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The most incisive twentieth century students of language converge from different premises on the conclusion that language is the key creator of the social worlds people experience, and they agree as well that language cannot usefully be understood as a tool for describing an objective reality. For the later Wittgenstein there are no essences, only language games. Chomsky analyzes the sense in which grammar is generative. For Derrida all language is performative, a form of action that undermines its own presuppositions. Foucault sees language as antedating and constructing subjectivity. The "linguistic turn" in twentieth century philosophy, social psychology, and literary theory entails an intellectual ferment that raises fundamental questions about a great deal of mainstream political science, and especially about its logical positivist premises.While the writers just mentioned analyze various senses in which language use is an aspect of creativity, those who focus upon specifically political language are chiefly concerned with its capacity to reflect ideology, mystify, and distort. The more perspicacious of them deny that an undistorting language is possible in a social world marked by inequalities in resources and status, though the notion of an undistorted language can be useful as an evocation of an ideal benchmark. The emphasis upon political language as distorting or mystifying is a key theme in Lasswell and Orwell, as it is in Habermas, Osgood, Ellul, Vygotsky, Enzensberger, Bennett, and Shapiro.

AbstractGender-based violence is a prevalent and persistent societal problem in Canada that permeates all spaces, including politics. Yet sexual harassment, sexual assault and/or gender-based violence research is rarely found in mainstream political science in Canada or elsewhere. This article argues that this absence is highly problematic for a discipline that purports to centre itself on understanding power—who has it and who doesn't, and how to access it. It further argues for a normative intersectional and interdisciplinary approach, highlighting promising avenues of research in feminist institutionalism and Indigenous feminism to help achieve elusive solutions to gender-based violence in the future.

Introduction. In October 2020 the most extensive social protests took place in Poland since the democratic transformation in 1989. They were caused pertinently by the Polish Constitutional Tribunal's decision and government policy on abortion. Numerous protests were held all over the country, both in larger cities, smaller towns and villages. Methods and materials. The study presents the results of the internet surveying method (CAWI) and snowball sampling. These were the only methods which can be used to study protest participants themselves (busy straightening in the streets), but also useful because of the pandemic situation in Poland. A 30 question survey was filled by about 200 people who took part in the protest in Olkusz city. Analysis. Research was made in time of "first main wave of protests" period, i.e. October 24–26, 2020. The author underlines the role of youth in the protests, and wants to answer two main research questions, first of all: what was the role of 'Generation Z' in October protests, and as well: what are the political views of the protesters. Researches about the first "hours" of protest are mostly extremely rare, the article also allows to see not only new youth Gen Z, but also modern civil protests. Results. Results show that the participants comprising mostly youth were not conservative, and could easily be considered a new generation of Poles – quite different from their older colleagues. But how and why are youngsters so politically different?

Cover title. ; Bibliography: p. 24. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Scholars have debated the importance of declining political trust to the American political system. By primarily treating trust as a dependent variable, however, scholars have systematically underestimated its relevance. This study establishes the importance of trust by demonstrating that it is simultaneously related to measures of both specific and diffuse support. In fact, trust's effect on feelings about the incumbent president, a measure of specific support, is even stronger than the reverse. This provides a fundamentally different understanding of the importance of declining political trust in recent years. Rather than simply a reflection of dissatisfaction with political leaders, declining trust is a powerful cause of this dissatisfaction. Low trust helps create a political environment in which it is more difficult for leaders to succeed. (American Political Science Review / FUB)

Many studies have focused on the relationship between political information and the use of ideology. Here, we argue that two "evaluative motivations"-general investment of the self in politics and extremity of partisanship-serve as moderators of this relationship. Specifically, we use data from two recent national surveys to test whether the possession of information is more strongly associated with a tendency to approach politics in an ideological fashion among individuals high in both types of evaluative motivation. Results supported this hypothesis, revealing that information was more strongly associated with ideological constraint and with a tendency to give polarized evaluations of conservatives and liberals among those who highly invest the self in politics and those with more extreme partisanship. As such, this study suggests that information and involvement interact to shape the use of ideology. Adapted from the source document.

This article deals with the relation of objective political competences and the subjective assessment of one's own political competence. The theoretical frame states that at least in early adulthood, only the subjective competence but not political knowledge is an autonomous and important determinant for (socio-)political participation, mediating the influence of objective political competences (or political knowledge, respectively). To test the role of subjective political competence and the (remaining) effect of political knowledge in early adulthood, empirical evidence using a sample of university students is presented. Cross-sectional analyses show that political knowledge has at least, if anything, an impact on voting, while fully mediated by subjective political competence relating non-electoral legal political activities. In contrast, the more profound competence of political reasoning has clear and stable positive effects on the intention to engage in non-electoral legal political actions – here subjective competence seems to be less important. Eventually, after a short excursus on school participation the findings are summarised and discussed by relating them back to framework and hypothesis. A concluding section proposes two opposing developmental-psychological considerations about the findings, raising further questions and giving an outlook into future research.

This article argues that the existing literature on world city formation overlooks geopolitics and political struggles in accounting for a city's transformation. Using Taipei as a case study, the article shows that geo‐economics, geopolitics and local politics each played an important role in Taipei's ambiguous world city formation in the late 1990s and are expected to continue to do so in the not too promising future. It is argued that the globalization process in the 1980s and the corresponding restructuring of the Taiwan economy induced the state to adopt a new developmental strategy that enhanced Taipei's competitiveness. However, the democratization process facilitated a new nation‐building process in the late‐1990s and the newly‐elected regime suppressed the city of Taipei's ongoing development, as a consequence of which Taipei's competitiveness as a regional world city has been declining. Geopolitics and local politics are thus found to explain to a large degree the ambiguities currently defining Taipei's world city formation.La littérature existante sur la formation des villes mondiales néglige les luttes géopolitiques et politiques dans ses explications de la transformation d'une ville. Prenant comme cas Taipei, l'article montre que géo‐économie, géopolitique et politique locale ont chacune joué un r^le important dans la formation complexe de cette ville mondiale vers la fin des années 1990, rôle qu'elles devraient conserver dans un avenir peu prometteur. Le processus de mondialisation des années 1980 et la restructuration subséquente de l'économie taiwanaise ont conduit l'&#5´tat à adopter une nouvelle stratégie de développement, laquelle a renforcé la compétitivité de Taipei. En revanche, le processus de démocratisation a encouragé un processus de construction nationale dans la fin des années 1990 et le régime récemment élu a asphyxié l'évolution de cette ville, en conséquence de quoi la compétitivité de Taipei en tant que ville mondiale de la région a décliné. La géopolitique et la politique locale peuvent donc expliquer en grande partie les ambiguïtés qui définissent actuellement la formation de la ville mondiale de Taipei.