3 News and Political Legitimacy: Gendered Mediation of Canadian Political Leaders

2021 ◽  
pp. 32-40
Author(s):  
Linda Trimble
Keyword(s):  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Leaders

scholarly journals The Misogyny of Authoritarians in Contemporary Democracies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nitasha Kaul
Keyword(s):  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Politics Of Identity ◽  
Global Projects ◽  
Global North ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Argument Proceeds

Abstract Contemporary democracy in multiple countries has been under assault from what has been variously called right-wing populism, authoritarian populism, cultural majoritarianism, new nativism, new nationalism, quasi-fascism, and neo-fascism. While the authoritarian behaviors of several electorally legitimated leaders in these countries have been in focus, their misogyny is seen as merely an incidental part of their personality. This article highlights the centrality of misogyny in legitimating the political goals and regimes of a set of leaders in contemporary democracies—Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro, Duterte, and Erdogan (all but Trump are still in power)—in countries from across Global North/South, non-West/West, with mixed populations and different majority religions. The argument proceeds as follows. First, I clarify the conceptualization of misogyny and explain why it matters. Second, I demonstrate the substantive misogyny of political leaders who are/have been heads of hegemonic right-wing political projects in five contemporary democracies (Trumpism, Modification, Bolsonarismo, Dutertismo, and Erdoganism). Third, I put forward three systematic ways in which misogyny works as an effective political strategy for these projects, by enabling a certain politics of identity to demonize opponents as feminine/inferior/anti-national, scavenging upon progressive ideas (rather than rejecting them) and distorting them, and sustaining and defending a militarized masculinist approach to policy and delegitimizing challenges to it. This article, thus, contributes to the literature on how masculinity, misogyny, and gender norms more broadly intersect with political legitimacy, by arguing for understanding the analytic centrality of misogyny to the exercise of political power in multiple global projects.

The Legacies of Patrimonial Patriarchalism

2011 ◽  
Vol 636 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwynn Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Military Coup ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Salvador Allende ◽  
Ideological Influence ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Familial Roles

In Chile, how citizens and political leaders have understood, incorporated, and contested the relationship between the familial and the political has been central to the development of their society. The author examines the ideological influence that familial beliefs had on the process of delegitimizing the presidency of Salvador Allende and legitimizing the military coup through an analysis of political rhetoric surrounding the mobilization of women in the March of the Empty Pots and Pans. The author argues that the march was a pivotal moment in which generalized beliefs about the state’s responsibility for familial welfare, including protecting men’s and women’s familial roles, were transformed into a powerful critique against Allende and his government. The author shows how the arguments put forward by Allende’s opponents drew on embedded beliefs about the relationship between families and politics to frame the emerging debate about the political legitimacy of President Allende.

scholarly journals Building Legitimacy

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 17-32
Author(s):  
Andrei Dălălău
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Real ◽  
Political Groups

After the collapse of the communist regime in Eastern Europe, political parties were faced with the necessity of building political legitimacy. This research aims to find out how political myths were instrumentalized by political leaders during the presidential campaigns in order to gain popular support. In the first part, the article focuses on defining “myth” as a legitimizing political instrument. In the second part four political myths used in the early 1990s in Romania are being analyzed: the myth of the interwar period, the myth of original democracy, the myth of political reform and the providential man. The method used is political discourse and party platform analysis. The results suggest that, during the early 90s, different political groups tried to build their legitimacy using political myths instead of rational politics, which ended up in their failure to address the real issues of a changing society.

scholarly journals Does Conscience Have to be Free? A Multiple Crossroads of Religious, Political, and Diplomatic Arguments: 1868-1874

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 35-44
Author(s):  
Kōichirō Matsuda
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
The Government ◽  
Religious Sects ◽  
The Individual ◽  
New Generation

This article will focus on the conundrum of building the political legitimacy while institutionalizing religious freedom which the newly established goisshin 御一新 government confronted. Liberation of "evil sects", which not only meant Christianity but also other religious sects such as fujufuse-ha of Nichiren school, was an issue which the Meiji state wanted to dodge. Western states demanded the lifting of the ban on Christianity but Japanese political leaders were vigilant against the idea. Reluctantly the Meiji state lifted the ban on Christianity in 1873 but they had started the institutionalization of Shinto as the state religion in advance. The government officials viewed that Christian faith and churches in Western countries were devised to prevent public mind from dissolution. They strived to establish an alternative version of religious authority in Japan instead of introducing the principle of conscientious freedom. However, on the other hand, a new generation of intellectuals raised the protection of the individual right of religious freedom as an urgent issue. I will analyze the diplomatic negotiations between the Western countries and the Meiji government officials, reports on the Western religious and educational systems in the Iwakura Mission records, voices of Buddhist and Shinto groups, and publications by leading intellectuals such as Nakamura Masao and Katō Hiroyuki so as to build a picture of how the concept of conscientious liberty was treated in such entangled contexts.

Democratic Legitimacy

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Rosanvallon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Constitutional Courts ◽  
International Debate ◽  
The Past ◽  
Democratic Authority ◽  
Original Contribution ◽  
Western Democracies

It's a commonplace occurrence that citizens in Western democracies are disaffected with their political leaders and traditional democratic institutions. But this book argues that this crisis of confidence is partly a crisis of understanding. The book makes the case that the sources of democratic legitimacy have shifted and multiplied over the past thirty years and that we need to comprehend and make better use of these new sources of legitimacy in order to strengthen our political self-belief and commitment to democracy. Drawing on examples from France and the United States, the book notes that there has been a major expansion of independent commissions, NGOs, regulatory authorities, and watchdogs in recent decades. At the same time, constitutional courts have become more willing and able to challenge legislatures. These institutional developments, which serve the democratic values of impartiality and reflexivity, have been accompanied by a new attentiveness to what the book calls the value of proximity, as governing structures have sought to find new spaces for minorities, the particular, and the local. To improve our democracies, we need to use these new sources of legitimacy more effectively and we need to incorporate them into our accounts of democratic government. This book is an original contribution to the vigorous international debate about democratic authority and legitimacy.

Aftershocks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seva Gunitsky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
International System ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sudden Rise ◽  
The World ◽  
National Borders

Over the past century, democracy spread around the world in turbulent bursts of change, sweeping across national borders in dramatic cascades of revolution and reform. This book offers a new global-oriented explanation for this wavelike spread and retreat—not only of democracy but also of its twentieth-century rivals, fascism, and communism. The book argues that waves of regime change are driven by the aftermath of cataclysmic disruptions to the international system. These hegemonic shocks, marked by the sudden rise and fall of great powers, have been essential and often-neglected drivers of domestic transformations. Though rare and fleeting, they not only repeatedly alter the global hierarchy of powerful states but also create unique and powerful opportunities for sweeping national reforms—by triggering military impositions, swiftly changing the incentives of domestic actors, or transforming the basis of political legitimacy itself. As a result, the evolution of modern regimes cannot be fully understood without examining the consequences of clashes between great powers, which repeatedly—and often unsuccessfully—sought to cajole, inspire, and intimidate other states into joining their camps.

Making It Count

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arunabh Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Statistics ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Great Leap Forward

In 1949, at the end of a long period of wars, one of the biggest challenges facing leaders of the new People's Republic of China was how much they did not know. The government of one of the world's largest nations was committed to fundamentally reengineering its society and economy via socialist planning while having almost no reliable statistical data about their own country. This book is the history of efforts to resolve this “crisis in counting.” The book explores the choices made by political leaders, statisticians, academics, statistical workers, and even literary figures in attempts to know the nation through numbers. It shows that early reliance on Soviet-inspired methods of exhaustive enumeration became increasingly untenable in China by the mid-1950s. Unprecedented and unexpected exchanges with Indian statisticians followed, as the Chinese sought to learn about the then-exciting new technology of random sampling. These developments were overtaken by the tumult of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961), when probabilistic and exhaustive methods were rejected and statistics was refashioned into an ethnographic enterprise. By acknowledging Soviet and Indian influences, the book not only revises existing models of Cold War science but also globalizes wider developments in the history of statistics and data. Anchored in debates about statistics and its relationship to state building, the book offers fresh perspectives on China's transition to socialism.

Motivational underpinnings of support for radical political leaders

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Grzymala-Moszczynska ◽  
Katarzyna Jasko ◽  
Marta Maj ◽  
Marta Szastok ◽  
Arie W. Kruglanski
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Personal Significance ◽  
Political Candidate ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Willingness To Engage

In three studies conducted over the course of 2016 US presidential campaign we examined the relationship between radicalism of a political candidate and willingness to engage in actions for that candidate. Drawing on significance quest theory (Kruglanski et al., 2018), we predicted that people would be more willing to make large sacrifices for radical (vs. moderate) candidates because the cause of radical candidates would be more personally important and engagement on behalf it would be more psychologically rewarding. We tested these predictions among supporters of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders. Our findings were in line with these predictions, as the more followers perceived their candidates as radical, the more they viewed leaders’ ideas as personally important, gained more personal significance from those ideas, and intended to sacrifice more for the leader.

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