40th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology: Temporality and the self vis-a-vis the Greek referendum of 2015: Contributions of 'letters from the future' used as an instrument in deciphering political decision making (original) (raw)
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The result of the EU referendum of June 2016 sent a shockwave through Europe as Europeans found that the British voting public had narrowly rejected continued membership of the European Union. Well before campaigning for the referendum opened, as a journal focused on European research and one of the journals of the University Association of Contemporary Europe Studies (UACES), the editors of JCER felt a responsibility to ensure that a topical response to the results – whatever they might have been - were heard. In the first of a new initiative by JCER (to publish a special section on an issue of topicality for Europe and those who research it) this final issue of 2016 features a special section dedicated to delivering some understanding of the reasons for the EU referendum, the inherent processes, the politicking and the voting choices.
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Democracy is future-oriented and self-correcting: today's problems can be solved, we are told, in tomorrow's elections. But the biggest issues facing the modern world - from climate collapse and pandemics to recession and world war - each apparently bring us to the edge of the irreversible. What happens to democracy when the future seems no longer open?
This article adopts a pragmatic-communicative approach, derived from Gregory Bateson's cybernetic theory, to the Greek Referendum Vote of 2015. Applying this approach, we interpret the Referendum as a double-bind situation. Our research question is twofold: (1) How do potential Greek voters discursively construct the Referendum? (2) How do they respond to the communicative situation posed? A total of 124 written narratives, " Letters from the Future, " written by 99 participants, were collected during the days prior to the vote. Their letters focused on a desired future situation after a YES or a NO vote outcome. Qualitative analysis showed how the letters were used to appropriate the Referendum query in a unique and deeply personalized manner. Moreover, we identified four types of responses to the ambivalent query: confirmation, rejection, disconfirmation, and meta-communication. These responses are indicative of the psychological and emotional burden posed by the query and of ways people responded to the query. In conclusion, we reflect on the importance of recognizing the psychological dimension of the vote, the role of narratives from the future for personal and social transformation, and the wider relevance of the proposed future-making, pragmatic approach to other Referendum situations.
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This article considers why the idea of an ideal or planned political future for Italy went into decline in the last quarter of the twentieth century, after having dominated the country’s political thinking for much of the modern era. What form did imagined futures take in the traditions of both left and right? Why did this way of thinking virtually disappear after the mid 1970s? What are the signs that future-oriented thinking may be starting to reappear in the twenty-first century?
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