Totalitarianism and democracy

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Totalitarianism and Democracy: Journal for international research on dictatorship and freedom
Title page of “Totalitarianism and Democracy”, 17th year, issue 1
description Scientific journal
Area of ​​Expertise Humanities and Social Sciences
language German English
publishing company Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
First edition 2004
Frequency of publication half-yearly
Sold edition 200 copies
Editor-in-chief Uwe Backes
editor On behalf of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Research by Thomas Lindenberger
Web link hait.tu-dresden.de/
publications
Article archive since 2004
ISSN (print) 1612-9008
ISSN (online) 2196-8276

Totalitarianism and Democracy - Review of International Dictatorship and Freedom Research (TD) is a since 2004 twice a year on behalf of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism at Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht published scientific journal , dedicated to the comparative study non- democratic systems and movements in history and the present as well as the analysis of the prerequisites for free democratic societies. Parallel to the paid print edition , the magazine has also been published in open access format since 2020 with financial support from Pollux .

Mission statement and profile

The magazine sees itself - as it says in the preface to issue 1 - as a "forum [for] interdisciplinary exchange (among others between historians, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, educators, religious scholars, philosophers)" for the scientific discussion of "historical and current forms the ' dictatorship ', the ' autocracy ', the ' extremism ' or the ' fundamentalism ', with the ' political religions ' and 'modern dictatorships' - or whatever the conceptual categories and interpretation patterns used may be ”. In addition, it would also be about the exploration of "those historical-political, social, social-psychological and cultural constellations, conditions and dispositions" which serve the "establishment and consolidation of the intellectual, procedural and institutional foundations of liberal-democratic societies".

Within the scope of this program, space should be given to a “pluralism of research approaches and methods” that takes into account the “diverse forms of scientific comparison” as well as the “different descriptive and normative claims when processing and interpreting the historical material”.

Editor, editor and advisory board

TD is published on behalf of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarian Research by the current director. This has so far concerned Gerhard Besier (2004–2007), Clemens Vollnhals (came 2007–2009, 2016–2017), Günther Heydemann (2009–2016) and, since 2017, Thomas Lindenberger .

The editorial management is incumbent on the deputy director of the institute Uwe Backes ; Lothar Fritze was responsible for the review section until 2019 .

The scientific advisory board currently includes Michael Burleigh , Stéphane Courtois , Emilio Gentile , Eckhard Jesse , Peter Graf von Kielmansegg , Werner J. Patzelt , Kurt Salamun and Hans-Peter Schwarz .

Varia

In December 2015, the editorial team sat up with a scientific joke and published a bogus article entitled The German-German Shepherd . In the article u. a. postulates that the first victim of the Wall was not a human but a police dog named Rex. A law that required the GDR border troops to keep their dogs on a leash prevented World War III, and the shepherds posted by the Berlin Wall were direct descendants of the guard dogs in the Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps .

The submitting collective of authors justified their " satirical intervention" in a subsequently published statement by stating that they wanted to "stimulate a discussion about" "why committed social criticism has become an exception in the humanities". After the "freely invented contribution" at a specialist conference at the Center for Metropolitan Studies at the TU Berlin did not "cause offense", the logical decision was made to "take the next hurdle in academic operations and submit the contribution for publication".

Subsequently, in a statement, the editorial management asked the readers and subscribers of the magazine to apologize for the fact that "the intention to deceive was not recognized and the necessary scientific due diligence was neglected". One was “systematically deceived”, “u. a. through a falsified curriculum vitae and apparently scientific argumentation, which was made credible to the reader with detailed explanations, extensive footnotes and incorrect archive information ”. As a consequence of the incident, an additional appraisal process was introduced for reliable quality assurance by obtaining mandatory external appraisals for every planned publication in the journal.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The journal “Totalitarismus und Demokratie” is now available as Open Access. In: Pollux . February 11, 2020, accessed July 10, 2020 .
  2. ^ Gerhard Besier: Introduction. In: Totalitarianism and Democracy. 1st year, issue 1, 2004, pp. 5–8 ( PDF; 39 kB ).
  3. ^ Christiane Schulte: The German-German Shepherd Dog - A contribution to the history of violence in the century of extremes. In: Totalitarianism and Democracy. 12th year, issue 2, 2015, pp. 319–334.
  4. ↑ Martin Machowecz : The dog misery. How the German-German Shepherd caused an academic scandal at the Dresden Technical University. In: The time . April 14, 2016, accessed January 18, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Philip Oltermann: Human-animal studies academics dogged by German hoaxers. Editors of Dresden-based journal apologize after being fooled by fake PhD student's paper on role of alsatians in totalitarianism. In: The Guardian . March 1, 2016, accessed January 18, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Anett Laue: "Animals of our homeland". Effects of the SED ideology on social human-animal relationships in the GDR. February 6, 2015, Center for Metropolitan Studies at TU Berlin. In: H-Soz-Kult . March 28, 2015, accessed January 18, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Christiane Schulte & Freund_innen: Inspector Rex shot at the wall? In: Telepolis . February 15, 2016, accessed January 18, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Editorial management: Statement on the article “The German-German Shepherd Dog - A Contribution to the History of Violence in the Century of Extremes” (TD 2015, 2, pp. 319–334). In: hait.tu-dresden.de. Archived from the original on March 6, 2016 ; accessed on January 18, 2020 .