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This book explores how a candidate who broke with almost every single norm governing candidate behaviour, appeared to eschew the professionalised forms of campaigning, and who had been more or less disowned by Republican elites, prove victorious? The focus is on Trump and his campaign; the account does not go beyond the November election and its immediate aftermath. The book argues that the Trump campaign, like earlier populist insurgencies, can be explained in part by considering some defining features of US political culture and, in particular, attitudes towards government. It explains the right-wing populism that has been a recurrent and ingrained feature of the political process over a long period. The book discusses structural characteristics of the American state that appear to be of particular significance in shaping attitudes, as well as some other ideas and frames brought to the forefront by the Trump campaign during the course of 2015 and 2016. It also considers the shifts and swings amongst voters and suggests that these, alongside ideas about the state and the 'entrepreneurial' efforts of the campaign, form part of the explanation for Trump's eventual victory. The book assesses Trump's ascendancy as a function of, and reaction to, the strategies and discourses pursued in the years preceding 2016 by Republican Party elites. 'Trumpism' and European forms of populism are still in some ways weakly embedded but they may intensify the battles and processes of group competition between different constituencies.
another line of explanation. It assesses Trump's ascendancy as a function of, and reaction to, the strategies and discourses pursued in the years preceding 2016 by Republican Party elites. Arguably, Trump's victory was the product of a chain reaction. In other words, it may be that Republican elites, through the discourses that they adopted in pursuit of given electoral logics , set off particular sets of reactive sequences that culminated, over time, in the emergence of the Trump campaign. The concept of reactive sequences is a form of path dependence. Nonetheless
regional elites. Russia’s ‘federation’ without ‘federalism’ has simply allowed the authoritarianism of the centre to be replaced by local level authoritarianism. As we discussed in chapter 3 regional and republican elites have been able to adopt constitutions/charters and other laws which violate the federal constitution. And a number of the bilateral treaties signed between Moscow and the regions have sanctioned the transfer of unconstitutional rights and powers to the republics.1 Thus, authoritarian leaders have been able to use the federal system as a protective
did a candidate who broke with almost every single norm governing candidate behaviour, appeared to eschew the professionalised forms of campaigning that have been adopted in recent years, and who had been more or less disowned by Republican elites, prove victorious? This book seeks to answer that question. It argues that the Trump campaign, like earlier populist insurgencies, can be explained in part by considering some defining features of US political culture and, in particular, attitudes towards government. Having said that, ‘culture’ is a term that must
The spatial element in post-communist Russian politics is now a political fact, but the scope and nature of regional autonomy and initiative is far less clear. In the 1990s the old hyper-centralised Soviet state gave way to the fragmentation of political authority and contesting definitions of sovereignty. Under President Boris Yeltsin a complex and unstable balance was drawn between the claimed prerogatives of the centre and the normative and de facto powers of the regions. This book argues convincingly that Russia will never be able to create a viable democracy as long as authoritarian regimes are able to flourish in the regions. The main themes covered are democratisation at the regional level, and the problems faced by the federal states in forging viable democratic institutions in what is now a highly assymetrical Federation. The book presents a combination of thematic chapters with case studies of particular regions and republics. It takes into account the literature available on the 'new institutionalism' and outlines the importance of institutions in developing and maintaining democracy. The book discusses the importance of sovereignty, federalism and democratic order, and considers the distinct problems of party-building in Russia's regions. It considers electoral politics and the whole issue of regional politics and democratisation in five particular areas of Russia - Novgorod, the Komi Republic, Russia's Far East, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.
By expanding the geographical scope of the history of violence and war, this volume challenges both Western and state-centric narratives of the decline of violence and its relationship to modernity. It highlights instead similarities across early modernity in terms of representations, legitimations, applications of, and motivations for violence. It seeks to integrate methodologies of the study of violence into the history of war, thereby extending the historical significance of both fields of research. Thirteen case studies outline the myriad ways in which large-scale violence was understood and used by states and non-state actors throughout the early modern period across Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Atlantic, and Europe, demonstrating that it was far more complex than would be suggested by simple narratives of conquest and resistance. Moreover, key features of imperial violence apply equally to large-scale violence within societies. As the authors argue, violence was a continuum, ranging from small-scale, local actions to full-blown war. The latter was privileged legally and increasingly associated with states during early modernity, but its legitimacy was frequently contested and many of its violent forms, such as raiding and destruction of buildings and crops, could be found in activities not officially classed as war.
, combined with a relatively modern and competitive industrial structure, provided republican elites with an unusually rich pool of political resources upon which they could rely. These resources enabled them largely to 'opt out' of Russia's general tendency towards greater local democracy and set up an authoritarian regime within a more democratic environment. The chapter is structured in four parts. First, it analyses the process of political institution building in Bashkortostan in the 1990s. This part includes an overview of the formal structure of political
’. These were exposed in their most visible form during efforts by Tea Partiers to dislodge Republican incumbents, most notably the defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in June 2014. Having said that, the term ‘establishment’ (which was popularized by the movement and figures such as former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin) should be used with caution. There are certainly Republican elites. Some are based in particular institutional locations, most notably Congress or the different state legislatures. Others control funding or the campaigning and mobilizing resources
republicanism. They testify that, by 1875, the republican elite spanned the political, cultural and professional domains of French society: tout Paris was becoming republican. Twenty-four republican Deputies and five members of municipal or general councils were among the signatories. The presence of nine doctors (including society doctor Samuel Pozzi and the bridegroom’s colleague Paul Broca
cent of the average in Russia. 7 This shows the true value of the boastful statements of the leadership that in Tatarstan people are better off than in other areas of the Russian Federation. However, these data are not to be found in the official statements of the republican elites or in the mass media which supports them. It would be interesting to compare a few indicators of living standards in the Russian Federation as a whole, in the Republic of Tatarstan and in Samara Oblast. The latter is chosen for comparison on good grounds. In Soviet times it was usual to