Using ground penetrating radar to understand the failure of the Koh Ker Reservoir, Northern Cambodia.

Ground penetrating radar, probing, and excavation were used to create a contour map of the topography of a buried laterite pavement forming the spillway of a large abandoned reservoir at the Angkorian‐period city of Koh Ker in Cambodia. Calculations of the flow velocity of water through the spillway, based on the topography of the laterite surface, demonstrate that this outlet was even less adequate for passing the flow of water from the Stung Rongea catchment than had been estimated previously by Lustig, Klassen, Evans, French, & Moffat (2018). We argue that this design flaw contributed substantially to the failure of the reservoir’s dike, possibly during the first rainy season after construction, which may have contributed to Koh Ker’s remarkably short‐lived tenure as the political center of the Khmer Empire.

Does the Apple Fall Far from the Tree?

The paper presents the results of a survey that assessed the impact of informal and formal agents of the political socialization (PS) process on a sample of students enrolled at the University of Rijeka (N = 635). The correlation between the participants' ideological self-identification (PIS) and the assessed ideological orientation of their parents (PIO) was analyzed. Students believe that no agent of socialization has even moderately influenced the formation of their political views and assess the weakest influence of the formal PS agent – teachers in primary and secondary schools. The participants believe that parents have influenced their political attitudes more than other agents, but assess this influence on average as weak, regardless of whether they place their parents in the same or different positions on the ideological orientation (IO) scale. Left- and right-oriented participants admit a somewhat stronger influence of their parents' informal PS than those who rank themselves in the center. Statistically significant correlations between PIS and the perceived PIO were obtained. A small share of participants does not perceive a similarity between their own and their parents' IO and there is a negligible share of those who place their parents in diametrically opposed positions on the scale. The participants who have a greater interest in politics and those from a more politically stimulating environment are more inclined to move away from the political center and their parents' IO. Concordance between family IOs increases with the perception of better relationships with parents.

Overview of Architecture and Religion Since 1500

The architecture of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam during the historically significant period of the 16th through 20th centuries reveals many similarities and differences. Particularly important are the architectural languages each employed to materialize, facilitate, and communicate their religion, and how they changed over time. Additionally, the ontological and symbolic roles of architecture and the key theoretical approaches to the subject are relevant contexts. These include typological taxonomies of organizations, path sequences, and historical, conceptual, or symbolic characteristics. Lastly, seven primary roles of religious architecture—historical, authoritative, commemorative, theocentric, cosmological, prestige, and community places–can effectively situate and contextualize particular examples. During the pivotal 16th century, popes remade St. Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican and transformed Rome into the ecclesiastical and political center of Christianity; Jews built substantial synagogues that reflected their status during the Golden Age of Jews in Poland; and the Ottoman Empire built some of its most significant mosque complexes that expressed the hegemony of the theocratic state. Subsequent periods of the architecture of the Abrahamic religions illustrate particular themes, and explicate the variety of roles, and relative importance, of the architecture at particular periods. Modernism, in particular, produced significant changes in the architecture, where complexity, ambiguity, inventiveness, and oscillations between tradition and innovation reflected the impacts of new technologies, liturgical reforms, and global architectural cultures. Throughout, the capacity of architecture to materialize and communicate ontological, historical, religious, and sociopolitical content and accommodate communal rituals cannot be overstated.

ADMINISTRATIVE, CULTURAL, URBAN AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS IN JERUSALEM IN THE EARLY ABBASID PERIOD (132-247 AH/749-861 AD)

This article sheds light on the history of the city of Jerusalem during the early Abbasid period (132-247 AH/749-861 AD), after the city had reached the most advanced stages of architectural and cultural development in the Umayyad period, based on it being a religious and political center competing with the Two Holy Mosques in the Hijaz. After the fall of the Umayyad Caliphate, the political role of the city of Jerusalem lessened, once the center of the caliphate moved to Baghdad, despite the continued care of the Abbasid caliphs for the city, especially regarding restorations of the holy sites, after the natural disasters that afflicted the city. The study also sheds light on the cultural and economic role of the city during the period.

Russia, the 1990s: Metamorphoses of the Emerging Polity

The article attempts to examine the era of the 1990s through the prism of communication in the system “center — regions”. The author interprets the epoch itself as a special, chaotic state of affairs. The political structures and instruments inherited by the new Russia from the Soviet times did not disappear, but lost their foundation (which corresponded to the model of Russian power described by Yuri Pivovarov), transformed into the mode of an autonomous drift along unauthorized trajectories. The new foundation (“the path of civilized countries”) came into conflict with the structures and instruments themselves. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that the rejection of that foundation deprived the political center of its legitimacy, since it was perceived and legitimized as a driver of the transition from socialism into the world of “civilized countries”. The article shows that it was the space of dialogue (bargaining) between the center and the regions that combined the principles of the Russian power and a new legitimizing foundation stemming from the “civilized countries” The author identifies three stages of such a dialogue. During the first stage, there was no adaptation, and the dialogue ended with a violent confrontation. As a result, two parallel realities emerged — the reality of legal norms and declarations and the reality of survival. The second stage, labeled by the author as “taming Europe”, witnessed democratic procedures uniting with the practices of the Russian power and recreation of the distributive economy at the regional level. At the same time, the dual legitimacy of the regional rulers — from the regional community and from the federal center — bound the country’s territory much stronger than enforcement agencies or future “spiritual staples”. The last stage, which is usually considered to take place after the 1990s, is associated with the transfer of practices that have developed in the regions to the center. However, according to the author’s conclusion, this is not the end of the constituent era and the formation of the polity, but a continuation of the quest.

Neutral bots probe political bias on social media

Social media platforms attempting to curb abuse and misinformation have been accused of political bias. We deploy neutral social bots who start following different news sources on Twitter, and track them to probe distinct biases emerging from platform mechanisms versus user interactions. We find no strong or consistent evidence of political bias in the news feed. Despite this, the news and information to which U.S. Twitter users are exposed depend strongly on the political leaning of their early connections. The interactions of conservative accounts are skewed toward the right, whereas liberal accounts are exposed to moderate content shifting their experience toward the political center. Partisan accounts, especially conservative ones, tend to receive more followers and follow more automated accounts. Conservative accounts also find themselves in denser communities and are exposed to more low-credibility content.

Brazil’s Stealth Military Intervention

Between 2016 and 2020, a group of activist generals successfully plotted the Brazilian military's gradual return to the political center stage with powers unseen since the dictatorship. They achieved this without formally breaking the law, suspending the democratic process or overthrowing the government. We call this a “stealth intervention,” an incremental yet systematic attempt to redesign politics without causing a rupture, that fits neither in the existing typology of coups nor in the literature on democratic backsliding. We argue that Brazil’ stealth intervention, built upon the military’s existing tutelary prerogatives and driven by an unreformed praetorian worldview that resurfaced amidst a sustained crisis of democracy, challenges the prevalent view of the armed forces as a reactive force that intervenes in civilian politics only when its institutional interests are threatened. Finally, we show that democratic backsliding in Brazil started under Bolsonaro’s predecessor, Michel Temer, and point to the generals’ understudied role in this process.

Religion and Migration in Rakhine

The historical migration and religious development in Rakhine (Arakan) up to the end of the second decade of the 21st century is complicated. This region was a crossroads for South and Southeast Asian civilizations and existed at the overlap of the frontiers of Islam and Theravada Buddhism. Existing in an ecological niche with a difficult topography and climate and a low population base, Rakhine social and state formation was built around inclusivity and tolerance. Although for much of its history the dominant religions of the population of the region were animism and then Brahmanism, successive waves of immigrants from both Bengal and Myanmar meant that Islamic and Theravada Buddhist influence was very strong. The early modern kingdom that emerged at Mrauk-U, its main political center, was built on maritime connectivity with the Indian Ocean world and developed a court culture that was both Muslim and Buddhist and ruled over a population that was religiously heterogeneous. Toleration was challenged, however, by the conquest of Rakhine by Myanmar in 1785 and efforts to eradicate local religious autonomy. Things did not improve under British rule after the British annexation of 1826. The Myanmar and British rulers of Rakhine politicized the region’s history and tried to retell the history of the region in ways that excluded some populations and included others, leading to efforts to force the Rohingya out of Rakhine from August 2017.

Choosing the Lesser Evil: Forecasting Presidential Elections in Peru

The Peruvian political landscape is dominated by the weakness of party organizations, the continuous rotation of political personalities, and, in turn, high electoral volatility and uncertainty. Nevertheless, we observe patterns of electoral competition that suggest candidates learn to capture the political center and compete over the continuation of an economic model that has sustained growth. We use this information to record the vote intention for the candidate viewed as the lesser evil. Our forecasting results predict a good share of the variation in political support for this candidate. The out-of-sample prediction also comes fairly close to the real electoral results. These findings provide some degree of electoral certainty in an area that, to date, remains understudied.