The Komi of the Kola Peninsula within ethnographic descriptions and state policies

For more than 100 years, ethnographic accounts have highlighted the non-nativeness of the Komi diaspora to the Kola Peninsula, contrasting it with the indigenous Sami population. Their legal status there has been a vexed issue unresolved by Tsarist administrators, Soviet ethnic policies, present-day ideas of multiethnic civic nation, and global indigenous activism. In the everyday life, however, there are no apparent differences between the two ethnic groups and their traditional lifestyles in the rural area of Murmansk region. Juxtaposing historical ethnographic accounts on the Izhma Komi with my fieldwork experiences among the Komi on the Kola Peninsula, I show how ethnographers uphold dominant ideologies and promote different state policies. The ambiguous ethnic and indigenous categorizations from their accounts reverberate in popular stereotypes, political mobilizations from below, and state policies from above. In this way, they make an interesting case for the practical problems of generalization and essentialism.     

The Evolution Trajectories of Voucher Funds: Towards Western-type Institutional Investors? The Case of the Czech Republic and Bulgaria

The implementation of similar mass privatization programs in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria led to the emergence of hybrid voucher funds. The contradictions stemming from this hybrid nature gave rise to the evolution of the funds' nature and of their place in the national ownership structure. The dynamics of this evolution is apprehended through a comparative study of the portfolios of a sample of funds between 1998 and 2000. We show how the interaction between the strategies of economic actors have shaped two transformation paths of the initial funds: holding companies on one hand and more ordinary collective investment vehicles on the other, the Czech and Bulgarian evolutions being divergent. We also discuss to what a degree these mutations bring these funds closer to Western-type institutional investors, showing that there is some convergence, but also the emergence of original forms.     

Influential News: Impact of Print Media Reports on the Fulfillment of Election Promises

Building on the mandate theory of democracy and literature on media coverage of elections, this article theorizes why information regarding party promises that is transmitted through the media could affect the former’s fulfillment. Utilizing a unique data set composed of 2,676 promises issued by 14 legislative parties over a 15-year period in post-communist Bulgaria, the study is among the first to longitudinally analyze the role of media in pledge fulfillment, while controlling for institutional and other explanations. The conclusions demonstrate that media reporting of election promises affects the fulfillment of pledges made by coalition parties, when more than one outlet has printed a promise, and under conditions of strong ideological divisions within the cabinet. Furthermore, the impact of media reporting is greater for pledges that do not otherwise have a high likelihood of being fulfilled.     

Attachment Style and Political Ideology: A Review of Contradictory Findings

Relational attachment style—a lifespan factor whose first manifestation at the age of 6 months continues into old age—has recently been theoretically and empirically linked to political ideology. A review of the literature that links these two constructs reveals a conflicting pattern. Secure attachment is predominantly associated with liberalism and its covariates, although the relationship is not robust, and there are some exceptions. Insecure avoidant attachment is associated with both liberalism and conservatism, along with their respective covariates. Finally, insecure anxious-ambivalent attachment is associated with covariates of conservatism. We propose a tentative distinction between motivational conceptualizations of attachment as a relational need and of attachment as a relational habit, which may help to clarify the relationship between attachment style and political ideology.     

Political Orientation and Ideological Inconsistencies: (Dis)comfort with Value Tradeoffs

People are often inconsistent in the way they apply their values to their political beliefs (e.g., citing the value of life in opposing capital punishment while simultaneously supporting abortion rights). How do people confront such inconsistencies? Liberals were more likely to say that issues that could draw on several competing values were complex issues that required value tradeoffs, whereas conservatives were more likely to deny the comparability of the issues. We argue that this difference is rooted in the distinct ways that liberals and conservatives represent political issues. Additional evidence suggested that conservatives’ higher need for closure leads them to represent issues in terms of salient, accessible values. Although this may lead conservatives’ attitudes to be more situationally malleable under some circumstances, such shifts do serve to protect an absolutist approach to one’s moral values and help conservatives to deny the comparability of potentially inconsistent positions.     

The Fulfillment of Parties’ Election Pledges: A Comparative Study on the Impact of Power Sharing

Why are some parties more likely than others to keep the promises they made during previous election campaigns? This study provides the first large‐scale comparative analysis of pledge fulfillment with common definitions. We study the fulfillment of over 20,000 pledges made in 57 election campaigns in 12 countries, and our findings challenge the common view of parties as promise breakers. Many parties that enter government executives are highly likely to fulfill their pledges, and significantly more so than parties that do not enter government executives. We explain variation in the fulfillment of governing parties’ pledges by the extent to which parties share power in government. Parties in single‐party executives, both with and without legislative majorities, have the highest fulfillment rates. Within coalition governments, the likelihood of pledge fulfillment is highest when the party receives the chief executive post and when another governing party made a similar pledge.