Bücher veröffentlicht von ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon

2019 was a defining year for the radical right globally. From national and supranational elections that witnessed a surge in support for radical right parties to transnationally-inspired terrorist attacks in New Zealand, the USA, and Germany, the radical right is not just on the rise, but becoming an international mainstream phenomenon. The yearbook draws upon insightful analyses from an international network of scholars, policymakers, and practitioners who explore the processes and impact of the radical right. Beginning with reflections on the ideology and then historical perspectives of the radical right, the volume then turns to contemporary manifestations of movements and political parties as well as terrorism and the role of online spaces. It ends by examining various perspectives towards countering and challenging the radical right. This overview provides a widespread examination of the global radical right in 2019, which will be useful to scholars, students, policy makers, and the public.

In 2012, soon after his election to a third presidential term as president, following a four-year stint as prime minister (to avoid modifying the constitution), and in the wake of an unprecedented wave of popular protests, Vladimir Putin issued his ¿May Decrees.¿ Notable among them was the government¿s commitment to increase the salaries of doctors, scientific researchers and university teachers to double the average in their respective regions by 2018. But then on December 30 of that year, the government issued a ¿road map¿ for education, revealing that the salary increases in higher education would be paid for, not by significant new government funding, but by ¿optimization,¿ which would eliminate 44% of the current teaching positions in higher education. This was justified in part by a forecasted drop in student enrollment. Thus opened a new, accelerated period of reform of higher education. David Mandel examines the impact of these reforms on the condition of Russiäs university teachers and the collective efforts of some teachers, a small minority, to organize themselves in an independent trade union to defend their professional interests and their vision of higher education. Apart from the subject¿s intrinsic interest, an in-depth examination of this specific aspect of social policy provides valuable insight into the nature of the Russian state as well as into the condition of ¿civil society,¿ in particular the popular classes, to which Russian university teachers belong according to their socio-economic situation, if not necessarily their self-image.

The book explores transformations of the apocalyptic figure of the Antichrist in various post-Soviet discourses, including ecclesiastical and political writings, conspiracy theories, and literary texts. Drawing on the extensive research into diverse materials published in the Russian Federation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it demonstrates how an initially religious idea has penetrated secular discourses and what implications this entails. By applying the innovative analytical category of ideomyth, the book successfully answers the question of how and why the figure of the Antichrist is employed within the Russian post-Soviet semiosphere, with a special focus on texts that emerged within nationalist and religious milieus.

Numerous political commentators have noted the rise of the radical right worldwide. How has the radical right responded to the COVID-19 pandemic? Has the radical right been legitimized in a world of closed borders and greater securitization? Have radical right regimes in power cracked under the strains of the crisis and thus undermined their own political fortunes? Have radical right-wing responses to COVID-19 been uniform or diversified? These are some of the questions tackled in Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic by the Radical Right.This volume gathers a collection of short pieces, which highlight the multi-faceted ways in which right-wing and radical right-wing political forces have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. It presents research by scholars from all around the world concentrating on the evolution of radical right-wing movements since the COVID-19 crisis began and their influence on mainstream and alternative narratives. The edited volume includes case studies as well as far-reaching reports on the radical right¿s utilizing of the crisis to re-shape ideas about sovereignty, globalization, democracy, equality, diversity, and political legitimacy. Such studies comprise cases on gender and class, racism, religious hatred, scapegoating, anti-Semitism and Sinophobia, conspiracy theories, and online radicalization, focusing on locations as diverse as the US, Canada, Brazil, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, France, Spain, Ukraine, Latvia, Israel, and India. All such studies are compiled in a total of six chapters and an epilogue, organized thematically and by country.

This timely book provides a comprehensive, multi-dimensional and comparative analysis of political uncertainty. It is innovative in introducing the notions of inter-institutional, verbally induced, and historical uncertainty. It argues for an inclusive approach which considers multiple aspects of uncertainty, even when they are of a different nature. Combining aggregate statistical analysis and qualitative case studies, it compares political uncertainty in established and non-consolidated democracies. Overall, this book furnishes important insights into uncertainty in political life and how the discipline of political science is coming to terms with it.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the demise of the Cold War¿s bipolar world order, Soviet successor states on the Russian periphery found themselves in a geopolitical vacuum, and gradually evolved into a specific buffer zone throughout the 1990s. The establishment of a new system of relations became evident in the wake of the Baltic States¿ accession to the European Union in 2004, resulting in the fragmentation of this buffer zone. In addition to the nations that are more directly connected to Zwischeneuropa (i.e. ¿In-Between Europe¿) historically and culturally (Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine), countries beyond the Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia), as well as the states of former Soviet Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan) have also become characterized by particular developmental pathways. Focusing on these areas of the post-Soviet realm, this collected volume examines how they have faced multidimensional challenges while pursuing both geopolitics and their place in the world economy. From a conceptual point of view, the chapters pay close attention not only to issues of ethnicity (which are literally intertwined with a number of social problems in these regions), but also to the various socio-spatial contexts of ethnic processes. Having emerged after the collapse of Soviet authority, the so-called ¿post-Soviet realm¿ might serve as a crucial testing ground for such studies, as the specific social and regional patterns of ethnicity are widely recognized here. Accordingly, the phenomena covered in the volume are rather diverse. The first section reviews the fundamental elements of the formation of national identity in light of the geopolitical situation both past and present. This includes an examination of the relative strength and shifting dynamics of statehood, the impacts of imperial nationalism, and the changes in language use from the early-modern period onwards. The second section examines the (trans)formation of the identities of small nations living at the forefront of Tsarist Russian geopolitical expansion, in particular in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Southern Steppe. Finally, in the third section, the contributors discuss the fate of groups whose settlement space was divided by the external boundaries of the Soviet Union, a reality that resulted in the diverging developmental trajectories of the otherwise culturally similar communities on both sides of the border. In these imperial peripheries, Soviet authority gave rise to specifically Soviet national identities amongst groups such as the Azeris, Tajiks, Karelians, Moldavians, and others. The book also includes more than 30 primarily original maps, graphs, and tables and will be of great use not only for human geographers (particularly political and cultural geographers) and historians, but also for those interested in contemporary issues in social science.