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How can democratic values and behavior be induced in new democracies? To answer this question, we test the impact of original civic education interventions in Tunisia, implementing an experiment with subjects recruited through Facebook and Instagram. Participants were randomly assigned to three treatment groups and one placebo group. Two treatments were derived from prospect theory, emphasizing the benefits or gains of a democratic system, or the losses by pitting autocracy versus democracy. A third treatment, derived from self-efficacy theory, provided practical information regarding participation in the upcoming 2019 elections. Our findings suggest that online civic education can have a considerable effect on democratic citizenship, including a significant reduction in authoritarian nostalgia and increasing intended political behavior such as electoral registration. Effects are strongest among those less engaged in the electoral process. When comparing the treatments across outcomes, we find that loss/gain-framed interventions are most effective in promoting democratic orientations.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the essence and destructive consequences of political and economic campaigns carried out in the third quarter of the XX century in China. The author makes an attempt to reconstruct the picture of the political, economic and social development of China in the period under study, to substantiate the specifics of the implementation of reforms in Xinjiang, to trace the interrelationships of economic, political and interethnic relations that are developing both in the region itself and between the central government and national autonomy. This study is aimed at identifying the relationship between socio-economic transformations in China and mass migration of the population, primarily of national minorities, to Kazakhstan. Particular attention was paid to the study of the radical transformations carried out in Xinjiang province since 1955 in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), since here the general negative consequences were aggravated by the ethno-political factor, increasing the push-out effect of the migration of the indigenous population of the ethnic minorities region. Based on the studied scientific literature, as well as the application of the method of historical detailing, several stages of China’s modernization were identified, which were uneven and extremely painful. The features of each stage were studied in details, the accumulated facts were ordered, cause-and-effect relationships were established between the political and economic development of China and the mass migration from China to Kazakhstan in the 1950–1970s. The use of a multifactorial integrated approach made it possible to understand the nature of many phenomena in the economic life of the XUAR and their dependence on political events, solving issues of nation-building, interethnic relations.

Tunisia is a unique context where youth-led protests in 2011 led to a successful democratic transition followed by elections where voters experienced democracy for the very first time. Despite youn...

El artículo plantea la política simbólica de la Transición democrática española a partir, por un lado, del debate sobre la capacidad de los regímenes democráticos para desarrollar una simbología propia y, por otro, de los particulares condicionantes históricos en que se desarrolló la Transición. Así, la herencia simbólica del franquismo obligó a desmantelar progresivamente sus elementos más característicos y a dotar al nuevo régimen de una simbología alternativa, que expresara sus principales valores políticos. La importancia de la Constitución de 1978 como mito fundacional de la nueva democracia se explica tanto por su capacidad para enlazar con la tradición liberal española, muy marcada por el constitucionalismo histórico, como por la legitimidad sin precedentes de un texto constitucional aprobado por primera vez en un referéndum popular. El artículo ofrece una amplia base empírica (Tabla I y Gráfico I) que permite constatar el protagonismo de la Constitución en la creación de un espacio público democrático y en el desarrollo de una intensa política conmemorativa. Finalmente, se valora en qué medida la crisis del sistema a partir de la recesión económica de 2008-2012 y del resquebrajamiento del modelo autonómico han erosionado los símbolos más representativos de la democracia instaurada a finales de los años setenta.

Until the fifth legislative election (2019) in the Reformation Era, money politics was still a disease in the democratic process in Indonesia. Instead of decreasing, the practice of money politics in the last election has become even more massive, vulgar, and brutal. Meanwhile, the prospect of Indonesian democracy, which was considered optimistic, so that it is considered a new democracy has recently tended to decline. This study tries to see the link between money politics and the prospect of consolidating Indonesia's democracy by utilizing secondary data through a qualitative descriptive study. The results of the study show that the quality of Indonesian democracy has decreased in recent years, partly due to the proliferation of political corruption practices, including money politics. Indonesia's prospects for a developed and stable democracy still require a long struggle, especially regarding serious eradication of political corruption, including corruption related to elections such as money politics.

In the context of a new democracy, the success of Kosovo university students is crucial to improving the material conditions and long-term stability of the youth in the country. Using the burgeoning data infrastructure from the public higher education sector, this analysis utilizes a sample of 67,618 to examine college student persistence and degree completion from 32 faculties. Findings demonstrate that persistence and completion are highly gendered phenomena, and that completion is largely dependent on a student’s major field of study.

The main purpose of the article is to study technologies of a smart city to identify the prospects for digital democracy and risks of digital totalitarianism. The basic methodological optics is the discourse analysis, which involves the identification and comparative analysis of various concepts on the selected issues. The supporting methodology was the Case Study principles and the big data analysis capabilities of the Google Trends platform. The article makes a theoretical contribution to the understanding of the algorithmic nature of modern political power, which is the basis of urban technopolitics, as well as the complex configuration of Policy and Politics. Algorithms, as the fundamental basis of digital applications and smart city technologies, are beginning to permeate the entire life of a citizen, closely intertwining with the mechanisms of digital control, rating, political decision-making, extraction, filtering and sorting of information data. It is particularly emphasized that the traditional social reality is transformed into a sociotechnical reality (the phygital world), in which it is no longer possible to rigidly separate the social from the technical. The conclusions indicate that digital democracy is possible only on the principles of open source, while digital totalitarianism, on the contrary, excludes such a model. Without the inclusion of smart citizens, the process of discussion and political decision-making, digital democracy is simply emasculated into a good, but still narrow service on the part of the authorities. In addition, without comprehensive programs in the field of political education, there will be no digital democracy, no smart citizens, only a smart elite will remain.

This article seeks to explore the discursive rediscovery of the left menace and the ideological relevance between the far right and the right wing in Greece in times of political turmoil. Drawing on some historical aspects of modern Greece, first, I intend to explain the resurgence of Greece’s divided past. By emphasising references to Gramsci and the ‘hegemony of the left’, the article investigates the discursive construction of ingroups and outgroups on the basis of haunted memories of modern Greek history. By synthesising the Discourse Historical Approach and the concept of Aristotelian topos, I explicate how Gramsci has been re-utilised in an extreme right context by Greek far-right figures in order to stigmatise their ideological opponents. In a second step, my aim is to study the normalisation of political enmity by highlighting far-right discourses’ resemblance to New Democracy’s members’ rhetoric through references to Greek culture and economic imaginaries.

There is much research about how migrants engage with politics in their home countries and about how state institutions facilitate this involvement. Yet, we know little about how members of Parliament refer to, and debate, issues related to communities of emigrants. The ways in which legislators give voice to and represent the de-territorialized demos has broad implications for the functioning of contemporary democracies. This article analyzes the ways in which the Romanian parliamentarians refer to emigrants. We focus on the parliamentary speeches from the plenary sessions in the Chamber of Deputies in the two most recent terms in office (2012–2016 and 2016–2020). The study includes 239 parliamentary speeches and uses thematic analysis. Our results identify an ambivalent attitude toward emigrants that transcends political divides. The Romanian legislators express concerns related to the representation of emigrants and their needs and see them as a valuable pool of economic and electoral support.

This study uses an interdisciplinary perspective to shed light on Ukraine’s continuous problems with media independence, which to date have not allowed Ukraine to become a country with a truly free media: since Ukraine’s independence in 1991 its media have consistently remained only “partly free.” The approach proposed in the paper combines theoretical tools of post-communist media studies with advancements in political science research in regime change and state-building to explore the continuities and changes in the institutional environment for the media in post-communist new democracies. The approach is applied to analyze two cases of post-communist media change, both problematic to explain within the framework of media studies alone: the case of incomplete media transformation in a hybrid regime (Ukraine) and the incident of backsliding in independent media in an advanced new democracy (Hungary). The paper is structured as follows: I first present the shortcomings in the way institutions, or more specifically the institutional environment for media freedom, were previously approached in post-communist media studies. I then propose a more advanced approach based on theories and concepts originating from comparative-politics studies of regime change and state and institution-building. I apply this approach to analyze the institutional environment for the media in Ukraine. Next, I explore the case of a radical reconstruction of media-related institutions in Hungary after Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party came to power in 2010.

O presente estudo objetiva apresentar a importância institucional do Conselho Empresarial do Sul de Minas – Regional Varginha (CESUL – Varginha) como lócus de articulação e proposição de alternativas para o desenvolvimento regional. A nova democracia que emerge atualmente caminha para um direcionamento mais participativo e não apenas representativo e nessa seara é de fundamental importância o papel dos conselhos municipais e regionais. O artigo foi construído com base em pesquisa bibliográfica e pesquisa-ação, tendo em vista a participação direta dos autores na constituição e implementação do CESUL. Os resultados demonstram o importante papel desse conselho na consolidação de um ambiente de debate regional, a constituição das câmaras temáticas, a construção das proposições por meio da “Carta do Sul de Minas”, bem como, a realização de parcerias nacionais e internacionais. Salienta-se como crítica e proposição de melhoria que o conselho aumente seu enraizamento regional permitindo uma maior fundamentação na sociedade sul-mineira. Palavras-chave: Conselho empresarial. Desenvolvimento regional. Sul de Minas. Democracia participativa.

Following the signing of the Prespa Agreement in June 2018, the Macedonian name issue became the most prominent topic on the Greek political agenda, catalysing an exceptional political confrontatio...

This study analyses quantitatively the content of thirty-nine political speeches made by political leaders of three political parties – New Democracy, Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) – of different status represented in the Greek parliament. The leaders of these parties release annual commemorative speeches of the restoration of Greek democracy on 24th July 1974. The focus of this study is on longitudinally analysing the content of commemorative speeches, looking at how political leaders communicate the historical event, by quantifying through a content analysis various forms of ingroups and outgroups in their annual commemorations. Such constructions were ventured during a period of 13 years, from 2004 to 2016, before and during the break out of financial crisis in 2010. Longitudinal quantitative content analysis identified differences in the use of we-referencing and they-referencing language, varying per status of parties and context of release of commemorative speeches. I view commemorative speeches as a non-neutral history-related business that requires mobilisation of audiences in different ways and different contexts. Implications of commemorating the historical past across time as institutional identity practice are discussed.

The Shanghai News was the People's Republic of China's (PRC's) first English-language newspaper. The News played an important, but forgotten, role in the development of the PRC's “external propaganda” apparatus, used to fight the ideological Cold War. The News was unusual in that it adopted a commercial business model and juxtaposed vehement anti-imperialist propaganda with advertising for multinational companies from “imperialist-capitalist countries.” This article argues that the News was a product of “New Democracy,” the central political paradigm of the PRC between 1949 and 1953. New Democracy, a policy of cross-class cooperation in the name of national reconstruction, is often dismissed as cynical tactic deployed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to diminish resistance during the takeover of China. The author argues for taking the real world impacts of New Democracy on life and work in early 1950s Shanghai seriously and cautions against teleological narratives.

While political accountability requires that voters can form an accurate picture of government performance, public evaluations of government performance in established democracies are often distorted by partisan considerations. We test whether the same factors bias evaluations of government performance in a new democracy where partisanship is less stable and defined. This analysis estimates individual-level models of retrospective national economic evaluations in South Korea’s 2017 presidential election. South Korea has unstable party politics, low levels of party institutionalization, and high levels of public distrust in political parties. Yet even in this context we find that voters’ economic evaluations are significantly affected by political loyalties such as party identification. This endogeneity is sufficiently large that it results in aggregate consumer evaluations of the economy that systematically vary across regions depending upon the relationship of the president to that region. The findings confirm that party identification shapes citizen opinions even in a context where its effect would likely be weak.

A key political feature of South Africa's transformation was the African National Congress, the National Party and Inkatha Freedom Party working together in a grand coalition. This arrangement was praised by leading power-sharing theorist Arend Lijphart. The unity government began in 1994 but two years later the National Party withdrew. This article explores power sharing during the initial phase of the settlement and discusses three aspects of it. First, the South African example points to the electoral drawbacks of power sharing for minor parties. Second, the National Party's participation in the coalition stifled the early development of substantial political opposition which slowed the pace of democratic consolidation. Third, participation in a power-sharing arrangement undermined the National Party's electoral fortunes contributing to its dissolution in 2005. This was an unexpected outcome for a party which had co-authored the country's settlement a little over a decade earlier.

Countries that undergo a democratic transition often adopt youth quotas to ensure stability and legitimacy in the eyes of a potentially rebellious youth cohort. Tunisia followed this trend by insta...

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the mechanisms behind the development of e-democracy. The contrasting cases of Italy and Hungary are selected as the case studies. With the development of new information and communication technology, more and more elements of domestic politics have been transferred to the internet-based platforms. As a response to the deep financial, economic and political crisis that Europe endured over the period 2010-2015 and as a result of the disappointment with traditional parties, new political movements and parties were created. In this paper, the Italian Five Star Movement (M5S) and the Hungarian Lehet Más a Politika (“Politics Can Be Different”) and Momentum are examined to trace the specific mechanisms that led to their establishment.Design/methodology/approachThe research is based on mixed method approach, using primary and secondary data to identify and examine mechanisms conducive to the emergence of e-democracy. It uses quantitative analysis along with discourse analysis and social media analysis. The research is based on the analysis of respective parties’ social media communication. The social media analysis has been carried out by the SentiOne social listening software within the time frame of February 2018 and the end of 2019. Along different types of democracy measurements, Italy and Hungary have been analysed between 2017 and 2019.FindingsThe paper identifies the key preconditions for the emergence of e-democracy. These are freedom, gender gap, inequality and corruption. It also then elaborates on mechanisms, such as social media activity and citizen engagement, which lead to the emergence of e-democracy. The thesis of this article is that in Hungary (compared to Italy), elements of high-quality standards for a democracy are still missing to establish a successful political party which uses the sustainable concept for e-democracy. In Hungary, the examined parties use social media only as media representation without exploiting the possibilities lying in social media platforms. They mostly rely on these networking sites during elections and no strong sentiments can be identified in their communication. Italy is a more developed democracy where online platforms are used to engage citizens regularly. M5S actively communicates through these platforms, which is reflected in the amount of comments and strong social media activity even out of election period.Originality/valueThe originality of the paper is the social media analysis to test the use of social media in the parties’ political communication. The paper defines key factors and mechanisms concerning the establishment of e-democracy through inductive analysis of two contrasting cases. Italy and Hungary are two member states of the European Union (EU) with different development, their current preparation and situation regarding e-democracy give insights on how the quality of democracy determines their attitude towards cyber parties. While Italy being a founding member of the EU has become an established democracy, Hungary, after the transition, has developed into a new democracy.

Trata-se de um trabalho teórico que empreende uma abordagem histórica. O objetivo central deste estudo é o de seguir a apreensão teórica / prática de Antonio Gramsci relativa à experiência dos Conselhos de Fábrica como o fundamento de uma nova democracia e de um novo Estado a partir do vínculo entre cultura e socialismo. A cultura é definida como esfera, pensamento, estrutura de atividades e construção de consciência realizada por camadas intelectuais orgânicas à classe operária, ou seja, pelas massas que exercem funções organizativas na produção e no modo cultural. Portanto, este trabalho pretende realizar uma análise da função da cultura relacionada à experiência dos Conselhos de Fábrica, em Turim (1919-1920), de maneira que a questão organizativa fica em evidência na categoria de cultura. As fontes utilizadas são os textos de Antonio Gramsci e importantes autores que discutem a teoria gramsciana, a fim de obter compreensão do cenário político e teórico que Gramsci se encontrava.

In many countries, voters are targeted with clientelistic and programmatic electoral offers. Existing research explores the demand side of clientelism, but we still know very little about what determines voters’ acceptance of clientelistic and programmatic electoral offers. This article builds a novel theoretical framework on the role that democratic dissatisfaction and political knowledge play in shaping voters’ acceptance of different types of electoral offers. We test the implications of the theory with a survey experiment conducted after the 2019 local elections in Bulgaria. Our results show that low-knowledge voters and those who are dissatisfied with the performance of democracy and democratic institutions are more likely to accept clientelistic offers from politicians. The findings contribute to the literature on electoral clientelism and political attitudes.