Suchergebnisse

Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America is probably one of the most oftreferred books today in the United States. It is widely seen as the best book ever written on this country, its words endlessly quoted by different political camps which claim the book as their own. This article examines the ways in which the American have read this magnum opus of the Frenchman, especially during the last few decades, on the assumption that their reading is reflecting their perceptions on contemporary American society and its future. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it tries to show that Democracy has long been read in America as an (or, in not a few cases, the) important source to reflect on a remedy for an increasingly "individualistic" and thus "despotic" American society. What the American have commonly found a solution to this problem out of reading the book is the restoration of the tradition of self-government, which is highly hailed by Tocqueville as an admirable feature of American society. Second, this article aims at showing that, although the different political views between conservatives and liberals (one of the most visible political divisions in this society today) are surely affecting the American reading of Democracy, this is only one aspect of the story. Many Americans, whatever their political tendencies are, end up calling for the revival of a self-governed American society as a consequence of studying the book. This common 'conclusion' derived from their reading could be interpreted as a proof that the image that America is the country built on citizens' active participation in public affairs is widely shared among the American themselves. In this considerably diverse society that could fragment at any time potentially, the image has thus been contributing to keeping it in unity, probably to not a small extent.

The United States suffers political and social polarization at its worst since the Civil War. Is Trump the "result" or the "cause" that accelerated this malaise? As a former Washington correspondent who covered the Trump administration last four years, I tried exploring answers for this American self-questioning. Trump-style governance, so-called Trumpism, has been characterized with its unique communication style to inspire anti-elite ressentiment among American public especially for white male middle-class who feel themselves less and less belongings to mainstream in their country. This communication sometimes takes the form of "dog whistle" aiming at Trump's core supporters or at other times takes the form of sense of complicity sharing misinformation intentionally. The anti-elite undercurrent and the partisan confrontation which accelerates political polarization have been fostered in the US even since before the rise of Trump. In this respect the Trumpism can be called the "result". On the other hand, it is also pointed out that Trump would be the "cause" which overturned the hierarchical order of policymakers, bureaucrats, experts and major media institutions playing himself destroying the existing order. In addition, the Covid-19 pandemic played a major role in amplifying its effects. This reminds us of importance of further exploration to find out how infectious disease has caused significant impact on the state of democracy.

This study aims at investigating how far the post-truth and echo chamber phenomena penetrate into Indonesian social media via comparative qualitative research methods. The data were taken from the messages related to the political contestation of Jokowi and Prabowo's supporters on Facebook. The results show that Indonesian social media has been penetrated by the post-truth and echo chamber phenomena. In conclusion, when the sample was taken from the group with the highest number of members, it is known that there are many posts with the topics of propaganda, criticism, hate speech, mockery, logical fallacy, and fake information in it.

This article examines whether mayors' social capital increases local governments' performance. Putnam suggests that politicians' social networks with residents may deteriorate political transparency and thus decrease performance. However, no direct relationships have been clarified. So, we focus on the Philippines as a case and conduct a survey on national representative 300 cities and municipalities in 2011. We find that (1) by distributions, among three indexes of performance as dependent variables, valuing fundamentals of governance have the highest scores. Social governance and administrative governance follow. Among mayors' networks as independent variables, mayors meet residents most, and local politicians, provincial politicians, and the central government officers follow. (2) By regression analyses, meeting residents promotes social governance, while meeting central government officers increases administrative governance. Multi-level analyses support these results. Therefore, mayors' social capital increases local governments' performance. Yet different social capital promotes different performance.

In 1942, proletarian writer, Takeda Rintarō, was sent from Japan to the Dutch East-Indies (Indonesia) as part of the Sendenbu (propaganda squad), where he led the literature section in the Keimin Bunka Shidōshō (cultural center) in Jakarta. Jawa sarasa documents Takeda Rintaro's activities and cultural experiences in Java, Indonesia, after he returned to Japan in 1944. Most Japanese literature and cultural writings about Nanyō or Nanpō ("South Islands" - South Asia and the Pacific, including Indonesia) from this era reference the concept of Imperialism in Asia. In the pre-war period, stereotypes such as dojin (local primitive) and tōmin (islander) defined South Island people as being lesser than or "other" than the Japanese people. Japanese literary depictions of tropical Eden's and exotic "uncivilized people" reflect similar perceptions and writings by Western authors towards Asia in the 19th century. This paper explores Takeda Rintarō's perspectives of "otherness" in prewar discourses about Indonesia. Through the influence of "The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" propaganda concept, the ideology of "sameness" was becoming a hegemonic cultural idea in Takeda's writings about Indonesia. Conversely, however, Takeda's depiction of the double-occupation of Java, with the political rule of Holland and economic domination of daily life by Chinese immigrants, implied criticism of Japan's administrative policies regarding economic exploitation in Java. Takeda's criticisms of Japanese policy are bedded in his emotion for the nature, culture and people of Indonesia.