New Perspectives最新文献

{"title":"Czech backlash against the GDPR: A small state’s mismatch between domestic and international priorities","authors":"Lucie Kadlecová, T. Weiss","doi":"10.1177/2336825X20954754","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825X20954754","url":null,"abstract":"This article is an exploratory study of the Czech response to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It employs the perspective of the small state literature to analyse the activities of a small European Union (EU) member state’s government that had to face a mismatch between its policy priorities and policy framing at the EU and domestic level. The article focuses on the arguably common situation of a small state’s government failing to shape a policy internationally and facing a backlash at home. On the basis of a qualitative study of primary and secondary sources as well as semi-structured interviews, the article explores how the Czech debate on GDPR prioritised the bureaucratic burden and costs resulting from the GDPR implementation over the need for privacy as an integral part of human dignity highlighted at the EU level. The article identifies two crucial factors as the basis of the popular backlash against GDPR in Czechia, the lack of prioritisation and the insufficient bureaucratic capacity. These two factors, widely identified in the literature as factors influencing small states’ performance, contributed to the Czech inability to shape GDPR at the European level, as well as the lacking information campaign and implementation domestically.","PeriodicalId":42556,"journal":{"name":"New Perspectives","volume":"52 1","pages":"7 - 22"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86365496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A country for old men: The pitfalls of conservative political analysis during crises","authors":"A. Reshetnikov","doi":"10.1177/2336825X20954733","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825X20954733","url":null,"abstract":"I would like to start this reply to the latest forecast by the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) with a small literary digression. Besides its poetic beauty, Y. B. Yeats’ ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ became one of the poet’s most lauded works for managing to express his acute reflexivity about the problem of aging. Observing the world around him, Yeats’ character understood with astounding clarity that it no longer belonged to him. Moved by this realization, he decided to set off to a different realm, a metaphysical world of immortal culture and spirituality, poetically represented as Byzantium. This critical reflexivity about the fragility and finitude of one’s earthly life indeed secured Yeats a place among his fellow literary classics in ‘the artifice of eternity’ (Yeats, 2004 [1928]: 2). In the IMEMO forecast, Dynkin et al., unlike Yeats, but like many pro-Kremlin spokespeople, tend to reproduce a somewhat fossilized and unreflective paradigm of political prognosis that hampers critical perception. Arguably, this analytical stance is a poor fit for the contemporary world, a reality that the authors dub ‘negative certainty’. The main reason for this misfit is that IMEMO adopts a discursive position of a ‘stereotypical old-timer’ who is attempting to talk to and educate a ‘stereotypical youth’. While trying to do so, however, the old-timer steps into territory","PeriodicalId":42556,"journal":{"name":"New Perspectives","volume":"72 1","pages":"474 - 480"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78976827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The COVID-19 pandemic: Global socio-economic and geopolitical implications","authors":"D. Sagramoso","doi":"10.1177/2336825X20955132","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825X20955132","url":null,"abstract":"As the contours of the ‘living-with-COVID’ world define themselves, it is becoming increasingly clear that several of the trends predicted by the IMEMO 2020 report are actually materialising. In their work, IMEMO scholars highlight a variety of tendencies in the realm of international relations and domestic affairs, which first appeared in previous years but are now reinforcing themselves in 2020, due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic. These include uncertain socio-economic futures, political upheavals, increased societal tensions and a rise in global protest movements. In the specific sphere of international relations, the IMEMO report correctly highlights the rising geopolitical tensions, the heightened competition between powerful states, the growing pressures on international institutions, as well as a ‘general trend towards re-nationalisation’ of politics. Reference is also made in the report to the loss of appeal of the liberal-internationalist and globalist paradigm, both in international affairs and in the realm of domestic governance. The current article takes a closer look at these various trends, within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, in order better to understand their global implications and assess their impact on developments in Russia. To examine the topic more effectively, the article clusters the trends identified by the IMEMO report into three specific areas of analysis – firstly, the post-COVID-19 global economic outlook and its social implications, both globally and inside Russia; secondly, the future of the international trade and strategic security regimes; and lastly, the new geostrategic confrontation between the United States and China, and Russia’s place in it. It concludes, as do IMEMO scholars, that the global outlook for international cooperation and multilateralism remains rather bleak. Yet, it nevertheless argues that certain positive developments can be discerned, which could provide some basis for hope.","PeriodicalId":42556,"journal":{"name":"New Perspectives","volume":"144 1","pages":"462 - 473"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77591332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pandemic projections from Moscow: The status quo reinvisioned (but not quite enough)","authors":"M. Kimmage","doi":"10.1177/2336825x20955129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825x20955129","url":null,"abstract":"Written in the shadow of the COVID crisis that began late in 2019 and has transformed international politics in 2020, the IMEMO’s 2020 Forecast furnishes valuable insight into global affairs and into the strategic agenda as it is being set in Moscow. It does an admirable job of integrating a global pandemic, which is wreaking havoc in real time, into longer term projections about global order. Where it concerns issues of public health and political upheaval, the Forecast is persuasive: it alleges a widening gap between political elites (in many countries) and the populations they are trying to govern. The Forecast misses a few important political trends, however. Of these, the most important is an accelerating consolidation of the post-Brexit European Union (EU). Should this continue, transatlantic relations could deepen, whereas Russia and China might find themselves confronting new challenges. If anything, the IMEMO Forecast does not stray far enough—intellectually—from the pre-COVID status quo. The Forecast assumes little change in Russia-EU relations, almost no change in US-Russian relations and closer linking together of Russia and China. It does not emphasize Russian agency in any of these three areas but instead roots the international situation in slow-moving structural processes: the alignment of interests between Russia and China, the possibility of an incipient ‘‘pragmatism’’ in the Kremlin’s relationship with Europe (broadly construed), and an intractable parting of the ways between the United States and Russia. The COVID crisis is understood, in this Forecast, as an impetus to trends that were apparent in 2019 and before. Some speculation is offered about ‘‘black swans’’—in particular those that might arise from global warming—and the stress these would put on the political order around the globe. In many different regions, the Forecast envisions elites struggling to hang on and a restless, younger generation eager to make its claim on political power.","PeriodicalId":42556,"journal":{"name":"New Perspectives","volume":"9 1","pages":"491 - 494"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88218648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Finding the roots of neo-traditionalist populism in Poland: ‘Cultural displacement’ and European integration","authors":"F. Melito","doi":"10.1177/2336825X20954756","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825X20954756","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the roots of populism in Poland in its current traditionalist-conservative fashion. In contrast with the liberal hegemony and, more specifically, with its ‘true European values’, right-wing populists in Poland claim to speak in the name of those people who refuse this external system of values and who experienced a ‘cultural displacement’. The article examines whether the consensual process of European Union (EU) integration has created room for a populist moment. Particular emphasis is given to the importance of culture in the construction of an alternative neo-traditionalist project. While the post-structuralist literature on populism has mostly focused on Western Europe and socio-economic demands, the concept of neo-traditionalism reveals the confrontation between two different blocs also in Central-Eastern Europe. The author analyses the neo-traditionalist discourse in Poland, most notably produced by the conservative party Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS), as a counter-hegemonic project. Opposing mainstream EU values, PiS appealed to ‘ordinary Poles’ and adopted a traditionalist-conservative narrative. The article will show how the neglect of a neo-traditionalist world view by the European elite and the threat to identity posed by liberal and individualistic values have been exploited by right-wing populists to forge a new common sense.","PeriodicalId":42556,"journal":{"name":"New Perspectives","volume":"9 1","pages":"23 - 44"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89705176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Between a liberal and a hard place: Russia and global ideological competition","authors":"Elizaveta Gaufman","doi":"10.1177/2336825X20954744","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825X20954744","url":null,"abstract":"The National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IMEMO) report points out that the world would experience an ‘‘increasing competition between states in the economic, military and ideological spheres’’ (emphasis added). Even though on the face of it, this passage might sound as a phrase from the Cold War era, the ideological competition around the world (Adamson, 2005) is intensifying with historical levels of polarization (Somer and McCoy, 2018). Russia occupies in this regard a favorable position as it may seem attractive to diverging ideological fractions: from different segments of conservative movement around the world, such as White nationalists who see Russia as ‘‘the last White country’’ to Christian fundamentalists who mistakenly assume that Russia has a homogenous Orthodox population; from opponents of perceived American hegemony to quasiliberal Western public intellectuals and politicians who depend on Russia to perpetuate their Orientalist and civilizationalist narratives (Ragozin, 2020). In other words, Russia as a country has become a simulacrum in the global ideological competition that reflects the preexisting biases of diverse ideologues. While the multipolarity thesis has been firmly established in Russian foreign policy doctrines, several underlying philosophical questions are a subject of fierce debate in what is left of the Russian public sphere. Notions of ‘‘new ethics,’’ ‘‘cancel culture,’’ #metoo, Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, debates on liberalism, political correctness, and feminism have become staples in Russia as well. While the ideological competition is not limited to the West-centered debates and Russia is, in fact, pursuing closer relationships with countries like China and India, as the IMEMO report points out, ideologically, it is unlikely to embrace non-Western thought and ideology such as Hindutva (Thobani, 2019) even though it does have some ideological resonances with Russian conservative thought. Hence, this essay will concentrate on the way Russian society engages with Western ideological debates.","PeriodicalId":42556,"journal":{"name":"New Perspectives","volume":"13 1","pages":"481 - 485"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88391275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Eppur si muove: Realism in the age of pandemic","authors":"Ruth Deyermond","doi":"10.1177/2336825X20955128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825X20955128","url":null,"abstract":"The IMEMO forecast provides, as always, an invaluable Russian perspective on global affairs for Western scholars. Previous iterations have highlighted the clear and widening difference between mainstream Russian International Relations (IR) scholarship and comparable Western analysis of the same issues. One of the most useful aspects of the forecast and response hosted by New Perspectives is that it generates a scholarly and mutually respectful engagement with these differences in a way that rarely happens elsewhere and which has now been made still more difficult by the current pandemic. The current forecast is, inevitably, different from its predecessors because of the global health emergency. Yet what is striking here is not the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic has overturned previous assumptions, but the extent to which it has not. The most acute challenges to security and to political and economic stability which are so clearly laid out in the forecast are not the traditional threats considered in realist scholarship, they are issues that realism has traditionally discounted. Nevertheless, the forecast holds tightly to the realist approach that has shaped its assessments in the past. This is profoundly problematic for the assessment of the world in the immediate and medium term because realism does not provide a framework for making sense of the problems now confronting individuals, communities and states.","PeriodicalId":42556,"journal":{"name":"New Perspectives","volume":"72 1","pages":"486 - 490"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85592616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Managing geopolitical competition in the strategic domains","authors":"F. Rose","doi":"10.1177/2336825X20934976","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825X20934976","url":null,"abstract":"In this presentation, I will seek to accomplish three primary objectives. First, I will address the reasons as to why the current US-Russia strategic stability framework is collapsing. Second, I will discuss how emerging technologies like cyber, space, and hypersonic weapons are impacting strategic stability calculations. And, finally, I will make specific recommendations on how to manage competition in the strategic domains with the objective of reducing the risks of miscalculation and nuclear use.","PeriodicalId":42556,"journal":{"name":"New Perspectives","volume":"154 1","pages":"298 - 304"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85320198","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘Patriot’ games? Visions of a post-liberal international order and how to keep peace","authors":"Johanna Sumuvuori","doi":"10.1177/2336825X20956487","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825X20956487","url":null,"abstract":"Declaring the so-called Liberal International Order, and Multilateralism in general, obsolete has become fashionable after the Russian invasion of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine in 2014. Among others, Russian and American leaders have emphasized competition and the uncompromising quest for the national interest as the basic and natural elements of inter-state relations. This worldview is reflected within societies throughout the world in populist nationalist movements and smacks of ‘strongman politics’ with its undertones of toxic masculinity, in which the only check against outright conflict is the balance of power.This worldview is, clearly, bad news for small states. Alternatives such as Xi Jinping’s ‘Community for the Shared Future of Mankind’ would also, at closer look, seem to refer back to the primacy of national sovereignty – in this case that of one particular state, China. Instead, small states with open economies such as Finland would prioritize strengthening multilateral cooperation and the rules-based international order. Adapting the present international order rather than abandoning it wholesale is key to overcoming these challenges. That adaptation should be driven by a constructive critique of the current state of affairs. But we also need to look critically at the ‘brave new worlds’ that populists and strongmen are promoting. An international order based on the balance of power and a search for absolute national sovereignty will rob us of the ability to overcome global threats as well as to seize opportunities provided by global civil society activism and scientific innovations.","PeriodicalId":42556,"journal":{"name":"New Perspectives","volume":"202 1","pages":"275 - 279"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72840122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"(No) future music?","authors":"S. Reynolds","doi":"10.1177/2336825x20934993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825x20934993","url":null,"abstract":"One of the many memorable memes and thought slogans associated with the late theorist Mark Fisher is “the slow cancellation of the future.” What does this evocative and melancholy phrase signify? In this talk Fisher’s blogging comrade and Retromania author Simon Reynolds reexamines the belief that the 21st century so far has been a Zeit without a Geist: an atemporal time of replicas, reenactments, reissues, revivals, and other syndromes of cultural recycling that put the “past” into pastiche. Are there reasons to be cheerful about music and pop culture as the 2010s limp to the finish line, if not so sanguine about politics or the environment? If society is deadlocked or, worse, heading in reverse, can we even expect music to surge forward like it once did?","PeriodicalId":42556,"journal":{"name":"New Perspectives","volume":"4 1","pages":"305 - 313"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85512865","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}