The great dichotomy: How experiences of history and transcendence explain Ukraine’s political life

The article uses Eric Voegelin’s ontology to address domestic processes in contemporary Ukraine. It explains how interpretations of experiences of history and transcendence evoke political order and justice. It also outlines the nature of political symbols deriving from these experiences. The article argues that Ukraine’s social architecture is constructed according to a set of arrangements that are generally regarded as moral and functional under given circumstances. As a result, it provides political elites a platform from which to build a plan of action and gain legitimacy. The article not only shows how Voegelin’s ontology can be used to explain Zelensky’s 2019 presidential election victory but also highlights its interpretative advantages over competing analytical approaches from within the frameworks of institutionalism and behaviorism.

Impeachment will add new uncertainties in Peru

Significance The right-wing opposition, led by Keiko Fujimori’s Fuerza Popular (Popular Force, FP), never fully recognised Castillo’s razor-thin election victory in June. Impeachment, the only constitutional method of ousting a sitting president, would require the votes of two-thirds of Congress; the votes are currently narrowly balanced. Impacts Castillo will retain public sympathy against a deeply unpopular Congress. Further motions of censure against ministers are to be expected. The business community will remain on the side-lines, for now.

Guinea's junta will dominate the political transition

Significance Conde’s increasingly authoritarian rule had generated widespread resentment, particularly following his controversial third-term election victory in October 2020. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) condemned the coup and suspended Guinea’s membership until the return of “constitutional order” but did not call for Conde’s reinstatement. Impacts International fears over Guinea’s stability may hinder new investments in the country’s mining sector in the short and medium term. The junta will not interfere with existing mining concessions and contracts. ECOWAS’s soft acquiescence to the coup may encourage other regional coup attempts. The junta will likely invite members of the opposition to form a broad-based transitional government while it maintains overall control.

Gbagbo will return to frontline Ivory Coast politics

Significance Instead he aims to create a new party. The FPI has since denied reports of mass defections by the party grassroots to Gbagbo. This comes in the context of broader public reconciliation efforts by President Alassane Ouattara, who seeks political stability in the aftermath of a highly controversial October 2020 third-term election victory. Impacts Ouattara is unlikely to grant general amnesty to all political actors in order to keep some of them outside the country. Gbagbo will likely win over most, though not all, of his former supporters within the FPI. Struggles within Gbagbo’s former party and other opposition formations will weaken the opposition in the short term. Gbagbo will consolidate his position as the main opposition leader, threatening the country’s stability in the lead-up to the 2025 election.

Viewing Joe Biden's Victory Speech in 2020 from the Perspective of Language Metafunction

From the perspective of functional linguistics, this paper analyzes the features of the discourse pattern of political speeches from the perspective of critical discourse analysis, taking Biden’s 2020 election victory speech as a model, and explores how political speeches realize ideational functions in language through transitivity system, voice system and normalization system, and how they realize interpersonal functions through mood system and modality system, how to realize textual function through theme-rheme structure, information structure, and cohesion system. A political speaker's mastery of his own subjective and objective attitude, the shaping of the credibility and persuasiveness of his speech, the construction of one's own social identity, interpersonal relationship, and ideology can be embodied through the three meta-functions of language.

Causal judgment in the wild: evidence from the 2020 US presidential election

A given event has many causes, but people intuitively view some causes as more important than others. Models of causal judgment have been evaluated in controlled laboratory experiments, but they have yet to be tested in complex real-world settings. Here, we provide such a test, in the context of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Across tens of thousands of simulations of possible election outcomes, we computed, for each state, an adjusted measure of the correlation between a Biden victory in that state and a Biden election victory. These effect size measures accurately predicted the extent to which U.S. participants (N=207, pre-registered) viewed victory in a given state as having caused Biden to win the presidency. This supports the theory that people intuitively select as causes of an outcome the factors with the largest average causal effect on that outcome across possible counterfactual worlds.

Neither side is ready to step back in Georgian crisis

Significance The authorities went ahead with the arrest of Nika Melia, leader of the opposition United National Movement (UNM), on February 23 even after the prime minister resigned in protest. Georgian Dream's actions have caused concern in Western capitals that approved its election victory when the opposition cried foul. Impacts The crisis is a setback for the government's stated plan to apply for EU membership in 2024. There is growing talk in the United States about individual sanctions targeting Ivanishvili and his associates. Political turmoil will harm hopes of foreign direct investment and the imminent Anaklia port tender.

Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction

Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction explores the considerable variations of neoliberalism around the world, and discusses the origins, evolution, and core ideas of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism emerged as the world's dominant economic paradigm in the 1990s. The global financial crash of 2008 and the subsequent emergence of more nationalist ideologies have challenged both neoliberal assumptions and related financial systems—a development most spectacularly reflected in 2016's pro-Brexit referendum in the UK and the Trump election victory in the same year. This VSI asks whether changing versions of neoliberalism might succeed in drowning out the calls for a return to territorial sovereignty and national greatness.

Divide and rule: Populist crackdowns and media elites in the Philippines

This article examines the ways in which populist president Rodrigo Duterte has managed and controlled the Philippines media since his election victory in 2016. Existing literature has pointed to the important role the media has played in electing and sustaining the popularity of Duterte, but have not examined the role of ‘media elites’. Through personal interviews with media owners and others in Manila, this empirical research provides insights into the challenges facing the contemporary Philippines media, in particular those media elites whose companies criticise his administration. While Duterte – like most populists – claims to be challenging powerful ‘oligarchs’, in reality his administration has cracked down severely against some media elites and has nurtured coercive relationships with others. The result is a landscape where media elites are unable to coalesce around media freedom. The research provides relevant findings supporting global literature on the role of populists in enabling greater crackdowns on the mainstream and independent media.