The Fallen Soldier as Fascist Exemplar: Military Cemeteries and Dead Heroes in Mussolini’s Italy

This article aims to dissect the nature of exemplarity in Italian Fascism. The social and political structures that emerged in Fascist Italy were highly reliant on a sense of morality, largely because of the degree of violence inherent in those structures. Under Fascism, morality was founded on concrete examples rather than on abstract principles. Exemplars were idealized sources of moral strength, and figures with the capacity to inspire or persuade. In particular, the fallen soldier and those who died for the nation constituted a major category of Fascist exemplars. Thus, soldiers who fell in the First World War were awarded exemplary status in order to encourage behaviors favorable to the regime. With the goal to demonstrate the importance awarded to exemplars, this paper focuses on a group of ossuaries, or bone depositaries, that were built under Mussolini’s dictatorship, and within which the regime reburied the remains of soldiers who fell in the First World War. The main purpose of the ossuaries was to present the dead as role models that might boost support for a program of nationalism, militarism, and imperialism. Thus, while their creation drew on factors such as Romantic literature and Italy’s religious and political traditions, the ossuaries represent an ideal case study of how Fascist morality was aided by and expressed through the use of exemplars.

Valdai forum as a platform of political communication: articulation of cultural, spiritual and political traditions of Russia (a review of Valdai international club agenda)

The article represents the results of an actual analysis of the discussions on the site of the Valdai International Club over the past ten years in the context of the broadcast of the Russian message to the world as one of the instruments of Russian soft power. The author shows how the articulation of cultural, spiritual and political traditions of Russia occurs at the Valdai Forum as a platform for political communication and based on the appeal of the head of state to the problems of preserving cultural and national identity, forming a positive image of the state in the international arena, preserving national values and patriotic consciousness. A brief analysis is made of a number of fundamentally important thematic contours of the discussion by the Valdai Club members, which in recent years have become significant components of the formation of the Russian message to the world. Besides, the author substantiates the actualization of the concept of cultural imperative in the political science understanding of the cultural and value matrix of the Russian state and society in the Valdai discourse, and highlights an internal axiological aspect focused on civil-patriotic values, a sense of national identity, and the ideology of social justice.

Origins of Varying Understandings of Democracy

This chapter uses mixed-effect models to examine the origins of varying conceptions of democracy. Due to data limitations, we are only able to account for some key individual demographic, cognitive, and psychological features as we explore the impact of surrounding economic, political, and cultural contexts. Overall, our findings demonstrate the salience of surrounding economic, political, and cultural contexts in shaping popular conceptions of democracy. Short-term fluctuations (like economic growth vs. recession), mid-term changes (like democratic practices gauged by Freedom House ratings and economic development measured by per capita GDP), and long-term evolutions (like the history of personal dictatorships and Confucian political traditions) all play important roles in this regard.

Intercultural dialogues in times of global pandemics: The Confucian ethics of relations and social organization in Sinic societies

Since COVID-19 is a global-scale pandemic, it can only be solved on the global level. In this context, intercultural dialogues are of utmost importance. Indeed, different models of traditional ethics might be of assistance in constructing a new, global ethics that could help us confront the present predicament and prepare for other possible global crises that might await us in the future. The explosive, pandemic spread of COVID-19 in 2020 clearly demonstrated that in general, one of the most effective tools for containment of the epidemics is precisely human and interpersonal solidarity, which must also be accompanied by a certain degree of autonomous self-discipline. The present paper follows the presumption that these types of personal and interpersonal attitudes are—inter alia— culturally conditioned and hence influenced by different traditional models of social ethics. In light of the fact that East-Asian or Sinic societies were more successful and effective in the process of containing and eliminating the virus compared to the strategies of the Euro-American regions, I will first question the widespread assumption that this effectiveness is linked to the authoritarian political traditions of the Sinic East and Southeast Asian areas. Then, I will critically introduce the Confucian ethics of relations, which in various ways has influenced the social structures of these regions, and clarify the question of whether and in which way the relics of this ethics had an actual effect on the crisis resolution measurements. The crucial aim of this paper is to contribute to the construction of theoretical groundworks for a new, transculturally grounded global ethics, which is more needed today than ever before.

Demokracja w Serbii i Chorwacji w XXI wieku: w koleinach historii?

The author shows the contemporary political regime in Serbia, focusing on the role of the president and the party system. He traces Serbia's evolution in the last decade from non-consolidated democracy to hybrid regime or even non-consolidated authoritarianism from the historical experiences that shaped her political culture. He identifies the sources of autocratism and monism in her state, church and intellectual history. He compares Serbia with Croatia, which for twenty years is a non-consolidated democracy. The article shows that Serbian and Croatian historical pre-1991 cultural and political traditions influenced the perceptions of democracy and “strong leaders” rules of their contemporary inhabitants no less than experience from the transformation period.

FACTORS OF THE INFLUENCE OF POLITICAL TRADITIONS ON THE TECHNOLOGY OF DESIGNING THE MEDIA IMAGE OF A REGIONAL LEADER

В настоящей статье конструирование политического образа исследуется в рамках взаимосвязанных между собой политических традиций и моделей массовой коммуникации. Понимание эффективности политической технологии рассматривается в соответствии с современной социально-философской трактовкой медиа как «способа данности мира». Авторы обращаются к российскому контексту: эффективность применения политических технологий в конструировании медиаобраза регионального лидера исследуется в жестких рамках авторитарного режима советской эпохи и на современном этапе с актуализацией технологий «мягкой силы». Современные стратегии предусматривают применение явных и скрытых тактик, нацеленных на установление контроля над «информационной волной», формируемой вокруг медиаобраза. В качестве резюме авторы обращаются к трендам развития институтов общества и массовых коммуникаций, ставятся вопросы динамики корреляции медиаобраза с учетом наполнения идеальной модели политического лидера и социального сторителлинга.

The Irish Border

The emergence, development, and transformation of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland reveals much about the changing nature of nation-statehood over the century that followed its creation. In its own way, it is also a subject of innovation. The three interrelated strands of relationships safeguarded by the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement of 1998 in many ways define the border. These relationships run within and between the two islands of Ireland and Britain, and also between the two political traditions in Northern Ireland. Nationalists and Unionists have come to define much of their ethos in relation to the symbolic meaning of the Irish border: The former want the border removed and the latter see the border as necessary to keep Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom. This helps to understand the prominence given to the Irish border in the context of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU), as well as the controversy around the terms of the U.K.–EU Withdrawal Agreement, which changed the nature of the relationship between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom as well as between Northern Ireland and Ireland. As a consequence of Brexit, the future of borders in and around Ireland—their openness and their governance—will be inevitably shaped by the vicissitudes of the EU–U.K. relationship.

What is Freedom?

This work is a collection of interviews on the topic of freedom from many of the world’s leading academic thinkers on the subject, as well as highly influential activists. The book contains twelve interviews and an introduction. The interviews are presented in a simple readable format intended for a general audience, each with a short introduction and suggested reading. The interviews are split into three sections; history, philosophy, and activism, covering what freedom has meant, how it can be defined, and what work it does in real-world political contestation respectively. One central theme of the work is how freedom’s meaning has changed and evolved over time and been contested both between and within political traditions. The book also explores contemporary alternatives to individual negative liberty, and considers freedom as a possible ideal to which activists can appeal. A final issue many of the interviews touch on is how different conceptions of freedom relate to different ideas about human nature and our relationship with history.