Author: Brent J. Steele
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000885771
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
This book explores contemporary populist politics through the lens of ontological security theory. It shows that the 'divisionary politics of populism' is fostered by narratives of crisis and insecurity surrounding the imagined Self that gives shape to 'the people' that populism claims to represent. The loss of faith in mainstream political parties and moderate electoral candidates seems characteristic of the Zeitgeist in much of the Western world and beyond. Politicians and agendas propped up by a discourse that antagonizes established political elites on behalf of a reified, and homogenized people has become a trend in the politics of several countries. This book has brought together a team of worldwide renowned specialists on ontological security to grapple with the contemporary populist challenge through the conceptual lens of ontological security theory. From crises of democracy in the West, to backlashes against democratization in the Global South, this collection not only unveils fundamental structures underpinning these significant and current phenomena. It also provides us with the analytical tools to understand other occurrences of populist politics that are gaining traction across the globe. This book will be of great interest to upper-level students, researchers, and academics in Politics, International Relations and Security. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Cambridge Review of International Affairs.
Author: Brent J. Steele
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415632692
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
In this innovative new work, Steele shows how we might recognize how an alternative form of accountability in global politics has been present for some time, and that, furthermore, this form's continued presence remains one of the most politically powerful, if not endurable, possibilities for resistance in the near future.
Author: Bahar Rumelili
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317750160
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221
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Book Description
This volume highlights the ways in which the prospect of peace can generate anxieties and consequently set in motion social and political processes that reproduce and reactivate conflicts. In analysing this issue, the volume builds on the notion of ontological security and its recent applications to international relations theory. Although conflicts threaten the physical security of the parties involved, they also help settle existential questions about basic parameters of life, being, and identity, and thus over time become sources of ontological security. The prospect of peace, through the resolution or transformation of conflict, threatens to unsettle the stability and consistency of self-narratives, and their associated routines and habits at the individual, group, and state levels. The contributors argue two key points: 1) that ontological insecurity may set in motion political and social processes that reproduce and reactivate conflicts; 2) that coping with peace anxieties necessitates the formulation of alternative self-narratives at the individual, societal, and state levels that re-situate the Self in relation to Other and to the world at large. Consequently, the book analyses the ways in which, and the conditions under which, conflict resolution induces ontological insecurity, and the different ways in which ontological insecurity has prevented the successful culmination of peace processes in different conflict contexts, including Cyprus, Israel-Palestine and Northern Ireland. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, conflict resolution, peace and conflict studies, social theory and IR in general.
Author: Georg Löfflmann
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040000827
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
This book demonstrates how populist security narratives served as the driving force behind the mobilization of Republican voters and the legitimation of an ‘America First’ policy agenda under the Trump presidency. Going beyond existing research on both populism and security narratives, the author links insights from political psychology on collective narcissism, blame attribution and emotionalization with research in political communication on narrative and framing to explore the political and societal impact of a populist security imaginary. Drawing on a comprehensive range of sources including key interviews, campaign and policy speeches, presidential addresses, and posts on social media, it shows how progressives, political opponents, immigrants, racial justice activists, and key institutions of liberal democracy collectively became an internal Other, delegitimated as ‘enemies of the people’. Developing an innovative conceptual-analytical framework of nationalist populism that expands on established concepts of political identity and ontological security, the book will appeal to students of critical security studies, critical constructivist approaches in International Relations, and US politics.
Author: Thorsten Wojczewski
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031168488
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
Populism has lately experienced a meteoric rise to become one of the most widely used terms in academic and wider public discourses and a supposedly defining feature of both domestic and world politics. Situated at the intersection of International Relations (IR), Political Theory and Comparative Politics, this book makes a critical intervention into the burgeoning IR scholarship on populism and problematizes the often hyperbolic and sweeping usage of the term as a general descriptor for non-centrist politics of different persuasions. The book seeks to move into a different theoretical direction and broaden the empirical focus of existing IR research. Theoretically, it bridges the gap between theories of populism and IR by bringing the Laclauian, discursive approach and IR poststructuralism together in a theoretical framework. The proposed framework moves away from the search for the policy preferences and impact of populism, and instead conceptualizes foreign policy and world politics as potential sites for practicing populism, ranging from the articulation of societal grievances to the construction of populist identities such as ‘the people’. Empirically, the book takes IR scholarship beyond the predominant focus on the populist radical right and single-country and -region studies. Building on the discourse analysis of an original data set, it offers a comparative analysis of right-wing and left-wing populist discourses in different world regions as well as populist cross-border collaboration and identity construction.
Author: Catarina Kinnvall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113413570X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 239
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Book Description
This book develops an interesting angle on a recognised issue of concern not just in the politics of South Asia, but much more broadly in the context of the contemporary world and developing global politics It explores the key contemporary issue of religious nationalism using a new approach: based on political psychology It will appeal to scholars and students of political sciences, IR, sociology, religious studies and social psychology as well as to those interested specifically in Indian politics
Author: Pippa Norris
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108444422
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 564
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Book Description
Authoritarian populist parties have advanced in many countries, and entered government in states as diverse as Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Switzerland. Even small parties can still shift the policy agenda, as demonstrated by UKIP's role in catalyzing Brexit. Drawing on new evidence, this book advances a general theory why the silent revolution in values triggered a backlash fuelling support for authoritarian-populist parties and leaders in the US and Europe. The conclusion highlights the dangers of this development and what could be done to mitigate the risks to liberal democracy.
Author: Regina Karp
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040153399
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 137
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Book Description
This book addresses a central puzzle in ontological security theory, namely the relationship between identity continuity and change, and the role anxiety plays in fostering and inhibiting change. The work argues for a more nuanced perspective on how change and threats to national identity relate, thus advancing our understanding of the role anxiety plays in shaping state choices. The case studies of Sweden and Germany show that national identity can experience highly disruptive challenges when the external security environment changes. According to extant ontological security theory, these structural challenges should lead to heightened anxiety and identity crises as national narratives become unstable and fragile. Instead, empirical evidence shows that states turn ontological anxiety into strategies of anxiety abatement, management, and ontological innovation. The evidence also reveals that states go to extraordinary lengths to maintain existing narratives, discursively maneuvring between the twin needs of biographical continuity and responsiveness to change. In their efforts to adapt and preserve identity, states embrace ontological ambiguity; they neither fully respond to change, nor do they ignore it. Rather, they strive for discursive innovation where new interpretations of how to be are balanced with new interpretations of the meaning of necessary change. In the process, ontological ambiguity becomes the new normal. These findings suggest that Sweden and Germany may not be outliers, and that being and becoming is an inherent feature of social life all state actors must engage with. This book will be of interest to students of security studies, European politics, foreign policy, and international relations.
Author: Brent J. Steele
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113598008X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
The central assertion of this book is that states pursue social actions to serve self-identity needs, even when these actions compromise their physical existence. Three forms of social action, sometimes referred to as ‘motives’ of state behaviour (moral, humanitarian, and honour-driven) are analyzed here through an ontological security approach. Brent J. Steele develops an account of social action which interprets these behaviours as fulfilling a nation-state's drive to secure self-identity through time. The anxiety which consumes all social agents motivates them to secure their sense of being, and thus he posits that transformational possibilities exist in the ‘Self’ of a nation-state. The volume consequently both challenges and complements realist, liberal, constructivist and post-structural accounts to international politics. Using ontological security to interpret three cases - British neutrality during the American Civil War (1861-1865), Belgium’s decision to fight Germany in 1914, and NATO’s (1999) Kosovo intervention - the book concludes by discussing the importance for self-interrogation in both the study and practice of international relations. Ontological Security in International Relations will be of particular interest to students and researchers of international politics, international ethics, international relations and security studies.
Author: Juliet Kaarbo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198843062
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 801
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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis provides an inclusive and forward-looking assessment of this subfield. Edited and written by a team of word-class scholars, it sets the agenda for future research in FPA and in IR.
