Politics

Publisher:: Sage Publications, Inc.
Publication date:: 2021-09-06

ISBN:: 0263-3957

Issue Number

No. 45-1, February 2025

Latest documents

Nostalgia and political analysis: A perspective from the Israeli case
I argue here for the relevance and importance of the study of nostalgia for political analysis. Focusing on the case of Israel, I propose that a study of nostalgia can yield, at least in the case at hand, insightful views of political reality that other approaches to the study of politics may fail to expose. Specifically, I focus on a nostalgia prevalent among the dominant Ashkenazi ethno-class, accompanied by a Mizrahi ‘counter’ nostalgia. I argue that these nostalgias tell us volumes – like other nostalgias can do – about the ways people and their socio-political groups understand their world and their place within it in the present and formulate their hopes for the future. In this, nostalgia proves to be an important part of the toolkit of the study of politics, alongside the study of political myth and symbols.
Populism, public opinion, and the mainstreaming of the far right: The ‘immigration issue’ and the construction of a reactionary ‘people’
While mainstream elite actors with the ability to shape public discourse (politicians, academics, and the media) generally oppose far-right politics, it is widely argued that such politics represent democratic populist grievances, whether cultural or economic: ‘this is what the people want’ and the mainstream should listen. Building on discourse theoretical approaches, this article uses opinion surveys on immigration to argue that rather than following ‘what the people want’, elite actors play an active part in shaping and constructing public opinion and legitimising reactionary politics. This article thus interrogates how public opinion is constructed through a process of mediation, how certain narratives are hyped and others obstructed. What this highlights is that rather than the result of a simple bottom-up ‘democratic’ demand, the rise of the far right must also be studied and understood as a top-down process: public opinion is not only a construction but also an agenda shaper, rather than a simple agenda tester. This article ultimately finds that ‘the people’ can be misrepresented in four principal ways: a people to be followed; a people to be blamed; a people to legitimise reactionary and elitist discourse and politics; and a circumscribed people.
Right-wing populist parties and their appeal to pro-redistribution voters
As anti-establishment parties, right-wing populists (RWPs) have been successful in attracting the politically discontent. This article shows how this appeal of RWPs asymmetrically affects citizens on the economical left and right. Building on previous work, the analysis examines how anti-establishment status conditions not only the effect of political disaffection, but also the effect of redistribution preferences on RWP support. A multilevel analysis using nine waves of the European Social Survey and a composite anti-establishment measure reveals that where RWPs are more established, strong pro-redistribution preferences drive voters away from these parties even more than voters are attracted to them based on political distrust. Political distrust more than outweighs the countervailing effect of pro-redistribution preferences only where RWPs are less established. There, pro-redistribution voters are a particularly suitable target as they are also more politically dissatisfied. These findings help to understand when and why RWPs can attract different segments of society.
Reading the COVID-19 emergency with and beyond Foucault: The liberal subject and everyday practices of mobility
Since the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, most analyses have used a Foucauldian perspective to investigate the disciplinary and surveillance mechanisms that (il/liberal) states introduced to contain the spread of the virus. Focussing on the Italian context, I suggest that, despite the mobility restrictions, the government retained overall its liberal rationality. Italian institutions did not aim to create a state of police nor to transform subjects into docile bodies. By reading the COVID-19 emergency with Foucault, I suggest approaching COVID-19 restrictions through the concept of governmentality, and propose that Italian institutions, at different levels, structured people’s fields of action by persuading, encouraging, and incentivising certain behaviours during the pandemic. However, I also suggest reading the COVID-19 emergency beyond Foucault by engaging with the work of Michel de Certeau and investigating the many ‘antidisciplinary practices’ through which people ‘metaphorized’ dominant (disciplinary) norms.
The effect of employment on attendance: A response to ‘Identifying and understanding the drivers of student engagement’
I challenge Strong’s findings that student employment is not related to attendance. I argue that the original analysis is guilty of controlling for a post-treatment variable. As a result, the coefficients in the regression model do not show how employment causes changes in attendance. I show that employment likely has a negative effect on attendance even given severe confounding. Academics should, if asked, tell students that their attendance will likely suffer the more paid work they do.
Some further reflections on the effect of employment on attendance
I offer some further reflections on the relationship between student employment and classroom engagement, in response to Hanretty’s discussion of my original article on the topic. First, I note that the data we’d ideally need to study this relationship properly doesn’t exist. Second, I suggest that Hanretty and I are pursuing subtly differing goals – he seeks the best estimate of a statistical relationship, while I am trying to make practical policy recommendations at the level of an academic department. Third, I gently push back against Hanretty’s injunction against the use of a post-treatment variable in my original paper, noting that there are good theoretical reasons for thinking my original argument – that not all hours of employment affect attendance equally – should work. Finally, I conclude that while it is true that students who work more hours are less likely to engage well with their studies, this relationship is conditional in part on factors that academic departments might realistically be able to influence.
Writing a constitution without parties? The programmatic weakness of party-voter linkages in the Chilean political change
In 2020 Chile began a constitution-making process that will culminate in writing a new constitution through a 155-member constitutional convention. The Chilean party system is often described as one of the most institutionalised in Latin America, so the election results of the convention’s members were even more surprising. Of the 155 people elected, only 50 (32.2%) are party members, 41 (26.4%) are independents adopted as candidates by a party, 48 (30.9%) are independents outside a party, and 17 (10.9%) are representatives of indigenous peoples, all of them independents. Compared to proximate legislative elections, the number of independent candidates (ICs) and winners was substantially higher. We suggest that this increase was not only due to a political climate of growing distrust of parties but also to an electoral law that allowed ICs to form electoral apparentments with one another, thus combining their votes and increasing their chances of success, especially in low-income municipalities of the capital.
Floating on uncertain waters: navigating ‘sensitivity’ while teaching politics and international relations in Mainland China
This article gives autoethnographic sketch of teaching International Relations in Mainland China. Attention is given to the issue of ‘sensitivity’, a phenomenon typically associated with Chinese State censorship. The article will however argue that sensitivity is much more complex than a top-down State prohibition on certain topics, arguing instead that it is an opaque and continually in flux phenomenon produced by multiple actors within society. The article will further argue that the surest means of navigating this phenomenon for an academic is to listen to students and use insights gained from them as a means of navigating sensitivity. These insights can provide both further knowledge of how sensitivities are constructed as well as how to safely discuss them – an awareness that can serve as inspiration for critical discussions on political issues. In completing this sketch, the article fills the notable gap in pedagogical literature on Higher Education in China concerning both politics as a challenge to teaching in mainland China, most studies almost exclusively concerning themselves with the challenges posed by cultural Confucianism, and as content, previous studies being almost completely contained within disciplines such as Business Management and Foreign Languages.
Working with politics ‘students as partners’ to engender student community: Opportunities and challenges
Research suggests that creating communities of learning (academic and social) leads to a better Higher Education (HE) experience for students, which, in turn, makes it more likely that they will persist in their studies. The concept of ‘student community’ in HE has become more prominent of late, partly due to the UK Government’s emphasis on retention. One way in which student community can be engendered is by working with ‘students as partners’ in their learning: students work with academics and each other to create and extend their learning, which, in turn, has a positive impact on student community and retention. This article discusses the opportunities and challenges of working with ‘students as partners’ within a Politics HE disciplinary context. In particular, it summarises an Open University Politics student engagement project, part of the University’s partnership with UK Parliament. In doing so, the article has implications for Politics HE practice generally, and online Politics HE practice in particular, and makes recommendations for working with Politics ‘students as partners’ within the current UK HE policy environment.
Decolonising politics curricula: Exploring the experiences and views of racially minoritised students
Through an exploration of the experiences and narratives of racially minoritised students, in this article, I argue that Politics curricula in the United Kingdom can largely be defined as epistemologically ignorant as a result of whiteness and Western-centrism. While there is a growing body of scholarship that has drawn attention to the whiteness and coloniality of Politics curricula, little, if any, has considered this from the perspective of racially minoritised students of Politics. This article addresses this gap in the literature and serves to prompt the Politics disciplines to look inwards and interrogate how whiteness and colonial logics continue to shape the study of Politics while also offering recommendations for curricula change based on students’ lived experiences. After briefly defining ‘the curriculum’, I outline the ways in which racially minoritised students defined Politics curricula as white and/or Western-centric and epistemologically ignorant. I then consider the role of teaching staff in curricula design and delivery and the potential for teaching practices to challenge curricula. Finally, before concluding, I explore what decolonising or ‘widening’ Politics curricula entails from the perspective of students.