Towards a new past: Some reflections on nationalism in post-socialist Slovakia

By analysing two commemorative events organized shortly before and after the 2010 parliamentary elections in Slovakia, this article demonstrates how the Prime Minister Robert Fico and his collaborators exploited these ceremonies to promote a more inclusive definition of political community than their right-wing counterparts. Although commentators have interpreted the continuous political success of the political party Smer-SD in terms of negatively connotated nationalism and national populism, Fico's discursive framework allows him to address those who have been stigmatized by post-1989 neoliberalism, especially former communists and people unable or unwilling to adapt to the rapid changes brought about by post-socialist social, economic, political as well as cultural transition(s). Instead of backwardness, Fico's anti-elitist and anti-capitalist rhetoric opened a new symbolic universe to these groups. The history narratives that formed an important part of this universe were not used to exclude the Other, but rather to create a meaningful future for those who have been ignored by (neo-)liberal ideals. This paper argues for an interpretation of post-socialist populist parties that would take into account culturally relevant symbolic structures advanced by these parties.     

从经典作家看社会学方法论对政治学发展的影响

虽然政治学和社会学都有着相对独立的研究对象,相互区别的方法体系,但很多社会学者尤以马克斯.韦伯及罗伯特.米歇尔斯为代表突破所谓的学科划分,形成交叉研究,其理论和方法对现代政治学发展产生重要影响。韦伯的"因果多元论"、"价值中立"、"理想类型"等方法论原则对现代政治科学研究方法产生重要影响,直接促成了政治系统分析的产生。米歇尔斯则在对"寡头统治铁律"进行论证的过程中不自觉地开拓了政治研究的方法,自发运用了政治心理分析和政治团体分析方法。这些学者的不懈努力最终促成了政治社会学的诞生。     

The deep error of political libertarianism: self-ownership,choice, and what’s really valuable in life

ABSTRACT

Contemporary versions of natural rights libertarianism trace their locus classicus to Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. But although there have been many criticisms of the version of political libertarianism put forward by Nozick, many of these objections fail to meet basic methodological desiderata. Thus, Nozick’s libertarianism deserves to be re-examined. In this paper I develop a new argument which meets these desiderata. Specifically, I argue that the libertarian conception of self-ownership, the view’s foundation, implies what I call the Asymmetrical Value Claim: a dubious claim about the importance of choice relative to other valuable capacities. I argue that this misunderstands what is really valuable in life, and show how it causes libertarianism to generate counterintuitive public policy recommendations.     

Still Causing Trouble: The Conservative Parliamentary Party

There have been relatively few backbench rebellions on the Conservative benches in the Commons since 2001, but division manifested itself on three significant occasions: over the Children and Adoption Bill (when the leadership insisted on applying a whip to a vote that many thought should have been 'free'), over Lords reform (where on a free vote a majority of Conservative MPs voted against their leadership's preferred position) and over Iraq (where the divisions were smaller than on the Labour side of the House but where there was a qualitative dimension to the rebellion). Most importantly of all, the events of October 2003, when Iain Duncan Smith was removed as party leader, showed how much power remained with Conservative MPs: they initiated the vote of confidence, in which they alone participated, and the emergence of Michael Howard as the 'unity' candidate meant that the grassroots were denied any role in the change of leadership.     

Patriotic history and anti-LGBT rhetoric in Zimbabwean politics

Over the past 20 years, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and his political party, Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), have relied heavily on political rhetoric that demonizes lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons. In this paper, it is argued that the anti-LGBT political rhetoric in Zimbabwe is part of a larger program known as “patriotic history,” which emphasizes a particular kind of Zimbabwean identity to legitimize the continued rule of Mugabe and ZANU-PF. The value of combining patriotic history and political homophobia emerges out of the unique political and economic context which Mugabe’s regime found itself unable to adequately address. To illustrate how and why this has happened, the paper focuses on two key incidents: the 1995 Zimbabwe International Book Fair, and the public conversation over writing a new constitution between 2010 and 2013.     

Sonia Delaunay: Fashioning the Modern Woman

Focusing on questions of gender and modernity, Gronberg examines representations of Simultaneous fashions designed by the Paris-based artist Sonia Delaunay in the German illustrated press of the 1920s. Simultaneous dress was presented as a means of rendering woman 'modern' both through fashion and through association with Parisian artistic avant-gardism. Gronberg explores the figure of the fashionably dressed Parisian femme moderne in relation to 1920s concepts of the neue Frau. The identity of Sonia Delaunay as an artist turned professional designer marked her out as a 'modern woman' and was crucial in the promotion of Simultaneity to international audiences. Delaunay's persona as a 'modern woman' also related to her status as a wife. The German press depicted Sonia Delaunay and her husband, the painter Robert Delaunay, as a Knstlerehepaar, an artist-couple exemplifying contemporary notions of 'companionate marriage'. Gronberg shows how such concepts of the modern woman were important not only in marketing Sonia Delaunay's fashions but also in claims for Robert Delaunay's post-war painting as a renewed form of avant-gardism. The essay concludes by considering Paris as a milieu in which women interacted with each other professionally-as writers, artists and photographers-engaging with and reformulating the visual imagery of modernity. The production, promotion and consumption of Simultaneous fashion during the 1920s reveals the 'modern woman' as both subject and object of representation. A preoccupation with fashion could be as much to do with challenging and overcoming, as with acquiescing to, stereotypes of femininity.     

罗伯特·史蒂文森与萨摩亚殖民争端——19世纪末欧洲殖民主义文化的另类声音

在生命的最后五年里,罗伯特.史蒂文森卷入了欧美列强在太平洋上的一场殖民争夺。他站到正义和弱者一边,用犀利的文笔无情地揭露和斥责殖民者的强盗行径,用真挚的同情为萨摩亚人大声疾呼,赢得了当地人的尊重和爱戴。史蒂文森体现了白人的良心,是一位极富正义感的文学家。     

New Labour in Britain: New Democratic Centralism?

This article uses a case study - the introduction in 1997 of new policy machinery - to analyse competing claims about the nature of the Labour Party's organisational transformation. It aims to demonstrate that whilst the new policy process was presented as a move towards greater democracy, both its general design and its modes of operation rendered inevitable the production of a general election manifesto in 2001 (the culmination of the process) whose contents coincided very closely to the leadership's tastes. The article then seeks to account for the form Labour's transformation took, drawing on the work of Michels and Lipset and his colleagues.     

A fascist Trojan horse: Maurice Bardegraceche,fascism and authoritarian socialism

Maurice Bardegraveche was an important neo-fascist writer whose ideas derived from those of Pierre Drieu la Rochelle and Robert Brasillach. Bardegraveche was a neo-fascist of the pen, and he used his journal Deacutefense de lposOccident to provide a link between fascism and neo-fascism in an attempt to resurrect the 'purity' of fascism in his post-1945 critique of West European history. Barnes addresses how Bardegraveche utilized a concept of 'authoritarian fascism', present in some old fascisms, to rehabilitate Europe. Bardegraveche commenced by analysing the faults of pre-war fascism and located many of his ideas in the work of José Antonio Primo de Rivera. He wanted to replace liberal democracy with an organic regime, both social and economic, but within a hierarchical framework. He opposed bourgeois society and advocated a corporate state of national solidarity. However, he believed that any new civilization must be aesthetic and move away from an insect-like industrialism in order to achieve a society based on peasant virtues. Bardèche appeared to be a utopian fascist, an anti-modernist. Barnes analyses his attack on capitalism, its feudalistic nature and the power of money, which he thought could only be opposed by fascist socialism and an ordered society. Bardèche located his variant of socialism within the context of the fascist philosophies of Drieu la Rochelle, Benito Mussolini, Jos Antonio, Corneliu Codreanu, Oswald Mosley and Jacques Doriot. He condemned political and economic liberalism and the class struggle. He wanted national capital to be protected and thought economic dependence relied on national independence. He believed economic power was held in too few hands and advocated a corporate state. Bardegraveche proves, essentially, to be a utopian, transcendental fascist.