Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review vol. XX, no. 4, 2020
ARTICULI
This article is devoted to the study of the attributes, logics, and reasons for the choice of semi-presidentialism in European countries. The supposition is that the verification and systematisation of the attributes of semi-presidentialism can be both constitutional and political that confirms it’s both institutional and political nature. Firstly, the article focuses on theoretical, methodological, practical, and empirical tools for the verification and systematisation of the attributes, logics and reasons of semi-presidentialism. Secondly, the article concerns the systematisation of the attributes and cases of semi-presidentialism in Europe. Thirdly, the study addresses the logics, patterns and reasons for the choice, attribution, and development of semi-presidentialism in Europe. It was stated that semi-presidentialism can be distinctively delineated formally (institutionally-procedurally) and actually (politically-behaviourally), even though it is outlined by the common definitional attributes. Thus, European semi-presidentialism is not a homogeneous, but a heterogeneous phenomenon. It remains the most common constitutional type in Europe, even though its attribution, logics and reasons have not created the equilibrium state in European countries. Therefore, the descriptive novelty is that semi-presidentialism is distinctively positioned formally and actually, since despite definition it is characterised by diverse complementary (typological) and temporary (transitive) attributes and reasons for the choice. In turn, the analytical novelty is that semi-presidentialism as the dominant European model operates quite variably in practice, certifying that its formal side does not always correspond to its actual side.
Keywords: system of government, semi-presidentialism, attributes of semi-presidentialism, logics and reasons for the choice of semi-presidentialism, European countries.
VITALIY LYTVYN (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv), vitaliy.lytvyn@lnu.edu.ua,
ANATOLIY ROMANYUK (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv), anatoliy.romanyuk@lnu.edu.ua,
IHOR OSADCHUK (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv), ihor.osadchuk@lnu.edu.ua.
The academic literature has recently started to underscore that the capacity of a policy entrepreneur is not only determined by his conditions as an agent but also by the context in which he/she operates. This article develops a conceptual framework to analyze this kind of context. To test this framework, we develop a qualitative comparative analysis between two policy fields: police and education in Uruguay (2010-2020). These cases offer a fruitful comparison to demonstrate the relevance of context to explain the probability of success of policy entrepreneurs with ambitious reform agendas. In the police sector, we show how the political entrepreneur managed to be successful as an agent of reform due to a series of contextual aspects that were favorably conjugated. In the education sector, this research identified several institutional and political factors that quickly conspired against the possibility to promote change, despite the presence of a reformist policy entrepreneur.
Keywords: policy entrepreneur, context, police, education, Uruguay.
GERMÁN BIDEGAIN (Universidad de la República – Uruguay), german.bidegain@cienciassociales.edu.uy,
ALEJANDRO MILANESI (Universidad de la República – Uruguay), alejandro.milanesi@cienciassociales.edu.uy.
This article provides a comparative analysis of the national cases of mnemopolitics of Latvia and Ukraine. The authors examine the historical politics of Ukraine and Latvia through the prism of two conceptual approaches - the “nationalizing” state of Rogers Brubaker and the “memory regimes” of Michael Bernhard and Jan Kubik. The article demonstrates how two opposite narratives compete and coexist in both countries - the official national-centric and Soviet counter-memory narratives. In Latvia, the Soviet narrative was replaced beyond the bounds and acquired a pronounced ethnic shell acting through the Russian-speaking community, becoming completely informal. At the same time, the presence of a significant part of the Russian-speaking population with its own identity and collective memory, as well as the activation of the historical policy of the Russian Federation with its revisionist view of the history of the Baltic states, creates a real threat to the historical memory and identity of Latvia and turns them into security objects. In Ukraine, two narratives until 2014 demonstrated both competition and a strange symbiosis in both formal and informal commemoration. The hybrid war of Russia against Ukraine, in which the technology of manipulating via historical memory was actively used, caused measures to securitize the Ukrainian national narrative (laws of decommunization), its strengthening and updating. However, the volatility of the state strategy in the historical memory, its dependence on the change of power, do not exclude a return to ambivalence and uncertainty in the politics of memory.
Keywords: politics of memory, narratives, Latvia, Ukraine, decommunization.
SERGII PAKHOMENKO (Mariupol State University, University of Latvia), pakhomenko.s@ukr.net,
ANNA HEDO (Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University), a.hedo@kubg.edu.ua.
One of the major challenges threatening the institutionalization of the legislature in Nigeria, following the return of civilian rule in 1999 is the high rate of legislator turnover. This turnover results in the erosion and weakening of institutional memory, slow rate of membership maturity, incompetence of the legislators and general legislative development. Nigerian legislators are some of the highest paid in the world and this serves as incentive that motivates the majority of incumbents to seek re-election. Yet, only a few of the 109 Senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives get re-elected after serving one or two terms. Thus, this study examines the electoral stage at which incumbent members exit the national assembly. In other words, do incumbent legislators exit or lose their seat in the assembly due to electoral defeat during party primaries (intra-party contest)? Is the high turnover resulting from the defeat of many incumbent members in the general election (inter-party contest)? To answer these questions, we generated data from secondary sources, and analyzed them using qualitative analysis and descriptive statistics. This study covers five electoral cycles and argues that more members often exit during primaries than the general elections due to intense intra-party competition, stronger challengers, and the influence of the state governors. The turnover rate is therefore generally high in Nigeria.
Keywords: Nigeria, national assembly, incumbent legislators, legislative turnover, legislative elections.
JOSEPH YINKA FASHAGBA (Federal University Lokoja, Nigeria), yinkafash2005@yahoo.co.uk,
CHIEDO NWANKWOR (John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies), cnwankw3@jhu.edu.
Slobodan Milošević, a key figure in the Yugoslav conflicts of the nineties, has been the focus of much scholarly analysis. However, we have, chosen to tackle him from the perspective of Operational Code Analysis, which is most commonly used for delving into political beliefs (dubbed “philosophical” and “instrumental” within the methodology) of political leaders. For the analysis of his Operational Code, we have coded his speeches at the Congresses of the Socialist Party of Serbia (whose president he was), which was the ruling party in Serbia during the nineties, his 1989 Kosovo Field speech (from when he rose to prominence), and his 2001 reflection on the Hague Tribunal, as the beginning and end of his political career. Furthermore, and arguably more important, is the novel approach to Operational Code Analysis, wherein it goes from its initial idea of analyzing the “inner” political beliefs of the chosen political subject to the Weltanschauung that they promulgate in practice. This is based on the switch from Platonic idealism towards Aristotle, drawing as well from Sartre, and Speech-Act theory developed by Austin and Searle. The approach has been dubbed “practical political hematology”, as it functions similarly to a medical blood screening: it divulges a set of practical political beliefs not unlike the blood screening in relation to the human bodily functions.
Keywords: Slobodan Milošević, Operational Code Analysis, Socialist Party of Serbia, speeches, practical political hematology.
SRĐAN MLADENOV JOVANOVIĆ (Nankai University), smjovanovic@nankai.edu.cn.
The article presents the way in which the communist Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu built the diplomatic ties between Romania and Senegal from 1965 to 1980, respectively how the bilateral relations have been organized. A case study of the visits between Ceaușescu and President Léopold Sédar Senghor is analyzed. The article uses as main sources the recently accessible diplomatic archives of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, articles from the state controlled Romanian communist press, and the Romanian propaganda published by the regime to promote official visits. The research scrutinizes the ideological and nationalistic elements of these visits in the context of the Cold War and of the Non-Aligned movement, respectively post African independences. Taking this case study as an illustration of the ties that Romania had with African states during Ceaușescu’s regime, the article identifies the main elements of a high-level visit, respectively the phases of the evolution of the Senegalese-Romanian relations.
Keywords: Cold War, diplomacy, diplomatic archives, (African) socialism, soft power.
DOMNICA GOROVEI (University of Bucharest), domnica.gorovei@gmail.com.
ANDREI URSU AND ROLAND O. THOMASSON (WITH MĂDĂLIN HODOR), Trăgători și mistificatori. Contrarevoluția Securității în decembrie 1989 [Shooters and Dissemblers. The Securitate Counterrevolution of December 1989,] Iași: Polirom, 2019 (ARMAND GOȘU, University of Bucharest)
RADU CARP AND CRISTINA MATIUȚA (Eds.), 2019 European Elections: the EU Party Democracy and the Challenge of National Populism, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020 (CLAUDIA ELENA CRĂCIUN CHIVEREANU, University of Bucharest)
RITCHIE SAVAGE, Populist Discourse in Venezuela and the United States. American Unexceptionalism and Political Identity Formation, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, (RADU GEORGE DUMITRESCU, University of Bucharest)
JOHN E. FINN Fracturing the Founding: How the Alt-Right Corrupts the Constitution, London: Rowman And Littlefield, 2019 (ALEXIS CHAPELAN, University of Bucharest/Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales)