Symbolic Political Communication,and Trust: A Young Voters’ Perspective of the Indonesian Presidential Election

Communication in political marketing plays an important role in political mobilization, building trust both in political actors and the government. Politicians construct their messages through careful branding as the power of the cultural symbols and signs conveyed through the brand are potent heuristic devices. This is particularly important in emerging democracies, where there is limited political knowledge and understanding. Therefore, this research explores how young voters understand the symbolic communication fashioned by political actors in Indonesia and how it relates to their brand. Indonesia is an interesting area for study; it is both secular and the world’s largest Muslim democracy. Using a phenomenological approach, a total of 19 in-depth interviews with young voters were conducted to gain rich insight into perceptions of the complexity of political symbolism, and trust among young voters. This study conceptualized political communication as a dual approach. The political brand promise is intrinsically linked to cultural references and conveyed through symbolic communication combined with a distinctive brand message. This builds trust, which then affects political participation. This conceptual framework provides insights into the importance of culture in branding which has implications for policy makers and actors in emerging and established democracies.     

Vicky,Cristina and Social Exclusion in Barcelona: A Tale of Two Cities

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - Barcelona has become one of the most touristic cities in the world, with more than 18 million...     

La généalogie imaginaire de la littérature algérienne francophone

This article contends that French language is both the perfect tool for the expression of one’s own identity and the instrument of knowledge that has shut down all possible other ones in Algeria. The works of Rachid Boudjedra (1969) and Yacine Kateb (1966) illustrate the highly ideological dimension of Algerian literature. By debunking the very idea of French literature, their novels fight back the concept of cultural imperialism. Yet, I think that the conflict between ideology and literature did not appear recently, after the colonial wars of independence, but was already underlined at the birth of French language as a national idiom in the writings of an author such as François Rabelais.     

Shifting borders: Islamophobia as common ground for building pan-European right-wing unity

ABSTRACT

In recent years, Islamophobia has become a useful tool for right-wing parties to mobilize electors in many European nation-states. The general xenophobic campaigns of the 1980s have given way to Islamophobia as a specific expression of racism. It is not only the new incarnations of right-wing populist parties that are making use of Islamophobic populism, but also right-wing extremist parties, whose traditions hark back to fascist or Nazi parties. This development appears unsurprising, as Islamophobia has somehow become a kind of ‘accepted racism’, found not only on the margins of European societies but also at the centre. Another interesting concomitant shift is the attempt by such parties to gain wider acceptance in mainstream societies by distancing themselves from a former antisemitic profile. While the main focus on an exclusive identity politics in the frame of nation-states previously divided the far right and complicated transnational cooperation, a shared Islamophobia has the potential to be a common ground for strengthening the transnational links of right-wing parties. This shift from antisemitism to Islamophobia goes beyond European borders and enables Europe's far right to connect to Israeli parties and the far right in the United States. Hafez's article explores this thesis by analysing the European Alliance for Freedom, a pan-European alliance of far-right members of the European parliament that has brought various formerly antagonistic parties together through a common anti-Muslim programme, and is trying to become a formal European parliamentary fraction in the wake of its victory in the European elections in May 2014.     

Editor's Introduction: The Amherst Seminar and the Everyday Life of the Law

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique -     

Personal rule,neopatrimonialism, and regime typologies: integrating Dahlian and Weberian approaches to regime studies

The concepts of personal rule, neopatrimonialism, sultanism and related conceptual labels have been widely used in political research, yet remain inadequately conceptualized. To make it a useful analytical category for comparative research, this article clarifies the concept of personal rule, derives its minimal definition and shows its proper genus, state authority structure. A new typological framework is advanced as an improved conceptual scheme that is able to capture variation on two salient dimensions of contemporary regimes in the developing and postcommunist worlds, the extent of political competition and the type of state authority structure.