Journal articles on the topic 'Former Yugoslav republics – Politics and government'

AbstractDuring the process of the dissolution of countries, there exist multiple critical junctures that lead to the partition of the territory, where the different groups cannot find a consensus on who rules and how to organize the government. The outcome of these crossroad decisions and political dynamics, who are often set-up centuries ago, either lead to conflict or relative peace between the nations and peoples who express opprobrium towards each other. The most recent cases of the divorce of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia have many similitudes and are therefore appropriate to attempt to theoretically analyze the essential difference between these two types of partitions. The Yugoslav situation led to War between the nations of Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia and Serbia, with an estimated 140,000 citizens of the former Yugoslav Republics killed, while the Czechoslovak case led to an innocuous settlement of differences and the creation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, who joined the European Union ten years later and saw zero casualties.It is worthwhile to study the relationship between the dissolution of states and conflict using the Czechoslovak and Yugoslav cases for three main reasons. First, the similitude of the two instances enables one to identify variables that bring the outcome of having either peaceful relations or conflict between divorcing nations. Second, it is possible to compare the opposing disposition of variables with other countries that faced dissolution at one moment in history. Third, the sources and research for the two events are extensive, but very seldom put into conflict, since the causes for dissolution in both instances seem patent and explicit, contrasting significantly in scope and depth. This paper may be an occasion to disprove the notion that unworkable forces were at play here and demonstrate that the situation could have skewed in either direction, even though those structural forces are what lay the groundwork of the situation devolving into conflict.

Yugoslavia, once an advanced country in market reforms, was one of the least transformed countries in Eastern Europe in the nineties. Such a situation was caused by the civil war, policy of the Milosevic?s regime and international sanctions. The resistance of the ruling conservative forces made it impossible to establish an adequate reform policy. Thus, the transition stopped short halfway. The situation has radically changed only since the autumn of 2000, after Milosevic?s downfall, when after the gradual lifting of international isolation, economic and political reforms were given a new stimulus, and the country could start the process of European integration. This article is an attempt to give an overview of the transition of the Yugoslav economy in the last ten years or so. The growth rate of Yugoslavia?s GDP is compared not only with that of its neighbouring countries, i.e. other former socialist countries of South-Eastern Europe (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Romania) but also with that of other transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe, including the Commonwealth of Independent States. A particular attention is given to the role of research and development (R&D) in Yugoslavia in the nineties as compared to Croatia, Slovenia, and the United States. The structural changes in the Yugoslav economy during the past decade are analysed together with property relations as well as the issues concerning small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). At the sectoral level, it is the performance of manufacturing and agriculture that is separately explored. In relation to this, wage formation and relative wage levels in Yugoslavia?s manufacturing are viewed regarding the country?s international competitiveness and wider characteristics of globalising world economy. In analysing the role of external sources in the Yugoslav economy, the problems of foreign trade, external indebtedness, and attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI) are emphasized together with the economic assistance rendered to the FRY by the European Union. Regarding the important indicator of openness, i.e. the share of exports and imports in GDP, a comparison is made between Yugoslavia, on one hand, and Croatia, Slovenia, the European Union, and the United States, on the other. The economic policy of Milosevic?s regime is contrasted with that of the new democratic government that came to power after the events in October 2000. Stabilisation, liberalisation, privatisation, and institutional reform are considered giving particular attention to the experience of the member republics of the Yugoslav federation: Serbia and Montenegro. The author comes to the following conclusions: in transition countries stabilisation, liberalisation, and privatisation cannot be successful without carrying out a comprehensive, deep reform of the system of political institutions that along with creation of conditions for establishment of democracy and its strengthening also enables building of a modern and efficient market economy. This complicated and often contradictory process could come across serious obstacles if the old state and party nomenclature in power retains the command economy without planning, and under demagogical, nationalistic, and populist slogans gets involved in wars even taking the risks of being put under international isolation. However, such an outdated economic system characterised by autarchy can only temporarily exist and hinder the unravelling of market reforms in the epoch of globalisation.

Although, 30-years ago, there was a limited number of computer networks and computers in the former Yugoslavia, as well as worldwide, they were used by academia and the elites, who had enough knowledge and access to computers and to modems. Their views on the political situation, which have been preserved in the digital world, may give valuable insight into events, and, notably, about how these elites perceived/participated in the collapse of the State, and how the public in different Yugoslavian republics articulated their views. The main problem relating to this kind of approach was the limited resources that were available, as the majority of the digital documents have been lost forever, so studying this topic through the use of pre-web digital documents looked more like digital archeology, and less like historical/textual analysis. This paper was written based on two case studies: the bulletin board systems (BBS) Sezam BBS, and the e-mail distribution list Pisma Bralcev, and how they were used to report on the Yugoslav People's Army’s attacks on Dubrovnik and Vukovar in Fall, 1991. In the first case, the study examines ‘Sezam BBS’, which was based in Belgrade and was used by Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian academics, politicians and journalists, and was, at the time, the most popular forum open to the public, and was under no government control. The second case was the email distribution list, Pisma Bralcev, which was run by Slovenian academics and was used for the distribution of news abroad. The data for analysis was collected through archival research on original discussions, e-mails, reports, etc. The main findings show that the bulletin board systems, discussion groups and e-mail enabled the first forums for the exchange of opposing ideas, and they became places in which the Yugoslavian elite could be informed beyond the information that was given by the mass media and politically controlled sources.

Abstract This paper investigates the empirical relationship between corruption, economic growth, and government spending in fourteen transitioning economies from 1995-2013. We find strong evidence of bilateral Granger causation between economic growth and corruption for the full sample but weaker evidence of such a relationship for four former Yugoslav republics. We also find bilateral Granger causality between government spending and corruption but a weaker unidirectional Granger causality from government spending to corruption in four former Yugoslav republics. Our results recommend caution when assuming that corruption is purely exogenous in empirical models.

This article examines debates between Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia concerning the post-Second World War Balkan borders in preparation for the Paris Peace Conference of 1946. While for most of the twentieth century Greece and Yugoslavia were close allies united in their position against revisionist Bulgaria, after 1944 the communist affiliations of the new Bulgarian and Yugoslav governments determined the rapprochement between the latter two states. As various proposals for border revisions and the possibility of a Balkan Federation were discussed, the Balkans became a prime battlefield in the emerging Cold War split between the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States. By examining a period of extreme political fluidity between 1944 and 1947, this article explores how the legacy of long-standing national tensions combined with the new political realities after the Second World War created the current borders of Bulgaria, Greece and the (former Yugoslav) Republic of Macedonia.

The Republic of Slovenia is a multinational state that appeared on the political map of Central and Eastern Europe as a result of disintegrating processes in socialist Yugoslavia. The problems of national minorities have been further deteriorated at the end of the SFRY existence, despite the fact that the Yugoslav leaders tended minority issues. National relations in modern Slovenia are a legacy of the socialist period. Italians and Hungarians are only two of national minorities in the republic who exercise their constitutional rights and guarantees. The Slovenian Constitution defines these minorities as autochthonous (historical). The article offers an analysis of situation and political activity of the autochthonous minorities in Slovenia using the example of the Italian community. Despite the fact that Slovenian Italians enjoy broad powers of autonomy in education, language, and they are actively involved in the political life of the state, there are still a number of unresolved problems of the coexistence of the Italian minority and the Slovenian majority, which are common to both autochthonous minorities and largely concern all other national communities of the Republic of Slovenia. The resettlement of Italians on the territory of Slovenia is characterized by compactness, which positively influenced the processes of consolidation of the minority in the matter of protecting their constitutional rights and guarantees. In the article, the author reasoned conclusion that Slovenian society has always been marked by a high level of xenophobia, also developed on the basis of the consequences of disintegration processes in socialist Yugoslavia. The concept of autochtonomism has become a kind of society response to the threat of external migration, and, according to the official Ljubljana, poses a danger to the titular nation and language. The Italians and Hungarians, in the minds of the Slovenes and the Slovenian government, are the lesser evil compared to the so-called unconstitutional minorities - immigrants from the former SFRY.

Although the quasi-confederal character of Yugoslavia, especially after the introduction of its 1974 constitution did not encourage the development of a genuine Yugoslavian public sphere wherepublic debate could transcend ethnic and republic divisions, it nevertheless allowed the formation of what could be called Yugoslav cultural space, a space within which social and political actors (feminist, peace movements) forged their identities regardless of the ethnic or national diversity that characterised their membership. However, the existence of this 'space' had a limited impact in Yugoslav politics partly due to the breakdown of inter-republic communication and the fragmentation of the Yugoslavian mass media. This paper traces the process of disintegration of the Yugoslav cultural space and the emergence of national 'public spheres' in the republics and provinces of former Yugoslavia and attempts to assess the role of the mass media and cultural institutions in these developments by identifying the key strategies of representation employed in the process of the fragmentation and 'nationalisation' of the public sphere of former Yugoslavia.

In the months between the Italian armistice (September 1943) and the end of the war (May 1945), Italy became the destination of a large group of Yugoslav exiles who, in various ways, opposed Tito and the Socialist and Federal Republic in the process of being formed. These exiles, divided by nationality and political affiliation (ranging from exponents of the resistance linked to the government in exile in London to the most radical collaborators with the Nazis), were united by their staunch anti-communism. Carefully observed by both the Italian secret services and the Allied military government, with the approach of the Cold War this Yugoslav ?refractory community? was increasingly used as a centre of propaganda and in part also of information by the West. After the Tito-Stalin split, this function was reduced, and the community waited for new developments that would only appear forty years later with the dissolution of the disdained Federal and Socialist Republic. This essay is an integral part of research based on the archives of the Italian Military Intelligence Service (SIM) kept at the Historical Office of the Italian Army General Staff in Rome, in the fonds of the Confidential Affairs of the General Directorate of Public Security of the Italian Ministry of the Interior and in the ?Affari Politici - Jugoslavia? collections of the Historical-Diplomatic Archive of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The research is still in progress and aims to create a map of the Yugoslav anti-communist community in Italy from the end of the Second World War until the dissolution of the Federal Republic between 1989 and 1992.

The downfall of communist Yugoslavia and the democratization process that followed at the end of the 1980s have led to the fragmentation of the country, which was accompanied by several wars of different intensity and duration (1991–1999). From the ashes of what once was the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia raised six independent states: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia. The situation relating to the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, after its unilateral declaration of independence at the beginning of 2008, and subsequent recognition by parts of the international community, remains unclear. Slovenia is already in the EU, while the rest of the former Yugoslav republics, within the framework of the Stabilization and Association Process of the European Union, have the status of EU Candidate or Potential Candidate countries and are slowly moving towards EU membership.

Beyond the mainstream conflict in former Yugoslavia, an incomplete research ‎exists on the micro-military ethnic alliances and micro-conflicts on the local‎ and regional levels particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The article attempts ‎to fill this knowledge gap through the examination of the theoretical frameworks, ‎instrumentalism and primordialism as the two most frequently used ‎frameworks in explaining the Yugoslav disintegration. In terms of instrumentalism, ‎the article expands on the overreaching assumptions on the account of ‎elitist capacity to instrumentilize ethnic violence in multiethnic societies. Article ‎adds to the existing literature that instrumentalism can and often does ‎inadvertently neglect identifying instances where the elitist’s instrumentalisation ‎of the masses did not materialize. Conversely, primordialism an approach ‎that fell out of favor and an unfit framework in regards to Yugoslav dissolution,‎ was substantially and eagerly applied as an explanans, particularly in the first ‎stages of the war. In principle, the primordialism erroneously characterized the‎Yugoslav dissolution as the ancient ethnic grievances coming to the surface in ‎the absence of strong central government and the primordialist never bothered‎ to further that analysis. Hence, this article will go beyond the basic primordialist‎assumption, it confirms that primordialism, the genetically based‎ argument, cannot adequately tackle conflicts in multiethnic societies as seen ‎in Yugoslavia however, and omitted from the literature, the article posits that ‎the approach has an inexplicably staunch and protracting capacity to linger and ‎spread through the pores of society as a mechanism often utilized by nationalists ‎elites to manipulate and sustain their radical views. This capacity in principle‎ effectively protracts hostilities as attested in all former Yugoslav republics.‎

This article is devoted to a critical comparative-legal analysis of the process of formation, development, transformation and disintegration of the first multinational political-territorial entity with a republican form of government of the “Soviet” type, which over time has become a clear example for such complex European states as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. This theme is unique not only in terms of solving the ethnic issue, but also as the “model” of territorial structure since the basis of one federation, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, formed another federation, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, which integrated, along with traditional administrative units, national political-territorial entities in the form of autonomous republics, regions, and districts. The article emphasizes the fact that one of the consequences of the appearance on the political map of the Soviet Union, which defeated Nazi Germany and its numerous satellites in World War II, was not only the formation of “popular democracy” countries and the so-called “socialist camp” that existed for over forty years and represented a civilizational alternative to the capitalist path of social development, but also the collapse of the colonial system and acquisition of independence and sovereignty by the peoples inhabiting the regions of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The Soviet model of the state structure and democracy institutions as antipodes to bourgeois populism and liberal demagogy facilitated an accelerated transition from declarations of constituent and constitutional documents proclaiming human and civil rights and freedoms to their practical implementation in the economic and political sphere in countries that had associated themselves with Western-style democracy; it resulted in a more socially oriented role of state and its structures. The Soviet experience clearly demonstrates what real results the state and society can achieve in solving the women's issue, elimination of total illiteracy, and growth of the well-being of citizens. At the same time, manifestations of authoritarianism and totalitarianism that took place at certain stages reveal that the power mechanism was subject not only to voluntaristic tendencies or official personification, but also to relapses into a personality cult, one of the most negative consequences of state disintegration and local civil wars within its former territory.

Political theater is a trend that, during the avant-garde 1920s, emerged at the intersection of efforts to liberate artistic forms and oppressed groups in society. It was an influence on Slovenian theatrical artists at the Workers’ Stage (Delavski oder) already in the interwar period. A trend towards ‘political theater’, one of the tendencies of politicized performing arts in the period, flourished in Slovenia and other republics of the former Yugoslavia in the 1980s. Against the background of an identity crisis of the Yugoslav state and its ideology, political theater addressed great stories of History and the Revolution in a post-avant-garde manner. During the transition, political theater initially lost its edge but was reborn in the 21st century. As a post-dramatic practice associated with performance, it now parses its own politics. It is a forum for critiquing small, local stories that nonetheless evince the contradictions of a peripheral nation-state in the era of transnational late capitalism.

The position and role of the head of state are crucial for determining whether a system of government can be determined as a parliamentary or semi-presidential one. In the five states of the former Yugoslavia, the established systems of government, although in principle parliamentary, contain a mixture of elements of these two systems. In addition to direct election, which is common to all these five states, proximity to one or the other system is determined by the scope and content of the powers of the head of state, and his position in relation to parliament and government. In that respect, analyzed systems postion themselfs in different places between those two systems. However, constitutional solutions in countries that go beyond the parliamentary system, yet do not reach the semi-presidential system, do not always correspond to the real role of the head of state, which is especially contributed by his (non) party character, numerous political factors, and areas of shared competencies and powers.

Parliament is the body of legislative power and, along with the government and the head of state, it plays the most important role in the state. The article concerns the analysis of the parliamentary institutions in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, i.e. Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia, the Republic of Montenegro, the Republic of Kosovo, the Republic of Serbia, the Republic of Slovenia and the Republic of Macedonia. The method used in the study was a system analysis and a comparative method, thanks to which we can see the similarities and differences in the functioning of the parliaments. In the analyzed countries, parliaments are subjects that influence political processes and the creation of law. The creators of the constitution had to take into account the traditions of parliamentarism as well as the complicated nationality situation in the countries.

The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Dayton Peace Agreement) accepted in Paris on December 14, 1995 was signed by: for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Alija Izetbegović, for the Republic of Croatia dr. Franjo Tudjman and Slobodan Milosevic for the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. There are good reasons why the international community has demanded that these people be signatories to the Dayton Peace Agreement. Namely, after unsuccessful attempts to establish an agreement on constitutional solutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, starting with Cutileiro's plan (cantonization of Bosnia and Herzegovina on ethnic grounds), on which talks in Sarajevo began in February 1992, until the conference in London on 26 and On August 27, 1992, it was obvious that the positions of the Serb and Croat sides in Bosnia and Herzegovina were being harmonized with the positions of Belgrade and Zagreb, that is, the policies previously agreed and agreed upon on the Milosevic-Tudjman route. Three delegations participated in the conference in London. On behalf of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Government were President Alija Izetbegović, Minister of Foreign Affairs Haris Silajdžić, Ejup Ganić and General Sefer Halilović. The Bosnian Serb delegation included Radovan Karadzic, RS President Momcilo Krajisnik, RS Vice President and VRS General Ratko Mladic, who were in direct consultations with Belgrade throughout the negotiations. Representatives of Bosnian Croats were the President of HZ HB Mate Boban, then the Prime Minister of Republic Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mile Akmadžić (although he was a member of the Government of Republic Bosnia and Herzegovina, he participated as a member of the Croatian delegation) and General Milivoj Petković. Croatian President Franjo Tudjman also took part in the negotiations and was the unofficial but de facto head of the Croatian delegation. Following the London Conference and the failure of the previous negotiations, the European Community Conference on Yugoslavia was expanded to include the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, chaired by Cyrus Vance (US diplomat on behalf of the UN) and Lord David Owen (on behalf of the EC / U). a new era of peace negotiations. Vance-Owen's plan foresaw the decentralization of Bosnia and Herzegovina within the existing borders with a constitutional order based on federal principles contained in a number of constitutive elements - regions (ten cantons formed on ethnic principles) and with the Sarajevo district where the central government would be located. This plan, after the refusal of the Serbian Assembly from Pale to ratify it, was definitely rejected. This was followed by the Owen-Stoltenberg Peace Plan (Constitutional Agreement on the Alliance of the Republics of Bosnia and Herzegovina) which offered a confederation of Bosnia and Herzegovina composed of three republics made up of ethnicity, but this plan also proved unacceptable. The Contact Group's plan followed the establishment of the Washington Agreement, which established the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in March 1994. This plan provided for the preservation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a union within its internationally recognized borders, and territorial division according to the percentage of territory (51:49). The Serbian leadership in Pale also refused to accept this proposal. The international community had to look for new solutions. The Contact Group's plan was a step towards negotiations that will result in the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement. However, it is important to note that all the plans offered led to the discovery of hidden policies created by the eastern and western neighbors of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Also, all the proposed proposals for "peace plans", which the international community tried to impose in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, were based on constitutional devastation and territorial division, thus accepting armed conquests and occupation of the area with the ultimate goal of destroying its territorial integrity and statehood. sovereignty, which made it obvious that the international community was not ready to protect the sovereignty of an internationally recognized state guaranteed by international law, which was especially denied by the introduction of an arms embargo, which prevented it from protecting its own sovereignty and territorial integrity. What was the role of the signatories of the Dayton Agreement in the preparation and execution of bilateral aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the aim of implementing plans for the partition of Bosnia and the realization of large-scale projects, and whether it determined their position as signatories to the General Framework Agreement? and the topic of trials of international courts with the aim of establishing, proving and convicting committed crimes. What is the significance of the signatories in the establishment and preservation of peace, and whether large-scale projects and plans for their implementation ended with the signing of the Dayton Agreement are questions whose answers are still being sought 25 years after the signing of the agreement. Namely, Slobodan Milosevic, the then president of the Federal Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), before the signing of the Dayton Agreement, appeared before the ICTY as an indictee for crimes committed in the Republics of the former Yugoslavia - Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo. The trial was not terminated due to the death of the accused, but the Trial Chamber rendered a decision on the motion for acquittal (Interim Judgment of the Hague Tribunal of 16 June 2004), which established his responsibility for genocide committed in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Franjo Tudjman, the then President of the Republic of Croatia, was identified as a participant in a joint criminal enterprise in a verdict handed down for crimes committed by the Croatian Army (HV) and the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) against the civilian population of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Case IT-04-74 Prlić etc). In its appeal verdict against the Bosnian six, the ICTY Appeals Chamber found that there was an international armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the state of occupation, but also confirmed the existence of a Croatian joint criminal enterprise aimed at "ethnic cleansing" certain areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Croatia's Franjo Tudjman as one of the participants in this JCE. Thus, persons who found themselves in court proceedings and were held responsible for the consequences of the policies they implemented, the commission of crimes and joint criminal enterprises realized in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, became signatories of the Dayton Peace Agreement and guarantors of peace.

The aim of the present paper is to map the development of women’s and gender studies (WGS) in the academic field in Slovenia. Slovenia is the first of the former Yugoslav state republics in which WGS have succeeded in entering the academic field and becoming part of institutionalised university study. In this paper we will ask the following questions: How, when and why did this happen? How was this connected to women’s and feminist movements and politics regarding women’s issues and demands? What were the obstacles in this process? Who were the agents and what were the factors that supported demands for the incorporation of WGS in academia? How has the field evolved in the last few decades? What were the phases of this development? Which fields were the forerunners, which were the late-comers and which are still left aside? What are the thematic scopes taught in WGS courses? In which degrees are thecourses offered and what are their modules? Who teaches them? The mapping in this paper is mainly based on primary sources of university programmes and their curricula at faculties of the University of Ljubljana, as well as on interviews with important agents in the field.

In the 1980s and 1990s vulnerable people worldwide have suffered assaults on their basic survival and civilized existence. Ethnic upheavals have convulsed the former Yugoslavia and new republics of the former USSR. The struggles have produced human tragedies beyond calculation in Rwanda. Political terrorists have operated freely in some Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries. Hunger, disease, ethnic strife, and praetorian governments continue to stalk much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Economic restructuring has marginalized citizens of some countries, placing people even further below already abysmal poverty lines. Families and civilized social values continue to disintegrate in the inner cities of the United States of America where income disparities between the poor and everyone else are increasing, threatening to create an underclass extending well beyond current geographical confines.

The role Franjo Tuđman and the Croatian government played in the process of peaceful reintegration of Croatian Danube region Hrvatsko Podunavlje (the Croatian Danube region) and in the establishment of the country’s full sovereignty is presented and analyzed, on the basis of documentary evidence, in this work. Also contained in this work are explanations and analyses related to the main objectives of the Republic of Croatia’s policies in the period from the end of 1995 to 1998. The influence of the USA and the international community on the process of resolving the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and their relationship with Franjo Tuđman is also presented. In this context this work gives an overview of the most relevant circumstances that led to the political agreement on peaceful reintegration of Hrvatsko Podunavlje and the two-year long implementation of the process.

Two additional agreements have been concluded on the enforcement of sentences of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). On 25 February 2000, an agreement was concluded between the Government of the French Republic and the United Nations on the enforcement of sentences of the ICTY. Thus, France thereby became the first permanent member of the Security Council to conclude such an agreement. A month later, on 28 March 2000, another agreement was concluded between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Nations. Both these agreements will enter into force upon notification to the United Nations by the respective states that the necessary national legal requirements have been met. Previously, agreements have been concluded with the following states: Italy, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Austria.

The problem of the interrelationship between the political and military elite is very complex, multidimensional, multi-hierarchical and relatively protected from the scientific and professional public and, as such, more difficult to understand. It is particularly relevant in war, where ties are looser and where the self-initiative of individuals and social groups comes to full expression, which is precisely the subject of this analysis. However, the subject is not considered in its totality, but is limited only to the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) in the period from the 1980s onwards. The events out of that time were used as an empirical basis for illustrating and arguing one's own views. The subject of this paper is structured in five separate parts. In the first part, the epistemological and logic bases of the relationship between politics and the military in war are presented, with the focus on the noticed weaknesses in the theoretical and normative sphere and their consequences for real practice. In the second part, a comparative analysis of the goals of politics and the military has been done, with an emphasis on the necessary need for them to coincide at the state level and be conducted by joint efforts. The third part explains the relationship between the military and politics at the most general level. It has been proven that politics is more general and that it directs the entire activities of the society including the deployment of the military in war. The fourth part presents the models of the relationship between the military and politics at strategic level. It has been unequivocally proven that politics is superior to the military, which does not exclude the possibility of intensive negotiations before making definite decisions on the deployment in combat operations. Finally, the fifth part explains the relationship between local government representatives and units at tactical level. The links between management and cooperation between these entities with the focus on communication difficulties and consequences are explained.

Every year, the first issue of Contemporary Military Challenges is published in May. This year, May is particularly important for Slovenia and especially for the Slovenian Armed Forces. Thirty years have passed since the first training of Slovenian military recruits on Slovenian territory. The beginning of this training additionally enraged the then authorities, especially the Yugoslav People's Army, and led to what is today known as the Pekre events. The first victim of the independence process fell, and the tensions due to the events that followed grew. They escalated into an armed conflict and a war, which fortunately did not last long. The independence process, however, began much earlier, before May of 1991, and ended with the departure of the last soldier of the former Yugoslav army from Slovenia in October of the same year. The thirtieth anniversary of Slovenian independence is an important milestone in Slovenian history. Unfortunately, this year it will not be commemorated as it should be as the COVID-19 pandemic has severely restricted us from socializing and celebration. It has also brought new circumstances and insights in many areas, where the resilience of the society and security should be particularly emphasized. The understanding and functioning of our national security system has been greatly influenced by the European migrant crisis in 2015, illegal migration, which is still underway, and the pandemic that has no end in sight. In the second semester of this year, Slovenia will hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. All of the above brings challenges as well as opportunities. We have learned a lot from the above, one of the most important findings being that self-sufficiency and the ability to take care of oneself are good. In a situation where all countries, not just EU members, are facing problems, it is very useful to be autonomous and independent of others. The various mechanisms of the European Union, NATO and some other international security organizations operate on the principles of solidarity, assistance and burden-sharing. However, it is very hard to share when everybody is lacking in something. The challenge for the future is certainly to anticipate trends, especially in security, to prepare accordingly, to own as much of what you need for yourself and for the functioning of your country, and, if possible, help other countries as well. It is the Common Security and Defence Policy of the European Union that requires more investment in the security and defence of countries, as well as in strengthening our common resilience. This has been included in several directives and other documents of the European Union, continually pointed out by its representatives; yet, according to the facts there is still a steady decline in this area. Perhaps Slovenia's Presidency of the Council of the European Union is the right opportunity to pay more attention to this topic. This year, May is also important for the Contemporary Military Challenges. Following last year’s indexing of the publication in the Crossref database, all articles that are available from the Digital Library of the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Slovenia will, as of May 2021, also be available from the Military and Government Collection of the EBSCO database and in Air University Library Index in Military Periodicals. This will enable a greater exchange of views, opinions and ideas between Slovenian and foreign authors in the security, defence and military domains. In the Slovenian Armed Forces, a Military Strategy of the Republic of Slovenia is being drafted, and the now retired Brigadier General Branimir Furlan is writing a book on military strategy. Hence, there will be more than enough opportunities for interesting military-related reading. The issues of our publication will contribute to this as well. In this issue, Pavel Vuk writes about the Evolution of the concept of strategy and its relating with the politics. He begins by explaining the historical aspect, when military leaders still consider the combat strategy to be a necessary concept, and gradually moves into the strategy as a way of shaping the public policy and reflecting the political will of the ruling elite. More on how successful countries are in implementing their strategies can be found in the article. Valerija Bernik writes about the Perspectives and challenges of Slovenian military education system. In her article, we learn a lot about the latest changes in the Slovenian Armed Forces in this regard. The author participated in the process of establishing the Higher Military Vocational School (NCO College) and acts as its Head. However, the establishment of the school is not the end, but the beginning of a new path and new opportunities for military education. In her article Activities of the Slovenian Armed Forces during the COVID-19 epidemic, Tanja Kremžar Kovač writes about the experiences of the Slovenian Armed Forces in these exceptional circumstances. The mission of international operations and missions continues despite the epidemic and the various restrictions on movement and travel bans. The armed forces must remain active and effective regardless of the various obstacles. Her article describes in detail how the Slovenian Armed Forces have managed to achieve this. Marjan Horvat focused on an ever-topical issue. Leadership in the Slovenian Armed Forces touches upon some new, as well as some already known topics. Leadership is an area that has never been sufficiently researched and which, despite continuous training and many years of practice, can never be mastered enough. Therefore, every effort dedicated to making progress in leadership is a good investment in every organization, especially in the Slovenian Armed Forces. The COVID-19 epidemic prevents us from properly commemorating the 30th anniversary of our country's independence this year, so we may do so on some other occasion. However, remembering important events and personalities is essential for a nation’s consciousness and patriotism. Jerica Pavšič and Zvezdan Markovič write about this in their article Forms of collective remembrance of General Maister, where they establish how we have been remembering this important figure, his actions and consequences that mainly reflect in the territorial integrity of our country.

Many Lenin monuments remain in cities around the former Soviet republics and a few national or regional authorities have decreed it against the law to deface or remove them. The Lenin monument in Bishkek, capital city of the Kyrgyz Republic, is an example of both policies. On two main counts, however, the fate of this particular bronze statue of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin has been unusual. Only in the Kyrgyz case was the country's central Lenin monument left untouched for over a decade after the collapse of communism, a decree for its preservation as a national treasure being put in force as late as 2000. And, when, in 2003, the government after all decided to remove the monument, it was then relocated only some 100 yards from its original location. These twin issues of timing and new spatial framing offer a window on the relationship between state ideology and politics in the Kyrgyz Republic. I propose to use an official ideology approach to understand the Kyrgyz ruling elite's ideological relationship to the Lenin monument after the collapse of communism.

PROBLEMS WITH THE APPOINTMENT OF THE PAPAL NUNCIO TO POLAND, NOVEMBER 1935 – APRIL 1937SummaryThe article describes the appointment of Filippo Cortesi to the office of papal nuncio to the Republic of Poland, and reviews the role of the Polish diplomats accredited to the Holy See in this process. The appointment of a nuncio following the departure of Francesco Marmaggi was extremely complicated. The list of candidates was the resultant of a number of factors. The individuals whose names were on it had used influence with the pope, the Vatican’s secretary of state, or former nuncios to Warsaw. Both the Polish government and the bishops of Poland had a say in the final outcome. In addition there was also the volatile political situation in Europe at the time, especially in Spain and Yugoslavia, which exerted an effect on the process. In June 1936 Carlo Chiarlo received the nomination for the office. However, the unanimously negative position of the Conference of the Bishops of Poland, especially Cardinals Kakowski and Hlond, stopped the appointment at the last moment. The Polish Government did not want Ermenegildo Pellegrinetti to be appointed and tried to prevent it, considering Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli the ideal candidate. Eventually Pius XI appointed Filippo Cortesi, formerly nuncio to Argentina.

The article presents a cultural and political analysis of the activities of the Belgrade International Theater Festival (BITEF) - a significant theatrical, general cultural and social phenomenon in Serbia, the Balkans / South-Eastern Europe, and throughout Europe as a whole. Before the collapse of the SFRY (1991-1992), being the official showcase of self-government socialism, the festival was at the same time one of the most representative shows of new theatrical trends in Europe. It was attended by troupes from the countries of the East and West - Western and Eastern Europe, the USSR, the USA, Latin America, China, Japan. Not being by definition a festival of political theater, thanks to the moral and civic position of its founders and leaders M. Trailovich and Y. Chirilov, BITEF has become a space of aesthetic and social free-thinking in the SFRY and in neighbouring socialist countries. The organizers of BITEF found an opportunity to provide a platform for theatrical «dissidents» with their performances dedicated to rethinking modernity and the recent past in any genre. During the existence of the FRY (1992-2003), BITEF became an annual cultural manifestation in opposition to the regimes in power in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, with their ideology of chauvinism and isolation from the outside world. At this time, the compilers of the festival programs began to attach special importance to performances of a political and social orientation. Many theaters from Serbia, as well as from the former neighbours of the Yugoslavian federation, and now the newly independent states, in their productions offered not so much a political, as a moral and ideological alternative to ethnic nationalism, militarism and political intolerance. Since 2006, in the independent Republic of Serbia, BITEF has strived not only to revive the traditions of Serbian theater, but also to preserve the best traditions of the theatrical art of the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, placing them in the context of the common European and global development of theater and culture, ideology and philosophy, literature, aesthetics, ethics. In principle opposing nationalism and militarism from the standpoint of humanism, BITEF plays an outstanding role in shaping public attitudes in Serbia, in weakening and overcoming conflicts, in normalizing relations between the peoples of the disintegrated Yugoslavia, in creating an atmosphere of freedom and tolerance.

Abstract Despite the joint history of Montenegro and Slovenia as republics of the former Yugoslavia, the development of the interest groups system has been different in these countries. While in Slovenia, these groups started to develop from the 19th century, in Montenegro the interest groups system was almost non-existent in the pre-socialist period with only a few participative elements, such as the use of tribal assemblies. Socialism did not support associational life, since most of the organizations that were founded at the time were under some form of government control. As a consequence, the interest groups system in Slovenia shrank during socialist rule, while in Montenegro it remained at the same level. During the 1980s and after the collapse of the socialist regime the interest group system in Montenegro finally starts to develop, being heavily influenced by international donor and assistance programmes, while in Slovenia the system had a new opportunity to flourish. In this article we are in particularly interested in how the interest group system contributes to the quality of democracy. Although Montenegrin interest groups have been a tool of influence and democratisation primarily on behalf of the international community, their internal democracy is less sophisticated than is the case in Slovenia. The results show that the origin of the interest groups system and the distinct histories of the specific political cultures seem to be embedded in the functioning of contemporary interest groups. This in turn, determines the strength or weakness of these groups in facing the challenges of de-democratisation.

AbstractDespite the joint history of Montenegro and Slovenia as republics of the former Yugoslavia, the development of the interest groups system has been different in these countries. While in Slovenia, these groups started to develop from the 19th century, in Montenegro the interest groups system was almost non-existent in the pre-socialist period with only a few participative elements, such as the use of tribal assemblies. Socialism did not support associational life, since most of the organizations that were founded at the time were under some form of government control. As a consequence, the interest groups system in Slovenia shrank during socialist rule, while in Montenegro it remained at the same level. During the 1980s and after the collapse of the socialist regime the interest group system in Montenegro finally starts to develop, being heavily influenced by international donor and assistance programmes, while in Slovenia the system had a new opportunity to flourish. In this article we are in particularly interested in how the interest group system contributes to the quality of democracy. Although Montenegrin interest groups have been a tool of influence and democratisation primarily on behalf of the international community, their internal democracy is less sophisticated than is the case in Slovenia. The results show that the origin of the interest groups system and the distinct histories of the specific political cultures seem to be embedded in the functioning of contemporary interest groups. This in turn, determines the strength or weakness of these groups in facing the challenges of de-democratisation.

Abstract Yugoslavia’s military internationalism was one of the most practical expressions of the country’s policy of nonalignment. Beginning with Algeria in the 1950s until its demise in the 1990s, Yugoslavia was an ardent supporter of liberation movements and revolutionary governments in Africa and Asia. This article argues that Yugoslav military internationalism was at the heart of Yugoslavia’s efforts to reshape the post-1945 global order and represented an extension of Yugoslav revolution abroad. Military aid was an expression of personal identification of Yugoslavia’s “greatest generation” with decolonization struggle. However, Yugoslav military aid to other countries went beyond a single foreign policy issue. Yugoslav military internationalism touched upon many other issues that included problems related to finances, economic development, the acquisition and transfer of military technology, relations with the superpowers, national security, ideology and politics, and prestige and status in global affairs. By the end of the 1970s, with the departure of the World War II generation and the looming economic crisis, Yugoslav military involvement in the Global South became increasingly driven by economic reasons. Former Yugoslav republics, after a short hiatus in the 1990s during the wars for Yugoslavia’s succession, are still present in the arms trade in the Global South.

During the process of gaining national independence the Slovenian government unlawfully erased 25,671 individuals, mainly citizens of other republics of the former Yugoslavia from the Slovenian Register of Permanent Residents. In 2012 the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Kurić and others vs. Republic of Slovenia held that there had been a violation of the 8th, 13th and 14th Articles of the European Convention on Human rights. Following this judgement the Slovenian government adopted a compensation scheme for the Erased introducing the criteria determining conditions for their redress. The article reflects on the political and legal construction of victimhood and reveals the notions of political loyalty, legal conformity and territorial attachment as one of the most decisive elements of victimhood. It shows that the subjectivity of victims in the case of the Erased is not defined within the human rights discourse but is grounded in nationalist terms.

The political-legal perspective of the development of the republics of the former SFRY can be obtained by a precise analysis of political developments in the former SFRY, viewed from the legal aspect, and under the influence of domestic and international factors that create a political reality in each individual republic. Building and taking care of a healthy, institutionally solid, legally dignified political system of one state is a challenge for every government, and therefore the government is a creator of an image of the political system, but also of innovative, economic, diplomatic, economic activity, which in many ways determines the level of democracy, the standard of living , the degree of political culture, constitutional and legal progress, the development of local self-government, and thus forms the image of a given society viewed through the lens of the political system. After its creation, the SFRY was a supranational state, with a federal political system, formed on the ruins of the outdated monarchist form of government, it had the futuristic contours of a real reality and, per its ideological concept, was significantly ahead of the time in which it existed. It was a symbol of sociological progress, synonymous with concepts that modern authors of political-legal thought today call cosmopolitanism. In this paper a comparative method of research will be applied, and based on it, will be presented the key determinants that define the social situation in the republics of the SFRY today, altogether with the proposals for the implementation of positive experiences, as well as the proposals for overcoming the potential difficulties of certain republics that they are facing today, considering that they have successfully overcome other similar obstacles.

The article discusses the prerequisites for the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, which was the "center" of conflicts at the global level, in particular, the onset of religious, ethnic, political conflicts in the Balkans in the last decade of the twentieth century, chronological and geographical conflicts. Specific characteristics are differentiated. The article also examines the situation in which the socialist states of Eastern Europe gained independence from the collapse of the Soviet government in 1991-1992, in particular, in the economic sphere. The epochal systemic changes that followed the collapse of the USSR and Yugoslavia predetermined a radical change in political, social and spiritual orientations and expectations in society. At the same time, the historical consciousness of peoples (like no other sphere of public, including ethnic self-identification) was involved in general transformational processes, reflecting in its development the well-known inconsistency and inconsistency of the socio-political evolution of the former republics in recent decades.

Abstract There are still many historical blind spots in research on Europe's displaced persons (DPs) after the Second World War. In particular, there are relatively few studies that link microhistorical perspectives on repatriation and resettlement with global contexts. This essay addresses this gap, in empirical as well as methodological terms, by focusing on a group of DPs that hitherto has received little attention from scholars: former members of the Royal Yugoslav Army, whom the Nazis had taken to Germany as prisoners of war (POWs). Classified as DPs after 1945, they lived in camps administered by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the International Refugee Organization (IRO). Under the circumstances, they continued to maintain military-like routines and fiercely refused repatriation. This was partly an expression of loyalty to the exiled Yugoslav king, Peter II. But it also mirrored the fears of DPs about—and resistance to the idea of—being returned to their homeland in the context of the early Cold War. Using the example of a DP camp in Bad Aibling (Upper Bavaria), this article connects Yugoslav DPs, Allied DP politics, and the interests of Tito's government, as well as the interventions of international relief agencies. It shows how some DPs adroitly subverted the international logic of DP self-governance as promoted by UNRRA. A global microhistory approach thus reveals how local actors and sites are shaped by, but also foundationally constitutive of, global regimes of migrational self-governance.

Book Review: Nadège Ragaru, “Et les Juifs bulgares furent sauvés”: Une histoire des saviors sur la Shoah en BulgarieThis presentation reviews a recent book by the French historian and political scientist Nadège Ragaru, analyzing how Bulgarian society has been dealing with the fate of the Bulgarian Jews during World War II. Pressurized by its Nazi German ally to send 20,000 Bulgarian Jews to extermination camps then located in the General Government, a part of the former Republic of Poland, the Bulgarian wartime government participated in the deportation of 11,343 Jews from the territories under Bulgarian administration in Greek Thrace and Yugoslav Macedonia, while withholding, after protests by some politicians and intellectuals, the Church and a part of the Bulgarian population, from completing the number of 20,000 by sending another 8,000 Jews from Bulgaria proper. In three consecutive chapters, Ragaru discusses how the People’s Courts dealt with the persecutors of the Jews, analyzes the ideological sensibilities raised by a film (a Bulgarian-DDR coproduction) about the deportation, and examines the use of three original short documentary shootings of the events. In the two final chapters, Ragaru deals with the relative pluralism of opinions that has been the case since the fall of the communist regime and the internationalization of the topic, especially as the tense relations with North Macedonia are concerned. Ragaru’s general conclusion is that in spite of the increased preparedness to admit Bulgaria’s involvement, the salvation continues to be overstated, while the complicity is smuggled away.Boek recensie: Nadège Ragaru, “Et les Juifs bulgares furent sauvés”: Une histoire des saviors sur la Shoah en BulgarieDit recente boek van de Franse historica en politieke wetenschapster Nadège Ragaru analiseert de manier waarop de Bulgaarse samenleving is omgegaan met het lot van de Bulgaarse Joden gedurende de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Onder druk van haar Nazi-Duitse bondgenoot om 20.000 Bulgaarse Joden naar uitroeiingskampen toen gesitueerd in het Generaal-Gouvernement, een deel van de voormalige Republiek Polen te sturen nam de Bulgaarse regering deel aan de deportatie van 11.343 Joden uit de territoria in Grieks Thracië en Joegoslavisch Macedonië onder Bulgaars bestuur, maar zag, na protesten van enkele politici en intellectuelen, de kerk en een deel van de Bulgaarse bevolking, af van de uitlevering van het resterende aantal van 8.000 Joden uit Bulgarije zelf. In drie opeenvolgende hoofdstukken, Ragaru beschrijft hoe de Volksrechtbanken omgingen met de vervolgers van de Joden, welke ideologische gevoeligheden werden opgeroepen door een film (een Bulgaars-Oost-Duitse coproductie) over de deportatie, en het gebruik dat gemaakt werd van drie originele korte documentaire filmfragmenten over de gebeurtenissen. In de laatste twee hoofdstukken behandelt Ragaru de relatieve verscheidenheid aan opinie na de val van het communistische regime en de internationalizering van het onderwerp, in het bijzonder in verband met de relaties met de Republiek van Noord-Macedonië. Haar algemene conclusie luidt dat, ondanks te toenemende bereidheid om de betrokkenheid van Bulgarije te erkennen, de redding toch overbelicht blijft, terwijl de medeplichtigheid wordt weggemoffeld.Recenzja książki: Nadège Ragaru, “Et les Juifs bulgares furent sauvés”: Une histoire des saviors sur la Shoah en BulgarieNadège Ragaru, francuska historyczka i politolożka, w swej najnowszej książce analizuje, w jaki sposób społeczeństwo bułgarskie traktowało bułgarskich Żydów w czasie II wojny światowej. Rząd Bułgarii, ulegając naciskom swego sojusznika, nazistowskich Niemiec, w sprawie wysłania dwudziestu tysięcy bułgarskich Żydów do obozów Zagłady w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie, wcześniej Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej, deportował 11 343 Żydów z terytoriów greckiej Tracji i jugosłowiańskiej Macedonii, znajdujących się wówczas pod rządami władz Bułgarii. Jednak po protestach nielicznych polityków, intelektualistów i Cerkwi oraz części bułgarskiej ludności władze Bułgarii ostatecznie odstąpiły od procederu wydalenia z kraju pozostałych 8 000 Żydów. W trzech kolejnych rozdziałach Ragaru opisuje, jak Trybunały Ludowe traktowały prześladowców Żydów, jaką podatność na ideologię wśród społeczeństwa bułgarskiego ukazała filmowa koprodukcja bułgarsko- -enerdowska o deportacjach, a także wyjaśnia, do czego posłużyły trzy krótkie oryginalne fragmenty filmów dokumentalnych ukazujące tamte wydarzenia. W ostatnich dwóch rozdziałach Ragaru przedstawia różnorodność opinii po upadku reżimu komunistycznego oraz internacjonalizację tematu, w szczególności kwestię stosunków z Republiką Północnej Macedonii. Autorka wysnuwa ogólny wniosek, że mimo przejawiającej się skłonności Bułgarii do uznania swego zaangażowania [w Zagładę], kwestia ocalenia Żydów [przez społeczeństwo bułgarskie] jest nadal bardziej eksponowana, a współsprawstwo jest wciąż zamiatane pod dywan.

The twentieth was, from one perspective, the democratic century — a span of one hundred years which began with no fully functioning democracies in existence anywhere on the planet (if one defines democracy as a political system in which there is both universal suffrage and competitive elections), and ended with 120 countries out of 192 classified by the Freedom House think tank as ‘democratic’. There are of course still many societies where democracy is denied or effectively neutered — the remaining outposts of state socialism, such as China, Cuba, and North Korea; most if not all of the Islamic countries; exceptional states such as Singapore, unapologetically capitalist in its economic system but resolutely authoritarian in its political culture. Many self-proclaimed democracies, including those of the UK, Australia and the US, are procedurally or conceptually flawed. Countries emerging out of authoritarian systems and now in a state of democratic transition, such as Russia and the former Soviet republics, are immersed in constant, sometimes violent struggle between reformers and reactionaries. Russia’s recent parliamentary elections were accompanied by the intimidation of parties and politicians who opposed Vladimir Putin’s increasingly populist and authoritarian approach to leadership. The same Freedom House report which describes the rise of democracy in the twentieth century acknowledges that many self-styled democracies are, at best, only ‘partly free’ in their political cultures (for detailed figures on the rise of global democracy, see the Freedom House website Democracy’s Century). Let’s not for a moment downplay these important qualifications to what can nonetheless be fairly characterised as a century-long expansion and globalisation of democracy, and the acceptance of popular sovereignty, expressed through voting for the party or candidate of one’s choice, as a universally recognised human right. That such a process has occurred, and continues in these early years of the twenty-first century, is irrefutable. In the Gaza strip, Hamas appeals to the legitimacy of a democratic election victory in its campaign to be recognised as the voice of the Palestinian people. However one judges the messianic tendencies and Islamist ideology of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it must be acknowledged that the Iranian people elected him, and that they have the power to throw him out of government next time they vote. That was never true of the Shah. The democratic resurgence in Latin America, taking in Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia among others has been a much-noted feature of international politics in recent times (Alves), presenting a welcome contrast to the dictatorships and death squads of the 1980s, even as it creates some uncomfortable dilemmas for the Bush administration (which must champion democratic government at the same time as it resents some of the choices people may make when they have the opportunity to vote). Since 9/11 a kind of democracy has expanded even to Afghanistan and Iraq, albeit at the point of a gun, and with no guarantees of survival beyond the end of military occupation by the US and its coalition allies. As this essay was being written, Pakistan’s state of emergency was ending and democratic elections scheduled, albeit in the shadow cast by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. Democracy, then — imperfect and limited as it can be; grudgingly delivered though it is by political elites in many countries, and subject to attack and roll back at any time — has become a global universal to which all claim allegiance, or at least pay lip service. The scale of this transformation, which has occurred in little more than one quarter of the time elapsed since the Putney debates of 1647 and the English revolution first established the principle of the sovereignty of parliament, is truly remarkable. (Tristram Hunt quotes lawyer Geoffrey Robertson in the Guardian to the effect that the Putney debates, staged in St Mary’s church in south-west London towards the end of the English civil war, launched “the idea that government requires the consent of freely and fairly elected representatives of all adult citizens irrespective of class or caste or status or wealth” – “A Jewel of Democracy”, Guardian, 26 Oct. 2007) Can it be true that less than one hundred years ago, in even the most advanced capitalist societies, 50 per cent of the people — women — did not have the right to vote? Or that black populations, indigenous or migrant, in countries such as the United States and Australia were deprived of basic citizenship rights until the 1960s and even later? Will future generations wonder how on earth it could have been that the vast majority of the people of South Africa were unable to vote until 1994, and that they were routinely imprisoned, tortured and killed when they demanded basic democratic rights? Or will they shrug and take it for granted, as so many of us who live in settled democracies already do? (In so far as ‘we’ includes the community of media and cultural studies scholars, I would argue that where there is reluctance to concede the scale and significance of democratic change, this arises out of continuing ambivalence about what ‘democracy’ means, a continuing suspicion of globalisation (in particular the globalisation of democratic political culture, still associated in some quarters with ‘the west’), and of the notion of ‘progress’ with which democracy is routinely associated. The intellectual roots of that ambivalence were various. Marxist-leninist inspired authoritarianism gripped much of the world until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war. Until that moment, it was still possible for many marxians in the scholarly community to view the idea of democracy with disdain — if not quite a dirty word, then a deeply flawed, highly loaded concept which masked and preserved underlying social inequalities more than it helped resolve them. Until 1989 or thereabouts, it was possible for ‘bourgeois democracy’ to be regarded as just one kind of democratic polity by the liberal and anti-capitalist left, which often regarded the ‘proletarian’ or ‘people’s’ democracy prevailing in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba or Vietnam as legitimate alternatives to the emerging capitalist norm of one person, one vote, for constituent assemblies which had real power and accountability. In terms not very different from those used by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology, belief in the value of democracy was conceived by this materialist school as a kind of false consciousness. It still is, by Noam Chomsky and others who continue to view democracy as a ‘necessary illusion’ (1989) without which capitalism could not be reproduced. From these perspectives voting gave, and gives us merely the illusion of agency and power in societies where capital rules as it always did. For democracy read ‘the manufacture of consent’; its expansion read not as progressive social evolution, but the universalisation of the myth of popular sovereignty, mobilised and utilised by the media-industrial-military complex to maintain its grip.) There are those who dispute this reading of events. In the 1960s, Habermas’s hugely influential Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere critiqued the manner in which democracy, and the public sphere underpinning it, had been degraded by public relations, advertising, and the power of private interests. In the period since, critical scholarly research and writing on political culture has been dominated by the Habermasian discourse of democratic decline, and the pervasive pessimism of those who see democracy, and the media culture which supports it, as fatally flawed, corrupted by commercialisation and under constant threat. Those, myself included, who challenged that view with a more positive reading of the trends (McNair, Journalism and Democracy; Cultural Chaos) have been denounced as naïve optimists, panglossian, utopian and even, in my own case, a ‘neo-liberal apologist’. (See an unpublished paper by David Miller, “System Failure: It’s Not Just the Media, It’s the Whole Bloody System”, delivered at Goldsmith’s College in 2003.) Engaging as they have been, I venture to suggest that these are the discourses and debates of an era now passing into history. Not only is it increasingly obvious that democracy is expanding globally into places where it never previously reached; it is also extending inwards, within nation states, driven by demands for greater local autonomy. In the United Kingdom, for example, the citizen is now able to vote not just in Westminster parliamentary elections (which determine the political direction of the UK government), but for European elections, local elections, and elections for devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The people of London can vote for their mayor. There would by now have been devolved assemblies in the regions of England, too, had the people of the North East not voted against it in a November 2004 referendum. Notwithstanding that result, which surprised many in the New Labour government who held it as axiomatic that the more democracy there was, the better for all of us, the importance of enhancing and expanding democratic institutions, of allowing people to vote more often (and also in more efficient ways — many of these expansions of democracy have been tied to the introduction of systems of proportional representation) has become consensual, from the Mid West of America to the Middle East. The Democratic Paradox And yet, as the wave of democratic transformation has rolled on through the late twentieth and into the early twenty first century it is notable that, in many of the oldest liberal democracies at least, fewer people have been voting. In the UK, for example, in the period between 1945 and 2001, turnout at general elections never fell below 70 per cent. In 1992, the last general election won by the Conservatives before the rise of Tony Blair and New Labour, turnout was 78 per cent, roughly where it had been in the 1950s. In 2001, however, as Blair’s government sought re-election, turnout fell to an historic low for the UK of 59.4 per cent, and rose only marginally to 61.4 per cent in the most recent general election of 2005. In the US presidential elections of 1996 and 2000 turnouts were at historic lows of 47.2 and 49.3 per cent respectively, rising just above 50 per cent again in 2004 (figures by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance). At local level things are even worse. In only the second election for a devolved parliament in Scotland (2003) turnout was a mere 48.5 per cent, rising to 50.5 in 2007. These trends are not universal. In countries with compulsory voting, they mean very little — in Australia, where voting in parliamentary elections is compulsory, turnout averages in the 90s per cent. In France, while turnouts for parliamentary elections show a similar downward trend to the UK and the UK, presidential contests achieve turnouts of 80-plus per cent. In the UK and US, as noted, the most recent elections show modest growth in turnout from those historic lows of the late 1990s and early Noughties. There has grown, nonetheless, the perception, commonplace amongst academic commentators as well as journalists and politicians themselves, that we are living through a ‘crisis’ of democratic participation, a dangerous decline in the tendency to vote in elections which undermines the legitimacy of democracy itself. In communication scholarship a significant body of research and publication has developed around this theme, from Blumler and Gurevitch’s Crisis of Public Communication (1996), through Barnett and Gaber’s Westminster Tales (2000), to more recent studies such as Lewis et al.’s Citizens or Consumers (2005). All presume a problem of some kind with the practice of democracy and the “old fashioned ritual” of voting, as Lewis et al. describe it (2). Most link alleged inadequacies in the performance of the political media to what is interpreted as popular apathy (or antipathy) towards democracy. The media are blamed for the lack of public engagement with democratic politics which declining turnouts are argued to signal. Political journalists are said to be too aggressive and hyper-adversarial (Lloyd), behaving like the “feral beast” spoken of by Tony Blair in his 2007 farewell speech to the British people as prime minister. They are corrosively cynical and a “disaster for democracy”, as Steven Barnett and others argued in the first years of the twenty first century. They are not aggressive or adversarial enough, as the propaganda modellists allege, citing what they interpret as supine media coverage of Coalition policy in Iraq. The media put people off, rather than turn them on to democracy by being, variously, too nice or too nasty to politicians. What then, is the solution to the apparent paradox represented by the fact that there is more democracy, but less voting in elections than ever before; and that after centuries of popular struggle democratic assemblies proliferate, but in some countries barely half of the eligible voters can be bothered to participate? And what role have the media played in this unexpected phenomenon? If the scholarly community has been largely critical on this question, and pessimistic in its analyses of the role of the media, it has become increasingly clear that the one arena where people do vote more than ever before is that presented by the media, and entertainment media in particular. There has been, since the appearance of Big Brother and the subsequent explosion of competitive reality TV formats across the world, evidence of a huge popular appetite for voting on such matters as which amateur contestant on Pop Idol, or X Factor, or Fame Academy, or Operatunity goes on to have a chance of a professional career, a shot at the big time. Millions of viewers of the most popular reality TV strands queue up to register their votes on premium phone lines, the revenue from which makes up a substantial and growing proportion of the income of commercial TV companies. This explosion of voting behaviour has been made possible by the technology-driven emergence of new forms of participatory, interactive, digitised media channels which allow millions to believe that they can have an impact on the outcome of what are, at essence, game and talent shows. At the height of anxiety around the ‘crisis of democratic participation’ in the UK, observers noted that nearly 6.5 million people had voted in the Big Brother UK final in 2004. More than eight million voted during the 2004 run of the BBC’s Fame Academy series. While these numbers do not, contrary to popular belief, exceed the numbers of British citizens who vote in a general election (27.2 million in 2005), they do indicate an enthusiasm for voting which seems to contradict declining rates of democratic participation. People who will never get out and vote for their local councillor often appear more than willing to pick up the telephone or the laptop and cast a vote for their favoured reality TV contestant, even if it costs them money. It would be absurd to suggest that voting for a contestant on Big Brother is directly comparable to the act of choosing a government or a president. The latter is recognised as an expression of citizenship, with potentially significant consequences for the lives of individuals within their society. Voting on Big Brother, on the other hand, is unmistakeably entertainment, game-playing, a relatively risk-free exercise of choice — a bit of harmless fun, fuelled by office chat and relentless tabloid coverage of the contestants’ strengths and weaknesses. There is no evidence that readiness to participate in a telephone or online vote for entertainment TV translates into active citizenship, where ‘active’ means casting a vote in an election. The lesson delivered by the success of participatory media in recent years, however — first reality TV, and latterly a proliferation of online formats which encourage user participation and voting for one thing or another — is that people will vote, when they are able and motivated to do so. Voting is popular, in short, and never more so, irrespective of the level of popular participation recorded in recent elections. And if they will vote in their millions for a contestant on X Factor, or participate in competitions to determine the best movies or books on Facebook, they can presumably be persuaded to do so when an election for parliament comes around. This fact has been recognised by both media producers and politicians, and reflected in attempts to adapt the evermore sophisticated and efficient tools of participatory media to the democratic process, to engage media audiences as citizens by offering the kinds of voting opportunities in political debates, including election processes, which entertainment media have now made routinely available. ITV’s Vote for Me strand, broadcast in the run-up to the UK general election of 2005, used reality TV techniques to select a candidate who would actually take part in the forthcoming poll. The programme was broadcast in a late night, low audience slot, and failed to generate much interest, but it signalled a desire by media producers to harness the appeal of participatory media in a way which could directly impact on levels of democratic engagement. The honourable failure of Vote for Me (produced by the same team which made the much more successful live debate shows featuring prime minister Tony Blair — Ask Tony Blair, Ask the Prime Minister) might be viewed as evidence that readiness to vote in the context of a TV game show does not translate directly into voting for parties and politicians, and that the problem in this respect — the crisis of democratic participation, such that it exists — is located elsewhere. People can vote in democratic elections, but choose not to, perhaps because they feel that the act is meaningless (because parties are ideologically too similar), or ineffectual (because they see no impact of voting in their daily lives or in the state of the country), or irrelevant to their personal priorities and life styles. Voting rates have increased in the US and the UK since September 11 2001, suggesting perhaps that when the political stakes are raised, and the question of who is in government seems to matter more than it did, people act accordingly. Meantime, media producers continue to make money by developing formats and channels on the assumption that audiences wish to participate, to interact, and to vote. Whether this form of participatory media consumption for the purposes of play can be translated into enhanced levels of active citizenship, and whether the media can play a significant contributory role in that process, remains to be seen. References Alves, R.C. “From Lapdog to Watchdog: The Role of the Press in Latin America’s Democratisation.” In H. de Burgh, ed., Making Journalists. London: Routledge, 2005. 181-202. Anderson, P.J., and G. Ward (eds.). The Future of Journalism in the Advanced Democracies. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007. Barnett, S. “The Age of Contempt.” Guardian 28 October 2002. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/media/comment/0,12123,820577,00.html>. Barnett, S., and I. Gaber. Westminster Tales. London: Continuum, 2001. Blumler, J., and M. Gurevitch. The Crisis of Public Communication. London: Routledge, 1996. Habermas, J. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. Lewis, J., S. Inthorn, and K. Wahl-Jorgensen. Citizens or Consumers? What the Media Tell Us about Political Participation. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2005. Lloyd, John. What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics. London: Constable, 2004. McNair, B. Journalism and Democracy: A Qualitative Evaluation of the Political Public Sphere. London: Routledge, 2000. ———. Cultural Chaos: News, Journalism and Power in a Globalised World. London: Routledge, 2006. Citation reference for this article MLA Style McNair, Brian. "Vote!." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/01-mcnair.php>. APA Style McNair, B. (Apr. 2008) "Vote!," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/01-mcnair.php>.

The twentieth was, from one perspective, the democratic century — a span of one hundred years which began with no fully functioning democracies in existence anywhere on the planet (if one defines democracy as a political system in which there is both universal suffrage and competitive elections), and ended with 120 countries out of 192 classified by the Freedom House think tank as ‘democratic’. There are of course still many societies where democracy is denied or effectively neutered — the remaining outposts of state socialism, such as China, Cuba, and North Korea; most if not all of the Islamic countries; exceptional states such as Singapore, unapologetically capitalist in its economic system but resolutely authoritarian in its political culture. Many self-proclaimed democracies, including those of the UK, Australia and the US, are procedurally or conceptually flawed. Countries emerging out of authoritarian systems and now in a state of democratic transition, such as Russia and the former Soviet republics, are immersed in constant, sometimes violent struggle between reformers and reactionaries. Russia’s recent parliamentary elections were accompanied by the intimidation of parties and politicians who opposed Vladimir Putin’s increasingly populist and authoritarian approach to leadership. The same Freedom House report which describes the rise of democracy in the twentieth century acknowledges that many self-styled democracies are, at best, only ‘partly free’ in their political cultures (for detailed figures on the rise of global democracy, see the Freedom House website Democracy’s Century). Let’s not for a moment downplay these important qualifications to what can nonetheless be fairly characterised as a century-long expansion and globalisation of democracy, and the acceptance of popular sovereignty, expressed through voting for the party or candidate of one’s choice, as a universally recognised human right. That such a process has occurred, and continues in these early years of the twenty-first century, is irrefutable. In the Gaza strip, Hamas appeals to the legitimacy of a democratic election victory in its campaign to be recognised as the voice of the Palestinian people. However one judges the messianic tendencies and Islamist ideology of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it must be acknowledged that the Iranian people elected him, and that they have the power to throw him out of government next time they vote. That was never true of the Shah. The democratic resurgence in Latin America, taking in Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia among others has been a much-noted feature of international politics in recent times (Alves), presenting a welcome contrast to the dictatorships and death squads of the 1980s, even as it creates some uncomfortable dilemmas for the Bush administration (which must champion democratic government at the same time as it resents some of the choices people may make when they have the opportunity to vote). Since 9/11 a kind of democracy has expanded even to Afghanistan and Iraq, albeit at the point of a gun, and with no guarantees of survival beyond the end of military occupation by the US and its coalition allies. As this essay was being written, Pakistan’s state of emergency was ending and democratic elections scheduled, albeit in the shadow cast by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. Democracy, then — imperfect and limited as it can be; grudgingly delivered though it is by political elites in many countries, and subject to attack and roll back at any time — has become a global universal to which all claim allegiance, or at least pay lip service. The scale of this transformation, which has occurred in little more than one quarter of the time elapsed since the Putney debates of 1647 and the English revolution first established the principle of the sovereignty of parliament, is truly remarkable. (Tristram Hunt quotes lawyer Geoffrey Robertson in the Guardian to the effect that the Putney debates, staged in St Mary’s church in south-west London towards the end of the English civil war, launched “the idea that government requires the consent of freely and fairly elected representatives of all adult citizens irrespective of class or caste or status or wealth” – “A Jewel of Democracy”, Guardian, 26 Oct. 2007) Can it be true that less than one hundred years ago, in even the most advanced capitalist societies, 50 per cent of the people — women — did not have the right to vote? Or that black populations, indigenous or migrant, in countries such as the United States and Australia were deprived of basic citizenship rights until the 1960s and even later? Will future generations wonder how on earth it could have been that the vast majority of the people of South Africa were unable to vote until 1994, and that they were routinely imprisoned, tortured and killed when they demanded basic democratic rights? Or will they shrug and take it for granted, as so many of us who live in settled democracies already do? (In so far as ‘we’ includes the community of media and cultural studies scholars, I would argue that where there is reluctance to concede the scale and significance of democratic change, this arises out of continuing ambivalence about what ‘democracy’ means, a continuing suspicion of globalisation (in particular the globalisation of democratic political culture, still associated in some quarters with ‘the west’), and of the notion of ‘progress’ with which democracy is routinely associated. The intellectual roots of that ambivalence were various. Marxist-leninist inspired authoritarianism gripped much of the world until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war. Until that moment, it was still possible for many marxians in the scholarly community to view the idea of democracy with disdain — if not quite a dirty word, then a deeply flawed, highly loaded concept which masked and preserved underlying social inequalities more than it helped resolve them. Until 1989 or thereabouts, it was possible for ‘bourgeois democracy’ to be regarded as just one kind of democratic polity by the liberal and anti-capitalist left, which often regarded the ‘proletarian’ or ‘people’s’ democracy prevailing in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba or Vietnam as legitimate alternatives to the emerging capitalist norm of one person, one vote, for constituent assemblies which had real power and accountability. In terms not very different from those used by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology, belief in the value of democracy was conceived by this materialist school as a kind of false consciousness. It still is, by Noam Chomsky and others who continue to view democracy as a ‘necessary illusion’ (1989) without which capitalism could not be reproduced. From these perspectives voting gave, and gives us merely the illusion of agency and power in societies where capital rules as it always did. For democracy read ‘the manufacture of consent’; its expansion read not as progressive social evolution, but the universalisation of the myth of popular sovereignty, mobilised and utilised by the media-industrial-military complex to maintain its grip.) There are those who dispute this reading of events. In the 1960s, Habermas’s hugely influential Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere critiqued the manner in which democracy, and the public sphere underpinning it, had been degraded by public relations, advertising, and the power of private interests. In the period since, critical scholarly research and writing on political culture has been dominated by the Habermasian discourse of democratic decline, and the pervasive pessimism of those who see democracy, and the media culture which supports it, as fatally flawed, corrupted by commercialisation and under constant threat. Those, myself included, who challenged that view with a more positive reading of the trends (McNair, Journalism and Democracy; Cultural Chaos) have been denounced as naïve optimists, panglossian, utopian and even, in my own case, a ‘neo-liberal apologist’. (See an unpublished paper by David Miller, “System Failure: It’s Not Just the Media, It’s the Whole Bloody System”, delivered at Goldsmith’s College in 2003.) Engaging as they have been, I venture to suggest that these are the discourses and debates of an era now passing into history. Not only is it increasingly obvious that democracy is expanding globally into places where it never previously reached; it is also extending inwards, within nation states, driven by demands for greater local autonomy. In the United Kingdom, for example, the citizen is now able to vote not just in Westminster parliamentary elections (which determine the political direction of the UK government), but for European elections, local elections, and elections for devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The people of London can vote for their mayor. There would by now have been devolved assemblies in the regions of England, too, had the people of the North East not voted against it in a November 2004 referendum. Notwithstanding that result, which surprised many in the New Labour government who held it as axiomatic that the more democracy there was, the better for all of us, the importance of enhancing and expanding democratic institutions, of allowing people to vote more often (and also in more efficient ways — many of these expansions of democracy have been tied to the introduction of systems of proportional representation) has become consensual, from the Mid West of America to the Middle East. The Democratic Paradox And yet, as the wave of democratic transformation has rolled on through the late twentieth and into the early twenty first century it is notable that, in many of the oldest liberal democracies at least, fewer people have been voting. In the UK, for example, in the period between 1945 and 2001, turnout at general elections never fell below 70 per cent. In 1992, the last general election won by the Conservatives before the rise of Tony Blair and New Labour, turnout was 78 per cent, roughly where it had been in the 1950s. In 2001, however, as Blair’s government sought re-election, turnout fell to an historic low for the UK of 59.4 per cent, and rose only marginally to 61.4 per cent in the most recent general election of 2005. In the US presidential elections of 1996 and 2000 turnouts were at historic lows of 47.2 and 49.3 per cent respectively, rising just above 50 per cent again in 2004 (figures by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance). At local level things are even worse. In only the second election for a devolved parliament in Scotland (2003) turnout was a mere 48.5 per cent, rising to 50.5 in 2007. These trends are not universal. In countries with compulsory voting, they mean very little — in Australia, where voting in parliamentary elections is compulsory, turnout averages in the 90s per cent. In France, while turnouts for parliamentary elections show a similar downward trend to the UK and the UK, presidential contests achieve turnouts of 80-plus per cent. In the UK and US, as noted, the most recent elections show modest growth in turnout from those historic lows of the late 1990s and early Noughties. There has grown, nonetheless, the perception, commonplace amongst academic commentators as well as journalists and politicians themselves, that we are living through a ‘crisis’ of democratic participation, a dangerous decline in the tendency to vote in elections which undermines the legitimacy of democracy itself. In communication scholarship a significant body of research and publication has developed around this theme, from Blumler and Gurevitch’s Crisis of Public Communication (1996), through Barnett and Gaber’s Westminster Tales (2000), to more recent studies such as Lewis et al.’s Citizens or Consumers (2005). All presume a problem of some kind with the practice of democracy and the “old fashioned ritual” of voting, as Lewis et al. describe it (2). Most link alleged inadequacies in the performance of the political media to what is interpreted as popular apathy (or antipathy) towards democracy. The media are blamed for the lack of public engagement with democratic politics which declining turnouts are argued to signal. Political journalists are said to be too aggressive and hyper-adversarial (Lloyd), behaving like the “feral beast” spoken of by Tony Blair in his 2007 farewell speech to the British people as prime minister. They are corrosively cynical and a “disaster for democracy”, as Steven Barnett and others argued in the first years of the twenty first century. They are not aggressive or adversarial enough, as the propaganda modellists allege, citing what they interpret as supine media coverage of Coalition policy in Iraq. The media put people off, rather than turn them on to democracy by being, variously, too nice or too nasty to politicians. What then, is the solution to the apparent paradox represented by the fact that there is more democracy, but less voting in elections than ever before; and that after centuries of popular struggle democratic assemblies proliferate, but in some countries barely half of the eligible voters can be bothered to participate? And what role have the media played in this unexpected phenomenon? If the scholarly community has been largely critical on this question, and pessimistic in its analyses of the role of the media, it has become increasingly clear that the one arena where people do vote more than ever before is that presented by the media, and entertainment media in particular. There has been, since the appearance of Big Brother and the subsequent explosion of competitive reality TV formats across the world, evidence of a huge popular appetite for voting on such matters as which amateur contestant on Pop Idol, or X Factor, or Fame Academy, or Operatunity goes on to have a chance of a professional career, a shot at the big time. Millions of viewers of the most popular reality TV strands queue up to register their votes on premium phone lines, the revenue from which makes up a substantial and growing proportion of the income of commercial TV companies. This explosion of voting behaviour has been made possible by the technology-driven emergence of new forms of participatory, interactive, digitised media channels which allow millions to believe that they can have an impact on the outcome of what are, at essence, game and talent shows. At the height of anxiety around the ‘crisis of democratic participation’ in the UK, observers noted that nearly 6.5 million people had voted in the Big Brother UK final in 2004. More than eight million voted during the 2004 run of the BBC’s Fame Academy series. While these numbers do not, contrary to popular belief, exceed the numbers of British citizens who vote in a general election (27.2 million in 2005), they do indicate an enthusiasm for voting which seems to contradict declining rates of democratic participation. People who will never get out and vote for their local councillor often appear more than willing to pick up the telephone or the laptop and cast a vote for their favoured reality TV contestant, even if it costs them money. It would be absurd to suggest that voting for a contestant on Big Brother is directly comparable to the act of choosing a government or a president. The latter is recognised as an expression of citizenship, with potentially significant consequences for the lives of individuals within their society. Voting on Big Brother, on the other hand, is unmistakeably entertainment, game-playing, a relatively risk-free exercise of choice — a bit of harmless fun, fuelled by office chat and relentless tabloid coverage of the contestants’ strengths and weaknesses. There is no evidence that readiness to participate in a telephone or online vote for entertainment TV translates into active citizenship, where ‘active’ means casting a vote in an election. The lesson delivered by the success of participatory media in recent years, however — first reality TV, and latterly a proliferation of online formats which encourage user participation and voting for one thing or another — is that people will vote, when they are able and motivated to do so. Voting is popular, in short, and never more so, irrespective of the level of popular participation recorded in recent elections. And if they will vote in their millions for a contestant on X Factor, or participate in competitions to determine the best movies or books on Facebook, they can presumably be persuaded to do so when an election for parliament comes around. This fact has been recognised by both media producers and politicians, and reflected in attempts to adapt the evermore sophisticated and efficient tools of participatory media to the democratic process, to engage media audiences as citizens by offering the kinds of voting opportunities in political debates, including election processes, which entertainment media have now made routinely available. ITV’s Vote for Me strand, broadcast in the run-up to the UK general election of 2005, used reality TV techniques to select a candidate who would actually take part in the forthcoming poll. The programme was broadcast in a late night, low audience slot, and failed to generate much interest, but it signalled a desire by media producers to harness the appeal of participatory media in a way which could directly impact on levels of democratic engagement. The honourable failure of Vote for Me (produced by the same team which made the much more successful live debate shows featuring prime minister Tony Blair — Ask Tony Blair, Ask the Prime Minister) might be viewed as evidence that readiness to vote in the context of a TV game show does not translate directly into voting for parties and politicians, and that the problem in this respect — the crisis of democratic participation, such that it exists — is located elsewhere. People can vote in democratic elections, but choose not to, perhaps because they feel that the act is meaningless (because parties are ideologically too similar), or ineffectual (because they see no impact of voting in their daily lives or in the state of the country), or irrelevant to their personal priorities and life styles. Voting rates have increased in the US and the UK since September 11 2001, suggesting perhaps that when the political stakes are raised, and the question of who is in government seems to matter more than it did, people act accordingly. Meantime, media producers continue to make money by developing formats and channels on the assumption that audiences wish to participate, to interact, and to vote. Whether this form of participatory media consumption for the purposes of play can be translated into enhanced levels of active citizenship, and whether the media can play a significant contributory role in that process, remains to be seen. References Alves, R.C. “From Lapdog to Watchdog: The Role of the Press in Latin America’s Democratisation.” In H. de Burgh, ed., Making Journalists. London: Routledge, 2005. 181-202. Anderson, P.J., and G. Ward (eds.). The Future of Journalism in the Advanced Democracies. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007. Barnett, S. “The Age of Contempt.” Guardian 28 October 2002. < http://politics.guardian.co.uk/media/comment/0,12123,820577,00.html >. Barnett, S., and I. Gaber. Westminster Tales. London: Continuum, 2001. Blumler, J., and M. Gurevitch. The Crisis of Public Communication. London: Routledge, 1996. Habermas, J. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. Lewis, J., S. Inthorn, and K. Wahl-Jorgensen. Citizens or Consumers? What the Media Tell Us about Political Participation. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2005. Lloyd, John. What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics. London: Constable, 2004. McNair, B. Journalism and Democracy: A Qualitative Evaluation of the Political Public Sphere. London: Routledge, 2000. ———. Cultural Chaos: News, Journalism and Power in a Globalised World. London: Routledge, 2006.

Illegitimacy is a multifaceted concept, powerful because it has the ability to define both itself and its antithesis; what it is not. The first three definitions of the word “illegitimate” in the Oxford English Dictionary – to use an illegitimate academic source – begin with that negative: “illegitimate” is “not legitimate’, ‘not in accordance with or authorised by law”, “not born in lawful wedlock”. In fact, the OED offers eight different usages of the term “illegitimate”, all of which rely on the negation or absence of the legitimate counterpart to provide a definition. In other words, something can only be illegitimate in the sense of being outside the law, if a law exists. A child can only be considered illegitimate, “not born in lawful wedlock” if the concept of “lawful wedlock” exists.Not only individual but national identity can be constructed by defining what – or who – has a legitimate reason to be a part of that collective identity, and who does not. The extent to which the early years of Australian colonial history was defined by its punitive function can be mapped by an early usage of the term “illegitimate” as a means of defining the free settlers of Australia. In an odd reversal of conventional associations of “illegitimate”, the “illegitimates” of Australia were not convicts. They were people who had not been sent there for legitimate – (legal) reasons and who therefore did not fit into the depiction of Australia as a penal colony. The definition invites us to consider the relationship between Australia and Britain in those early years, when Australia provided Britain with a means of constructing itself as a “legitimate” society by functioning as a location where undesirable elements could be identified and excluded. The “illegitimates” of Australia challenged Australia’s function of rendering Britain a “legitimate” society. As a sense of what is “illegitimate” in a particular context is codified and disseminated, a corresponding sense of what is “legitimate” is also created, whether in the context of the family, the law, academia, or the nation. As individuals and groups label and marginalise what is considered unwanted, dangerous, superfluous or in other ways unsatisfactory in a society, the norms that are implicitly accepted become visible. Rather as the medical practice of diagnosis by exclusion enables a particular condition to be identified because other potential conditions have been ruled out, attempts to “rule out” forms of procreation, immigration, physical types, even forms of performance as illegitimate enable a legitimate counterpart to be formed and identified. Borrowing a thought from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, legitimates are all alike and formed within the rules; the illegitimates are illegitimate in a variety of ways. The OED lists “illegitimate” as a noun or adjective; the word’s primary function is to define a status or to describe something. Less commonly, it can be used as a verb; to “illegitimate” someone is to bastardise them, to render them no longer legitimate, to confer and confirm their illegitimate status. Although this has most commonly been used in terms of a change in parents’ marital status (for example Queen Elizabeth I of England was bastardised by having her parents’ marriage declared invalid; as had been also the case with her older half-sister, Mary) illegitimisation as a means of marginalising and excluding continues. In October 2014, Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison introduced legislation designed to retrospectively declare that children born in Australia to parents that have been designated “unlawful maritime arrivals” should inherit that marginalised status (Mosendz, Brooke). The denial of “birthright citizenship”, as it is sometimes called, to these infants illegitimises them in terms of their nationality, cutting them away from the national “family”. Likewise the calls to remove Australian nationality from individuals engaging in prohibited terrorist activities uses a strategy of illegitimisation to exclude them from the Australian community. No longer Australian, such people become “national bastards”.The punitive elements associated with illegitimacy are not the only part of the story, however. Rather than being simply a one-way process of identification and exclusion, the illegitimate can also be a vital source of generating new forms of cultural production. The bastard has a way of pushing back, resisting efforts at marginalisation. The papers in this issue of M/C consider the multifarious ways in which the illegitimate refuses to conform to its normative role of defining and obeying boundaries, fighting back from where it has been placed as being beyond the law. As previously mentioned, the OED lists eight possible usages of “illegitimate”. Serendipitously, the contributions to this issue of M/C address each one of them, in different ways. The feature article for this issue, by Katie Ellis, addresses the illegitimisation inherent in how we perceive disability. With a profusion of bastards to choose from in the Game of Thrones narratives, Ellis has chosen to focus on the elements of physical abnormality that confer illegitimate status. From the other characters’ treatment of the dwarf Tyrion Lannister, and other disabled figures within the story, Ellis is able to explore the marginalisation of disability, both as depicted by George R. R. Martin and experienced within the contemporary Australian community. Several contributions address the concept of the illegitimate from its meaning of outside the law, unauthorised or unwarranted. Anne Aly’s paper “Illegitimate: When Moderate Muslims Speak Out” sensitively addresses the illegitimate position to which many Muslims in Australia feel themselves relegated. As she argues, attempting to avoid being regarded as “apologists for Islam” yet simultaneously expected to act as a unifying voice for what is in fact a highly fragmented cultural mix, places such individuals in an insupportable, “illegitimate” position. Anne Aly also joins Lelia Green in exploring the rhetorical strategies used by various Australian governments to illegitimate specific cohorts of would-be Australian migrants. “Bastard immigrants: asylum seekers who arrive by boat and the illegitimate fear of the other” discusses attempts to designate certain asylum seekers as illegitimate intruders into the national family of Australia in the context of the ending of the White Australia policy and the growth of multicultural Australia. Both papers highlight the punitive impact of illegitimisation on particular segments of society and invite recognition of the unlawfulness, or illegitimacy, of the processes themselves that have been used to create such illegitimacy.Illegitimate processes and incorrect inferences, and the illegitimisation of an organisation through media representation which ignores a range of legitimate perspectives are the subject of Ashley Donkin’s work on the National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Program (NSCSWP). As Donkin notes, this has been a highly controversial topic in Australia, and her research identifies the inadequacies and prejudices that, she argues, contributed to an illegitimate representation of the programme in the Australian media. Without arguing for or against the NSCSWP, Donkin’s research exposes the extent of prejudiced reporting in the Australian media and its capacity to illegitimise programmes (or, indeed, individuals). Interesting here, and not entirely irrelevant (although not directly addressed in Donkin’s paper), is the notion of prejudice as being an opinion formed or promulgated prior to considering the equitable, just or judicial/judged position. Analogous to the way in which the illegitimate is outside the law, the prejudiced only falls within the law through luck, rather than judgement, since ill-advised opinion has guided its formation. Helen Vella Bonavita explores why illegitimacy is perceived as evil or threatening, looking to anthropologists Mary Douglas and Edmund Leach. Using Shakespeare’s Henry V as a case study, Vella Bonavita argues that illegitimacy is one of the preeminent metaphors used in literature and in current political discourses to articulate fears of loss of national as well as personal identity. As Vella Bonavita notes, as well as being a pollutant that the centre attempts to cast to the margins, the illegitimate can also be a potent threat, a powerful figure occupying an undeniable position, threatening the overturning of the established order. The OED’s definition of illegitimate as “one whose position is viewed in some way as illegitimate” is the perspective taken by Crystal Abidin and Herawaty Abbas. In her work “I also Melayu OK”, Abidin explores the difficult world of the bi-racial person in multi-ethnic Singapore. Through a series of interviews, Abbas describes the strategies by which individuals, particularly Malay-Chinese individuals, emphasise or de-emphasise particular linguistic or cultural behaviours in order to overcome their ambivalent cultural position and construct their own desired socially legitimate identity. Abidin’s positive perspective nonetheless evokes its shadow side, the spectre of the anti-miscegenation laws of a range of racist times and societies (but particularly Apartheid South Africa), and those societies’ attempts to outlaw any legitimisation of relationships, and children, that the law-makers wished to prohibit. The paper also resonates with the experience of relationships across sectarian divides and the parlous circumstances of Protestant –Catholic marriages and families during the 1970s in the north of Ireland, or of previously-acceptable Serbo-Croatian unions during the disintegration of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Herawaty Abbas and Brooke Collins-Gearing reflect on the process of academic self-determination and self-construction in “Dancing with an illegitimate feminism: a female Buginese scholar's voice in Australian Academia”. Abbas and Collins-Gearing address the research journey from the point of view of a female Buginese PhD candidate and an Indigenous Australian supervisor. With both candidate and supervisor coming from traditionally marginalised backgrounds in the context of Western academia, Abbas and Collins-Gearing chart a story of empowerment, of finding a new legitimacy in dialogue with conventional academic norms rather than conforming to them. Three contributions address the illegitimate in the context of the illegitimate child, moving from traditional associations of shame and unmarried pregnancy, to two creative pieces which, like Abidin, Abbas and Collins-Gearing, chart the transformative process that re-constructs the illegitimate space into an opportunity to form a new identity and the acceptance, and even embrace, of the previously de-legitimising authorities. Gardiner’s work, “It is almost as if there were a written script: child murder, concealment of birth and the unmarried mother in Western Australia” references two women whose stories, although situated almost two hundred years apart in time, follow a similarly-structured tale of pregnancy, shame and infant death. Kim Coull and Sue Bond in “Secret Fatalities and Liminalities” and “Heavy Baggage and the Adoptee” respectively, provide their own stories of illuminative engagement with an illegitimate position and the process of self-fashioning, while also revisiting the argument of the illegitimate as the liminal, a perspective previously advanced by Vella Bonavita’s piece. The creative potential of the illegitimate condition is the focus of the final three pieces of this issue. Bruno Starrs’s “Hyperlinking History and the Illegitimate Imagination” discusses forms of creative writing only made possible by the new media. Historic metafiction, the phrase coined by Linda Hutcheon to reflect the practice of inserting fictional characters into historical situations, is hardly a new phenomenon, but Starrs notes how the possibilities offered by e-publishing enable the creation of a new level of metafiction. Hyperlinks to external sources enable the author to engage the reader in viewing the book both as a work of fiction and as self-conscious commentary on its own fictionality. Renata Morais’ work on different media terminologies in “I say nanomedia, You say nano-media: il/legitimacy, interdisciplinarity and the anthropocene” also considers the creative possibilities engendered by interdisciplinary connections between science and culture. Her choice of the word “anthropocene,” denoting the geological period when humanity began to have a significant impact on the world’s ecosystems, itself reflects the process whereby an idea that began in the margins gains force and legitimacy. From an informal and descriptive term, the International Commission on Stratigraphy have recently formed a working group to investigate whether the “Anthropocene” should be formally adopted as the name for the new epoch (Sample).The final piece in this issue, Katie Lavers’ “Illegitimate Circus”, again traces the evolution of a theatrical form, satisfyingly returning in spirit if not in the written word to some of the experiences imagined by George R. R. Martin for his character Tyrion Lannister. “Illegitimate drama” was originally theatre which relied more on spectacle than on literary quality, according to the OED. Looking at the evolution of modern circus from Astley’s Amphitheatre through to the Cirque du Soleil spectaculars, Lavers’ article demonstrates that the relationship between legitimate and illegitimate is not one whereby the illegitimate conforms to the norms of the legitimate and thereby becomes legitimate itself, but rather where the initial space created by the designation of illegitimate offers the opportunity for a new form of art. Like Starrs’ hyperlinked fiction, or the illegitimate narrators of Coull or Bond’s work, the illegitimate art form does not need to reject those elements that originally constituted it as “illegitimate” in order to win approval or establish itself. The “illegitimate”, then, is not a fixed condition. Rather, it is a status defined according to a particular time and place, and which is frequently transitional and transformative; a condition in which concepts (and indeed, people) can evolve independently of established norms and practices. Whereas the term “illegitimate” has traditionally carried with it shameful, dark and indeed punitive overtones, the papers collected in this issue demonstrate that this need not be so, and that the illegitimate, possibly more than the legitimate, enlightens and has much to offer.ReferencesMosendz, Polly. “When a Baby Born in Australia Isn’t Australian”. The Atlantic 16 Oct. 2014. 25 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/10/when-a-baby-born-in-australia-isnt-australian/381549/›Baskin, Brooke. “Asylum Seeker Baby Ferouz Born in Australia Denied Refugee Status by Court”. The Courier Mail 15 Oct. 2014. 25 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/asylum-seeker-baby-ferouz-born-in-australia-denied-refugee-status-by-court/story-fnihsrf2-1227091626528›.Sample, Ian. “Anthropocene: Is This the New Epoch of Humans?” The Guardian 16 Oct. 2014. 25 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/16/-sp-scientists-gather-talks-rename-human-age-anthropocene-holocene›.