The Permanent Campaign and the Permanent Political Class

2017 ◽  
pp. 86-109
Author(s):  
Ron Formisano

The permanent campaign “has become increasingly antithetical to governing.”


1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
Darren Kew

In many respects, the least important part of the 1999 elections were the elections themselves. From the beginning of General Abdusalam Abubakar’s transition program in mid-1998, most Nigerians who were not part of the wealthy “political class” of elites—which is to say, most Nigerians— adopted their usual politically savvy perspective of siddon look (sit and look). They waited with cautious optimism to see what sort of new arrangement the military would allow the civilian politicians to struggle over, and what in turn the civilians would offer the public. No one had any illusions that anything but high-stakes bargaining within the military and the political class would determine the structures of power in the civilian government. Elections would influence this process to the extent that the crowd influences a soccer match.


Author(s):  
Jane Caputi

The proposed new geological era, The Anthropocene (a.k.a. Age of Humans, Age of Man), marking human domination of the planet long called Mother Earth, is truly The Age of the Motherfucker. The ecocide of the Anthropocene is the responsibility of Man, the Western- and masculine-identified corporate, military, intellectual, and political class that masks itself as the exemplar of the civilized and the human. The word motherfucker was invented by the enslaved children of White slave masters to name their mothers’ rapist/owners. Man’s strategic motherfucking, from the personal to the planetary, is invasion, exploitation, spirit-breaking, extraction and toxic wasting of individuals, communities, and lands, for reasons of pleasure, plunder, and profit. Ecocide is attempted deicide of Mother Nature-Earth, reflecting Man’s goal to become the god he first made in his own image. The motivational word Motherfucker has a flip side, further revealing the Anthropocene as it signifies an outstanding, formidable, and inexorable force. Mother Nature-Earth is that “Mutha’ ”—one defying translation into heteropatriarchal classifications of gender, one capable of overwhelming Man, and not the other way around. Drawing upon Indigenous and African American scholarship; ecofeminism; ecowomanism; green activism; femme, queer, and gender non-binary philosophies; literature and arts; Afrofuturism; and popular culture, Call Your “Mutha’ ” contends that the Anthropocene is not evidence of Man’s supremacy over nature, but that Mother Nature-Earth, faced with disrespect, is going away. It is imperative now to call the “Mutha’ ” by decolonizing land, bodies, and minds, ending rapism, feeding the green, renewing sustaining patterns, and affirming devotion to Mother Nature-Earth.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Zybała

This article addresses the complexity of trade-union approaches to board-level employee representation in the Visegrád countries, and the barriers it faces in particular national settings. Trade unionists in these countries accept the relevance of such employee representation in theory, but their practical agenda covers other issues which they perceive as more important as they struggle to survive at many levels of activity, and face growing existential uncertainty and risk. Unions also lack capacity to overcome obstacles such as reluctance on the part of the political class and managerial hostility to board-level representation; they cannot exert influence on major policy decisions at national level. They are operating in a more and more difficult environment, reflecting not merely a declining membership base, but also the recent economic crisis that failed to change the economic policy paradigm in the Visegrád countries: policies there still rely on a neoliberal approach and hence are not conducive to labour participation. What can still be seen as the predominant model is the traditional one of the market economy in which rights of ownership reign supreme.


2002 ◽  
Vol 172 ◽  
pp. 1010-1028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lau Siu-kai ◽  
Kuan Hsin-chi

Hong Kong's political parties are now in decline after the return of the former British colony to China. The decline of political parties stands out in stark relief in a context featuring “Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong” and gradual democratization. A major reason for the decline is the stunted political party system of Hong Kong. Prominent in that stunted system is the absence of a ruling party. The stunted party system is primarily the result of Beijing's antipathy towards party politics in Hong Kong, which in turn discourages party formation by the Hong Kong government and the conservative elites. The lack of incentives for the business elites to organize political parties to protect their interests is another major reason. The stunted party system has produced serious adverse consequences for the governance of Hong Kong, representation of interests, public attitudes towards the political class and the further democratization of the territory.


1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
Darren Kew

In many respects, the least important part of the 1999 elections were the elections themselves. From the beginning of General Abdusalam Abubakar’s transition program in mid-1998, most Nigerians who were not part of the wealthy “political class” of elites—which is to say, most Nigerians— adopted their usual politically savvy perspective of siddon look (sit and look). They waited with cautious optimism to see what sort of new arrangement the military would allow the civilian politicians to struggle over, and what in turn the civilians would offer the public. No one had any illusions that anything but high-stakes bargaining within the military and the political class would determine the structures of power in the civilian government. Elections would influence this process to the extent that the crowd influences a soccer match.


Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7 (105)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Vladislav Vorotnikov

The article examines the structure of national historical mythology of the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) with an emphasis on the foreign policy dimension based on the analysis of their issues of the postage stamps. Since issuing of the postage stamps is a product of consensus between the state and civil society, their topics and images presented on them, on the one hand, may be considered as a part of the semiotic model of the state image, thus reflecting its stance on processes, events, phenomena or personalities of the past and the present and, accordingly, shaping, transforming or supporting a certain nation-forming mythology or state ideology; on the other hand, they reflect mass perceptions of the dominant national historical narrative, and often the priorities of contemporary politics. Due to the specifics of the Baltic states’ history and the dominant values and ideology of their political class, the mainstream historical narrative is inevitably turned outward, that makes the analysis of its main elements extremely operational in the study of their strategic cultures. The article proposes the author's attitude to categorizing and highlighting the main chronological and thematic elements of the arrays of postage stamps of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia from 1990 to 2020. On the basis of discourse and selective iconographic analysis, the key elements of national historical narratives and their coherence with the foreign political positioning and strategies of the Baltic states are identified and analyzed. A comparative analysis of the three country cases allows us to pinpoint their relative proximity as well as some specific features.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 53-68
Author(s):  
A.V. SKIPERSKIKH ◽  

The purpose of the research is to present how the carnival element in the regional policy is associated with the legitimating of power. Also made of the current state of the regional political process in some constituent entities of the Russian Federation, characterized by a high degree of carnivalization. As a result, the importance of the practices of the regional elite, resorting to game forms of their own positioning. The legitimacy of the regional power to depend on festive discourse. A routine political process in the constituent entities of the Russia does not evoke public emotions that have a positive effect on the legitimation of power. The demand for the politics of spectacle is also present in municipal political practices in a very dangerous epoch of COVID-19. A social organism that needs emotions, as well as control, does not experience serious transformations. In society penchant for spectacle, as well as the political class in the production of carnival events, there are deep historical roots, as well as the cultural specificity of a particular region. The points out that in the regional political process one can increasingly see accents on festivals. So, the government solves two important problems: the first one is a public request for a show, it is resolved in conditions of a rather unpleasant and unpromising accumulation of negative for the authorities due to the deterioration of the socio-economic situation in general, the second one is the production of the play solves the issues of legitimation regional and municipal authorities.


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