scholarly journals Illiberal peacebuilding in Angola

2011 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Soares de Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Poverty Alleviation ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Liberal Peace ◽  
Post War ◽  
Liberal Peacebuilding

ABSTRACTAngola's oil-fuelled reconstruction since the end of the civil war in 2002 is a world away from the mainstream liberal peacebuilding approach that Western donors have promoted and run since the end of cold war. The Angolan case is a pivotal example of what can be termed ‘illiberal peacebuilding’, a process of post-war reconstruction managed by local elites in defiance of liberal peace precepts on civil liberties, the rule of law, the expansion of economic freedoms and poverty alleviation, with a view to constructing a hegemonic order and an elite stranglehold over the political economy. Making sense of the Angolan case is a starting point for a broader comparative look at other cases of illiberal peacebuilding such as Rwanda, Lebanon and Sri Lanka.

The Council of Europe: 50 years of European cooperation

1999 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-505
Author(s):  
Daniel Tarschys
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
European Identity ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
European Cooperation ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Fundamental Values

The post-war European credo – never again a Europe given over to totalitarian terror and war, but a Europe of peace and freedom – led to the creation in May 1949 of the Council of Europe with the clear political and ideological alignment to build a Europe of common values (democracy, human rights and the Rule of Law), to which the practice of market economy was added. The promotion of those fundamental values constituted the Council's specific mandate and raison d'être together with ever-increasing cooperation patterns. After the end of the Cold War, the organization became the pre-eminent European political institution welcoming, on an equal footing and in permanent structures, the democracies of Europe freed from communist oppression. The Kosovo conflict calls for a hardening of the European resolve to base its future on the defence of human dignity, respect for the individual, the Rule of Law and pluralist democracy, indispensable in fostering a common European identity. Setting-up of regional and European cooperation and integration structures has been an important step forward, but must be complemented by the conviction and determination to forge a common European destiny.

STATE POLICING AND INVISIBLE FORCES IN MOZAMBIQUE

Africa ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 424-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helene Maria Kyed
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
War Zone ◽  
Police Authority ◽  
State Police ◽  
State Authority ◽  
Post War ◽  
Spiritual Problems

ABSTRACTThis article explores how the state police in Mozambique tried to (re)encroach upon a former war zone and what their methods implied for state authority more generally. Post-war reform efforts to professionalize the police in accordance with the rule of law and human rights have had apparently paradoxical results. This is in part because efforts to constitute state authority have relied on both embracing and taming ‘tradition’ as an alternative domain of authority, order and law. Ethnographic fieldwork at police stations shows that the police increasingly handle witchcraft cases and spiritual problems. This, the article argues, does not only reflect a tension between local/customary and state/legal notions of order and justice. Equally significant is the existence of partial sovereignties. A spiritual idiom of power and evildoing constitutes an alternative articulation of sovereignty due to the capacity of invisible forces to give and take life. This is an idiom mastered by chiefs and healers. Police officers engage with invisible forces to gain popular legitimacy and manifest state power, and yet they never manage to fully master those forces. Consequently, state police authority remains uncertain, and must be continually reinforced by enacting hierarchies and jurisdictional boundaries and by using force.

The Clinton Administration and Africa: A View from Nairobi, Kenya

1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-74
Author(s):  
Korwa G. Adar
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Clinton Administration ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Human Rights Movement

There is nothing more fundamental to Africans who are concerned with the future of the African continent than the issues of democracy, human rights, good governance, and the rule of law. These basic human liberties, among other concerns, constitute the central driving force behind what is often referred to as Africa’s “second liberation.” The primary purpose of this article is to assess the Clinton administration’s role in this second liberation, particularly in terms of its involvement in issues of democracy and human rights. This assessment is offered from the perspective of an individual who has been directly involved in the prodemocracy and human rights movement in Kenya. This article focuses on whether the Clinton administration’s policies are still heavily influenced by classic U.S. conceptions of realpolitik, or if enlightened leadership more in line with a neo-Wilsonian idealpolitik—as official rhetoric suggests—has permitted a fundamental departure in favor of a more coherent and tangible democracy and human rights foreign policy stance in the post-Cold War era.

scholarly journals Applied aspects of accounting the principle of the rule of law in system analysis and simulation of the state system of Ukraine

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 14-18
Author(s):  
V.F. Obolentsev
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Systems Engineering ◽  
System Analysis ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
System Engineering ◽  
The State ◽  
State System ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
The Law

The rule of law is a fundamental principle of the legal sphere. Its assertion in the state institutions of democratic countries is an outstanding achievement of mankind. The implementation of this principle is the basis of civil society and civil liberties. The rule of law is the supremacy of law in society. The rule of law provides for its implementation in law-making and law enforcement activities. The manifestation of the rule of law is that the law is not limited to legislation as one of its forms, but also includes other social regulators (norms of morality, traditions, customs, etc., which are legitimized by society). All these elements of law are united by a quality that corresponds to ideology of justice – the idea of law, which is largely implemented in the Constitution of Ukraine. The first problem for the implementation of the principle of law in Ukraine is that this principle has not yet received the proper normative consolidation and official interpretation. The second problem is its extension to socio-economic rights and social benefits. The third problem is the insufficient level of legality in our state. The aim of the paper is to establish the peculiarities of implementation of the principle of the rule of law at the present stage of development of scientific and technological progress. The task of the paper is to investigate the peculiarities of implementation of the rule of law in the application of information and analytical technologies of system engineering in the legal sphere. In accordance with the experience of using information-analytical technologies of system engineering in the legal sphere, the paper outlines the peculiarities of implementation of the principle of the rule of law in the system analysis and modeling of the state system of Ukraine. The principle of the rule of law must be taken into account in such modeling as "governing circumstance". That is the resource according to which the state system of Ukraine functions. Our preliminary works give grounds to assert that information and analytical technologies of systems engineering are also a promising methodological tool for studying the principles of state building. The principle of the rule of law is the cornerstone of building a democratic state governed by the rule of law in Ukraine. Three years ago, scholars moved away from identifying the rule of law with the law-creating instruments.

Józef Nowacki as a Theoretician of Normativism in Poland

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 248-267
Author(s):  
Sławomir Tkacz
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Third ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Post War ◽  
Legal Theorist ◽  
Historical Sketch

The present paper aims to present an outline of the views of the Polish legal theorist Józef Nowacki (1923–2005). The claim put forward is that Nowacki was the chief representative of Hans Kelsen’s normativism in Polish legal theory. The paper begins with a short historical sketch presenting the reception of Hans Kelsen’s views in Polish jurisprudence, noting that in the post-war period the communist authorities believed that normativism was at odds with the then prevailing system of actually existing socialism. Drawing inspiration from German-speaking authors, Nowacki rejected the ideology prevailing in Poland at that time and became a staunch advocate of the normativist stance, in particular with regard to the theory of the legal system. The second part of the paper discusses Nowacki’s views regarding the concept of the rule of law, and the third and last part presents Nowacki’s critique of the case-law of the Polish Constitutional Court.

scholarly journals Protest und Demokratisierung in Myanmar: Erste Erkenntnisse aus dem „Myanmar Protest Event Dataset“

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 295-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Buschmann
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Economic Transition ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Reforms ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
The Right ◽  
Human Rights Standards

Abstract Myanmar has been perceived to be in a sociopolitical and economic transition since the semi-civilian government under President Thein Sein took office in 2011. Amongst other things, for a representative democracy to function, citizens have to have the freedom to express their opinions and deliberate them with fellow citizens. This requires the secure granting of fundamental civil liberties, as prescribed in the freedom of expression, association, and assembly. Hence, once in the process of democratization, a formerly authoritarian state has to make significant improvements in the granting and protection of these rights too. To empirically test whether Myanmar has made such improvements since 2011 is the goal of a greater research project I am working on. This research note introduces the project and summarizes first findings. By combining knowledge on legal reforms and protest data from the Myanmar Protest Event Dataset, it is suggested that, in Myanmar, the de jure exercisability and de facto exercise of fundamental civil liberties have significantly improved from 2011 to 2015. Informal methods of suppressing the right to protest, such as arbitrary violence, have increasingly descended while methods that are formally in accordance with the rule of law but still lack compliance with international human rights standards have ascended.

scholarly journals Making Sense of Competitive Authoritarianism: Lessons from the Andes

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell A. Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Electoral Institutions ◽  
Hybrid Regimes ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Competitive Authoritarianism ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Andes ◽  
Electoral Regime ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractScholarly attention has increasingly shifted from diminished subtypes of democracy to hybrid regimes, particularly competitive authoritarianism. Such regimes retain democracy’s formal features while failing to meet its minimum standards. When properties of distinct concepts like democracy and authoritarianism are combined, however, confusion, inaccuracy, and mischaracterization of cases may occur. By disaggregating political systems into electoral institutions, surrounding rights and freedoms, constitutionalism, and the rule of law, this article complicates the binary distinction between a midrange definition of democracy and competitive authoritarianism. A number of Andean cases are found to fall on the spectrum of defective democracies between these categories. Defective democracies break down when rulers violate the conditions necessary for institutionalized alternation in power by means of public participation and loyal opposition in an electoral regime. Given leaders’ reliance on electoral legitimacy, however, even defective democracies may prove surprisingly resilient.

Conflict and Courts: Civil War and Judicial Independence across Democracies

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 700-713
Author(s):  
Brad Epperly ◽  
Jacqueline Sievert
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Judicial Independence ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Federal Judiciary ◽  
Cross National

Many argue that during conflict, executive power expands at the expense of the judiciary and civil liberties. Although this is a common conjecture, no systematic study of conflict and judicial independence exists. We argue that conflict, rather than strictly inhibiting independence, is instead a critical juncture that increases the possibility of institutional change, either positive or negative. We assess this claim in three ways: cross-national analyses of (1) de facto and (2) de jure judicial independence after the onset of conflict, and (3) a case study of statutory and jurisdictional changes to the federal judiciary after the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War. Each illustrates that conflict onset is associated with a higher likelihood of changing levels—both decreases and increases—rather than unidirectional decreases in judicial independence. We then present preliminary hypotheses and analyses for three factors that, given conflict onset, should be associated with either improved or worsened conditions for the judiciary. This study has implications for research on conflict, courts, and the rule of law in both political science and legal studies.

scholarly journals PROPERTY AND THE RULE OF LAW

Legal Theory ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Austin
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Substantive Content ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
New Framework

This paper offers a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the common law of property and the rule of law. The standard way of framing this relationship is within the terms of the form/substance debate within the literature on the rule of law: Does the rule of law include only formal and procedural aspects or does it also encompass and support substantive rights such as private property rights and civil liberties? By focusing on the nature of common-law reasoning, I wish to question the form/substance dichotomy that frames this debate and to show that the formal aspects of the rule of law are in fact principles widely adopted within the practice of common-law reasoning and as such play a large role in shaping the substantive content of common-law property rights. Understanding this has implications beyond the relationship between property law and the rule of law.

scholarly journals KRIMINALISASI DITINJAU DARI PERSPEKTIF TEORI HUKUM PIDANA (CRIMINAL LAW THEORY)

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-132
Author(s):  
Marthen H. Toelle
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legislative Power

AbstrakTulisan ini mengkritisi kriminalisasi oleh legislator ditinjau dari perspektif Teori Hukum Pidana. Keputusan legislator untuk mengkriminalkan suatu tindakan melalui undangundang perlu dibatasi karena sangat mempengaruhi kebebasan individu. Di negara berdasarkan pada asas the Rule of Law (negara hukum), pembatasan kekuasaan legislator bersifat niscaya. Khusus terkait dengan keputusan legislator dalam melakukankriminalisasi, bentuk pembatasan tersebut dapat dilakukan salah satunya dengan jalan membedakan antara kriminalisasi yang legitimate dengan kriminalisasi yang tidak legitimate. Melakukan pembedaan tersebut merupakan salah satu bidang kajian dari Teori Hukum Pidana dengan tujuan supaya undang-undang pidana yang dihasilkan dalam proses kriminalisasi mengandung kebenaran.                                                                                                                                                                                                AbstractThis article tries to criticize the legistature’s decision to criminalize from the Criminal Law Theory perspective. The legislatures decision to criminalize needs to be limited because it has great impacts over civil liberties. According to the Rule of Law principle, the limitation over legislative power is inescapable. Specifically related to the legislature’s decision to criminalize, the forms of limitation can be undertaken by differentiate between the legitimate criminalization and the illegitimate criminalization. Doing this differentiation is analytically one of the main concerns of the Criminal Law Theory in order to satisfy that the criminal law resulted from the criminalization process is really needed.

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