures of power less by direct attack and more by addressing his broad readership as equal moral beings, capable of challenging the agents and agencies of authority, whether in political action or private philanthropy.


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