Developing a Theoretical Framework for Processing the Negative Information in Social Media

The author explores the fundamental aspects of the rational decision-making process with the aim of understanding that negative information has the possibility to distort processing of political information. This article further develops a theoretical framework of the relationship between negative information on social media and its receiver. This article conducts an empirical analysis to partially prove this framework with the Twitter texts spread by the Internet Research Agency (IRA). This analysis indicates that: (1) tweets containing negative information had more interaction than tweets containing positive information; (2) tweets containing anger-inducing content had more interaction than tweets containing fearful content. These results suggest that negative emotion would have a more significant effect on this process, and different negative emotions can have a distinct effect on information processing.

Building Legitimacy

After the collapse of the communist regime in Eastern Europe, political parties were faced with the necessity of building political legitimacy. This research aims to find out how political myths were instrumentalized by political leaders during the presidential campaigns in order to gain popular support. In the first part, the article focuses on defining “myth” as a legitimizing political instrument. In the second part four political myths used in the early 1990s in Romania are being analyzed: the myth of the interwar period, the myth of original democracy, the myth of political reform and the providential man. The method used is political discourse and party platform analysis. The results suggest that, during the early 90s, different political groups tried to build their legitimacy using political myths instead of rational politics, which ended up in their failure to address the real issues of a changing society.

Anti-Corruption NGOs as Think Tanks

While anti-corruption scholars have analyzed and explained theoretically citizen-based anti- corruption approaches, studies on one of the most important aspects of a leading anti-corruption non-governmental organization (NGO) has been limited: the role of Transparency International (TI), in particular national branches of TI, as a think tank. Drawing on data from an interview with a former head of TI in the UK (TI-UK), this study will conduct a preliminary review and analysis of the effects of TI-UK in anti-corruption policymaking. The analysis shows that TI-UK was not only involved in the drafting of legislation but also had an impact on the outcomes during the legislation and initial implementation processes. This study is expected to contribute to understandings of anti-corruption policymaking processes and development of theories and practices of anti-corruption reforms.

Populist Government and Constitutional Democracy

Until the first decade of the 21th century, scholars and reporters have identified contemporary populism as an element of anti-systemic revolt; furthermore, they have also recognized an incompatibility between populist phenomenon and government function. However, some recent cases of populist parties in power seem to be able to put into crisis more than one certainty regarding the nature and scope of the populist phenomenon. This observation raises the questions of this work: what harmful effects does populism in government produce on liberal institutions, pluralism, and representation in constitutional democracies? Do these effects merely erode the liberal component, or do they extend to produce a degeneration of democracy as a whole? And finally: what are the risks for democracy? The article corroborates the diarchic theories of democracy and aims to demonstrate the lack of compatibility between the principles of liberal democracy and populist principles, which have a negative impact not only on the liberal component, but also on the quality of democracy in its entirety.

One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

Despite a considerable body of literature on Italian ethnoregionalist parties, scholars of nationalism and regionalism have overlooked southernist parties. This article aims to fill this lacuna by examining Italian southernist parties’ identity and electoral performance from 1945 to 2020. Firstly, it investigates southernist parties according to ideological positioning, autonomist or secessionist nature, and territorial area of origin. Then, by relying on official data, it explores the parties’ electoral performance in national, European, and regional elections. The main findings of the study show that, since the end of World War II, Italian southernist parties: a) have been characterized by a more autonomist rather than secessionist nature; b) have followed the typical patterns of the catch-all party; c) have performed better in regional elections. This article provides preliminary information on southernist parties, paving the way for further research on such political formations.

Sustainable Development in Middle Powers’ Governance Arrangements

Considering middle powers’ potential to address new demands worldwide and their propensity to contribute to new forms of institution-building in global governance, arrangements between them consist of interesting opportunities to promote sustainable development. However, some have shown to be more effective than others in this regard. When observing two of these partnerships’ outcomes between 2015 and 2018, India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA) Trilateral Forum has demonstrated more effectiveness than Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, and Australia (MIKTA) New Innovative Partnership. To understand why, this study analyses specialized literature, with special attention to Koenig-Archibugi’s (2002) framework on global governance arrangements’ effectiveness. Arguing that middle power arrangements that address sustainable development are more effective when benefiting from greater functional specialization and that diversified power access also plays a role, this study raises awareness about middle powers’ relevance in addressing new global demands. The study points out the nascent research on these informal partnerships and the causal relations between these arrangements’ structures and effectiveness.

Missing Cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean

Resource discoveries and an emerging maritime arms race in the Eastern Mediterranean have created incentives for an overarching security cooperation framework However, collaboration in the mentioned sectors remains absent and the former regional coalitions have been reconfigured. This article investigates why a lack of cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean persists. In answering this question, Securitzation Theory and Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) serve as a theoretical foundation. Building on the latter theories, seeing the Eastern Mediterranean as a regional security complex leads to the contention that if two or more units of this system securitize each other’s activities within the said complex, this will lead to negative ramifications on regional collaboration. The chosen case is the reciprocal securitization of Turkey and Greece in 2020. Finally, the case study reveals blind spots in RSCT and introduces a new concept to cope with these: the buffer subcomplex.

Accounting for Change in IR

Most theories of International Relations (IR) are cautious, if not pessimistic, about the potential for change in IR. In this regard, the concept of ontological security holds promising yet oft-overlooked prospects. This article argues that applications of ontological security to IR theory thus far have been limited due to the narrow conceptualisations of practices and how they contribute to one’s attempts to preserve their ontological security. As such, this paper seeks to expand the theoretical framework through which ontological security is applied to IR, which involves a more comprehensive conceptualisation of practice that considers reflexivity as key. Accordingly, the theory demonstrates that a state, faced with threats to their sense of Self, can respond either by rigidising or changing their practices rather than being limited to the former. This allows one to account for change—especially big change—in world politics such as the increasingly inward-looking turn of the West.

Discussing Subsidiarity in Terms of Justification

This article attempts to study the inter-institutional dimension of the practical implementation of the subsidiarity principle in the EU legislative process. The main research question is whether the subsidiarity principle could be a real communicative tool in the EU’s multi-level regulation policy used to seek consensus between EU institutions and national parliaments on the justification of an appropriate level for EU actions (subsidiarity justification). The short answer is ‘yes’. Through the content analysis of the published documents and with the help of the theory of deliberation, the author argues for a subsidiarity justification procedure occurring at the beginning of each instance of the EU legislative process to provide an inter-institutional setting to move away from confirming (one-way) to deliberative (two-way) reasoning over the issue of potential subsidiarity violation in the EU legislative process.