scholarly journals Withdrawing and Drawing In: Political Discourse in Policed Communities

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 604-647 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vesla Weaver ◽  
Gwen Prowse ◽  
Spencer Piston

AbstractA growing body of literature examines how direct or vicarious contact with forms of state surveillance affects political behavior and perceptions of government legitimacy. We develop a new method, Portals, to collect conversations between black residents from highly policed areas in five different U.S. cities between 2016 and 2018. While existing research emphasizes how interactions with the carceral state are alienating and demobilizing, our analysis of these conversations identifies productive ways in which citizens respond to oppressive encounters with police. The political discourses used by Portals participants, we argue, are centered on a logic of “collective autonomy”—given police ignorance, abuses of police authority, and the little political power that residents of highly policed communities have to demand change, many conclude that power is best achieved by strategically distancing from state institutions in the short term while building community power in the long term. Crucially, articulations of collective autonomy transcend the ideological positions of participants and track closely with an ideological tradition in black politics that persists across generations and contexts of state oppression.

Author(s):  
Silvia Marzagalli

The reassessment of the driving forces leading to the French Revolution provoked the rejection of the traditional Marxist interpretation according to which the Revolution was led by an emerging capitalistic bourgeoisie strengthened by long-term industrial and trade growth, and the emergence of interpretations based on political and ideological developments. This chapter argues that demography and economy still offer important keys to understand the origins of the Revolution if they are embedded within a broader analysis, taking social, cultural, and political aspects into account. In stressing the escalation of social tensions provoked by an unequal redistribution of resources, analysis of the demographic and economic developments highlight the background against which the convergence of political and short-term subsistence crises pushed rural and urban masses to revolt in 1789. Without their actions, the political revolution led by a majority of the representatives who met at the Estates-General in 1789 would have been repressed.


2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-271
Author(s):  
John David Lewis

Claims that a man-made global warming catastrophe is imminent have two major aspects: the scientific support offered for the claims, and the political proposals brought forth in response to the claims. The central questions are whether non-scientists should accept the claims themselves as true, and whether they should support the political proposals attached to them. Predictions of a coming disaster are shown to be a-historical in both the long term and the short term, to involve shifting predictions that are contrary to evidence, and to be opposed by many scientists. The political proposals to alleviate this alleged problem—especially plans by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—are shown to offer no alternative to fossil fuels, and to portend a major economic decline and permanent losses of liberty. The anthropogenic global warming claims are largely motivated not by science, but by a desire for socialist intervention on a national and a global scale. Neither the claims to an impending climate catastrophe nor the political proposals attached to those claims should be accepted.


2005 ◽  
Vol 156 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-31
Author(s):  
Vassil Stiptzov ◽  
Christoph Duerr

The present experiences with multifunctional regional forestry planning in six pilot areas of Bulgaria clearly indicate how different interest groups can actively participate in long-term forestry planning. These processes can play a guiding role for the general democratisation of municipalities, for a constructive collaboration with civil society, the private sector and state institutions. One condition for the effective implementation of the plans is the political will to set clear priorities for the multifunctionality of forests in order to provide appropriate financial resources for implementation together with a consistent controlling mechanism. Bilateral development cooperation between Bulgaria and Switzerland seeks to promote awareness amongst the actors, develop appropriate methodologies and educate and train stakeholders. What is still lacking in Bulgaria is the formulation of appropriate forestry legislation and guidelines for the preparation and implementation of the plans, an efficient monitoring system as well as the carefully formulated coordination with regional spatial development planning.


Author(s):  
Kristopher Ramsay

Foreign policy often involves two or more countries finding a path from contested interests to a peaceful agreement that incorporates the political and security desires of the relevant parties. In almost every case, the possibility of armed conflict as an alternative means of settling disagreements casts its shadow. Recent research on foreign policy can be well understood as following the view, first articulated by Thomas C. Schelling, that all international relations is really about negotiations and bargaining. This worldview brings a number of aspects of international politics into a natural and coherent framework. We can understand what leads countries to fail to reach peaceful solutions when disagreements arise, how the issues on the agenda influence the content and success of negotiations, and how domestic constituencies shape the ability of leaders to make agreements. Equally important, we can understand the trade-offs between short-term negotiating advantages and long-term issues of reputation.


2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jung-Eun Lee

Theoretical developments on the temporalities of social movements have been grounded in both long-term and mid-term perspectives. This focus has obscured the processes of short-term mobilizations, leaving it unclear whether the established models explain the micro-dynamics of short-term protests. Considering the important effects short-term protests have on political processes, it is crucial to analyze how they develop in interaction with their external environment every day. This article seeks to address this research lacuna by extending the current perspectives into short-term protests. It tests whether the daily fluctuations of political and cultural contexts shaped the anti-U.S. beef protests in South Korea in 2008, with a temporal span of 121 days. The findings emphasize the importance of political and discursive opportunities for protests to develop: While state repression as well as state actors' dissonant/incoherent statements spurred protests, third-party actors' dissonant/incoherent opinions in the conservative media led to a decline in protests.


2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-175
Author(s):  
Gesine Manuwald

This paper discusses the function of speeches given by Cicero to the popular assembly (contio) as reports about recent political events or decrees. Several of the few extant examples are part of oratorical corpora consisting of speeches from politically difficult periods, namely from Cicero's consular year (63 BCE; Catilinarians) and from his fight against Mark Antony (44–43 BCE; Philippics). Cicero is shown to have applied his oratorical abilities in all these cases to exploit the contio speeches so as to present narrative accounts of political developments in his interpretation and thus to influence public opinion in the short term during the political process and particularly, within an edited corpus, in the long term.


2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomás Bril-Mascarenhas ◽  
Antoine Maillet

AbstractWhat explains the remarkable resilience of pension regulation in postauthoritarian Chile, even after decades of majoritarian voter discontent and growing international and domestic criticism of Pinochet’s pioneering private capitalization system? This puzzling outcome can be understood only by looking at the combined effect of the pension industry’s long-term power-building investments and its short-term political actions to outmaneuver state and societal challengers. Engaging new theoretical developments in political economy and historical institutionalism, this study examines the long-term process by which the previously nonexistent Chilean pension industry expanded and leveraged its power during key episodes of open contestation. The analysis of pension regulation in Chile between the 1980s and the 2010s illustrates the importance of placing business power in time, motivating new rounds of theory building in the quest to address the perennial question of how business gets what it wants in the political arena.


2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick M. Hess ◽  
Juliet P. Squire

The tension at the heart of pension politics is the incentive to satisfy today's claimants in the here and now at the expense of long-term concerns. Teacher pensions, in particular, pose two challenges. The first is that political incentives invite irresponsible fiscal stewardship, as public officials make outsized short-term commitments to employees. The second is that incentives hinder modernization, as policy makers avoid the politically perilous task of altering plans ill suited to attracting talent in the contemporary labor market. The alignment of the political stars has helped some states and localities to address the first challenge, but far too few have demonstrated a willingness to tackle the second. We illustrate the political dynamics through discussions of pension plans in New Jersey, Oregon, and San Diego, California, and suggest several political strategies that could make pension challenges more tractable and encourage public officials to be responsible fiscal stewards or to revisit anachronistic retirement systems.


1993 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 615-619 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Berg

Malnutrition cannot be reduced to any single causality. While the political economy explanation is correct, suffering must be addressed in the short term by the available technical solutions. More work is needed on both the long-term causes of malnutrition and on methods of prophylaxis and treatment for nutritional diseases.


Author(s):  
Burke A. Hendrix

Political theorists often imagine themselves as political architects, asking what an ideal set of laws or social structures might look like. Yet persistent injustices can endure for decades or even centuries despite such ideal theorizing. In circumstances of this kind, it is essential for political theorists to think carefully about the political choices normatively available to those who directly face persistent injustices and seek to change them. The book focuses on the claims of Aboriginal peoples to better treatment from the United States and Canada. The book investigates two intertwined issues: the kinds of moral permissions that those facing persistent injustice have when they act politically, and the kinds of transformations that political action may bring about in those who undertake it. The book argues for normative permissions to speak untruth to power; to circumvent or nullify existing law; to give primary attention to protecting one’s own community first; and to engage in political experimentation that reshapes future generations. The book argues that, when carefully used, these permissions may help political actors to avoid co-optation and self-delusion. At the same time, divisions of labor between those who grapple most closely with state institutions and those who keep their distance may be necessary to facilitate escape from persistent injustice over the long term.


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