scholarly journals Thomas Piketty's Capital and the Developing World

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Birdsall
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Developing World ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Progressive Taxation ◽  
Social State ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Advanced Economies ◽  
Inherent Tendency

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a tour de force—a compelling and accessible read that presents an eloquent and convincing warning about the future of capitalism. Capitalism, Piketty argues, suffers from an inherent tendency to generate an explosive spiral of increasing inequality of wealth and income. This inegalitarian dynamic of capitalism is not due to textbook failures of capitalist markets (for example, natural monopolies) or failures of economic institutions (such as the failure to regulate these monopolies), but to the way capitalism fundamentally works. Unless the spiral is controlled by far more progressive taxation than is now the norm, the political fallout could undermine the viability of the successful “social state” (p. 471) in the advanced economies, putting the democratic state itself at risk.

scholarly journals Epigenetics and Politics in the Colonial Present

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-388
Author(s):  
Karen Bridget Murray
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
British Columbia ◽  
Early Development ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Aboriginal Child ◽  
Style Of Thought ◽  
The Relationship

This article draws attention to the importance of including the colonial present in critical inquiries into the relationship between epigenetics and politics. Focusing on British Columbia (Canada) at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the assessment illustrates how an epigenetic style of thought rendered tangible the “vulnerable Aboriginal child” as a category amenable to settler-colonial governmental interventions. More specifically, the article demonstrates how prominent elements of this classification interconnected with a mediating device undergirded by epigenetic reason, the Early Development Instrument. Eugenic sensibilities produced through epigenetic logics wove through this relationship. In turn, linkages between the EDI and the classification of the at-risk Aboriginal child comprised a terrain that shaped settler-colonial power and privilege through mechanisms of population management and related implications for territorial control. The article evaluates what these findings suggest for extending debates about the political elements of epigenetic reason.

Democratic Careening

2013 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 729-763 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Slater
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Developing Country ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
Developing World ◽  
Political Instability ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Accountability ◽  
Detailed Case ◽  
Twenty First Century

Democracy in the developing world is generally outliving expectations, but not outperforming them. Democratic collapse has happily been a far rarer event thus far in the twenty-first century than it was in the twentieth. Yet it does not exactly ring true to say that most developing country democracies are consolidating. This review essay ventures the claim that political scientists need to transcend their rightful concerns with how and why young democracies collapse or consolidate, and devote more attention to theorizing how and why they careen. It defines democratic careening as political instability sparked by intense conflict between partisan actors deploying competing visions of democratic accountability. Careening occurs when actors who argue that democracy requires substantial inclusivity of the entire populace (vertical accountability) clash with rivals who defend democracy for its constraints against excessive concentrations of unaccountable power, particularly in the political executive (horizontal accountability). These arguments are elaborated through reviews of leading theoretical works on democratic break-down as well as detailed case studies of Thailand and taiwan.

The Political and Aesthetic Power of the Everyday in Beckett's Happy Days

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-66
Author(s):  
Julie Bates
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
First Century ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Algerian War ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Last Man ◽  
Second World

Happy Days is contemporaneous with a number of seminal contributions to the concept of the everyday in postwar France. This essay suggests that the increasingly constrained verbal and physical routines performed by its protagonist Winnie constitute a portrait of the everyday, and goes on to trace the affinities between Beckett's portrait and several formulations of the concept, with particular emphasis on the pronounced gendering of the everyday in many of these theories. The essay suggests the aerial bombings of the Second World War and methods of torture during the Algerian War as potential influences for Beckett's play, and draws a comparison with Marlen Haushofer's 1963 novel The Wall, which reimagines the Romantic myth of The Last Man as The Last Woman. It is significant, however, that the cataclysmic event that precedes the events of Happy Days remains unnamed. This lack of specificity, I suggest, is constitutive of the menace of the play, and has ensured that the political as well as aesthetic power of Happy Days has not dated. Indeed, the everyday of its sentinel figure posted in a blighted landscape continues to articulate the fears of audiences, for whom the play may resonate today as a staging of twenty-first century anxiety about environmental crisis. The essay concludes that in Happy Days we encounter an isolated female protagonist who contrives from scant material resources and habitual bodily rhythms a shelter within a hostile environment, who generates, in other words, an everyday despite the shattering of the social and temporal framework that conventionally underpin its formation. Beckett's play in this way demonstrates the political as well as aesthetic power of the everyday in a time of crisis.

Sharp rise in vaccine hesitancy in a large and representative sample of the French population: reasons for vaccine hesitancy.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Sophie Hacquin ◽  
Sacha Altay ◽  
Emma de Araujo ◽  
Coralie Chevallier ◽  
Hugo Mercier
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Educational Level ◽  
Representative Sample ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
The Political ◽  
French Population ◽  
Sharp Rise ◽  
Vaccine Refusal ◽  
French People ◽  
Nationally Representative

A safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine is our only hope to decisively stop the spread of the SARS-CoV-2. But a vaccine will only be fully effective if a significant share of the population agrees to get it. Five consecutive surveys of a large, nationally representative sample (N = 1000 for each wave) surveyed attitudes towards a future COVID-19 vaccine in France from May 2020 to October 2020. We found that COVID-19 vaccine refusal has steadily increased, reaching an all-time high with only 23% of participants willing to probably or certainly take a future COVID-19 vaccine in September 2020. Vaccine hesitant individuals are more likely to be women, young, less educated, to vote at the political extremes, to be dissatisfied with the government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, and to feel less at risk of COVID-19. The reasons why French people would refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine are similar to those offered for other vaccines, and these reasons are strikingly stable across gender, age and educational level. Finally, most French people declare they would not take the vaccine as soon as possible but would instead rather wait or not take it at all.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas I. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Michel De Montaigne ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Northern European ◽  
Political Conception ◽  
Legal Principle ◽  
Ethical Disposition

In academic debates and popular political discourse, tolerance almost invariably refers either to an individual moral or ethical disposition or to a constitutional legal principle. However, for the political actors and ordinary residents of early modern Northern European countries torn apart by religious civil war, tolerance was a political capacity, an ability to talk to one’s religious and political opponents in order to negotiate civil peace and other crucial public goods. This book tells the story of perhaps the greatest historical theorist-practitioner of this political conception of tolerance: Michel de Montaigne. This introductory chapter argues that a Montaignian insistence that political opponents enter into productive dialogue with each other is worth reviving and promoting in the increasingly polarized democratic polities of the twenty-first century.

American Custom, Ritual, and Holidays

2018 ◽  
pp. 255-276
Author(s):  
Jack Santino
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life Course ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Events ◽  
Close Study ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Since the nineteenth century, attention in folklore and folklife studies has shifted from viewing certain customary symbolic actions such as “calendar customs” and rituals of the life course to a more inclusive performance-oriented perspective on holidays and customs. Folklorists recognize the multiplicity of events that people may consider ritual and festival, and the porous nature of these categories. The concept of the “sacred” has expanded to include realms other than the strictly religious, so as to include the political and other domains, both official and unofficial. A comprehensive study of ritual and festival incorporates a close study of folk and popular actions as well as institutional ceremony. In the twenty-first century, approaching events as both carnivalesque and ritualesque allows folklorists to describe purpose and intention in public events, and to account for political, commemorative, celebratory, and festive elements in any particular event.

The Crisis of Minorities in Ethnic States: The Case of Palestinian Citizens in Israel

1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naditn Rouhana ◽  
Asʿad Ghanem
Keyword(s):  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
International System ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Group Rights ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Ethnic Affiliation ◽  
Democratic State

The vast majority of states in the international system, democratic and non-democratic, are multi-ethnic (Gurr 1993). A liberal-democratic multi-ethnic state serves the collective needs of all its citizens regardless of their ethnic affiliation, and citizenship—legally recognized membership in the political structure called a state—is the single criterion for belonging to the state and for granting equal opportunity to all members of the system. Whether a multi-ethnic democratic state should provide group rights above and beyond individual legal equality is an ongoing debate (Gurr & Harff 1994).

V. II principio dell’irretroattività della legge nell’esperienza giuridica romana dell’età repubblicana

2021 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-273
Author(s):  
Umberto Laffi
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
The Law ◽  
Criminal Legislation ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

Abstract The Principle of the Irretroactivity of the Law in the Roman Legal Experience in the Republican Age. Through an in-depth analysis of literary and legal sources (primarily Cicero) and of epigraphic evidence, the author demonstrates that the principle of the law’s non-retroactivity was known to, and applied by, the Romans since the Republican age. The political struggle favored on several occasions the violation of this principle by imposing an extraordinary criminal legislation, aimed at sanctioning past behaviors of adversaries. But, although with undeniable limits of effectiveness in the dynamic relationship with the retroactivity, the author acknowledges that at the end of the first century BC non-retroactivity appeared as the dominant principle, consolidated both in the field of the civil law as well as substantive criminal law.

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