Francisco Weffort and the Dependency Theory: Populism, Class, and Nation

Discussion of the notions of populism and dependency as part of Brazilian political thought in the first years after the establishment of the dictatorship in the country, especially of the contributions of the political scientist Francisco Weffort from 1966 to 1972, reveals the bumpy path of these concepts in Weffort’s research on national political history and on the difficulties of building a developed and democratic nation. From the debates between Weffort and Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Weffort’s growing concern with the problem of working-class autonomy and criticism of and retreat from the use of the notion of dependency it is apparent that, contrary to what its own author stated, one of the main theories about populism in Brazil and Latin America was far from homogeneous. A discussão das noções de populismo e dependência como parte do pensamento político brasileiro nos primeiros anos após o estabelecimento da ditadura no país, especialmente das contribuições do cientista político Francisco Weffort de 1966 a 1972, revela o caminho acidentado dessas concepções na pesquisa de Weffort sobre a história política nacional e sobre as dificuldades de construção de uma nação desenvolvida e democrática. Dos debates entre Weffort e Fernando Henrique Cardoso, e da crescente preocupação de Weffort com o problema da autonomia da classe trabalhadora e da crítica e recuo do uso da noção de dependência, é evidente que, ao contrário do que afirmava seu próprio autor, uma das principais teorias sobre o populismo no Brasil e na América Latina estava longe de ser homogênea.

‘This is not who we are’: Gendered bordering practices, ontological insecurity, and lines of continuity under the Trump presidency

The Trump presidency ushered in a heightened sense of ontological insecurity in the US, based on a national self-narrative that portrayed an emasculated America. Trump promised a return the US to primacy by pursuing policies and practices that focused on border protection, militarisation, and the vilification of external others, while amplifying racial tensions within the country. From caging immigrant children at the border, to an enabling of white supremacy and the Capitol riots, Trump's presidency was broadly seen as aberration in the self-narrative of America as a tolerant, democratic nation. In this article, I am interested in how gendered bordering practices inform ontological (in)security in Trump's narrative of the nation, domestic and external policy, and discourses. While Trump's electoral loss to Biden in 2020 has been described as a ‘return to normal’, this article instead considers how Trump's presidency exhibited lines of continuity when examined through a gender lens. Understanding how masculinism informs ideas of ontological security reveals how notions of gendered bordering, hierarchy, and ordering have been persistent threads in US politics, rather than simply an anomaly under Trump. This suggests greater potential to read ontological security in more complex terms through gendered bordering practices.

The Ethical Issues of Television Journalists’ Endorsement Activities on Instagram

Nowadays, endorsement or paid promotion activities on Instagram are not only done by celebrities but also by people from other profession with many followers such as television journalist. The journalists who play an important role as the fourth pillar of a democratic nation are immersed in digital euphoria by participating in endorsement activities. This certainly leaves ethical problems, based on the Indonesian Journalist Code of Ethics, journalists must be independent and prohibited to misuse their profession to benefit certain parties. Therefore, this research was conducted to study this phenomenon, especially in understanding the attitudes and perceptions of journalists towards their endorsement or paid promotion activities. This research was conducted using a descriptive-qualitative approach with semi-structured in-depth interview. Five informants, journalists form several television stations in Indonesia (SCTV, TV One and Kompas TV), were interviewed. The results showed that the journalist’s motives in doing the endorsement are to help small businesses and to get financial benefits. Four informants believed that the endorsement activities did not violate the Journalist Code of Ethics as long as they only talk about the facts and do not spread mislead information, while, the other one argued it certainly did. Their perceptions were influenced by their membership of professional association and ownership of professional certification. The informant who agreed that the endorsement activities are not in accordance with the code of ethics, has a membership of Indonesian Television Journalists Association (Ikatan Jurnalis Televisi Indonesia) and also has a professional certification as primary journalist, while the other informants do not have.

Right to Pray

Focusing on cultural restrictions on women’s access to the garbhagriha in specific Hindu temples in India, this paper attempts to contextualize the wider debates around gender in faith-based practices and the confrontation between the ‘right to pray’ movement and its opponents. It reviews the complexities of practising public religion in a democratic nation. In the ambit of the contemporary feminist movement, activism has been initiated for reclaiming space for women in the realm of religion and faith. This was most clearly demonstrated in the women-led right to pray movement. The movement has been continuously evolving in local spaces and remains diversified across public places of worship. Debates around the exclusion of women have required the judiciary to reinterpret the relation between public temples and the equality proclaimed by the Constitution. By looking at the Sabarimala and Shani Shingnapur temple protests, this paper reflects on the conflict between activism and faith traditions. It charts the legal outcomes, local responses, political tensions, and the associated gender subjectivity. It attempts to revisit the role of women as recipients rather than agents of religion in public spaces, while extending the arguments to other aspects of ritual.

Practicing Ballot Secrecy: Postal Voting and the Witness Requirement at the 2019 Finnish Elections

Electoral rights belong to the core of citizenship in democratic nation-states. Voting, then, represents an actualization of the relationship between the citizen and the political community. For citizens living outside the country in which they are eligible to vote, voting signifies a rare institutional connection to the country of origin. The aim of this article is to explore the introduction of the postal vote, a new form of voting for external voters at Finnish elections, from the grassroots perspective. The study focuses on how a central policy concern, safeguarding ballot secrecy, was resolved in the policy implementation by the witness requirement, and how the individual voters subsequently applied it. According to the voters’ accounts of the act of voting, the adopted method for underlining the importance of ballot secrecy in the Finnish overseas postal voting system, for many voters, makes little sense. While they effectively practice ballot secrecy, many fail to demonstrate this to the witnesses they were supposed to convince. Conversely, for these voters, the witness requirement merely works to break the secondary secrecy of elections, namely the secrecy of their participation itself. The empirical material for the article comprises policy documents and thematic text material (interviews, written responses) from 31 Finnish citizens living outside Finland. The article contributes to the scholarly debates on voting as a social, institutional and material practice. It further provides policy-relevant knowledge about grassroots implementation to various electoral administrations many of which, at the time of writing, face pressure to reform their repertoire of voting methods to function better in exceptional circumstances, such as a pandemic.

The Pandemic as a Rupture that Follows Rules: Comparing Governance Responses in India, USA, Sweden and Norway

How a country responds to a rupture such as the COVID-19 pandemic can be revelatory of its governance. Governance entails not only the exercise but also the constitution of authority. The pandemic response thus presents a real-world disruption to verify or problematize some truisms about national governance and produce novel comparisons and insights. We present a comparative analysis across four established democratic nation-states. First, we identify concerns of relevance for national pandemic responses and map them to state characteristics. Next, we conduct thematic analyses of recent ruptures in India, the United States, Sweden and Norway, to form a baseline of truisms about governance responses to frontier moments such as this pandemic, and hypothesize their relative propensities across the concerns. We then compile comparative data on emergent pandemic responses during the first 90 days of respective, temporally proximate outbreaks. This combination enables us to link response characteristics to national propensities across the relevant concerns. We identify similarities and differences between what the pandemic responses reveal and the truisms of scholarship about the four countries state characteristics. We argue that ruptures in democratic governance contexts embody temporally discontiguous and country-specific patterns. They are conjunctures of particular possibilities for bounded reconfiguration. Such reconfiguration can intensify or shift the course of what the state is becoming. We argue that in our cases it accelerates shifts to authoritarianism (India and the United States), raises stark questions of national identity (Norway and Sweden) and underscores tensions between the reemergence of welfare states and the global project of neoliberalism. By revealing what sort of rules show resurgence across ruptures, our comparative analysis deepens a timely understanding of punctuated politics of reconfiguration of authority.

Racism, the press, and Canadian society: laying the groundwork for contemporary study

As its national anthem proclaims, Canada is indeed "glorious and free," especially with the trope of a harmonious cultural mosaic as a defining characteristic of this fundamentally democratic nation. As Prime Minister Jean Chretien asserts, egalitarian values have always been at the basis of Canadian society: "Throughout the course of our history, we Canadians have built our society on the principles of fairness, justice, mutual respect, democracy and opportunity" (Department of Canadian Heritage, 1997). However, there also emerges from Canada's history a legacy of racial prejudice, discrimination, and disadvantage. As numerous studies have shown, racist attitudes and beliefs persist in Canada, even though they are not always apparent to those unaffected by their direct repercussions. This tension begs the question: how does a society that upholds liberal democratic values, prohibits overt discriminatory practices of ethnic group dominance, and defends its tolerant and humanistic character simultaneously perpetuate racism?

Racism, the press, and Canadian society: laying the groundwork for contemporary study

As its national anthem proclaims, Canada is indeed "glorious and free," especially with the trope of a harmonious cultural mosaic as a defining characteristic of this fundamentally democratic nation. As Prime Minister Jean Chretien asserts, egalitarian values have always been at the basis of Canadian society: "Throughout the course of our history, we Canadians have built our society on the principles of fairness, justice, mutual respect, democracy and opportunity" (Department of Canadian Heritage, 1997). However, there also emerges from Canada's history a legacy of racial prejudice, discrimination, and disadvantage. As numerous studies have shown, racist attitudes and beliefs persist in Canada, even though they are not always apparent to those unaffected by their direct repercussions. This tension begs the question: how does a society that upholds liberal democratic values, prohibits overt discriminatory practices of ethnic group dominance, and defends its tolerant and humanistic character simultaneously perpetuate racism?

‘To Hell with Bishops’: Rethinking the Nexus of State, Law and Religion in Times of Crisis in Zimbabwe

The article addresses the responses of the government of Zimbabwe and its proxies to a letter issued by Catholic bishops on 14 August 2020, entitled ‘The march is not ended’. The response to the letter presents an ambivalent view of the nexus of the state, law and religion in Zimbabwe, which needs to be teased out and challenged in order to reinvent a democratic nation. This theoretical article taps into decoloniality theory to problematise state responses to the letter. The articles discuss responses by government actors, such as Monica Mutswanga and Nick Magwana, and regime enablers, such as Mutendi and Wutawunashe. The responses indicate the weaponization of religion and law to silence dissenting voices, and to enact a skewed nationalism. The article argues that, in the context of crisis, authoritarianism, and abuse of human rights, politicians and religious leaders should position their narratives to enact social justice, ontological density, peace and accountability, as a healing process to usher in sustainable development.