God, Mammon and the Rise of Nationalism

Books reviewed in this article:
David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680–1800
Liah Greenfeld, The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth
Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam
Tariq Ali, The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity
Maurizio Ferrera and Martin Rhodes (eds.), Recasting European Welfare States
Evelyn Huber and John Stephens, Development and Crisis of the Welfare State: Parties and Policies in Global Markets
Paul Pierson (ed.), The New Politics of the Welfare State
Duane Swank, Global Capital, Political Institutions, and Policy Change in Developed Welfare States
John Ramsden (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century British Politics
Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society
Giles Radice, Friends and Rivals: Crosland, Jenkins and Healey
Michael McManus, Jo Grimond: Towards the Sound of Gunfire     

RETRACTED ARTICLE: A Discourse Analysis of Quotidian Expressions of Nationalism during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chinese Cyberspace

Journal of Chinese Political Science - By conducting discourse analysis on quotidian expressions of nationalism of Chinese netizens and analyzing their “Liking” behavior, this article...     

Retraction Note: A Discourse Analysis of Quotidian Expressions of Nationalism during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chinese Cyberspace

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

The European Central Bank and the COVID-19 recession

The ECB, turning a page from its sluggish response the 2008–09 financial crisis, has responded to the COVID-19 recession by quickly stabilising banks and flooding the eurozone with cheap capital. Yet the crisis has caused fiscal imbalances – most notably between Germany and Italy – to worsen, with no prospect of making political headway towards mutualising the debts of individual member states.     

Beyond Unionism versus Nationalism: the Rise of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland has always been a polity noted for its strong links between national identity, religion, and voting, and acute British unionist versus Irish nationalist divisions. The constitutional question of whether Northern Ireland should be part of the UK or a united Ireland dominates. Yet, recent surveys have suggested a sizeable and growing section of its electorate declares itself neither unionist nor nationalist. This development may have assisted the growth of the centrist Alliance Party, which rejects unionist and nationalist identities and claims to be neutral on Northern Ireland’s constitutional status. Alliance doubled its vote across three elections in 2019 and is now the third largest party in the region. This article examines the importance of ideological dealignment relative to other factors, such as Alliance’s opposition to Brexit, in explaining the rise of a non-binary party in a divided society.     

The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Nationalist Emulation during the COVID-19 Pandemic

As COVID-19 rapidly spread across the globe, every government in the world has been forced to enact policies to slow the spread of the virus. While leaders often claim responses are based on the best available advice from scientists and public health experts, recent policy diffusion research suggests that countries are emulating the COVID-19 policies of their neighbors instead of responding to domestic conditions. Political and geographic considerations play a role in determining which countries imitate one another, but even among countries that are politically or geographically distant, nationalist regimes seem to favor certain approaches towards the pandemic. We investigate why this is the case by examining whether countries that embrace a nationalist ideology are more likely to emulate the COVID-19 policies of similarly nationalist regimes. We demonstrate that, even after controlling for domestic circumstances and linguistic, trade, geographic, and political connections, nationalist countries are emulating each other’s responses. These results are robust and shed light not only on new mechanisms of policy diffusion but also on the growing international cooperation of nationalist regimes and leaders.

     

COVID-19 and the policy sciences: initial reactions and perspectives

Policy Sciences - The world is in the grip of a crisis that stands unprecedented in living memory. The COVID-19 pandemic is urgent, global in scale, and massive in impacts. Following Harold D....     

Human Security and the Rise of Private Armies

In parts of the developing world, private armed groups are acquiring sufficient capabilities to challenge the state as the sole legitimate fount of order and stability. As a result, there is emerging a notion of clientele politics in which the loyalty of citizens, rooted as it is in the need for protection, is devolving to sub-state actors with highly questionable motives. The result is a malignant dynamic in which the erosion of the state both stems (in part) from the rise of these private actors and reinforces it as well. In their quest for security, citizens are paradoxically drawn to the very groups that have undermined the social order-flawed though it may have been-and compromised individual security. The cases of Sierra Leone and Colombia are presented here in support of this contention; and while their experiences are certainly idiosyncratic, the broad conclusions they occasion hold true for countless other private armed groups challenging the state elsewhere in the world.     

The Politics of Blaming: the Narrative Battle between China and the US over COVID-19

Journal of Chinese Political Science - During the COVID-19 pandemic, we are witnessing a surge of nationalism throughout an ostensibly globalized world. In this article, we focus on the...     

The Quest for Certainty and the Demise of Political Theory

In this paper, I contribute to the ongoing conversation in New Political Science regarding the status of political science in general, and political theory in particular. I argue that the quest for certainty and desire to quantify knowledge has not been limited to empiricist political scientists. The emphasis on quantification and deductive logic is found in many places within the political theory tradition itself. Time and again, mathematics and the physical sciences are held up as the model for all knowledge. I argue that this focus has led theorists to distance themselves from politics, either out of despair or disdain for the ambiguity and variability present in political life. While I do not propose that Aristotle provides a magic remedy for the current problems in the discipline, I suggest that his combined interest in logic and the close examination of material detail provides a perennially viable framework for political theory.     

Fighting COVID-19 through Government Initiatives and Collaborative Governance: The Taiwan Experience

Taiwan is situated less than 200 kilometers from the first COVID-19 outbreak state, China, and it has millions of international visitors yearly. Taiwan's collective efforts to block and eliminate the invisible enemy (COVID-19) from the island have resulted in relatively low infection and death numbers and have been hailed as a successful anomaly amid the global pandemic. This review provides some background on the systems and organizations that helped Taiwan streamline a task force (command center) in a timely manner to launch related initiatives, mobilize the public, and engage private resources to implement strategies and policies that were further enhanced by collaborative behaviors and volunteers. Even subject to threatening conditions such as cruise ship stopover and numerous foreign immigrant workers, there were no outbreaks of community infection in Taiwan similar to those in Singapore, Japan, and other countries. Taiwan's successful measures offer a good example for future comparative studies.     

新冠肺炎疫情对中国宏观经济的影响与对策探讨

从50种重要生产资料市场价格的近期波动和同期对比来看,新冠肺炎疫情对我国宏观经济运行的确产生了显著的负面冲击。尽管这种冲击是暂时的,并没有改变我国经济总体向好的基本态势,但仍对我国主要宏观经济变量产生了不可忽视的重要影响。一方面,导致我国就业出现"前紧后难"态势,并可能改变未来的就业结构;另一方面,使我国外需所面临的不确定性提高,内需则可能会出现明显的结构性分化。与此同时,疫情将加大政府财政增支和减收双重压力,导致我国物价水平波动加剧,并存在诱发新一轮通货膨胀的潜在风险。针对挑战,需要从就业、需求和宏观调控等三个角度予以应对。     

The incidence and magnitude of the health costs of in-person schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic

Public Choice - The health costs of in-person schooling during the pandemic, if any, fall primarily on the families of students, largely owing to the fact that students significantly outnumber...     

Many Nationalisms,One Disaster: Categories,Attitudes and Evolution of Chinese Nationalism on Social Media during the COVID -19 Pandemic

Journal of Chinese Political Science - Previous research has shown the increase of Chinese nationalism in some international events. However, it is unclear how a specific event fosters the rise of...     

Unprecedented Challenges,Familiar Paradoxes: COVID-19 and Governance in a New Normal State of Risks

This Viewpoint essay understands China's COVID-19 responses through the lens of six paradoxes, focusing on normal and non-normal governance, competing values, expertise and politics, centralization and decentralization, public and private, and technology and institutions. Preliminary lessons are drawn regarding pandemic governance: embedding resilience into all aspects of governance; developing a public value framework for pandemic governance and improving individuals' ethical capacity; institutionalizing policy capacity on pandemic governance and requiring expertise in relevant positions; balancing centralized coordination and decentralized responses with a stable and ready-to-work commanding center; enabling businesses and nonprofits for pandemic governance but regulating them appropriately; and enacting technologies to revolutionize pandemic governance with proper institutional safeguards.     

The Transaction Costs of Government Responses to the COVID-19 Emergency in Latin America

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a crisis that is challenging national and local governments to innovate in their responses to novel problems. Despite similarities to the challenges confronted in developed countries, for Latin American governments, these problems are amplified by structural obstacles such as social inequalities. These countries must respond with capacities and resources that are often limited by spoils systems and by social and political polarization. This essay provides an overview of some innovative practices in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. In particular, this essay concentrates on some salient collaborative efforts in the region. To draw lessons from these practices, the authors focus on the formal and informal institutions that facilitate or obstruct collaboration across jurisdictions. The findings are discussed in terms of the transaction costs of collaboration identified in these experiences.