Politico: Enemies of Putin, but no longer friends

A few days ago, Poroshenko hit back with a much harder blow than a satirical song. He signed an order stripping Saakashvili of the Ukrainian citizenship he had granted only two years earlier. That left Saakashvili — a former head of state — stateless, since he lost his Georgian passport when he became Ukrainian.

What lies behind the latest twist in the men’s fraught relationship depends on who’s telling the story. Saakashvili says he is being punished for speaking out against rampant graft under Poroshenko. The president’s allies insist the move was legally justified but also speak of Saakashvili as an impulsive, ungrateful figure who turned on the man who brought him back from the political dead. [...]

Officially, Saakasvhili was stripped of Ukrainian nationality because he failed to provide details in his citizenship application of a criminal case against him in his native Georgia.

But figures across the Ukrainian political spectrum — including rivals of Saakashvili such as former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky — said the move smacked of a witch hunt. [...]

Saakashvili’s reforms in Odessa made only modest headway. Critics said he quickly lost interest in the daily nitty-gritty of running a far-flung province. Saakashvili and his team said they were being blocked and undercut by Kiev.

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The Conversation: Discontents: identity, politics and institutions in a time of populism

Contrary to the neoliberal belief that economic globalisation would ensure the triumph of Western-style democracies, it appears that democratic institutions everywhere have been weakened by their inability to satisfy an increasing number of voters. This was remarkably prescient, given Stiglitz was writing before the catalyst of the global financial crisis.

It is not difficult to find evidence for this claim. Despite some small gains in the past decade in a few African countries, liberal democracy has been on the retreat in several countries: Russia, Turkey, Thailand, Hungary. [...]

In contemporary usage, “populism” is generally understood to mean political movements and individuals who channel widespread alienation and frustration by claiming to speak for “the people” against forces that are said to be destroying cherished ways of life. “The people” in Western societies are, for the most part, implicitly understood to be white and Christian, blurring the line between race and religion. [...]

Majority support for slavery, racial discrimination or denial of equal rights to women does not make any of these things democratic. Populism feeds on a heady dose of philosophical nihilism, which sometimes seems to echo critiques of globalisation made by the left. [...]

But to argue this is to overlook the ways in which value judgements and state power have always shaped “private and family life” – abortion, adoption, adultery – and to overlook the position of privilege from which so much of the denunciation of identity politics stems. The women’s and gay movements emerged precisely because of the need to struggle against state-supported discrimination. [...]

As “identity politics” becomes increasingly understood as the politics of victimhood rather than empowerment, it is essential to remember that no one movement has a single identity, nor can it achieve liberation without larger social and political change.

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Political Critique: The Economics of Fear: How Orbán Profits from Insecurities

In the early 2000s, there was a social-populist turn in Orbán’s politics: after he lost the national election in 2002, he realised that his old rhetoric, which addressed merely the well-off and the middle classes, didn’t reach  enough people – there was a need to speak to the marginalised parts of society as well. Although this didn’t change the actual goals of his social policies (he still doesn’t want to reduce social inequalities, and neither does he support the abolition of school segregation), he realised that there were widespread fears amongst the losers of post-Communist transition, which he had to incorporate into his rhetoric (combined with some national sentiments). Today, 4 million Hungarians live below the subsistence level, and even prior to the economic crisis, in the pre-Orbán years, this number was well above 3 million. So, there have been plenty of potential addressees for messages that were built around social security.

Therefore, by the time he was elected to become prime minister in 2010, Orbán’s rhetoric was built around three threats: the so-called “death of the nation” (the disappearance of the nation, or at least the dissolution of national identity); social fears; and the fear of the foreign and the unknown. [...]

A main characteristic of Orbán’s political machinery is his ability to masterfully combine different fears. The number of combinations and variations is almost endless. Due to government propaganda, almost every topic in the country is discussed along the lines of fears and threats. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all three threats come up together, but it happens – for example, in the case of his ‘fight’ against Brussels. Since the EU disapproves of the Hungarian government’s most prominent social policy, the so-called rezsicsökkentés (the government imposed price-cuts on utility providers) and would impose austerity on the country, Orbán can position himself as the saviour of Hungary, who keeps the foreigners (the EU) at bay, protects national sovereignty, and last – but not least – shields the people from austerity (even though the Hungarian government is, in fact, cutting spending on healthcare, education and social services). [...]

The other group of problems is that of inequalities: today, it is not only the developmental differences between different countries or regions of the world that are problematic, as there are also growing differences within the so-called developed countries, both in terms of wealth and in terms of income. It is becoming more and more questionable how there could be a sense of shared belonging between all those people who might live in the same country, but may face very different hardships. A possible response by governments is the newly rediscovered mobilising power of national sentiments, which can also absolve governments from tackling inequalities, as they can claim that social injustices can be traced back to national grievances and are thus the faults of foreign forces.

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CityLab: Why Italy Is Banning Everything

On first glance, it’s easy to nod in agreement with Italy’s wave of bans on tourist-related misbehavior. The latest city to join this movment is Milan, which at the end of July has brought in a (potentially extendable) summer ban on bottles, cans, firecrackers, food trucks, and selfie sticks in its central Darsena neighborhood, a bar-filled canal district that functions as Milan’s main after-dark living room. This comes not that long after Florence’s mayor threatened to enforce a ban on al fresco picnicking in the city’s Cathedral Square by hosing down offenders.

The Milanese tourist crackdown also comes fast on the heels of Rome’s introduction of fines to anyone eating near or dipping their toes in the Eternal City’s many fountains, then a measure banning nocturnal al fresco drinking in every area of town (with the exception of the suburb in which Mayor Virginia Raggi herself lives). Add these to bans on vending non-local food in Florence, Venice, and Verona and a semi-comic picture develops of an official boot, stamping on a kebab carton forever. [...]

But why is this crackdown happening now? There’s no question that many of Italy’s city centers are in a poor state. Rome in particular has become a byword for urban squalor, with barely a week goes by without another tale of Rome’s Degrado (decay/deterioration). Problems include inefficient (and possibly corrupt) trash collection that leaves central streets looking shabby, potholed roads, major buildings left vacant, and historic areas overrun iwth pushy street vendors—not uncommonly dressed up as ancient Romans. Public buses can be rickety, while the administration itself continues to be riddled with inefficiency and patronage. [...]

The law does seem to be living up to fears that it offers authorities a license to discriminate. Earlier this month, two trans women in Naples were fined and banned for 48 hours in accordance with the new regulations from the environs of a central square for soliciting, even though they insist they were simply having a drink in a bar. LGBT organizations protested the move, pointing out that it was carried out not because a crime had been committed, but because police had decided they had a hunch something was amiss.

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The Conversation: Is there such a thing as a ‘true self’?

The idea that we have true selves has been contentious. For every bright-eyed humanist urging us to shed our social conditioning and discover the authentic self within there is a jaundiced philosopher telling us it is an illusion. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that he “had no true self” and his self was in fact “an empty palace of mirrors”.

Whether the true self is fact or fiction, many people believe in it. Those beliefs have been explored by a number of social psychologists and “experimental philosophers”. Their work has begun to clarify why the idea of the true self matters, regardless of whether it is real. [...]

Surprisingly neither of these claims appears to be true. One study showed that unsociable people were just as likely as others to hold very positive views of their true self. It also found that people from three collectivist cultures – Colombians, Singaporeans and the famously gloomy Russians – were just as likely as Americans to believe the true self to be good.

One implication of the belief that the true self is good is that we respond differently to positive and negative changes in people’s behaviour. Studies suggest that when people undergo positive change we tend to see it as revealing their true self. Self-improvement is viewed as discovering who one truly is. Negative change, in contrast, is seen as a corruption or obscuring of the true self. It is in the nature of caterpillars to become butterflies, not the reverse.

The idea of the true self might seem slippery and nebulous, but it may have important implications. Believing that deep down we are fundamentally good may anchor a sense of personal identity and self worth. Pursuing goals that are intrinsic to our selves may lead to greater well-being than pursuing those that are more peripheral, such as materialistic desires.

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