US hegemony and the origins of Japanese nuclear power : the politics of consent

This paper deploys the Gramscian concepts of hegemony and consent in order to explore the process whereby nuclear power was brought to Japan. The core argument is that nuclear power was brought to Japan as a consequence of US hegemony. Rather than a simple manifestation of one state exerting material ‘power over' another, bringing nuclear power to Japan involved a series of compromises worked out within and between state and civil society in both Japan and the USA. Ideologies of nationalism, imperialism and modernity underpinned the process, coalescing in post-war debates about the future trajectory of Japanese society, Japan's Cold War alliance with the USA and the role of nuclear power in both. Consent to nuclear power was secured through the generation of a psychological state in the public mind combining the fear of nuclear attack and the hope of unlimited consumption in a nuclear-fuelled post-modern world

Bases da legitimidade democrática no Brasil: adesão a valores e avaliação de desempenho

Estudos recentes sobre legitimidade democrática têm seguido uma perspectiva idealista que enfatiza a adesão dos cidadãos a valores fundamentais desta forma de governo. Alguns autores, entretanto, têm indicado que essa abordagem pode não ser adequada para a análise sobre países sem longa tradição democrática, propondo como alternativa um modelo realista que enfatiza como variável independente a avaliação de desempenho institucional. O presente artigo pretende contribuir para esse debate testando esse modelo alternativo para o caso brasileiro, utilizando dados produzidos pelo projeto World Values Surveys. Os resultados indicam que variáveis relacionadas a avaliações objetivas acerca do desempenho das instituições e das lideranças políticas têm um impacto maior sobre os níveis de legitimidade, em comparação com as variáveis referentes à adesão a valores.<br>Recent studies about democratic legitimacy have been proceeding an idealistic perspective that emphasizes the adhesion of the citizens to value fundamental this government way. Some authors, however, have been indicating that approach cannot be adapted for the analysis of countries without long democratic tradition, proposing as alternative a realistic model that emphasizes as independent variable the evaluation of institutional performance. The article intends to contribute for that debate testing that alternative model for the Brazilian case, using data produced by the project World Values Surveys. The results indicate that varied related to objective evaluations concerning the performance of the institutions and of the political leaderships have a larger impact on the legitimacy levels, in comparison with the referring variables to the adhesion to value

Political mistrust in southern Europe since the Great Recession

Published online: 14 Apr 2016The political effects of the Great Recession on southern Europe were substantial. The rapid economic deterioration of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain from 2008 onwards was accompanied by an increase in citizens' dissatisfaction towards national political institutions. The sources of political mistrust in the southern periphery were of a political and economic nature. Using quantitative data from EU member states from 2000 to 2015, this paper evaluates the suitability of competing theories in explaining this shift in political attitudes in southern European countries. It first hypothesizes that political mistrust is explained by citizens' rationalist evaluations of changing macroeconomic performance. It also hypothesizes that political mistrust changes according to institutional performance. The paper argues that economic crises act as an external shock that places politics, politicians and institutions in the spotlight as a result of citizens' deteriorating performance of the economy. The findings suggest that unemployment, public debt and political corruption are key variables in understanding short-term changes in political mistrust