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Regular version of the site

Politics of the Star Wars: Can Political Science Make it Clearer?

Lecturer from the Department of Political Science at HSE St. Petersburg Yury Kabanov has published an insightful series of articles on the ways in which Political Science can contribute to our understanding of Star Wars and what post-Soviet states can learn from the uneasy experience of the "galaxy far, far away".

"In the last two years we saw the resurrection of the Star Wars movie franchise, although the universe has never been decaying thanks to thousands of books, fan-fiction stories, series and games. Fans’ attitude to Episode VII: Force Awakens is ambiguous. Many think it’s a mere replica of the original trilogy, others find no logical cohesion between the end of Episode VI and the new one. The latest movie, The Rogue One, was also met with skepticism, as it shows the Rebels as extremists, and a common Good vs. Evil fairytale has turned into a complex military drama.

For political scientists and the Star Wars fan, though, these films are the necessary pieces of puzzle, and the stories they tell are quite in line with the previous movies. Further I will try to illustrate how Political Science contributes to our understanding of the Star Wars Galaxy.  

What we have seen in Episode VII is a classical example of the failed state, a country without capacity to execute control over its territory. Although there is again a republican government, we can also see two military camps. One is the Rebels, who support the central authority but nevertheless are quite independent in use of their fleet and weapons. Another is the New Order, preserving the imperial legacy, and having enough funds to make a new Death Star out of the whole planet. This peculiarity was to some extent addresses by the Galactic Constitution".

Read the full version of Part 1 of the series in Russian: http://actualcomment.ru/politika-zvezdnykh-voyn-1702221046.html