The rise of exclusive-formalistic religious interpretations is a series of facts that emphasize how the graph of the seeds of religious radicalism in Indonesia and Aceh, in particular, is ...increasingly undeniable. Referring to this phenomenon, this research aims to study the strengthening of political democracy and national identity based on local values and culture, which is the standard of political behavior in Aceh. This research method uses descriptive qualitative data from interviews, FGDs, questionnaires, and literature studies. The results obtained: First, the interpretation of Dayah Ulama towards the narrative of religious moderation looks dynamic and varied. On the one hand, in quantity, most Dayah Ulama do not question the narrative of religious moderation, including accepting its derivative concepts. On the other hand, it indicates a form of fragmentation in accepting the narrative of religious moderation. Second, the majority of Dayah Ulama show acceptance of the narrative of religious moderation with pre-conditions. The attitude shown must be based on existing Islamic Sharia and Acehnese customs regulations. Third, conservative and exclusive attitudes appear negotiable, meaning that these attitudes can fade if religious interests are not disturbed.
The purpose of this article is to define the middle class as the representative of the public interest and the social foundation of democracy in Ukraine. Throughout the history of Ukraine, the middle ...class has always been oppressed by Russian and Soviet colonialism. The revival of the middle class is slowed down by the fact that the middle class is “hanging” in the gravitational field between the government and the opposition. In Ukraine there are no bourgeois party(s) independent of the oligarchy. One condition must be met for the introduction of political and economic democracy. The middle class should have full parliamentary representation. There are still no parties in the Ukrainian parliament that represent the interests of the middle class. This applies to both the government and the opposition. The middle class actively supported opposition politicians during the revolutionary events of 2004 and 2013-2014. In modern conditions, it is a class of volunteers, activists and volunteers who are defending Ukraine against a large-scale military invasion. A new social contract, aimed at implementing Ukraine's European and Euro-Atlantic integration on the basis of democratic values and institutions, is impossible without the active political participation of the middle class. This is precisely why the middle class needs full parliamentary representation. Methodology. Class analysis was used to examine the position of the middle class in the political space between the government and the opposition. This makes it possible to identify the different worldviews and values of large groups of people who occupy different social positions and whose interests are expressed in politics. In order to determine the need to redistribute public goods in favour of the middle class through parliamentary representation, the authors turn to the theory of economic democracy. The data from empirical sociological research on the high level of consolidation of the Ukrainian middle class during the war and the results of the middle class' choice in the 2014 and 2019 election campaigns are presented. According to the sociological research data, support for democracy is growing in Ukraine, and the middle class is opting for European and Euro-Atlantic integration. Results. According to objective indicators of income, education, employment and consumer behaviour, the middle class consists of residents of large cities who have (or are in the process of obtaining) higher education. Given the differences between the Ukrainian middle class and the middle class in democratic countries in terms of objective income levels, subjective indicators should also be used to determine it. The self-identification of the middle class is determined by the desire for democratic changes, the awareness of the need to overcome corruption, the deconstruction of the oligarchic regime and the introduction of market reforms. The middle class is a social group that is most interested in political and economic competition, because it is the middle class that benefits from democracy and the market economy. The lack of parliamentary representation of a large social group, the middle class, hinders the democratisation of Ukraine. The social weight of the middle class is constantly growing. It is proven that the fragmentary reforms in Ukraine after the events of 2004 and 2013-2014 were carried out by the oligarchic regime under the pressure of the middle class. At the same time, the constitutional reversals regarding the form of government (presidential and parliament-presidential), the changes in the electoral system (from a majority to a mixed system, the passage of the proportional model in the parliamentary elections of 2006 and 2007) can be explained by the manipulations of the oligarchy, which captured the parliament in order to prevent the middle class from coming to power. The factors that prevent the Ukrainian middle class from gaining parliamentary representation are identified: 1) Oligarchy, as a political regime of economic monopolists. The oligarchic forces have not only privatised the branches of the national economy, but have also created effective systems of political control over the parliament and the “oligarch-lumpen alliance”, which influences the political decisions of Ukrainian citizens with the help of the mass media and oligarchic parties (electoral projects); 2) the mediatisation of politics, caused by the monopoly of financial and industrial groups on television channels; 3) the formation of the “party of power” as an “internal” party, which retains its influence through the formation of a majority in the Ukrainian parliament; 4) the social pathologies of post-Soviet society (paternalism, ambivalence of mass consciousness, atomisation of society, conformism, nihilism, deprofessionalisation, deactualisation of universal democratic values, etc.). It was noted that during the war they were partially overcome in the public consciousness; 5) indoctrination in the educational system, which causes problems of manipulative distortion of collective memory, reproduction of “post-Soviet” identity and regimes of truth. Overcoming the mediatisation of politics, populism and indoctrination will contribute to the rationalisation of political interaction and the growth of the influence of the middle class. In the process of rationalisation of political interaction, the main role belongs to the middle class as a class of individuals who have completed secondary or higher education. This enables them to check facts on the basis of media literacy, to distinguish truth from lies, rational argumentation from populism. As part of the modern “new” middle class, public intellectuals are the first to play a role in the rationalisation of politics. Practical implications. The results of the study can be used in the process of further democratisation, European and Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine, as well as in the development of middle class political parties. They will contribute to increasing the weight of the middle class in politics and to raising the awareness of middle class representatives of the need for parliamentary representation. Overall, the authors hope that all the results of the study will contribute to the overcoming of the oligarchic regime in Ukraine and the establishment of a democratic system of redistribution of public resources. Value/оriginality. This study of the role of the middle class in Ukrainian politics allows for a better understanding of the need for parliamentary representation of the middle class. It also reveals the reasons for the dominance of the oligarchy. The focus is on the devastating consequences of this dominance for the middle class. The need to ensure the parliamentary representation of the middle class in order to overcome the oligarchy and further democratise Ukraine has been identified.
This paper explores the 'issue-oriented' perspective on public involvement in politics opened up by recent research in Science and Technology Studies (STS). This research proposes that public ...controversy around techno-scientific issues is dedicated to the articulation of these issues and their eventual accommodation in society. It does not, however, fully answer the question of why issue formation should be appreciated as a crucial dimension of democratic politics. To address this question, I turn to the work of two early 20th-century American pragmatists: John Dewey and Walter Lippmann. In their work on democracy in industrial society, they conceived of public involvement in politics as being occasioned by, and providing a way to settle, controversies that existing institutions were unable to resolve. Moreover, Dewey developed a 'socio-ontological' understanding of issues, which suggests that people's involvement in politics is mediated by problems that affect them. Dewey and Lippmann thus provide important argumentative resources for further elaborating the approach to public involvement developed in STS. STS research has also developed a 'socio-ontological' approach, as it focuses on the 'attachments' that people mobilize (and that mobilize people) in the performance of their concern with public affairs. Such an approach provides an alternative to discursivist analysis of the role of 'issue framing' in the involvement of publics in politics.
Social democracy demands existence of freedom, equality, justice and solidarity among masses. Doyens like John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx decrypted the social inequalities that ...deprived people of human rights. Dr B. R. Ambedkar, being the most influential figure vis-à-vis social democracy in Indian context, voiced the deprived status of Dalits. Inspired by John Dewey’s idea of social endosmosis, he concluded that education can help to dissolve the rigid boundaries of caste. He also vociferously advocated education for Dalits to erase the status quo of being a society’s underbelly and overcome the quotidian humiliations. Discourses on Dalits since then have converged to an infectious expansive debate on the concomitant subjugated status of Dalits in the Indian social structure. Many Dalits have procured agency through education and have been vociferously voicing the subjugated position of Dalits in the cultural apparatus of caste. Bama is one such educated Dalit woman who has laid bare through her writings the complexities existing in a Dalit’s life. Her autobiography invocates Dalits to empower themselves through education and transgress the rigid boundaries of caste. The article examines her vision of Dalits’ emancipation vis-à-vis Ambedkar’s notion of social democracy.
The purpose of the article is to determine the role of the middle class in political democracy and economic democracy in Ukraine. The role of the Ukrainian middle class in the revolutionary events of ...2004 and 2013-2014 – the Ukrainian Maidans, the influence of the middle class on the results of the parliamentary elections in Ukraine and its presentation in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine are noted. The pendulum-like oscillation of self-identification of the middle class between "service to the oligarchs" and "resistance to democracy," the basis of civil society, is noted. The emphasis is placed on the fact that democracy is the rule of the middle class, and the principle of equal freedom is at the core of economic democracy. The compromise between capitalism and democracy is the need to distribute the public good under the supervision of political democracy in the interests of the middle class. Methodology. The theory of economic democracy was used to study the essence and characteristics of the middle class in Ukraine. By means of sociological methods of empirical research middle class identification by indicators of income, education, labor (employment), consumer behavior is given. Differences of "European" middle class from Ukrainian middle class are marked. In connection with the fact that the level of income of the Ukrainian middle class does not correspond to the indicators of EU countries, the necessity of application of subjective indicators to determine self-identification of middle class representatives in Ukraine is substantiated. The definition of the middle class from the opposite, i.e., what the middle class is not (not the oligarchs, not the authorities, not the working class, etc.) is also applied. Results. The trajectories of the middle class in Ukraine have been defined – from active participation in the Ukrainian revolutions to the role of a servant of the oligarchic regime. The middle class is well positioned to establish a regime of political democracy and to oppose the oligarchic-lumpen alliance. What hinders this is the insufficient activity of the middle class during election campaigns and especially after them. The oligarchs' established monopoly in the economy and media space allows for effective election campaigns in the mass media and the financing of political parties. This nullifies attempts of the middle class to establish political democracy in Ukraine. The growing role of the new middle class – intellectuals and representatives of the creative industries – has been noted. The self-identification factors of the middle class include a sense of justice, responsibility for the future and the practice of democratic values. According to sociological research, representatives of the Ukrainian middle class strive for democratic changes, overcoming corruption, deconstruction of the oligarchic regime, and implementation of market reforms. They have higher education, are interested in art, go to restaurants, and can sometimes afford vacations abroad. The political parties that declared support for the middle class and defined it as a target group in the elections included the "Team of Winter Generation," "Veche," "Self Reliance", and "Voice". The first two were perceived as oligarchic projects, while the last two parties made it to parliament, respectively, in the eighth and ninth convocations. Separately, the 2019 elections, in which the voice of the middle class became truly powerful, are examined separately. The "old faces," representatives of the post-Soviet oligarchy, and bureaucrats lost in the majoritarian districts. The middle class refused to support those politicians and parties that had become "servants of the oligarchs" in parliament, taking an important step in building not only a political democracy, but also an economic democracy. Practical implications. The results of the study can be used in the process of European integration of Ukraine, the implementation of reforms to develop political democracy as the rule of the middle class and economic democracy as a democratic system of redistribution of public resources. Value/originality. This study of the middle class and economic democracy allows us to understand the economic factors that influence politics, the role of the middle class and its characteristics in the process of establishing political democracy and economic democracy in Ukraine.
PurposeThe paper examines the relationship between board effectiveness and audit fees for state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Furthermore, given the unique nature of SOEs, the paper assesses ...country-level influences, such as economic freedom, political democracy and protection of minority shareholders, which can impact board effectiveness and audit fees.Design/methodology/approachA combination of two-stage and ordinary least squares regression is used to examine the board characteristics-audit fee relationship for SOEs in a multinational setting during the period from 2016 to 2018.FindingsThe results indicate that board characteristics that represent a high level of effectiveness are associated with higher audit fees in SOEs. Furthermore, the findings suggest SOE's operating in countries evidencing medium levels of democracy and economic freedom and medium to high levels of protection of minority shareholders may be motivated to reduce agency conflicts by promoting accountability and transparency, thereby demanding increasing levels of corporate governance, monitoring and audit quality, thereby increasing audit fees.Practical implicationsThe results provide further support for the OECD (2015) guidelines promoting the use of high-quality external audits in SOEs.Originality/valueAs a result of the scarceness of research in this area, the current study extends the literature by examining the role of corporate governance and audit fees in SOEs, while examining the influence of economic freedom, political democracy and protection of minority shareholders.
Television has played a central role as a tool through which to imagine and re-imagine the South African nation, family and selfhood, and to 'fix' these same categories. From the apartheid state's ...blacking out of healthy everyday life images of black families, through the efforts of founding a 'new' nation using the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to modern day therapeutic talk shows, television has progressively placed less salience on the 'nation' and more on family and interpersonal relationships within this social unit. Self-disclosure on television, especially through a talk show significantly called Relate, ironically reveals and occludes legacies of class and racial differentiations with their attendant socio-economic imbalances. Talking about personal affect to 'fix' one's problems on national television emerges as an instrumental undertaking that appears to benefit guests to the show but perhaps not as much as it does the production company and South African Broadcasting Corporation, suggesting that the participants are being exploited. Be that as it may,
Relate
emerges as an exercise in the interiorization of control, as well as an invitation to undertake serious dialogue about interpersonal intimacy.
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