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Pol Science: A learning space for seeing politics, society, culture, and everyday life through different lenses.

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In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum argues that authoritarianism is not necessarily tied to the political left or right. At its core is an anti-pluralist mindset, a discomfort with disagreement, complexity, uncertainty, and competing ways of seeing the world. Authoritarian politics becomes attractive when people prefer a single, simple explanation and a unified political identity over the messy reality of democratic debate. The danger begins when disagreement is treated as disloyalty, opponents are seen as enemies, and political diversity becomes something to eliminate rather than negotiate. For Applebaum, authoritarianism is therefore less a fixed ideology than a way of relating to political difference and complexity.
#anneapplebaum #authoritarianism #antipluralism #democracy #politics #politicaltheory #polarization #freedom #pluralism #politicalscience #polscience by @polscience.insta

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The quote often attributed to Pericles captures a simple but enduring political truth: indifference to politics does not shield anyone from its consequences. Governments still make decisions about taxes, education, employment, housing, war, healthcare, civil liberties, and public services whether citizens pay attention or not. Politics shapes the conditions under which people work, study, travel, speak, and live their everyday lives. Refusing to engage with politics does not mean escaping it; it simply means leaving decisions about your life and society in the hands of others. Politics may be ignored, but it cannot be avoided.
#pericles #politics #democracy #citizenship #politicalparticipation #civicengagement #power #politicaltheory #democraticcitizenship #socialscience #politicalscience #polscience by @polscience.insta

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Democratic authoritarianism describes political systems that retain the formal institutions of democracy such as elections, constitutions, and legislatures while gradually concentrating power in the hands of a single leader or ruling party. Instead of abolishing democracy outright, these regimes use democratic legitimacy to weaken the rule of law, undermine judicial independence, restrict media freedom, marginalize opposition, and erode civil liberties. Elections continue to take place, but the political playing field becomes increasingly unequal. Thinkers such as Jacob Talmon, Fareed Zakaria, Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, Ozan Varol, and Cas Mudde have shown how contemporary authoritarianism often emerges not through military coups but through the slow erosion of democratic norms from within. Democratic authoritarianism demonstrates that democracy can survive in form while losing its liberal and constitutional substance.
Core Themes: Democracy, Authoritarianism, Rule of Law, Populism, Competitive Authoritarianism, Illiberal Democracy, Constitutionalism, Civil Liberties, Political Institutions, Democratic Backsliding.
#democraticauthoritarianism #democracy #authoritarianism #politicaltheory #comparativepolitics #ruleoflaw #illiberaldemocracy #populism #democraticbacksliding #socialscience #politicalscience #polscience by @polscience.insta

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2 months ago

Your common sense has an ideology #ideology #politics #polscience by @polscience.insta

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Noam Chomsky (born 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and political critic whose work transformed the study of language, power, media, war, and ideology. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he studied at the University of Pennsylvania and spent much of his academic career at MIT, where he became one of the most influential figures in modern linguistics. His linguistic work, particularly the theory of generative grammar, challenged behaviorist approaches and argued that humans possess an innate capacity for language.
Beyond linguistics, Chomsky became widely known for his sustained critique of state power, imperialism, militarism, corporate influence, and mass media. In works such as Manufacturing Consent (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, he examined how powerful institutions can shape the production and circulation of public information. Other major works include American Power and the New Mandarins (1969), Hegemony or Survival (2003), and Who Rules the World? (2016). Across his political writings, Chomsky emphasizes critical inquiry, freedom of expression, democratic participation, and skepticism toward concentrated power.
#noamchomsky #chomsky #usa #philadelphia #mit #universityofpennsylvania #linguistics #politicaltheory #criticaltheory #propaganda #manufacturingconsent #imperialism #democracy #socialtheory #politicalthought by @polscience.insta

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Erich Fromm presents nationalism as a form of collective attachment that can become idolatrous when the nation is treated as an absolute value above humanity. His comparison with “incest” points to an attachment turned inward and exclusive: love of one’s own group can become closed to those outside it. Patriotism, in this sense, becomes problematic when loyalty to the nation demands that other human beings be viewed as less worthy of solidarity or respect.
For Fromm, genuine love should not depend on exclusion, superiority, or hostility toward outsiders. Love of country can exist, but it should remain part of a wider commitment to humanity. The passage therefore criticizes the transformation of national belonging into an unquestionable moral authority where the nation becomes an object of worship rather than one dimension of human identity.

#erichfromm #nationalism #patriotism #humanism #idolatry #politicaltheory #socialtheory #politicalphilosophy #identity #humanity #polscience by @polscience.insta

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Yanis Varoufakis (born 1961) is a Greek-Australian economist, political economist, and public intellectual known for his work on capitalism, financial crises, inequality, globalization, and the political economy of the European Union. Born in Athens, Greece, he studied mathematical economics at the University of Essex, mathematical statistics at the University of Birmingham, and earned his PhD in economics from the University of Essex. He has taught at the University of Cambridge, University of Sydney, and National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where he remains a professor of economic theory.
Varoufakis combines economic analysis with political and philosophical questions about power, debt, markets, democracy, and the organization of capitalism. He became internationally prominent during the Greek debt crisis, when he served as Greece’s finance minister in 2015. His books include Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, Adults in the Room, Another Now, and Technofeudalism. His broader argument is that economic systems are never purely technical arrangements: they distribute power and shape democratic possibilities, making political economy inseparable from questions of society and political authority.
#yanisvaroufakis #greece #athens #politicaleconomy #capitalism #economics #europeanunion #debtcrisis #inequality #democracy #politicaltheory #socialtheory #universityofessex #universityofathens #technofeudalism by @polscience.insta

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Angela Davis (born 1944) is an American scholar, writer, and activist whose work examines the interconnected structures of race, gender, class, capitalism, punishment, and political power. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, she studied at Brandeis University, the University of Frankfurt, and the University of California, San Diego, and later taught at UCLA and San Francisco State University before joining the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she became Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies.
Davis is particularly known for Women, Race & Class (1981), Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), and Abolition Democracy (2005). Her analysis connects racial and gender inequality with economic structures and the history of punishment, while her work on the prison-industrial complex questions the assumption that incarceration is the only or primary response to social problems. Her idea of abolition democracy emphasizes creating the social conditions—such as education, healthcare, housing, and economic security that can reduce reliance on systems of punishment.
#angeladavis #usa #birmingham #blackfeminism #feminism #womenraceandclass #prisonabolition #abolitiondemocracy #criticaltheory #racialjustice #polscience #capitalism #politicaltheory #ucsc #socialtheory by @polscience.insta

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The Revolution of Everyday Life (1967) is one of the key texts of the Situationist International, written by Belgian thinker Raoul Vaneigem. Rather than treating revolution only as a seizure of political or economic power, Vaneigem asks how domination is reproduced in ordinary everyday life through work, consumerism, social roles, boredom, hierarchy, and the pressure to merely “survive” rather than fully live. He argues that capitalism does not exploit only labour; it increasingly absorbs and commodifies desire, creativity, leisure, and everyday experience.
For Vaneigem, revolutionary transformation begins with the reappropriation of everyday life—recovering spontaneity, creativity, communication, pleasure, and genuine participation from the structures that constrain them. He contrasts passive conformity with a “will to live” and argues that individual liberation cannot be separated from collective transformation. Alongside Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle, the book became a major expression of Situationist thought and influenced the radical imagination surrounding the May 1968 movements in France.
#raoulvaneigem #therevolutionofeverydaylife #situationism #situationistinternational #everydaylife #capitalism #consumerism #alienation #radicalpolitics #criticaltheory #socialtheory #may1968 #guydebord #revolution #autonomy by @polscience.insta

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Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, political leader, and the country’s first democratically elected president (1994–1999). Born in Mvezo, Transkei, he studied at University College of Fort Hare and later University of Witwatersrand, where he studied law. He joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944 and became a major figure in the struggle against apartheid. After his imprisonment following the Rivonia Trial, Mandela spent 27 years in prison before his release in 1990.
Mandela’s political life is closely associated with the struggle for non-racial democracy, equality, negotiation, and reconciliation. After his release, he led negotiations that helped bring an end to apartheid and, with F. W. de Klerk, received the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. As president, Mandela emphasized nation-building and reconciliation and voluntarily stepped down after one term in 1999. His political legacy is closely connected to the idea that a deeply divided society can move toward democracy through political negotiation, institutional transformation, and reconciliation without abandoning the struggle for equality.
#nelsonmandela #southafrica #apartheid #anc #democracy #reconciliation #antiracism #freedom #politicalthought #humanrights #socialjustice #nobelpeaceprize #polscience by @polscience.insta

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The most reliable sign of capitalism’s ideological triumph is the virtual disappearance of the very term capitalism.”
.. Slavoj Žižek, Whither Left? (2010)
For Slavoj Žižek, the point is not that capitalism has disappeared, but that the word “capitalism” can disappear from everyday political language even while the system itself remains dominant. In his 2010 Whither Left? lecture, he argues that political debate often replaces a direct critique of capitalism with terms such as globalization, corruption, or imperialism. For Žižek, this linguistic shift can make capitalism appear less like a specific historical and economic system and more like the natural background of social life.
The deeper argument is about ideological hegemony: an ideology can be powerful not only when people openly believe in it, but when its basic assumptions become so familiar that they no longer need to be named or defended. Žižek links this to the difficulty of imagining alternatives to capitalism, famously arguing elsewhere in the same lecture that it can be easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
#slavojzizek #capitalism #ideology #ideologicalhegemony #marxism #criticaltheory #politicaltheory #polscience #globalization #politicaleconomy by @polscience.insta

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Slavoj Žižek brings together Marxism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, philosophy, and cultural criticism to examine how ideology shapes not only what people believe, but also what they desire and enjoy.
Ideology is not simply a collection of false beliefs. It can structure our perception of reality, making existing social relations appear natural, necessary, or inevitable. Fantasy provides an imagined framework through which subjects organize their desires and cope with contradictions they cannot fully confront. Jouissance refers to a peculiar form of excessive enjoyment in which pleasure can become intertwined with pain, guilt, or suffering, helping explain why people may remain attached to practices or systems that harm them.
In The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Žižek examines how ordinary objects, values, or political ideas can acquire an excessive symbolic importance and become objects of collective desire. His concept of the parallax view describes situations in which apparently incompatible perspectives cannot simply be reduced to one unified viewpoint. For Žižek, the gap or contradiction itself can reveal something fundamental about reality.
#slavojzizek #zizek #ideology #fantasy #jouissance #lacan #marxism #theory #criticaltheory #politicaltheory #philosophy #polscience #parallaxview #sublimeobjectofideology by @polscience.insta

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