Progressive Politics in a Changing World: Challenging the Fallacies of Blue Labour

In Britain and across Europe, the social alliances that sustained progressive politics for a century are disintegrating. The financial crisis of 2007–8 showed that Labour and its ‘third way’ European followers had got the economics of modern capitalism wrong. With the mainstream left compromised, it has been the nationalist right that has benefitted, re-defining politics around issues of nation, culture and identity. What is surprising is the number of influential voices across the centre and left of politics who have accepted much of this far-right analysis and adopted its language and terminology. These trends, especially post-Brexit, have crystallised in the UK around the label of ‘Blue Labour’. This article examines the fallacies and flaws of the Blue Labour tendency in four key areas—class, economy, family and race—and suggests alternative ways forward, which seek to forge rather than disrupt alliances between the working class and new social movements.     

Looming Issues for Scotland and the Union

The minor electoral gains for the Scottish National Party (SNP) in 2007, which made it the largest party but a minority Scottish Executive administration, have provoked a fundamental review of Scottish devolution. Political imperatives rather than reasoned argument seem to dominate the actions of those pushing for independence and/or greater powers for the Scottish Parliament. The renaming of the Scottish Executive by the SNP as the Scottish Government is creating confusion. The Scottish Executive's plans to move to independence are inadequate for the significance of the intended outcome. The unionist opposition parties could not agree to form a majority coalition but have launched a major review of devolution which includes the possibility of increased tax powers for the Scottish Parliament even when existing tax powers are not used. Federalism has been proposed by the Liberal Democrats and others but evidence from other states suggests that this is by no means a stable or certain solution.     

全球化与西部民族地区的文化安全

球化是指所有世界各民族融合成一个单一社会、全球社会的变化过程。全球化始于经济一体化 ,进而扩展到政治和文化等各个领域。西方文化的全球扩张影响了西部民族地区的文化安全。为此 ,西部民族文化自身要在新的历史时期不断地发展和创新 ;要大力发展文化产业 ,促进西部民族地区的经济发展 ;要积极探索在新的时期保护和发展民族文化的多种形式 ;警惕全盘西化论和极端民族主义的回潮 ,保证西部民族地区文化的协调健康发展。     

梁启超国家主义思想论析

梁启超民族国家思想的起点是"群",终点是"国家主义",前者属于典型的传统话语,后者属于西方政治思想。针对中国的现实情境,梁启超"有选择地接受"了德国国家主义思想中的"国家有机体说",对"国家至上说"却有所保留。梁启超国家主义思想的宣扬在很大程度上促成了中国现代国家观念的形成。     

Party over Policy? Scottish Nationalism and the Politics of Independence

The Scottish National Party (SNP) won control of Scotland's devolved government in the 2007 election yet opinion polls show no majority for its objective of independence in Europe. While the party is adept at exploiting short‐term political opportunity structures in the wider British context, as well as appealing to the ‘opinion electorate’, it appears less successful at persuading a majority of Scottish voters to agree with its core ideology. Helpful parallels can be drawn between 2007 and the last time the party polled over 30 per cent of the popular vote in Scotland at the 1974 (October) British General Election—then, as now, the Scottish voter appears to be willing to distinguish between party and policy.     

Liberal Nationalism,Imagined Immigration and the Progressive Dilemma

The article critically evaluates liberal nationalist perspectives on immigration by drawing on findings from a qualitative research project undertaken in 2014 among White British interviewees in England. From one perspective the study's participants' attitudes seem to support arguments made by David Goodhart and other liberal nationalists regarding immigration, social trust and integration. However, further analysis suggests that these attitudes are to a very significant extent drawn first from partially imagined ideas surrounding immigration and second from potentially unreliable sources. These findings thus provoke the question of whether social trust and notions of a national community are actually being disrupted by immigration, or whether they are being disrupted by prejudiced nationalist and xenophobic perceptions about immigration and immigrants. The article will conclude by arguing for more nuanced research into attitudes towards immigration and in favour of a sceptical approach to nationalist frameworks for interpreting society and politics in Britain today.     

Nationalisation of multilevel party systems: A conceptual and empirical analysis

The concept of ‘nationalisation’ is vigorously discussed in the literature and three dimensions have been proposed. A first dimension considers the extent to which a party's vote in territorial units varies across time and this is labeled ‘dynamic nationalisation’. ‘Distributional nationalisation’ focuses on the degree to which there is an equal distribution of party votes across territorial units. Finally, ‘party‐linkage nationalisation’ concerns the extent to which candidates link together under common party labels. In addition to a conceptual debate there has been a simultaneous debate on the measurement of the various forms of nationalisation. This article contributes to both debates and argues that most of the literature on nationalisation suffers from a methodological nationalism bias – that is, the tendency of many scholars to choose the statewide level and national election as the natural unit of analysis. This claim is supported by a conceptual and empirical analysis regarding the effects of decentralisation on nationalisation. The conceptual analysis shows that the non‐robust findings of many studies concerning the effects of decentralisation on nationalisation can be related to the methodological nationalism bias. An effect of decentralisation is found once nationalisation is conceptualised with regard to its multilevel dimension and the measurements of nationalisation are differentiated according to parties, regions and type of elections (national or regional). An empirical analysis on the nationalisation of party systems, parties and regions in 18 countries for national and regional elections held between 1945 and 2009 shows that regional authority has a significant and robust effect on regions and regional elections but not on parties, party systems and national vote shares.     

Compressed modernity and its discontents: South Korean society in transtion

According to conventional economic indicators, since late 1997 history has been reversed for South Koreans since late 1997. Their current financial crisis, which would have led to a moratorium without the emergency bail-out packae from teh International Monetary Fund, seems to require not only economic austerity for business firms and citizen but also a total devaluation of their developmental ‘micacle’ in the latter half of the twentieth century. South Koreans' dilemma, if evaluated from a broad historical and theoretical perspective on their compresed modernity, is that the vary mechanisms which made their explosive economic growth possible tend to create various hazardous consequences in social, political, cultural as well as economic life. Patriarchal political authoritarianism chaebol's despotic and monopolistic business practice, abuse and exclusion of labour, neglect of basic welfare rights, ubiquitous physical dangers, and ideological self-nagation are particularly serious examples of such hazards of the uniquely South Korean modernity.     

Guest editor's introduction

In 1933 the army of the nascent Iraqi state launched an exterminatory attack on members of the Assyrian community who had fled to Iraq during the First World War. 'The Assyrian affair' which at the time sent shock-waves around the world has now been largely forgotten. But an examination of its origins and causation reveals much about the nature and pattern of modern genocide. Levene argues that typecasting genocide as the outcome of prejudice, racism or even xenophobia, while these may be significant ingredients, proves to be insufficient as a comprehensive explanation. Rather, these factors need to be analysed within the context of an emerging international system of nation-states. This itself may be a factor in helping to catalyse the most extreme and radically ideological responses, especially from new and untried national elites seeking to overcome perceived obstacles to their state's development and genuine independence.     

Who is the enemy now? Islamophobia and antisemitism among Russian Orthodox nationalists before and after September 11

In this article Verkhovsky focuses on Russian nationalist groups who base their ideology on the Russian Orthodox tradition. These Russian Orthodox nationalists should be distinguished both from those nationalists for whom Orthodoxy is clearly overwhelmed by the ideological demands of ethno-nationalism, as well as from those who use Orthodoxy simply as a popular symbol of national identity. Orthodox nationalists, moreover, are fairly independent of the Moscow Patriarchate and its ideology. The ideology of Orthodox nationalism focuses both on its principal enemy, the Antichrist, and on those enemies subordinate to the Antichrist: Jews, Catholics, the West, the New World Order and so on. In the mid-1990s Islam had no obvious place among this set of hostile forces. The Moscow Patriarchate and moderately nationalist politicians, relying to some extent on Eurasianist ideas, saw the relationship between Orthodoxy and Islam in Russia as a harmonious one, and, on the whole, Orthodox nationalists did not disagree, although individuals occasionally claimed that the Jews, using the West, were setting Islam against Orthodox Russia. The situation began to change during the second Chechen war, when Orthodox nationalists began to issue warnings of an Islamic threat. This was related not only to the situation in former Yugoslavia and in Chechnya, but also to an increase in the immigration of Muslims to ethnically Russian regions of the country. For Orthodox nationalists, this Islamic threat was part of the larger threat coming from the Jews and the West. Islam, they claimed, was being used as a tool by the Antichrist not only because it was a flawed religion, but because it, being less godless than the West, would produce radical Islamism as a synthesis of western technology and eastern passion. In the intense debates that followed in the wake of the attacks of 11 September 2001 most Orthodox nationalists in Russia supported adopting a neutral position in the supposed ‘clash of civilizations’ between Islam and the West.