Political inequality, political participation, and support for populist parties

We theoretically investigate how political abstention among certain social groups encourages populist parties to enter the political stage, trying to absorb inactive voters. We design a two-stage game with two established parties and n voters who jointly determine a taxation policy. The electorate is divided into two groups, the advantaged and the disadvantaged. Voters’ decisions on whether to participate depend on a party’s tax rate proposal and on general party ideology. Effective political participation requires a certain amount of financial, social and intellectual resources to, for example, evaluate party programs or to engage in political discussion. As the disadvantaged are endowed with fewer resources, they lack political efficacy, resulting in less political participation. Consequently, the established parties propose a tax rate which is biased towards the preferences of the advantaged. The unused voter potential among the disadvantaged draws the interest of a populist challenger. To win support from the disadvantaged, the challenger party optimally proposes a respectively biased tax rate, which then works to polarize the political spectrum.Please confirm if the author names are presented accurately and in the correct sequence (given name, middle name/initial, family name). Author 1 Given name: [Kim Leonie] Last name [ Kellermann]. Also, kindly confirm the details in the metadata are correct.All correct.

Necessary Questions of Chö: Uses and Abuses of Religion in Dondrup Gyel’s “Tulku”

“Why do you ask questions of roots and branches instead of the necessary questions of chö (Tib. chos)?” asks a character in Tibetan author Dondrup Gyel’s (don rgrub rgyal) controversial 1980 short story, “Tulku” (sprul sku). The Tibetan term chö can be translated in many ways, including to mean ‘the Buddhist teachings,’ ‘religion’ more generally, or even ‘the nature of reality.’ In “Tulku,” however, what chö means is not at all clear, and the various characters claim authority to determine what is legitimate chö. In the story, a Tibetan village is visited by a mysterious stranger claiming to be a tulku—a reincarnated religious leader— but who is actually a fraud. Most scholars have interpreted “Tulku” as a critique of traditional Tibetan religious devotion, and as a call by Gyel for Tibetans to modernize. This paper, however, proposes a new reading of “Tulku.” It suggests that Gyel pairs overt criticism of the corrupt tulku with a subtler critique of the Chinese government’s policy towards Tibetan Buddhism. It argues for such a reading by tracking how the word chö is used in “Tulku.” It shows that Gyel places the word not in the mouths of the Tibetan villagers, but rather in the mouths of the fraudulent tulku and the representatives of the Communist Party. Both thus use chö in order to appeal to the Tibetan villagers, claim power for themselves, and exclude the opposing party. “Tulku” thereby creates parallels between the ways in which the Tulku and the Party use chö to appeal to and manipulate the Tibetan villagers. On this reading, “Tulku” highlights the way chö can be weaponized by both traditional religious authorities and Communist party ideology, and suggests that in this modern period, any claimant to chö must be treated with caution and skepticism.

Vocative and nominative as an appellation: the language norm formation in the Soviet period

Background. The authors of Ukrainian grammar books published before 1933 were consentient that appellation expressed by a noun requires the use of the vocative case only. In 1933, new People’s Commissar of Education of the USSR V. Zatonskyi formed the commission ‘for auditing the work on the language front’. On the 26th of April, the Commission adopted several resolutions, among which there was the provision to review scholar and didactic books to reveal ‘nationalistic deformation’. After they had been made public, in the Soviet handbooks for higher and secondary education, one can find a statement that the ‘vocative form’ is used to express appellation. However, the “nominative case” can also occasionally perform this function.Purpose. The purpose of this paper is to compare the morphological variability of appellation expressing codified in the Soviet handbooks and the accurate appellation expressing in dramas of the 1920s – 30s of the XX century. To find out the presence or absence of the pragmatic differences between vocative and nominative in this function is in the focus of our analysis as well.Methods. The methodological base of research is the discourse-analytical approach, within we compound discourse analysis method (to descry the designing new syntactic norm in the linguistic-didactic discourse of the end of the 1930s – the beginning of the 50s) and content-analysis method (to find out the real means of expressing appellation in social realists’ dramas of the 1920s – 30s of the XX century).Results. Theory about vocative as non-case and legitimization of the term ‘called form (vocative form)’ to denote it became dominant in all Soviet Ukrainian language handbooks for secondary and higher education. There are no remarks about another qualification in this grammatical category in the analyzed handbooks, and it evidences the monologue style of the Soviet linguistic-didactic discourse. The authors of these handbooks codify a double language norm to express an appellation – the vocative form and the nominative case. The thesis about nominative as a means to denote an appellation is usually formulated in the way of a superficial remark that may be apprehended by a recipient as upon the table fact. The study of the morphological manifestation of appellations in the drama of late 1920–30s created by the authors transmitting the official party ideology proves that vocative case predominates. Nominative to denote appellation has mainly a pragmatic effect or is one of the means of creating characters. Moreover, only in O. Korniychuk’s plays the use of morphological forms of appellations does not follow any regularities.Discussion. Spreading the nominative case to denote appellation in modern colloquial speech is conditioned by the complex of factors. On the one hand, it is a loosening of language norm in Soviet handbooks and on the other hand, it is the fact that morphological forms of vocative and nominative in plural nouns and singular nouns of neutral gender are homonymous. However, this thesis is needed verification on more comprehensive language material that represents different functional styles of the Ukrainian language.

Perspectivas ideológicas em política externa nas eleições presidenciais brasileiras de 2018

O artigo teve como objetivo principal estimar o posicionamento e diferenciar ideologicamente os partidos que disputaram as eleições presidenciais brasileiras de 2018, através da análise de suas posições sobre política externa, expressas em seus manifestos de campanha. As posições em 2018 foram contrastadas também com os manifestos das campanhas de 2010 e 2014. Os resultados demonstram que a maioria dos partidos se localizam à direita e que apenas aqueles à extrema esquerda defendem um papel minimalista para a política externa brasileira. A comparação com eleições anteriores mostra estabilidade na ordenação ideológica partidária, e que os cinco partidos que disputaram as últimas três eleições presidenciais se moveram à esquerda.Abstract: The main objective of the article was to estimate the position and ideologically differentiate the parties that disputed the Brazilian presidential elections of 2018, by analyzing their positionson foreign policy, expressed in their campaign manifestos. Positions in 2018 were also contrasted with the 2010 and 2014 campaign manifests. The results show that most parties are on the rightand only those on the far left defend a minimalist role for Brazilian foreign policy. Comparison with previous elections shows stability in party ideology, and the five parties that have competed in the ast three presidential elections have moved to the left.Keywords: Elections; Ideology; Brazilian Foreign Policy; Political Parties.

Who spends more? Party Ideology and Public Spending in 16 Post-Socialist Countries

The article is revisiting a never-concluded debate about the partisan effect on public spending. It explores the impact of the ruling parties’ ideological orientation, operationalised in a single-dimensional left-right scale, on budget expenditures in Central and Eastern Europe. The research is conducted within an expanded time series covering the complete period since the fall of one-party regimes in sixteen former socialist countries, where the issue has remained under-studied, especially in comparison with a number of similar studies focusing mostly on developed Western democracies. The findings moderately support the main hypothesis demonstrating that, although an ideology matters, there are also other more significant predictors of the spending among political, economic or other contextual variables related to a specific transitional framework of the countries in question. The same conclusion applies to the total consumption, as well as to the examined budget segments of social transfers and education, while the environmental spending seems to be completely unrelated to the partisan variable.

Formalism and anti-formalism in the Chinese Communist Party’s governance project

This article argues that the governance project of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) oscillates between rule-based formalism and anti-formalist scepticism about rule-based governance. In this dichotomy, anti-formalist arguments support CCP leaders’ efforts to maintain and increase the Party’s influence over the judiciary and other state organs, which is a key justification for the Party’s power. Formalist language, in contrast, supports Party leaders’ attempts to constrain lower-level cadres’ uses of power within the Party. Formalist language is particularly prominent in the writings of Party ideologues on the interpretation of the Party’s internal regulations, including the CCP Constitution. At the same time, Party ideology also provides for various anti-formalist arguments about rule-based governance within and outside the Party. Paradoxical as it may be, the Party leadership seeks to exert rule-transcending political leadership through formal rules. While the focus of this article is on China, it argues that other illiberal regimes may also be studied in terms of similar, potentially incoherent approaches to rule-based governance.