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This introductory article presents a short overview of the evolution of populism since the late-19th century forms to the most recent Western European formulas. Starting from a short conceptual inquiry, the articleprovides a precise analytical picture of the different changes in the form and content of populism across time and space. Previously connected with radical right formulas, the article illustrates how different newpopulist parties have partly embraced a left-wing program such as in thecase of Podemos in Spain or La France insoumise in the French case. Thelast part of the article provides possible scenarios for the future. In particular, despite the recent evolutions in the Austrian, Dutch and Frenchelections, the analysis stresses the fact that the populist mood hasprogressively influenced traditional politics (i.e. the topic of immigration,the search of charismatic figures, the questioning of representative democracy). The article concludes with an open question about the futureof a populist from below.
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Fifty years later, the concept of populism is still plagued by the disorderthat Isaiah Berlin labelled as the “Cinderella complex”, meaning there isa shoe, the shape of populism, but no foot to fit it or almost none. In orderto go beyond this ironic situation, the analysis claims it is necessary to avoid seeing populism as a form of ideology characterized by a certaindegree of internal coherence. Similarly, it considers it is necessary toavoid reducing populism to a simple rhetorical and demagogic style every political actor can use according to his/her needs. If we adopt a comparative perspective, take into account the populism’s most recentmanifestations and search for their lowest common denominator, we canidentify the elements of a psychological predisposition that, in line with Theodor Geiger and Juan Linz, can be considered the basis of a characteristic mentality. Within this context, this article aims to identify the specific elements belonging to this mentality and to include them in adefinition able to cover the multiplicity of meanings given to the word“people”. Finally yet importantly, this definition aims to shed light on the nature of the relationship between populism and democracy.
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The article draws a characterisation of the late comer among the Italian populist parties, the Five Star’ Movement, led by the ancient comedian Beppe Grillo. Starting with a definition of what he means by “political personalisation”, the Author first describe this party as a political organisation in which the leader masters all the key areas – notably,communication, rules setting, and resolution of internal conflicts. Then,he argue that the Five Star Movement is a “personalist party”, in which Beppe Grillo embodies a powerful but non-charismatic leader. In the closing section, the Author tries to shed light above the probable evolutions of the party, particularly dealing with its institutionalisation process.
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Disintermediation, that is the process of removing an intermediary from arelationship, is an increasingly relevant phenomenon in contemporary societies, also fostered by the diffusion of new technologies. In the political field, disintermediation processes can be seen in the trend towards (apparently) more direct and immediate forms of political mediation. The adversity towards mediations, whether of structural or procedural nature, is an invariant feature of populist manifestations:populists seem to be the best interpreters of disintermediation processes,because of the correspondence between certain features of populism and the characteristics of new technologies. The aim of this article is three-fold. First, it will define the concept of political disintermediation. Second, it will analyse the connection between the concept of disintermediation and populism, and the relationship between the internet and populism.Finally, through this interpretative framework, it will examine the case ofthe Five Star Movement, in particular its use of the Internet.
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This article focuses on a very specific issue: the French left and its concept of people. More specifically, it aims to map the way this concept evolved in the period of the Popular Front and the challenges due to the colonial issue. More specifically, as the French historian René Gallissot writes, the 1930s and the fascist threat in Europe have contributed to a new theoretical understanding of the people by the French Communist Party. This new understanding means that the pluralistic concept of “people” – namely the “oppressed people of the colonies” – was replaced by the concept “the French people”. While the concept of “people” was used in order to stress the internationalism of French communists in the1920s and early 1930s, with the Popular Front, this concept evolved and had an important impact on what has been called the social-chauvinisticturn of the French Communist Party (i.e the absence of support for the anticolonial movements). However, it is true that this question is not specific to the French Communist Party only; similar behaviours have been chronicled in the cases of the US and British communist parties.Despite this caveat, the article illustrates how the study of the “populist” dimension of the French Communist Party can provide a better understanding of the complex relations between the Left and the colonial question.
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Frequently considered a catch-all concept aiming to stigmatise political opponents, populism seems to be the political buzzword of the new century across Europe. Within this context, this article aims to map the way in which different interpretations of the idea of “people” influence the populists’ critique of contemporary representative democracies. The analysis starts from an outline of the theoretical challenges linked to the concept of populism. Following these conceptual delimitations, the theoretical overview provides the background for the operationalisation of the concept of “people” and of “populism”. The empiric part is focused on four case studies: France Insoumise (Unbowed France), Front National (National Front), Movimento 5 Stelle (Five Stars Movement) and Lega Nord (North League). The analysis uses qualitative content analysis of the most recent public documents provided by the parties under scrutiny. The main conclusion is that the three concepts of the people have a major impact on the way the four populist parties relate themselves to democracy and the type of reforms of the traditional representative democracy they take into consideration.
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This article aims to present the evolution of relations between Romania and the Republic of Moldova over the last decade, in the period between “the Twitter revolution” and the summer of 2018, the moment when there was a dramatic cooling of relations between the European Union, the United States, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, on the one hand, and Moldova on the other. In this article we also analyze the way in which Romania has reacted to Moldova’s side skids and try to make sense of the extent to which the government in Bucharest may be considered responsible for the transformation of Moldova from the success story of the Eastern Partnership into a captive state, as it is considered today.
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This study proposes an analysis of how the National Liberal Party (PNL), the National Peasant Party (PNT) and the National Christian Party (PNC) used caricatures, lyrics or electoral posters to build a more favorable image of their own party or compromise the opponent. Based in particular on the sources existing in the official party press and the so-called independent one, we proceeded to a description of the three elements, including the meanings and messages intended for the electorate. With a predominantly rural population (over 80%), poorly educated in regard to civic issues, caricature and electoral lyrics were used in particular by the PNT and the so-called independent press to attack the ruling party, as well as the formation of A. C. Cuza and Octavian Goga, and to target those with a nationalist-peasant affiliation. Through the three types of confrontation, the parties in our study have endeavored to transmit as effectively as possible the eccentric populist and manipulative messages aimed at attracting thousands of voters. Although both the national and the nationalist-peasant press used caricature and versification as a political weapon, there are immense differences between the contents of the two camps, the caricaturist Petrică Lazar and the anti-Semitic poet Vasile Militaru -known also under the pseudonym of Radu Barda -preferring the construction of satirical images and poems that contained huge doses of grotesque, beliefs and prejudices about the Jewish minority.
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After the independence of Algeria in 1962, separatist movements in French colonies emerged, especially in the Comoros and Djibouti. The countries respectively achieved independence in 1975 and 1977. During the 1960s and 1970s, the French government abandoned its repressive policy and sought to help the territories attain independence. However, the whole process never came to an end in the Comoros islands, since Mayotte forwent independence, despite the various condemnations from international authorities. Mayotte retained its link with France thanks to the enthusiasm of the former supporters of French Algeria. In Djibouti, violence brought about violence. The executive power strongly repressed demonstrations, but it also had to face the violence of some separatists, who took hostages to make their voice heard. France finally left the territory but maintained an important military base in the country. This paper aims at examining these events. It also questions the divided reactions of the French political forces. The left parties quite unanimously denounced electoral fraud and supported independence, whereas Gaullists and liberals wavered over the attitude – intransigence or flexibility – to adopt.
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This article presents a defence of gender-based affirmative action programmes against its critiques. It starts from an overview of the history and main criticisms addressing affirmative action programmes, and then proposes several arguments against these criticisms. Several rationales are to be found at the core of this article: first, women still face discrimination in regard to access to education and employment. This position relies on the statistical data referring to both the U.S. and the E.U. Second, gender-based affirmative action should be treated differently than race-based affirmative action since women’s discrimination on the labour market stems mainly from traditional gender norms largely exerted within the family and exercised through state’s family policies (e.g. childcare policies). Third, despite the fact that the article defends gender-based affirmative action against the main critiques, it also argues that this measure alone is an inefficient method to tackle gender inequality. The article concludes that gender-based affirmative action programmes are not effective methods to tackle gender inequality because they address only one part of the problem, namely gender inequality encountered in the public sphere (education and employment), while completely ignoring family and caring responsibilities.
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The variations of presidential, parliamentary and semi-presidential systems of government represent the main framework of analysis of this study. Extremely different factors of the political process and inter-institutional relations, which are the conditions for defining different systems of government, can be indicators for distinguishing typical and atypical systems of government. In this sense, the purpose of this article is to determine whether the peculiarities of the institution of the vote of no confidence in governments in several post-Soviet semi-presidential countries (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia) can predetermine the atypicality of these systems of government. It is argued that the atypicality of the post-Soviet semi-presidentialism is often due to the fact that parliaments have the right to cast the votes of no confidence in governments, but the latter come in force only when they are supported by presidents, who may be empowered to choose between the dismissal of governments and the dissolution of legislatures. On one hand, such systems of government definitively tend to be semi-presidential. On the other hand, the atypical responsibility of governments to parliaments denies the semi-presidential nature of systems of governments largely in favor of presidentialism. This determines that against the backdrop of traditional generalizations of different systems of government, they are formally and actually constructed as “constitutional hybrids” in six post- Soviet countries (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia) and therefore can be positioned both as cases of atypical semi- presidentialism and instances of incomplete presidentialism. At the same time, such cases are unique and must be classified as exceptional ones.
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The Central European countries have been members of the European Union (EU) since 2004. During the process of their transformation towards democracy and market economy, the four Visegrad countries (V4) – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia – were strongly supported by Western European EU members, particularly Germany, which was especially interested in the EU Eastern enlargement. Later on, Germany undertook a similar approach in assisting the transformation towards democracy and market economy in the countries included in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiative, forming the Eastern dimension of the European Neighborhood Policy. Unlike in the past, however, current Berlin policy-makers are no longer willing to support an Eastern enlargement of the EU. Nevertheless, Germany expects the V4 to intensively engage with the EaP countries (i.e. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine) and to share their experiences from the political and economic transformation they underwent. The V4 countries, having regularly stressed the importance of deeper and wider cooperation within the EaP, have proved able to meet German expectations concerning their role in the EaP project. In a period marked by numerous disputes between the V4 states and Germany (with the migration crisis at the top of the list), the convergence of Germany’s preferences with those of the V4 countries within the EaP initiative is an encouraging sign of a continuing intensive and deep cooperation among Germany and the V4 countries.
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The article evaluates the representation of three Southeastern European countries – Slovenia, Romania and Croatia – in the staff of the diplomatic service of the European Union, European External Action Service in the period of 2012-2017. The assessment is focused on the development of the representation of these countries in the three most important categories of the EEAS Staff – AD Staff, AST Staff and Contract Agents. The study tries to find an answer to the question of the extent to which the representation of the individual states in the EEAS is adequate, with the basic method of evaluation being a comparison of the given state’s percentage of the European Union’s overall population versus its percentage of the overall number of EEAS officials in any particular category.
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Having played a substantial role in the bipolar period, the Arctic has found itself at the “backyard” of international politics after the Cold War. During the last decade of the XXth century, the Arctic was the priority issue only for the littoral states. The Russian expedition to the North Pole in the so-called “last scramble” for energy resources drew regional interest of a wide range of international actors, including NATO. The Alliance faced a serious task of elaborating its policy in the Arctic to meet its member-states’ and associated partners’ modern-day reality expectations. NATO started close cooperation with Norway trying to shape a policy that could bring an added value to the region in terms of positive security thinking, largely dominating European agenda after the Cold War. However, a rapid change of the security situation since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has shifted the Alliance’s agenda towards the continent and its relations with Moscow raising concerns about the revival of the traditional bipolar thinking about the security and prospective remilitarization of the Arctic. It is vital for the Alliance to shape its policy, both strategically and tactically, to face those security challenges and guarantee peace and stability in the Arctic.
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This article explains the possible drivers behind the establishment of the Pacific Alliance (PA) in South America focusing on foreign economic policies and explaining the extent of policy convergence as a possible factor. In so doing, it examines on what basis these countries try to engage collectively with key Asian partners. A brief historical explanation might allow us to verify how non-legal elements have been politically and successfully networked with perfect timing. Policy convergence over strategies such us internationalization and negotiation was a milestone in the creation of the PA itself, presidentially led by Chile, Colombia and Peru. However, Chile and Peru share a pro-Pacific profile in economic and political terms, while Colombia’s elites have traditionally ignored the Pacific Coast. These differences not necessarily impede on the articulation of a collective cooperation strategy with Asia-Pacific, but it might slow down the Chilean eagerness to reach prompt accords with Asian partners. This article suggests that taking non-legal factors into consideration might allow a wider understanding of the reasons behind economic alliances’ formation. In so doing, International Political Economy’ theoretical richness might fill the gap that International Economy Law has to explain such phenomena.
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African democracy is still evolving since it began to take root over twenty years ago. There have been various forms of party fission and fusion in the quest for the acquisition of state power. Evidence suggests that party merger in Africa is driven by an entirely different set of logic from mainstream rationalizations that underpin mergers in developed democracies. A major drawback of merger politics in Africa is the lacuna of ideological barrenness, which drives the continued penchant of the political elite to switch parties based on self-aggrandizing permutations. This paper offers insights into the party system and the underpinning motivation for mergers in African politics, namely, that they are essentially motivated by self-interest and driven by rational political calculations aimed at the capture of state power to further prebendal intentions. Using Nigeria as a case study, this paper evaluates the party system and provides raisons d’être for existing mergers. It further contends that unless ideology is brought to the front seat of party formation and organization, merger politics will remain a shifting ground of ad hocism designed for the capture of state power, and for the advancement of narrow politico-economic interests of select political elites.
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Since the fall of the USSR, the development of the integration process has become a foreign policy priority of the former Soviet territory. However, Moscow has failed to achieve this goal: no established structure could lead to significant integration. This research provides a historical review of the Eurasian economic integration. Employing an analysis of the international agreements and treaties that were behind the activities of the Eurasian integration unions, we reveal the specific features of economic integration communities’ evolution in the post-Soviet territory within the period from the Soviet Union collapse to the present date and assess their true fails and gains. The findings reveal that the Eurasian integration appears to have evolved mostly “on paper” in the form of various documents but has had no practical implementation. Its development was characterized by permanent cycles, which member countries attempted to overcome, establishing new integration entities. However, their interest gradually faded, making EAEU feel like the last attempt to implement a Eurasian integration processes.
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The main approaches to determining the regional division of Ukraine are analyzed. It is shown that regional identity in Ukraine is determined by a unique combination of the historical heritage of the region, features of the ethno-confessional composition of its population, socio-economic status, and specifics of lifestyle, traditions and culture. The functional analysis of regional identity justifies that, being considered one of the basic construction elements of a definition “region”, it plays an important role in the preservation and functioning of a regional socio-political space. Subjective factors influence the formation of regional identity models: interests of regional elites, geopolitical factors, current political processes, political parties and public organizations, the position and influence of the mainstream media. The politicization of regional differences in modern Ukraine has led to increase in the regionalization of electoral political sympathies, the aggravation of social differences around geopolitical and ethno-cultural values. Ethnocultural regionalism creates additional difficulties in the formation of national identity, consolidation of the Ukrainian society according to the strategic social development goals: its democratization and modernization. Therefore, the formation at the state level, the policy of identity based on public consensus and democratic values, taking into account the ethnic, cultural, confessional and linguistic features of the Ukrainian regions, is acquiring particular relevance in modern Ukraine.
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The paper maps from a quantitative perspective the place of policy research and education in Romanian political science. It starts from the assumption that public policy is a building block of political science and should have its place in both teaching and research in Romania. Moreover, it assumes that within policy research and education the emphasis should fall on the subfields which better contribute to the integration with the other building blocks. It assesses the place of policy education within the BA in political science degree requirements, the policy focus of MA programs, the policy-related output of the doctoral schools in political science, and the extent to which comprehensive political science journals give space to policy research. It finds convergence with international trends concerning policy education, while also pointing out a diminished presence of policy research in comprehensive journals and reduced interest in research topics with integrative potential.
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