Political theories
WAR AND SOCIAL ORDER: ULTIMA RATIO OR CONDITIO HUMANA? Hobbes – Clausewitz – Schmitt – Foucault
Keywords: war, social order, Thomas Hobbes, Carl von Clausewitz, Carl Schmitt, Michel Foucault
This article discusses the heuristic problems associated with revealing the role of war in the process of (re)production and transformation of the social order. Since war has only recently become an independent subject of social theory (despite the obvious importance of the organized violence in the historical dynamics of the modern societies), O.Kildyushov resorts to the analysis of the texts of the old and new classics that emphasized the social functionality of war or used military lenses for explication of the essence of the socio-economic and power relations – Thomas Hobbes, Carl von Clausewitz, Carl Schmitt and Michel Foucault. The author shows that the works of these political thinkers are able to act as important heuristic resources for understanding the socio-productive effects of war.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2016-80-1-6-32
POLITICAL THEORY, DISCOURSE AND IDEOLOGY
Keywords: theory, discourse, ideology, ideological statements, retrospective notion
On the basis of the analysis of the relationships between political theory and political discourse, A.Shvyrkov comes to the conclusion that such relationships can be best described using the metaphor of generation: although it is true that theory generates discourse, discourse is not equal to theory, and changes in theory do not necessarily lead to changes in discourse (at least, immediate and direct changes). In other words, theory and political discourse that it generates can develop quite independently of each other. Exploring the problem of ideology in this context, the author makes a distinction between ideology and ideological statement and formulates a hypothesis about the retrospective nature of the notion “ideology”, which is filled with the real content only when the change of an epoch occurs.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2016-80-1-33-42
CRITICISM OF GLOBALIZATION AND FREDRIC JAMESON’S ANTI-GLOBALIZATION STRATEGIES
Keywords: globalization, late capitalism, postmodernism, cognitive mapping, Fredric Jameson
This article analyzes Fredric Jameson’s critical concept of globalization, its philosophical and political grounds. The article shows that the American theorist’s interpretation of the phenomenon of globalization is based on Hegel's idea about the dialectic of Identity and Difference, which manifests itself not only in viewing globalization as a dialectic of unification and diversity, but also in recognizing dialectic of culture and economics an internal logic of the development of the modern capitalism. Comparing Jameson’s key idea of merging different levels of the economic, the cultural and the political as a fundamental characteristic of postmodernity to his strategies of confronting globalization, E.Vakhrusheva comes to the conclusion that he assigns the main role in the fight against globalization to the cognitive mapping strategy.
Post-Soviet space
TRANSFORMATION OF GEOPOLITICAL ORDER IN POST-SOVIET SPACE
Keywords: geopolitical order, geopolitical project, neo-empire, post-Soviet space
The article examines the transformations of the geopolitical order in the post-Soviet space. According to A.Goltsov’s assessment, the geopolitical order in the territory of the former USSR is determined primarily by the ratio of power between the Russian Federation and macro-empire of the West. However, in some sub-regions the geopolitical order also largely depends on other external actors’ policy. For example, Turkey and Iran play a significant role in the South Caucasus, and the geopolitical and geo-economic influence of China continues to increase in the Central Asia. As regards the geopolitical order established in the Central and Eastern Europe, Goltsov classifies it as bipolar. At the same time, he points out the possibility of a compromise between the EU and Russia in the distribution of spheres of primary influence, which will pave the way for the transformation of the confrontational order into the bi-centric order of peaceful interaction.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2016-80-1-54-72
Andrey Scherbak, Mikhail Komin, Mikhail Sokolov
“LES MISERABLES”: COMPARATIVE BIOGRAPHIES OF UKRAINIAN AND “NOVOROSSIYAN” COMMANDERS
Keywords: democratization theory, social capital, conflict in South-East Ukraine, biographical analysis
The paper tests the hypothesis about the similarity of the social origin of the commanders of volunteer battalions that distinguished themselves with the beginning of the military operations in South-East Ukraine. On the basis of a comparative analysis of the biographies of more than 50 Ukrainian and “Novorossiyan” commanders, the authors show that the latter, at the very best case, belong to the lower middle class. The results of the research conducted by the authors make us look with a critical eye at some of the major tenets of the popular theories of democratization and modernization that explain transition to democracy by the extension or maturation of the middle class. On the one hand, this reflects the specificity of the post-Soviet space, where the other, less privileged social groups play a vital role in the political regime transformation rather than “the angry citizens”. On the other hand, this allows us to put the political processes unfolding in South-Eastern Ukraine into the global processes.
Paradigms of social development
Olesya Koltsova, Eleonora Kirkizh
IMPACT OF INTERNET ON PARTICIPATION IN PROTESTS
Keywords: protests, political movements, political communications
This article analyzes the impact of Internet on protest behavior. Using data from 49 countries obtained during the sixth wave of the surveys in the framework of the project World Values Survey, O.Koltsova and E.Kirkizh build regression models that allow to assess the impact on protests of various factors related to both the “resources” and “values” categories. The research study conducted by the authors shows that reading online news bears an independent effect on people’s participation in peaceful demonstrations, which cannot be reduced to the influence of other factors, and this impact is robustly reproduced in different countries.
Political cultures
POLITICS OF MEMORY IN POST-COMMUNIST EUROPE AND ITS IMPACT ON EUROPEAN CULTURE OF MEMORY
Keywords: politics of memory, national historical narratives, collective memory, Holocaust, genocide
Having carefully reviewed the processes occurring today in the politics of memory, A.Miller concludes that in the 21st century the European politics of memory as a whole undergone a radical transformation as a result of interaction between the Western and the Eastern European cultures of memory. According to the author’s assessment, the Eastern European model that focuses on the sufferings of its nation and the motive of the existential threat, prevailed over the West-European, in which the theme of self-blame and responsibility played the main role. Explaining such turn by both the unwillingness of the elites of the leading Western countries to enter into a tough confrontation with the EU new members regarding their politics of memory, as well as by the “old Europe’s” loss of self-confidence and trust in the success of the EU as a project of integration, Miller shows that the Eastern European mechanisms of collective memory and identity construction prevailed when the Western Europe comprehended the growing tensions in the relationships between Russia and its neighbors.
Practical sociology
AUDIT OF IMPLEMENTED SAMPLE: FROM ROUTE TO QUOTA SELECTION
Keywords: public opinion poll, convenience sample, route sample, data fabrication, interviewer’s effect
The article presents the results of a large-scale audit conducted in the wake of the quantitative apartment-based survey on tablets in the Samara and Voronezh regions. It is shown that under the existing circumstances route sampling becomes very problematic. In a situation of scarcity of different resources (money, time, personnel) the perfectly implemented samples are indicative of fabrications and distortion of the prescribed procedures rather than professional and high-quality work. In fact, pollsters implement quota-controlled samples that are incompatible with the systematic route selection, which doubts the adequacy of the employed methods of statistical analysis.
Laboratory
ANALYSIS OF COHERENCE OF GROUPS’ POSITIONS IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT IN 1979–2014
Keywords: European Parliament, European Union, political groups, coherence, coherence indices
The article examines the coherence at the European Parliament on two major cleavages (ideological and national) that determine whether deputies unite into the groups. Having described the data in use, R.Kamalova calculates the Rice index that allows to measure the degree of coherence of deputies in the group, analyzes the pairwise coherence between the groups, and then assesses the level of fragmentation and polarization of the EU legislative body.
Cathedra
NATIONALIZATION AND REGIONALIZATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS: APPROACHES TO RESEARCH
Keywords: party system, nationalization, regionalization, electoral geography
The Russian studies of party systems usually focus on their genesis and actor structure, competition and institutionalization. Meanwhile, such crucial characteristic of a party system as its nationalization has been largely overlooked by the Russian scholars. The situation with regionalization of party systems is not much better: it is mainly studied in the framework of the electoral geography, if studied at all. As a first step to remedy the situation, R.Turovsky refers to the existing international political science approaches to the study of nationalization and regionalization of party systems. He considers the origin of the relevant notions, research trends and indicators used and tests some of them on the Russian elections.
DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2016-80-1-162-180
Gubernatorial readings
Keywords: development cycle, crisis, world order, management of the future, Russia
The material published here is a report on the Twenty-Third Gubernatorial readings held in Tyumen, December 16th, 2015, under the framework of the joint project conducted by the journal Politeia and the administration of Tyumen region with the topic of the Readings being possible strategies of Russia in the changing world and a lecturer – A.O.Bezrukov, Associate Professor at Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia), a retired colonel of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia.