scholarly journals Want to Study the Nature of Power? Start by Moving the Chairs!

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (03) ◽  
pp. 488-491
Author(s):  
Meg Mott
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Theory Use ◽  
The Chairs

ABSTRACTAt first glance, the political-theory classroom can seem like a “philosophy class in disguise.” How can we make our text-based classes more “political”? This article considers how three teaching formats—debate, fishbowl, and forum theater—enact different types of power in the classroom and how those enactments necessitate political judgments. In addition to creating the need for political analysis, each of these formats embodies a particular rhetorical strategy often used by political theorists. By physicalizing the argumentative, introspective, and descriptive devices that writers of political theory use, students become better readers of these often old and usually dense texts.

From Scientific Socialism to Political Science?

1994 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 63-66
Author(s):  
David Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Labor History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
Scientific Socialism

Ira Katznelson has proposed that we labor historians can recover our lost élan by engaging the agenda of liberalism. Although he acknowledges that today's writings on working-class history are variegated and richly rewarding, he regrets that they have become uncoupled from controversies over public policy and social change and run the risk of becoming little more than “sentimental reminders of times lost and aspirations disappointed.”To revitalize our sense of engagement he recommends that we call a halt to “the continuing flight within labor history from institutional-political analysis.” We should focus our attention on historical relationships between the state and civil society, and we should inform our analyses with the political theory that historically has assumed its shape around those relationships: liberalism.

scholarly journals Awakening the "Walking Dead": Zombie Pedagogy for Millennials

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 ◽  
pp. 4-13
Author(s):  
Nancy Dawn Wadsworth
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
The Political ◽  
Pedagogical Tool ◽  
Global Problem ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Walking Dead

This article lays out the pedagogical benefits of using popular zombie productions, particularly AMC's The Walking Dead, to teach a critical introduction to modern political theory. Based on my undergraduate course: "Political Theory, Climate Change, and the Zombie Apocalypse," the article outlines how The Walking Dead can be used to critique the mythic assumptions built into modern social contract theory; to introduce other political ideologies, including conservatism, anarchism, fascism, and communism; and to consider the political challenges raised by a global problem such as climate change in an increasingly neoliberal environment. Zombie productions are offered as a particularly salient pedagogical tool that can help awaken critical political analysis for the Millennial Generation.   

scholarly journals Exploring the political pulse of a country using data science tools

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel G. Folgado ◽  
Veronica Sanz
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Data Science ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Negative Sentiment ◽  
Fully Connected

AbstractIn this paper we illustrate the use of Data Science techniques to analyse complex human communication. In particular, we consider tweets from leaders of political parties as a dynamical proxy to political programmes and ideas. We also study the temporal evolution of their contents as a reaction to specific events. We analyse levels of positive and negative sentiment in the tweets using new tools adapted to social media. We also train a Fully-Connected Neural Network (FCNN) to recognise the political affiliation of a tweet. The FCNN is able to predict the origin of the tweet with a precision in the range of 71–75%, and the political leaning (left or right) with a precision of around 90%. This study is meant to be viewed as an example of how to use Twitter data and different types of Data Science tools for a political analysis.

On the Will of the People: Notes on the Political “Theory” of Populism

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claus Offe
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
National People ◽  
The Will

The “will of the (national) people” is the ubiquitously invoked reference unit of populist politics. The essay tries to demystify the notion that such will can be conceived of as a unique and unified substance deriving from collective ethnic identity. Arguably, all political theory is concerned with arguing for ways by which citizens can make e pluribus unum—for example, by coming to agree on procedures and institutions by which conflicts of interest and ideas can be settled according to standards of fairness. It is argued that populists in their political rhetoric and practice typically try to circumvent the burden of such argument and proof. Instead, they appeal to the notion of some preexisting existential unity of the people’s will, which they can redeem only through practices of repression and exclusion.

Getting Real?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Goodhart
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Norms

Chapter 3 engages with realist political theory throughcritical dialogues with leading realist theorists. It argues that realist political theories are much more susceptible to conservatism, distortion, and idealization than their proponents typically acknowledge. Realism is often not very realistic either in its descriptions of the world or in its political analysis. While realism enables the critical analysis of political norms (the analysis of power and unmasking of ideology), it cannot support substantive normative critique of existing social relations or enable prescriptive theorizing. These two types of critique must be integrated into a single theoretical framework to facilitate emancipatory social transformation.

Department of Political Affairs

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herman T. Salton
Keyword(s):  
Secretary General ◽  
The Political ◽  
Leadership Change ◽  
Member States ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Peace Agreements

This chapter assesses the role of the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) in the Rwanda genocide. It situates DPA within the Secretariat of the early 1990s, explains the importance given to it by Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali, and analyses the department’s reaction to the crisis. The DPA’s role in monitoring the Arusha Peace Agreements and in providing the ‘political’ analysis of the Rwandan context is also reviewed, as is Boutros-Ghali’s desire for a powerful ‘political’ department to be juxtaposed to member states’ preference for peacekeeping and DPKO. The chapter also considers the leadership change of March 1994 when, a month before the genocide, Marrack Goulding took over the whole of DPA.

Polybius on ‘Classical Athenian Imperial Democracy’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craige B. Champion
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Second Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Athenian Democracy ◽  
Political Analysis

This chapter makes two contributions to our understanding of Polybius’ representation of the Athenian democracy. First, it shows that Polybius’ negative general portrayal of Athens in his political analysis in Book 6 is frequently at odds with his apparent admiration of the Athenians as reflected in his accounts of Athenian diplomacy in the historical narrative. Second, and more importantly, the paper contextualizes the characterization of the Athenian politeia in Book 6 within Polybius’ generally negative depictions of radical democratic states (ochlocracy, in Polybius’ terms). Here it is necessary to note the political meaning of the term ‘democracy’ in the mid-second century BCE, in order to understand how Polybius can condemn the Athenian politeia while praising the qualities of δημοκρατία‎.

Aristotle on the Concept of Shared Life

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Brill
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Character

Aristotle on the Concept of Shared Life studies Aristotle’s understanding of the political character of human intimacy via an examination of the zoological frame informing his political theory. It argues that the concept of shared life, i.e. the forms of intimacy that arise from the possession of logos and the capacity for choice, is central to human political partnership, and serves to locate that life within the broader context of living beings as such, where it emerges as an intensification of animal sociality. As such it challenges a long-standing approach to the role of the animal in Aristotle’s thought, and to the recent reception of Aristotle’s thinking about the political valence of life and living beings.

The Political Theory of Data: Institutions, Algorithms, & Formats in Racial Redlining

2021 ◽  
pp. 009059172110278
Author(s):  
Colin Koopman
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
The Political ◽  
Know How ◽  
Data Points ◽  
Emergent Literature

Despite widespread recognition of an emergent politics of data in our midst, we strikingly lack a political theory of data. We readily acknowledge the presence of data across our political lives, but we often do not know how to conceptualize the politics of all those data points—the forms of power they constitute and the kinds of political subjects they implicate. Recent work in numerous academic disciplines is evidence of the first steps toward a political theory of data. This article maps some limits of this emergent literature with an eye to enriching its theoretical range. The literature on data politics, both within political theory and elsewhere, has thus far focused almost exclusively on the algorithm. This article locates a further dimension of data politics in the work of formatting technology or, more simply, formats. Formats are simultaneously conceptual and technical in the ways they define what can even count as data, and by extension who can count as data and how they can count. A focus on formats is of theoretical value because it provides a bridge between work on the conceptual contours of categories and the technology-centric literature on algorithms that tends to ignore the more conceptual dimensions of data technology. The political insight enabled by format theory is shown in the context of an extended interrogation of the politics of racialized redlining.

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