俄罗斯的“主权民主”思想

以普京2005年国情咨文为标志,俄罗斯提出了主权民主思想。当前,主权民主思想对于俄罗斯发展的重要意义已经超出了意识形态的范畴,它反映了俄罗斯联邦当前和今后一段时期的状态。本文论述了俄罗斯主权民主思想提出的历史背景、形成基础、发展过程、政治内涵、政治影响及其政治前景。     

Settler Colonial Strategic Culture: Australia,AUKUS, and the Anglosphere

Australia's history as a settler colony within the British Empire fundamentally shapes its sense of security within the Indo-Pacific region. Australia has consistently looked outside of its region for security and sought partners on the explicit basis of political, cultural, and ethnic similarity. What role does Australia's history play in shaping its foreign policy? We argue that these choices in foreign policy are inextricable from Australia's history as a settler colony on the farthest reaches of the British Empire. The AUKUS Agreement (AUKUS) is an example of how Australia operates to preserve racial hegemony in the face of non-white threat — real or perceived. This research utilises critical discourse analysis to interrogate elite-level discourse around AUKUS to ascertain the dominant narratives that inform its creation, the issues it seeks to address in Australian security policy, how it is structured by historical narratives of security, and how it functions to structure those narratives going forward. This article seeks to participate in the growing push to decolonise International Relations by illuminating the way Australia is ontologically and epistemologically invested in the preservation of racial hegemony.     

INFORMATIONAL CAPITALISM AND U.S. ECONOMIC HEGEMONY: Resistance and Adaptations in East Asia

This article promotes a “cultural international political economy” approach to globalization in East Asia in the so-called information age. It emphasizes the inherently discursive as well as material character of economic relations and their embedding in a complex web of different scales of action from local to global. Thus it introduces the policy discourses related to two major components in recent efforts to renew U.S. hegemony: promotion of the Global Information Infrastructure and the global expansion of intellectual property rights through the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights agreement. This initiative has enabled the emergence of a hegemonic GII-IPR-TRIPs complex supported by transnational informational capital, trade-related committees, and state agencies. This complex has triggered several forms of resistance and adaptation in East Asia. Targets of this resistance have been the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and the GII-IPR-TRIPs complex itself. Modes of counterhegemonic resistance have included state strategic support for the Linux movement as well as everyday tactics of software piracy. In addition, subhegemonic forces (e.g., APEC and national governments) have been acting as translating centers that help shape responses to efforts to consolidate the hegemony of the GII-IPR-TRIPs complex at regional levels.     

Contested Discourse,Contested Power: Nationalism and the Left in Paraguay

Nationalism has been a key, but generally overlooked, component of twentieth‐century Paraguayan politics and an important explanatory factor in the country’s political outcomes. Indeed, it has been central to the struggle for political power, most significantly to the continuing hegemony of the Colorado Party. This article traces the development of the Paraguayan Left, highlighting its structural and functional weaknesses, and analyses its relationship with nationalism, in particular with the dominant Colorado nationalist discourse. It argues that an important failure of the Left – and indeed other political parties and movements – has been its inability to produce a successful challenge to this hegemonic discourse.     

INDIA’S DEMONETISATION: MODI’S ‘NUDGE’ TO CHANGE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR

This article offers an account of the impact of Indian PM Narendra Modi’s decision in November 2016 to withdraw suddenly all Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes from circulation in India with the avowed intent of combatting fraud, tax avoidance and other economic problems. The article assesses the impact from the demonetisation in November to the March 2017 Indian regional elections, where wide-scale victories for Modi’s political party, the BJP, appear to have vindicated his reforms. The article provides an analysis of the political background of the period, as well as looking at the economic and societal impact of the changes, including the way in which the behaviour of Indian citizens has been ‘nudged’ with particular regard to use of banking, transactions, social effects, and payment of tax.     

European Integration and the End of an Imperial Consciousness in Britain

This article examines the impact of European integration between 1961 and 1975 on national and imperial consciousness in Britain. It suggests that the end of imperial sentiment that was brought about by greater involvement in Europe did not produce a strong or deep attachment to the idea of European integration. Arguments about the need for European integration to transcend war in Europe tended to reinforce a sense of Commonwealth commonality for the British rather than a sense of European commonality. Although the Empire and Commonwealth had become a mere source of nostalgia in British consciousness by 1975, the weak support for European integration continues to condition British attitudes to European integration to this day. Indeed, in the current Eurosceptic climate, the Dominions are making a return to British political consciousness.     

Controversy over the concept ‘freedom’ during the Iranian constitutional revolution (1906– 09)

The Iranian constitutional revolution of 1906–09 paved the way for the establishment of new administrative institutions, adopting modern ideas and the hegemony of new political discourse over the archaic political reasoning. One of the most important aspects of the new discourse was the definition and internalization of modern concepts. This paper holds the view that the concept ‘freedom’ brought about a complicated problem for the socio-political sphere in the course of the Iranian revolution and, as such, deserves a thorough examination. Previous studies on the subject have usually neglected this aspect. Yet, this was exactly the main domain of the clash between traditionalism and modernity during the revolutionary years and brought about far-reaching results for Iranian society. This article attempts to contribute to this field by examining a number of Iranian journals of the period in order to evaluate their understanding of the concept ‘freedom’ and show the discrepancy between the constitutionalist and non-constitutionalist discourses.     

Peter Gowan's “American grand strategy”

While this article broadly agrees with Peter Gowan's concern about the new militarism of the United States and the appalling consequences that have emerged as a result of U.S. preemption in Iraq, it questions the extent to which his portrait of U.S. hegemony addresses all the relevant issues as they affect the Asian region. Given the numerical dominance of Asia in world population and the rising power of China and India, how Gowan's “American Grand Strategy” applies to this part of the world is of fundamental importance to the relevance and sustainability of his argument. Part 1 on U.S. economic hegemony argues that U.S. capital has not been an unmitigated evil for India and where U.S. interests have been damaging they are not uniquely so: the European Union's economic policies have also been deeply damaging even though Europe is not a hegemon. Part 2 on U.S. political hegemony argues that bringing Pakistan and India into the U.S. alliance system has been beneficial for regional security and domestic political-ethnic stability. Part 3 considers responses to U.S. hegemony, arguing that this supremacy is more fragile than Gowan assumes because new powers, such as China and India, have long-term strategies to reduce their dependency. The conclusion suggests that despite widespread criticism and dissatisfaction with the nature of U.S. engagement in Asia, the dominant view in the region is one that sees the United States as a useful wedge between the emerging interests of China, India, and Japan. In short, the “American Grand Strategy” is not as negative, overwhelming, or as unpopular as Gowan suggests.     

Preaching politics: Islam and Christianity on the Kenya coast

Focusing on the Kenya coast, this article analyses the developing contrast between the place of Islam and Christianity in public politics. It argues that Islam’s association with criticism of the political order contrasts with Christianity, but that this is not the result of inherent difference between the religions. Both have previously provided a language, and space, for political commentary and activism in Kenya. The contrast is rather the contingent result of particular circumstances in Kenya. Christianity has become increasingly associated with affirming clientelism and the accumulation of wealth in a way which is avowedly non-political but in practice legitimates the current political order. Meanwhile, although individual Muslims are more likely to enjoy high political office than was previously the case, Muslims are also more likely to locate their experience as symptomatic of a wider pattern of exclusion in Kenya and link this sense of local injustice to global inequalities.     

Cut Loose in the Caribbean: Neoliberalism and the Demise of the Commonwealth Sugar Trade

This article focuses on the way the Anglophone Caribbean succumbed to the overhaul of the European Union sugar trade and how these countries have attempted to restructure their economies in its wake. We show how the protagonists of reform gave a sense of inevitability to the demise of the Commonwealth trade system and conveyed (unrealistic) strategies for how this should be managed for the benefit of the Caribbean. In this way we detail the hegemony of neoliberalism in contemporary trade politics and the need for alternative strategies for rural development in the Caribbean region.     

Sandeman centenary Luncheon

For many years huge expatriate populations have played a much documented role in the economic development of the Gulf monarchies. But a less well-told story is how expatriates have also contributed to their political stability. As non-citizens their presence in such large numbers has reinforced the elite status of most citizens in the region – an important non-pecuniary legitimacy resource for the various ruling dynasties. Moreover, the primarily employment-driven status of expatriates has meant that they have usually adopted either an apolitical or even prostatus quo stance. In some cases their perceived loyalty has led to selective naturalization or even direct co-option into security services. Disrupting this decades-old relationship, however, have been the recently changing political and economic circumstances of the Gulf monarchies. Already decisions have been made to reduce significantly expatriate populations due to accumulating pressures. Such measures are likely to threaten the historic political advantages the presence of expatriates has provided for these polities.     

Malcolm Caldwell

This paper is an analysis of the role played by the 1952 language movement (bhasha andolan) in East Bengal in the development of a Bengali nationalist discourse. The language movement forged a conscious link between various subaltern social groups, enabling them to transcend existing barriers and transform them into formidable political actors. Using the concept of counter hegemonic striving, this paper argues that the language movement was a definitive outcome of years of counter hegemonic activities of the Bengali subalterns.

This process of counter hegemony was especially evident in the peasant insurgency in rural areas and in the building of an alternative political organization. The articulation of political power through these two processes stands in sharp contrast to the efforts of the Muslim League, both ideologically and politically. It negated the idea of the very existence of the Pakistan state, and facilitated new ways of articulating the concept of Bengali nationalism. Although the unit forged by the language movement was short-lived it, nonetheless, underscored the existence of an indigenous political culture to the subalterns and paved the way for the historic emergence of a separate nationstate in 1971 — Bangladesh.     

Traditionalization as a response to state-induced development in rural Tibetan areas of Qinghai,PRC

ABSTRACT

The current state-induced and top-down-implemented development and modernization of the predominantly rural areas of western China can be perceived as a clear demonstration of Chinese power in Tibetan areas, resulting in the repression of expressions of minority culture. This article argues that the local population’s various practices of traditionalization, as demonstrated through an emphasis on the maintenance or (re)invention of representative cultural forms can be understood as efforts to counteract the socio-economic and cultural assimilation measures or even as a form of political resistance. At the same time, in the context of the economic opportunities brought on by the rapid development, in tourism for example, traditionalization has become an important economic asset for both the state and local Tibetans. These (revived) traditions could enhance cultural awareness among visitors to minority areas and strengthen local people’s sense of cultural security and their self-understanding as Tibetans.     

The Transformation of Australian Electoral Analysis: The Two‐Party Preferred Vote — Origins,Impacts, and Critics

Measuring party support in Australia by constructing a “two‐party preferred” vote has had a profound effect, not only on the way political scientists, journalists, and politicians understand electoral “swing” and predict electoral outcomes, but also on their understanding of the party system, their thinking about electoral fairness, and their views about which party or parties can legitimately claim government. This article traces the origins — the maternity as well as the paternity – of the “two‐party preferred”. It documents its spread from federal to state elections, even as voting systems in some states have switched from exhaustive preferential to optional preferential. It discusses its wide‐ranging impact, and its implications for notions of electoral fairness and the legitimacy of election outcomes. It evaluates various criticisms of the concept — technical, pragmatic, and conceptual. And it notes the implications for marginal seat campaigning of the commonly observed “uniform swing”— implications completely at odds with the idea that marginal seats matter.     

A Hard Culture? Religion and Politics in Turn-of-the-Century Australian History

The idea that Australia developed a uniquely "hard" political culture after 1788 — a culture that prized the rational and made short shift of religion — has had plenty of currency over the years. This idea has been challenged in recent scholarship, along with the broader notion that Western society became secularised during the twentieth century. Set against the backdrop of a wider challenge to the "secularisation narrative", this article explores the work of several historians dealing with the relationship between religion and Australian politics at the turn of the twentieth century. These historians, who include Al Gabay, Frank Bongiorno, Bruce Scates, and Judith Brett, are creating "softer" understandings of Australian political history. As a consequence, I suggest, their work has implications for the way we think about the relationship between the religious and secular Left, as well as for the way we think about Australian masculinities and culture more generally.     

The hegemonic work of automated election technology in the Philippines

This article addresses the political role of information technology in the Philippines. It uses a theoretical framework inspired by Antonio Gramsci to examine the discourse surrounding automated elections in two major daily papers, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Business World Philippines. It argues that this discourse strengthens current conceptions of the development process by appealing to the interests not only of the dominant fraction of capital in the country today, but also to the middle class. Such operations are essential for the creation of an historic bloc capable of exercising hegemony.     

Cracking Hegemony in Thailand: Gramsci,Bourdieu and the Dialectics of Rebellion

Gramsci's notion of “hegemony,” like Bourdieu's concept of “habitus,” seems designed to explain accommodation to existing social structures, rather than resistance. In this paper, however, I draw from the Prison Notebooks some arguments that contribute to a Gramscian understanding of how hegemony may break apart under the weight of the same uneven development processes central to hegemony. Drawing also from Bourdieu, I argue that the conceptions of “hegemony” and “habitus” inscribe the possibility of resistance within the embodied experience of accommodation to class rule. I then elaborate a dialectical, Gramscian-Bourdieusian account of the Red Shirt movement in Thailand, showing that the seeds for the destruction of royalist hegemony in Thailand have been sown in the embodied processes of accommodation to ruling class hegemony. The breadth and depth of challenges to this hegemony, moreover, are evident not only from the activities of the Red Shirt movement and regional discontent in Northern and Northeast Thailand but from the resistance of working class women to attempts to police their sexuality and limit their consumerism. The refusal of Thai elites to accept the breadth and depth of Thailand's dispositional transformation has legitimised – in their eyes – the brutal crackdown on Red Shirt protestors that resulted in the April-May 2010 massacres. Yet repression can only kill off political leaders and specific parties; it will not likely derail the growing resentment of ordinary Thais over elitist class rule.     

Jeremy Bentham,John Stuart Mill and the Secret Ballot: Insights from Nineteenth Century Democratic Theory

As part of a series of demands for political reform in Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Jeremy Bentham famously made a case for use of the secret ballot in elections. The advocacy of Bentham and his disciples on this issue fed into broader and at times robust public debate, particularly in the 1830s. On the opposite side of this debate was another leading political theorist, John Stuart Mill, who opposed secret ballot reform. This paper re‐examines the contours of this debate, making the case that it has important implications for contemporary political theory and debates about democracy. Firstly, and in terms of making sense of the debate itself, it points to the need to make a distinction between the “voter intimidation” argument and the Benthamite preference aggregation argument. Secondly, it suggests that distinguishing between vote‐buying and voter's dependence provides support for defenders of the secret ballot. Thirdly, it demonstrates the potential application of the idea of voting held in “trust” to the so‐called boundary problem in democratic theory. Finally, it points to the potentially wide but overlooked application of the Chartist idea of open voting (allowing the oppressed to identify their allies) in contemporary political theory.     

The Social Function of Carlos Fuentes: A Critical Intellectual or in the ‘Shadow of the State’?

This article seeks to raise meaningful questions about the role, or wider social function, of the intellectual within state–civil society relations in Latin America characterised by conditions of socio–economic modernisation. It does so by pursuing such questions through a detailed examination of the social function of Carlos Fuentes as an intellectual in Mexico. Through a focus on the social function of Carlos Fuentes, it is possible to distinguish the role intellectual activity can play in the construction and contestation of hegemony in Mexico. Most crucially, the article prompts consideration of the social basis of hegemony and the agency of intellectuals organically tied to particular social forces functioning through state–civil society relations in the struggle over hegemony. Put differently, it is possible to grant due regard to the mixture of critical opposition and accommodation that has often confronted the intellectual within Latin America.     

Finanzm?rkte und ihre Sinnformen: Handlungskoordination und Signalkommunikation

The article explores theoretical arguments that help understand the specificity of financial forms of meaning as well as their dissemination beyond financial markets. It revaluates the argument, discussed in the Social Studies of Finance, that financial operations and knowledge practices are characterized by a performative logic. While this argument suggests that financial forms of meaning ought to be conceptualized as a mode of knowledge, the article proposes an alternative. Proceeding from Jürgen Habermas??s distinction between life-world and systemic rationality, it argues that financial markets rely on a distinctive mode of action coordination: actors orient their actions not at the possible motives of others but at the cumulating consequences of their action (prices). The prevalent mode of meaning in financial markets, thus, can be conceptualized as action coordination through signal communication. This mode of meaning has been institutionally and technologically fostered in the course of the twentieth century, spreading across the financial economy and beyond. As an example the article refers to current political debates about the stabilization of the Euro, which significantly evoke the idea of political signals vis-à-vis the financial markets.