Studia Politica, vol. XV, no. 2, 2015
ARGUMENTUM
CAMIL-ALEXANDRU PÂRVU, Extraterritorial Voting Rights from a Cosmopolitan Perspective (pp. 159-173)
Abstract
This article reviews the recent literature that analyses, within a normative cosmopolitan framework, the question of granting voting rights to “nonresidents” in circumstances defined by concerns for global justice. It examines such inquiries as grounded in a recognition of the democratic paradox, that of democracy’s domain; surveys the different applications of the all affected interests principle, commonly invoked as a possible solution to the paradox; and advances a range of alternative analytical and normative frameworks to rethink the justification of extraterritorial rights. It concludes on a note regarding the normative potential of “modular citizenship” and virtual representation when articulated in a deliberative democratic key.
Keywords
global justice, territorial rights, cosmopolitanism, democracy, citizenship.
CAMIL-ALEXANDRU PÂRVU - Assistant Professor, Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest, camil.parvu@gmail.com
ARTICULI
ANDREI MIROIU, Deportations and Counterinsurgency. A Comparison of Malaya, Algeria and Romania (pp. 177-194)
Abstract
This article considers in a comparative historical and strategic perspective the large-scale deportations of restive populations during the Malayan Emergency, the Algerian War and the Romanian anti-communist rebellions. The failed American campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan witnessed a rebirth of military and academic interest in post-war counterinsurgencies (COIN), with an entire “COIN school” being put in charge of the two wars from 2006 to 2011. This particular school elevated the experiences of late colonial warfare, notably the French experience in Algeria and the British campaign in Malaya to the status of policy guides for the early 21st century world. However, one crucial aspect of these was not considered, both theoretically and militarily, for obvious political reasons. Both these conflicts witnessed large-scale deportations, amounting to between a fifth and a third of the population of these colonies. The democratic governments in London and Paris, signatories of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, dislocated millions of their subjects, destroyed their property and forced them to live in poverty and food deprivation in guarded settlements and concentration camps, undergoing interrogations, torture and systematic brainwashing. In Eastern Europe, following the Soviet example but with striking similarities with democratic countries, the government of Romania launched a similar program to defeat rebellions. This article considers the role of this “forced” mobility in shaping military victory in the three cases and argues that just by itself this aspect invalidates the strategic and political relevance of them for shaping COINs waged by democratic governments.
Keywords
counterinsurgency, deportations, decolonization, armed rebellion, Cold War.
ANDREI MIROIU, PhD in Political Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, andrei_miroiu@yahoo.com
VIVIANA IACOB, Performance as Ideological Weapon. Transferring The New Man on Stage (pp. 195-210)
Abstract
This paper focuses on the complexities of cultural transfers in the performative arts in Romania after 1945. It discusses a number of soviet theater productions in the context of the local dynamics of re-fashioning national theatre practice. The early stage adaptations of known soviet narratives were the first to show Romanian audiences the soviet man and the social Utopia s/he struggled to etatize. Such productions had to inspire both theatre practitioners and the new Romanian audiences to work on themselves and their society in order to achieve the promise of socialism.
Keywords
socialist realism, soviet plays, theatre practice.
VIVIANA IACOB, PhD Candidate, Doctoral School of Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Bucharest, vivianaiacob80@gmail.com
ALEXANDRU GUSSI, Some Thoughts on the Transitional Justice Dilemmas in the Romanian Post-Communist Context (pp. 211-227)
Abstract
In this paper, we tried to emphasize the most important features of the political context in which the issue of the communist past is raised after 2006 with the sequence Tismăneanu Comission-Oficial Report-Presidential condemnation. This is an occasion to understand the difficulties of the relationship between the civil society demands for transitional justice and the Romanian institutions will to deliver policies in the anticommunist logic. In 2000-2010 we can see de-politicization and then a re-politicization of anti-communist discourse that emerges as a blending of some structural factors defining the relationship with the communist past in Romanian political context. After 2006 occurred an explosion of the anti-communist galaxy, basically on political issues, which led to a remarkable diminution of the influence of the transitional justice supporters in the political sphere.
Keywords
anticommunism, communism, democratization, past, politicization.
ALEXANDRU GUSSI, Lecturer, Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest, alexandru.gussi@fspub.unibuc.ro
DRAGOŞ DRAGOMAN, Where Have All Marxists Gone? The Intellectual Left, Ideological Debate and Public Space in Post-Communist Romania (pp. 229-247)
Abstract
The weakness of left parties in Central and Eastern Europe is less visible in their electoral support than it is in their intellectual support. After decades of intellectual hegemony, left ideas literally vanished in the region, leaving neoliberalism to rule as the only game in town. The immediate and alarming consequences as growing inequalities, unfairness and deprivation did not triggered any solid response from left intellectuals. In Romania, the explanation is to be found in the overwhelming ideological domination of neoliberal ideas, which still inhibit the intellectual left response, twenty-five years following the collapse of the socialist regime. If right-wing intellectuals helped democratization in Romania, as some scholars emphasize, by cultivating the alternative, breaking down previous stereotypes, relentlessly challenging thinking patterns and facilitating public deliberations, they certainly did not create a fruitful debate. If they struggled to deconstruct national-communist narratives, their virulent and obstinate effort in attacking not only totalitarian communism, but equally left values, inhibited any legitimate response from left-wing intellectuals. The consequence is two-fold. Very soon, reasonable values as equality and fairness have been submerged under the flux of full marketization, property accumulation/restitution and unlimited social competition, certifying that social Darwinism is the victorious ideological winner of the Cold War. On the long-run, the ultra-dominance of the neoliberal intellectuals will seriously undermine the consolidation of a public sphere, a space of freedom and equality accepting the public political reasoning, created by the discursive interactions between people willing to let arguments, not status, money and power, to be decisive. The aim of the article is therefore to map, by using a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the essential anti-left arguments produced by the right-wing intellectuals in one of their flagship publications and to unravel the general environment in which arguments are postulated and very few times answered.
Keywords
post-communism, intellectuals, neoliberalism, Romania, public sphere.
DRAGOȘ DRAGOMAN, Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, Political Science and Security Studies, Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu, Romania, dragos.dragoman@ulbsibiu.ro
JULIEN DANERO IGLESIAS, POMPILIU NICOLAE CONSTANTIN, Ice Hockey and Discourse on the Other in the Romanian Press (pp. 249-263)
Abstract
In 2011 the world of ice hockey in Romania was hit by a scandal: during a match opposing Romania to Hungary, the players of the Romanian national team started singing the Hungarian national anthem and remained silent for the Romanian one. A few weeks later a player of the under-16 Romanian national team was beaten up by his young teammates because he, the sole Romanian ethnic of the team, asked his co-players, Hungarian ethnic Romanian citizens, to speak Romanian and not Hungarian. Some of the Romanian media in Bucharest rushed then on the scandal and the reactions were strong against what was considered an unacceptable evidence of Hungarian chauvinism. In this context, the paper proposes a study of the reaction of the Romanian press to the events which launched the scandal. It shows how the inclusion and exclusion of the Hungarian minority is at stake in the discourse of the country’s Romanian majority. Following a methodology inspired by Critical Discourse Analysis as proposed by Wodak (1999), the research takes into account articles in four Romanian daily newspapers dealing with the scandals. It demonstrates how an “other” is constructed in the press and how a latent exclusive discourse pervades into these newspapers.
Keywords
Romania, Hungary, minority, nationalism, discourse, sports.
JULIEN DANERO IGLESIAS, Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow (UK), Julien.DaneroIglesias@glasgow.ac.uk
POMPILIU NICOLAE CONSTANTIN, Associate Researcher, Le Centre Régional Francophone de Recherches Avancées en Sciences Sociales, University of Bucharest, pompiliuconstantin@yahoo.com
FRANCIS ARSENE FOGUE KUATE, Économie politique de la presse écrite au Nord-Cameroun postcolonial (The political economy of the written press in Northern Cameroun)(pp. 265-287)
Abstract
This paper seeks to address the political participation of the press in the Northern Cameroon after the beginning of the democratic process which led to the institutionalization of freedom of speech in 1990. Through a Political Economy of Communication perspective, it aims at focusing on L’Harmattan and L’OEil du Sahel ‒ which are the main newspapers in Northern Cameroon ‒ to question the political capital of the press in this area where there is an hegemonic competition between ethno-tribal communities. The paper provides a venue to unveil the contribution of L’Harmattan and L’OEil du Sahel to rivalries between elites in sight of their positioning on the political chessboard at local and national levels. It arises from the analysis of the publications of those newspapers that they have a partisan position in the political opposition between the Fulbe who are Muslims and the Kirdi who are non-Muslims. L’Harmattan supports the first while L’OEil du Sahel has affinities with the others.
Keywords
political economy, press, ethno-tribal rivalries, political competition, Northern Cameroon
FRANCIS ARSENE FOGUE KUATE, Assistant Professor, History Department, University of Buea (Cameroon), kuate@gmail.com
VITALIY S. LYTVYN, Republicanism with the Position of Superpresident. Differentiation of Presidential and Semi-Presidential Systems of Government with Superpresidents (pp. 289-318)
Abstract
The article is dedicated to conceptual analysis and considering the republicanism with the position of superpresident. The author has discovered the nature, origin and features of modern interpretation of superpresidentialism, examined the conceptual difference between the system of government and the form of government in the context of republics with superpresidents, determined the key features, varieties and risks of republican systems of government with the positions of superpresidents. The author also has examined the relationship between republics with superpresidents and contemporary forms of governments, differentiated republics with superpresidents into presidential and semipresidential systems of government with superpresidents.
Keywords
form of government, system of government, republicanism, presidentialism, semi-presidentialism, superpresident, superpresidentialism.
VITALIY S. LYTVYN, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (Ukraine), lytvyn.vitaliy@gmail.com
DRAGOȘ SDROBIȘ, Limitele meritocrației într-o societate agrară. Șomaj intelectual și radicalizare politică a tineretului în România interbelică, Polirom, Iași, 2015 (CLAUDE KARNOOUH) (pp. 321-326)