Suchergebnisse

In the last three decades, Turkey has attempted to build close relationships with Russia, Iran and the Turkic World. As a result, there has been ongoing debate about the extent to which Turkey's international relations axis is shifting eastwards. Ozgur Tufekci argues that Eurasianist ideology has been fundamental to Turkish foreign policy and continues to have influence today. The author first explores the historical roots of Eurasianism in the 19th century, comparing this to Neo-Eurasianism and Pan-Slavism. The Ozal era (1983-1993), the Cem era (1997-2002) and Davutoglu era (since 2003) are then examined to reveal how foreign policy making has been informed by discourses of Eurasianism, and how Eurasianist ideas were implemented through internal and external socio-economic and political factors

This article traces the evolution of an Islamist ideology in Kenya's public discourse, putting Islamist ideas within a longer history of Muslim politics than most other studies. Specifically, it examines internal debates amongst the minority Muslim population of Kenya, and debates between Muslims and the state and Muslims and the wider Christian public, regarding how to improve the Muslim condition in a Christian-dominated country. The immediate background for the emergence of Islamist ideas is then discussed through an examination of trends since the 1990s, including increased contestations of religious and political authority, and responses to Muslim activism by the state and the wider Christian public. The article concludes that Islamist politics in Kenya, and elsewhere, are more often than not a result of local histories as much as they are part of a global Muslim 'victimization' narrative.

Optimism is difficult to come by when considering the possibility of halting the growth of government, much less reversing it. Public-choice economics identifies several reasons why political arrangements allow organized groups to advance their private interests by demanding government growth that harms the public interest. Moreover, excessive government also springs from what are widely seen as 'other-regarding' features of human nature, which are driven by ideology and morality. For more than one hundred years, noble concerns have persuaded well-meaning people to favor more government to promote the public interest, and others have exploited those concerns to grab political privileges at public expense. Concentrating here on the history of government growth in the United States since the 1890s, we argue that private interests and political ideology have reinforced each other to become potent forces for government expansion. This history seems to provide little reason for optimism for those who believe, as we do, that the social gains from reducing the size and scope of government would far exceed the costs. Adapted from the source document.

Der deutsche Föderalismus ist seit den 1960er Jahren mit höchst unterschiedlichen Bildern charakterisiert worden: vom unitarischen Bundesstaat über den kooperativen Föderalismus zum Wettbewerbsföderalismus und bis hin zu den stark durch die Forderung nach Entflechtung beeinflussten Föderalismusreformen der Jahre 2006 und 2009. Der Beitrag untersucht die Abfolge aus juristischer Sicht. Die verschiedenen, die Föderalismusdiskussion prägenden Bilder werden im Lichte der Entwicklung des Grundgesetzes und der verfassungsgerichtlichen Rechtsprechung beschrieben.

This paper examines the effect of government ideology on monetary policy in a quarterly data set of 15 OECD countries in the period 1980.1-2005.4. Our Taylor-rule specification focuses on the interactions of a new time-variant indicator for central bank independence and government ideology. The results suggest that leftist governments did not decrease short term nominal interest rates at all. In contrast, short term nominal interest rates were higher under leftist governments. A potential reason for this finding might be that leftist governments have sought to make a market-oriented policy shift by delegating monetary policy to conservative central bankers.

Louisiana educators at an urban K-5 school participated in a two-year study to share their experiences related to the implementation of a state high-stakes testing program (LEAP 21) that is used to make promotion decisions in grades 4 and 8. Observations, document analysis, and interviews were used to study the development of attitudes, perceptions, and practices related to the use of and consequences emanating from this testing practice. It was found that the state test has far-reaching effects on teaching, curriculum, school climate, students, parents, and school administration. The ideology of testing as a positive reform idea and the practice of testing as a constant and tangible threat, form the two poles of an experiential field that these educators encounter as figure and ground. The avoidance of failure and the threat of failure push these educators toward an ideological commitment to testing.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has pursued full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). In doing so, Iran has appeared to be unfazed by the prospect of allying with Russia and China, two countries which have systematically suppressed their Muslim minorities for decades. Similarly, the SCO's Central Asian member states are led by individual leaders who are generally believed to rule in spite of their populations. As a result, Iran's eagerness to join the SCO may appear to contradict its self-promoted image as the champion of Muslim interests, but in reality it sits nicely within its overarching enmity for the USA. Indeed, the SCO is seen as a geopolitical counterweight to the USA. For Iran, this geopolitical opportunity overrides ideological imperatives, with the gap between ideology and geopolitics most evident under the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractGovernments are increasingly turning to the market to provide public goods, works and (perhaps most controversially) services. Markets, and market values, have come to govern our lives as never before and the financial crisis appears to have done little to dampen governments' faiths in markets. The public procurement rules define some of the parameters within which governments must engage with the market but the ideology of these rules, particularly how much 'space' they afford Member States to pursue non-commercial policies in their procurement decision-making, is deeply contested. This chapter argues that there is a missing empirical dimension to these ideological discussions. It seeks to partially redress this by presenting findings from an ethnographic study of a competitive tendering exercise at a British prison, from which it is argued that a more complex ideological picture emerges than appears from doctrinal analyses of the rules.

MARX'S THOUGHTS ON THE PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNISM HAVE BEEN EXTENSIVELY QUOTED AND ANALYSED, CRITICIZED AND PRAISED. TODAY THE MOST FAMOUS AMONG THEM IS A SHORT PASSAGE FROM THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY, A MANUSCRIPT WORK BY MARX AND ENGELS FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1924 IN A RUSSIAN TRANSLATION, AND THEN IN THE ORIGINAL GERMAN IN 1926. THIS PASSAGE IS SO WELL KNOWN AND SO EXTENSIVELY QUOTED THAT ITS OMMISSION FROM ANY STUDY OF MARX'S WORK IS WORTHY OF NOTICE, BECAUSE IT SUGGESTS THAT THE COMMENTATOR IS UNWILLING TO CONFRONT AN ISSUE THAT CAN NOW BE RESOLVED. THIS IS THE QUESTION OF CONSISTENCY IN MARX'S VIEWS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY AND COMMUNIST SOCIETY. THE PASSAGE CANNOT NOW BE READ AS ONE CONTINUOUS TRAIN OF THOUGHT. IN FACT IT SHOWS MARX SHARPLY REBUKING ENGELS FOR STRAYING, PERHAPS MOMENTARILY, FROM THE SERIOUS WORK OF UNDERCUTTING THE FANTASIES OF UTOPIAN SOCIALISTS.

This is an original, thoroughly researched account of the image of Canada in Soviet writings - political, jounalistic and academic - over the entire course of Soviet history. A study of the role of ideology in Soviet foreign affairs, the book traces the influence of an adjusting Marxist-Leninist "lens" on policy formulated by the Kremlin and also, explicitly, on a public discourse rigidly controlled by government. This public image has been collated with private opinion documented in recently opened Russian archives. Canada clearly served a larger purpose in Soviet foreign policy than was previously assumed. Uniquely Canadian issues and participants helped shape Soviet policy, sometimes in very strange ways. Both story and reference text, Canada in the Soviet Mirror will interest readers in Soviet and Canadian studies, journalism, and popular culture.

Within the framework of this article, the main problems associated with the actualization in domestic social science of scientific research on various aspects of the functioning of political ideologies in modern Russia are considered. The author states that for the last year in the subject field of researchers there have been widely discussed such issues as problems of theoretical and methodological foundations for the analysis of ideologies and their role in shaping the worldview of various age groups, constitutional context of functionality of ideologies in Russian politics, imperial tendencies in the ideological and worldview space of Russia, significance of ideologies in socio-political communications, and a number of other important aspects. The author pays main attention to analysis of the changes that have occurred recently in domestic scientific discourse in the interpretation of state ideology, discussions about the expediency and possibility of its adoption, about its value core, about its applied significance in the process of political socialization, and other aspects. Based on the analysis, it was concluded that the majority of supporters of development and normative consolidation of the state ideology underestimate the fact that in modern Russia there are no legal, political, socioeconomic, and socio-cultural prerequisites for this. Nevertheless, in the context of a hybrid war between the United States and its allies against Russia, the public's awareness of a very real deadly external danger to the country becomes crucial. In author's opinion, there is not only an objective need, but also the possibility of reaching a consensus on this issue of all the leading political forces in Russia, res ponsible for its fate to future generations. Such public consent of the leading Russian political parties does not require a radical revision of the current Constitution of the Russian Federation and can be adopted in the form of a memorandum, declaration, or any other form that does not claim to be a state ideology.