The relation between cultural values and models of democracy: a cross-national study

The relation between democracy and culture is a long-lasting subject of interest in political science. In the contemporary approach to cultural analysis, value orientations are studied as fundamental manifestations of culture. The mainstream research has focused on finding a relation between the quality of a democratic system and the existence of essential values in a society. There is, however, an understudied question as to what the relation between cultural values and models of democracy in different countries exactly is. We know that there are different models or patterns of democracy (for example, majoritarian versus consensus and participatory versus spectator democracy) discernible in various countries. But what is the reason that a particular country, or set of countries, appreciates and accepts one type of democracy, while suspecting and discrediting other types? This article aims to find an answer to this question from the perspective of cultural differences. Using the empirical data derived from the operationalization of dimensions of democracy and dimensions of culture at the national level, we examine hypotheses regarding the relation between societal cultural values and the practice of different models of democracy in various countries.     

Ethnic Group Representation in a Cross-National Comparison

This paper compares the levels of ethnic group representation in parliament in 95 democracies. The analyses are comparative in nature, breaking with the literature where single country studies are the norm. Considering both electoral and cultural variables, the results cast doubt on whether the role of the electoral system in shaping political representation is dominant. In contrast to what much of the literature suggests, once controlling for the ethnic make-up of society and cultural attitudes, electoral aspects seem of little significance. Levels of ethnic group representation are best explained with cultural variables, in particular liberal attitudes towards marginalised groups in society.     

我国文化遗产保护法律体系：构建与发展

文化遗产是一个国家、民族自我认同和身份的象征,是该国软实力的重要组成部分,从法律的角度厘清它的内涵与外延具有重要意义。应当从法律角度解释文化遗产的概念,梳理我国文化遗产保护的立法历程,阐述该法律部门体系化的构建,并以“生态人类中心主义”价值理念为指导,在立法上完成向非物质、整体、动态文化遗产保护的转变。     

金融支持民族地区文化产业发展研究

在文化产业发展进程中,金融的资源配置功能具有极为重要的推动作用。因此,必须系统整合文化产业链,促进民族地区金融与文化创意产业的有效结合,保障文化产业顺利发展。     

论马克思主义文化观与政党文化建设

牢牢树立政党文化建设的根本原则,准确把握政党文化建设的价值取向,不断加强政党文化建设的文化自觉,推进党的文化建设,对增强国家文化软实力,建设社会主义文化强国具有重要的意义。     

Take an issue: cultural economy and finance

Abstract

Present-day capitalism is increasingly financial in character. At nearly every turn, finance and practices of financialization have begun to work their way into most areas of everyday life. The papers gathered together in this special section under the umbrella term ‘cultural economy of finance’ seek to explore the preparation of key areas of modern finance. In doing so, they demonstrate the productiveness of opening finance to a range of interdisciplinary inquiry to show how finance works and how debates about finance might be productively progressed.     

A cultural political economy of crisis recovery: (trans-)national imaginaries of ‘BRIC’ and subaltern groups in China

Abstract

This paper explores crisis recovery from a cultural political economy (CPE) perspective. It examines the role of (trans-)national forces in constructing BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) as drivers for recovery. First, it comments on some ‘cultural economy’ studies and indicates the value of a CPE approach. Second, it examines the ‘BRIC’ as a symbolic condensation of ‘hope’ knowledge and shows how this signifier evolved in three overlapping moments referring to its role as investor, consumer and lender. Third, it considers the material basis of the appeal of BRIC discourses, especially the credibility acquired through BRIC stimulus packages in the global financial crisis. Fourth, it indicates how China's ‘gold standard’ stimulus package has intensified some deep-rooted political tensions and harmed subaltern groups. Finally, it reflects on how CPE can contribute to studies of crisis and recovery.     

Observatory's linguistic landscape: semiotic appropriation and the reinvention of space

Using a longitudinal ethnographic study of the linguistic landscape (LL) in Observatory's business corridor of Lower Main Road, the paper explores changes brought about by the influx of immigrant Africans, their artefacts and language practices. The paper uses the changes in the LL over time and the development of an “African Corner” within Lower Main Road, to illustrate the appropriation of space and the unpredictability, which comes along with highly mobile, technological and multicultural citizens. It is argued that changes in the LL are part of the act of claiming and appropriating space wherein space becomes summarily recontexualized and hence reinvented and “owned” by new actors. It is also argued that space ownership can be concealed through what we have called “brand anonymity” strategies in which the identity of the owner is deliberately concealed behind global brands. We conclude that space is pliable and mobile, and that, it is the people within space who carve out new social practices in their appropriated space.     

Eastward Enlargement of the European Union and the Identity of Europe

The constitution of a European demos with a collective identity is one of the preconditions for adjusting the legitimacy problem of the European Union (EU). The analysis attempts to clarify empirically whether there is sufficient commonality regarding Europeans' political value orientations to substantiate a collective identity. Particularly in view of the European Union's eastward enlargement, the question arises whether widespread cultural heterogeneity in Europe allows the formation of a European demos at all. In Europe we can identify a West-East axis of political value orientations. Democratic attitudes decrease the further to the East while at the same time there is an increase in etatist orientations. Thresholds can be observed which distinguish Western European countries on the one hand and Central and Eastern European countries on the other. Within the group of Central and Eastern Europe a further distinction can be made between the three Slavic republics of the former Soviet Union and the rest of the countries. These findings support Huntington's theory of civilisations.     

‘But this is a park’! The paradox of public space in a Buenos Aires ‘no man's land’

Drawing upon qualitative fieldwork, this paper analyzes the occupation of an abandoned park in the south of Buenos Aires by the city's urban poor, delineating the implications of this incident for notions of citizenship in the context of deeply fragmented social rights. While public space has historically been understood as an expression of the universality of rights bearing membership in a political community, I show how this universalism became the object of struggle during a conflict over the park between the local middle class and squatters, many of which were of immigrant origin. The discourses mobilized by various social groups blurred the distinction between citizenship as a set of legal–formal rights versus a project of normative inclusion. While public space is juridically constructed as universal, particularistic claims to these spaces are imbued with increased legitimacy in a context in which social rights – conceived as a set of provisions guaranteed by the state under a regime of liberal citizenship – are unrealizable. By claiming this space for particularistic uses, squatters drew attention to the contradictions embedded in public space's democratic pretensions in a setting in which putatively universal rights are ignored by the state.