Ekaterina Levintova

Global Citizens Are Made, Not Born: Multiclass Role-Playing Simulation of Global Decision Making

Globalization, global citizenship, and political engagement have become such buzzwords and clichés that we often lose the sense of their meaning. Global citizenship in particular is an elusive concept to operationalize. This article proposes to look at three dimensions of global citizenship: legal (rights and obligations), psychological identification with the global community, and political ones. Heeding the calls to wed traditional liberal education with the experiential learning in pursuit of developing students global values and competencies, we devised and implemented a simulation called the Global Summit on Sustainability, an active learning assignment we run in large, general education survey classes (Global Politics and Introduction to American Government & Politics) populated by mostly nonpolitical science majors. The total number of students involved in the summit range from 225 to 360 each semester. But how does having a Global Summit influence the development of global citizenship and its three dimensions in large general education undergraduate political science classes? By using (1) instructor observations at the summit; (2) statistical analyses of pre- and postsummit surveys; and (3) a qualitative review of students written assignments, we find that the Global Summit influences the development of global citizenship skills.

Good Neighbours?: Dominant Narratives about the ‘Other’ in Contemporary Polish and Russian Newspapers

Abstract This article explores whether and how pre-communist images and stereotypes of Russia and Russians and Poland and Poles are being perpetuated in the framing of Russian–Polish relations by the contemporary Russian and Polish print media. It is hypothesised that the stable core of pre-communist Russian public discourse about Poland and Polish narratives of Russia survived the forced internationalism of the communist period and is present today, although it is also being reimagined at the margins. Using a sample of 1,208 articles from Russian and Polish daily newspapers, the article examines contemporary narratives and their relationship to the old discourses.

Being the opposition in contemporary Russia: The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) among social-democratic, Marxist–Leninist and nationalist–socialist discourses

Did the ideological discourse of the KPRF, the communist successor party in post-Communist Russia, evolve in the same direction as the identity and discourse of the majority of ex-communist parties in Eastern and Central Europe which now embrace social democracy? In particular, did the KPRF’s Marxist–Leninist and nationalist–socialist rhetoric change with time as the political climate for its functioning as the only viable Russian opposition party continued to deteriorate? This question is addressed through content analysis of public documents and internal party documents, which reveals that the latter are considerably more liberal and democratic in tone than the former.

A tale of two independence movements: how do citizens encounter issues of international law and democratic theory?

Foreign policy events, including secessionism and independence movements, become objectified for most citizens through media coverage. Accordingly, I look at the coverage of Kosovo’s and Scotland’s bids for independence in the two top national newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Scholarship in international law, democratic theory, and comparative politics might have valuable insights on independence processes, but it is the media frames inspired by these strands of theoretical literature that shape public opinion and/or reflect policy-makers’ preferences (and biases) in the foreign policy arena. I find that print media can engage in theoretically sophisticated coverage of secessionist movements, which often echoes scholarly insights derived from the relevant academic literature. The two European case studies show consistent application of tropes and frames that one would find in the academic publications on the subject. Yet these cases also illustrate profound differences in media framing not reducible to objective legal and political differences between the two events. US foreign policy considerations also appear to play a role in explaining variance in media frames.