Abstract This article examines how Chinese history education in Hong Kong seeks to construct young people’s identification with Chinese governance. Employing textbook-based discourse analysis as its primary research methodology, the study analyses Chinese history textbooks published by several major publishers. It establishes a clear link between history education and the construction of national identity, demonstrating how multiple stakeholders have transformed Chinese history education into a mechanism of national education. By analysing the representation of Hong Kong’s past within the broader context of modern Chinese society, the article reveals the strong political and ideological orientations embedded in these historical narratives. Through a detailed comparative discourse analysis of different textbook editions, the study illustrates how Hong Kong history is framed through Mainland-centered historical perspectives and incorporated into a Chinese nationalist narrative presented as pedagogically appropriate and authoritative. The textbooks’ portrayal of the “historical relationship” between Hong Kong and China constructs a discourse of “historical legitimacy,” through which China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong is naturalised and reinforced. In doing so, the curriculum and textbooks actively shape students’ understanding of national identity, encouraging the internalisation of a Chinese political and historical identity aligned with contemporary governance.
Abstract In the last decade, the expansion of digital media and sociopolitical changes have contributed to a transnational revival of patriotic attire linked to nationalist performance, particularly in post-Communist contexts. This article examines the visual and ideological intersections between politics, media, and dress, focusing on the cultural, performative, and political dynamics of contemporary nationalist fashion. It investigates the historical roots of this phenomenon, its postcolonial, gendered, and global dimensions, and its role in the reconstruction of historical memory. The study traces how patriotic attire, featuring neo-folk motifs, embroidery, religious symbols, historical scenes, and political iconography, serves as a visual manifestation of new nationalist narratives in post-Soviet and post-Communist states. These sartorial forms function both as ideological statements and as expressions of utopian and dystopian visions of the nation. The emergence of this trend is situated within a longer tradition of 19th-century patriotic self-visualization, adapted to contemporary sociopolitical conditions.
Abstract Due to their major influence on the process of democratic backsliding in numerous countries around the world, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, populist and nationalist parties have been extensively explored in academic literature in recent years. While these parties’ domestic dynamics have been thoroughly studied, both independently and in comparative designs, their foreign relations have largely gone unnoticed. This is a shortcoming in the literature, especially when it comes to the European Union, where these parties have the ability to collaborate in the European Parliament and influence European policies. As a result, the purpose of this study is to examine nationalist parties’ parliamentary diplomacy by exploring the case of a new and ambitious newcomer, Romania’s Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR). Based on interviews with party members and netnography, our findings demonstrate that AUR’s parliamentary diplomacy is organised around three important objectives: Eastern and Central Europe, Western Europe and the EU level. While their focus on the EU is explained by their successful ambition to enter the European Parliament in 2024, and their focus on Eastern Europe by their desire to do so by strengtening collaboration with ideologically similar parties in Poland, AUR’s focus on diaspora is unlike any other Romanian political party: they not only try to forge ties with the Romanian diaspora in the West, but they also open the black box of Romanian historical diasporas, particularly the ones in Serbia and Ukraine. Preliminary findings contribute to the literature in political science and international relations on autocratization (Luhrmann, Anna, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2019. “A Third Wave of Autocratization Is Here: What Is New about It?” Democratization 26 (7): 1095–1113. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2019.1582029.) and democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe (Bozoki, Andras, and Daniel Hegedűs. 2018. “An Externally Constrained Hybrid Regime: Hungary in the European Union.” Democratization 25 (7): 1173–1189. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2018.1455664.), both theoretically and empirically. Theoretically, this paper contributes by opening up the research on the parliamentary diplomacy of nationalist parties, while empirically I contribute by exploring the case of AUR.
Abstract This research note proposes a conceptual and methodological framework for studying the relationship between music and nationalist conflict. Conceptually, it introduces acoustic coercion — the enforcement of sonic conformity through informal violence operating with state complicity under credible impunity through selective non-intervention — as a consolidating concept for dynamics documented piecemeal across existing scholarship on music-politics relations. This concept captures dynamics that frameworks often organized around propaganda, censorship, and resistance capture partially: the gap between formal tolerance and informal terror, the conscription of performers into political service, and the impossibility of acoustic neutrality in polarized environments. Methodologically, the note demonstrates how historical acoustemology — the reconstruction of past sonic environments from textual sources — can serve nationalism studies by recovering the lived experience of sonic conflict from archival materials while remaining attentive to listening positionality. The toolkit applies equally to ethnographic study of contemporary cases; the historical emphasis reflects the available evidence. Drawing on original research into the partisan press in Athens during the Greek National Schism (1915–1922), the note shows how professional musicians became trapped subjects, compelled to perform partisan repertoires through violence and economic necessity. The note concludes by suggesting how these tools might illuminate other cases where sound serves as a medium of nationalist boundary enforcement.
Abstract The purpose of the present study was to identify the mechanisms of the functioning of religious ethos in the political discourse of Japan and Singapore. The methodology combined political science, cultural studies, religious studies, and historical-genetic analysis. The findings showed that Japan developed a distinctive model of religious-political interaction based on Shintoism as a sacralised foundation of statehood. During the Meiji period, State Shinto legitimised political authority and national unity, while after 1945, religious symbols continued to influence national consciousness despite official secularism. In Singapore, religious pluralism contributed to a model of “managed harmony,” in which Confucian ethics, adapted to modern conditions, supported civic cohesion. The state regulated the religious sphere to preserve social stability. Comparative analysis demonstrated that both countries used religion as an instrument of political integration, although through different institutional mechanisms. Confucian traditions were particularly significant in both contexts, but acquired different political interpretations. The study concluded that religion remains an important component of contemporary national ideologies, adapting to modernisation and globalisation without losing cultural identity. The findings may inform political planning in culturally diverse societies.
