Suchergebnisse

The author poses the question about the fate of neoconservatism, in the 1980s the official political orientation in the USA. Twenty years later, one can see how anti-communism and anti-modernism, neoconservatism's fundamental ideological premises, have changed the political practice and awareness, both (and equally) in American foreign and national policy. Though conceptually incoherent, neoconservatism has proved to possess exceptional clout. This has led the author to conclude that neoconservatism, despite the claims by neoconservatives themselves that it is dead, still has much leeway, since voters' awareness has been changed: they have got used to the new political context, they vote for well-balanced "mixtures" of rightist and leftist ideologies. (SOI : PM: S. 164)

The notions of "right" and "left" are a fundamental semantic pattern within which voters construct their political perceptions and attitudes. Their universal meaning lies in a simple spatial approach to politics as conflict; functionally, "right" and "left" are "shortcuts" for political communication. In the empirically oriented political science, the left- right scale has become a standard variable in public opinion polls. After the initial pessimistic interpretations, in the last twenty years or so, this scale has increasingly demonstrated its validity and reliability. The sources of the right-left identification may be manifold, and not solely ideological. Also, the right-left scheme has demonstrated a remarkable potential to - in time - encompass new political contents and thus create a need for new cross-national and longitudinal studies. Voters - and not scientists - are those who define what is left and what is right. (SOI : PM: S. 168)

The author analyses the relationship among atomism, pluralism, and democracy from the standpoint of contemporary Rawlsian and Kafkian theory of justice. The author views fairness and justice as forms of substituting democratic decision-making in multicultural communities. (SOI : S. 143)

Violations of human rights have become an almost daily occurrence via various TV and newspaper reports. Massacres, murders, torture, violence, imprisonment of political opponents, are facts of life in a number of contemporary states. While these states blatantly curtail human rights of their citizens, the governments and peoples of other countries have the right but also a kind of duty to demand they be respected. This feeling of global responsibility is increasing every day thanks to the process of globalization itself. (SOI : PM: S. 82)

This essay is an attempt to explore structural, value, ideological, and performance premises of partyism. It has been modelled after the methods and findings of eminent researchers (e.g. Inglehari, Klingemann, Knutesen, and others), who have devoted a major portion of their research to the relations among the mentioned concepts. The empirical research was conducted on a sample of Croatian students in 1998/99. By using complex analysis models of the mentioned variables we have showed that the ideological (left-right) orientation is more important for the electoral choice of Croatian students than the value orientations (religious/secular, left/righ materialism and materialism/postmaterialism). The author then shows why (in line with the results of European studies) the party orientation is more important than the values. What is most important here, however, is the finding that the two variables (the assessment of the democratic performance of the system and the ideological left/right orientation) are relatively the most significant variables for explaining the party identity and electoral choice of Croatian students. It has been shown that the leftist and the opposition parties in Croatia can count on the more left-oriented students and those who are dissatisfied with the functioning of democracy in Croatia, plus those more secularly and post-materialistically oriented. The used analytical methods can contribute to a more detailed elaboration of the theory of partyism (party identities and electoral choices) and to the model of political polarization in the society. And this is surely one of the central tasks of modern political science. (SOI : SOEU: S. 178)