scholarly journals Nationality and Equal Political Rights: A Necessary Link?

Author(s):  
Andreas Samartzis

Main justifications for regarding common nationality as a necessary condition for holding equal political rights – Critique of collective self-determination, equal stakes, nature of political activity, and stability justifications – Rejection of the incommensurability of legitimacy and justice – Socioeconomic interdependence and liberal democratic values as the normative grounds for equal stakes – Risk of entrenchment of hostility among national groups as a consequence of a competitive conception of political activity – Instrumental value of stability – Stability through democratic inclusion – Possibility of sustainable pluralism through deliberative democracy – Modified version of the equal stakes argument – Equal political rights on the basis of long-term residence – Association of citizenship with nationality in contemporary European states – Redefinition of citizenship as top-down redefinition of nationality – Need to reconceptualise equal political rights independently of citizenship – Legal argument for interpreting references to popular sovereignty in national constitutions in accordance with long-term residence, rather than nationality – Available legal remedies

Author(s):  
Başak Çali

This chapter surveys the legal influence of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) on the domestic laws of States in the Middle East region. It analyses ratification, reservation, and reporting practices, the domestic legal status of the ICCPR, and State responses to the Human Rights Committee’s concluding observations. The chapter argues that the ICCPR’s legal influence in the region is structurally hampered due to its lack of authoritative legal status and the dominance of defensive domestic legalism. A significant gap remains between the HRC’s vision of civil and political rights protection grounded in the entrenchment of liberal, democratic, and multicultural laws and the region’s authoritarian or majoritarian political structures that foreground security and treat non-majority identities as threats. The influence of the ICCPR on domestic laws in the Middle East remains a long-term battle, whereby small gains under limited legal opportunity structures remain the overarching norm.


Author(s):  
Lucia M. Rafanelli

This book develops a theory of the ethics of “reform intervention,” a category that includes any attempt to promote justice in a society other than one’s own. It identifies several dimensions along which reform interventions can vary (the degree of control interveners exercise over recipients, the urgency of interveners’ objectives, the costs an intervention poses to recipients, and how interveners interact with recipients’ existing political institutions) and examines how these variations affect the moral permissibility of reform intervention. The book argues that, once one acknowledges the variety of forms reform intervention can take, it becomes clear that not all of them are vulnerable to the objections usually leveled against intervention. In particular, not all reform interventions treat recipients with intolerance, disrespect recipients’ legitimate institutions, or undermine recipients’ collective self-determination. Combining philosophical analysis and discussion of several real-world cases, the book investigates which kinds of reform intervention are or are not vulnerable to these objections. In so doing, it also develops new understandings of the roles toleration, legitimacy, and collective self-determination should play in global politics. After developing principles to specify when different kinds of reform interventions are morally permissible, the book investigates how these principles could be applied in the real world. Ultimately, it argues that some reform interventions are, all things considered, morally permissible and that sometimes reform intervention is morally required. It argues we should reconceive the ordinary boundaries of political activity and begin to see the pursuit of justice via political contestation as humanity’s collective project.


Dialogue ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-89
Author(s):  
HSIN-WEN LEE

David Miller argues that national identity is indispensable for the successful functioning of a liberal democracy. National identity makes important contributions to liberal democratic institutions, including creating incentives for the fulfilment of civic duties, facilitating deliberative democracy, and consolidating representative democracy. Thus, a shared identity is indispensable for liberal democracy and grounds a good claim for self-determination. Because Miller’s arguments appeal to the instrumental values of a national culture, I call his argument ‘instrumental value’ arguments. In this paper, I examine the instrumental value arguments and show that they fail to justify a group’s right to self-determination.


Author(s):  
Zoran Oklopcic

Who is ‘the people’? How does it exercise its power? When is the people entitled to exercise its rights? From where does that people derive its authority? What is the meaning of its self-government in a democratic constitutional order? For the most part, scholars approach these questions from their disciplinary perspectives, with the help of canonical texts, and in the context of ongoing theoretical debates. Beyond the People is a systematic and comprehensive, yet less disciplinarily disciplined study that confronts the same questions, texts, and debates in a new way. Its point of departure is simple and intuitive. A sovereign people is the work of a theoretical imagination, always shaped by the assumptions, aspirations, and anticipations of a particular theorist-imaginer. To look beyond the people is to confront them directly, by exploring the ways in which theorists script, stage, choreograph, record, and otherwise evoke the scenes, actors, actions, and events that permit us to speak intelligibly—and often enthusiastically—about the ideals of popular sovereignty, self-determination, constituent power, ultimate authority, sovereign equality, and collective self-government. What awaits beyond these ideals is a new set of images, and a different way to understand the perennial Who? What? Where? When? and How? questions—not as the suggestions about how best to understand these concepts, but rather as the oblique and increasingly costly ways of not asking the one we probably should: What, more specifically, do we need them for?


1998 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Gill

THE PROSPECTS FOR DEMOCRACY IN RUSSIA REMAIN ONE OF THE MOST compelling questions both for scholarly analysis and in international politics. But in attempting to survey the prospects for a democratic future in post-communist Russia, all too often we are blinded by the dramas of the moment. Conflict between president and legislature, the success first of Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party and then of the communists in successive legislative elections, the Chechen war and the president's health – are all issues which have tended to crowd out analysis of more long-term structural considerations which will underpin the course of future Russian development. These major events in the day-today life of Russian politics can have a significant effect upon such development, but a focus upon them exclusively risks not only missing the importance of the deeper structural factors, but also misunderstanding the context within which these events occur. These events are shaped fundamentally by the structures which underpin the political system: broad structural changes within the society will give shape to the arena within which political activity takes place.


2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 649-669 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patti Tamara Lenard

Abstract In liberal democracies, citizens are entitled to a substantive package of rights, including the right to participate in politics. Without this right, citizens cannot be self-determining in any rich sense. As more and more people cross borders, the number of residents without citizenship is rising, as is the number of people who have little say in the political life of the communities in which they reside. I assess the normative status of long-term, non-citizen residents and conclude that, without the right to vote, and without the right to run for office, long-term, non-citizen residents are denied political self-determination. Using the “thick-thin” lens that unites the contributions to this issue, I propose granting non-citizen residents more expansive political rights.


1970 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-172
Author(s):  
Оксана Воронкевич

У   статті   актуалізовано   проблему   поширеності   шкільного   насильства   у   середовищі   учнів  початкових класів. Особлива увага звертається на необхідність діалогічної взаємодії учасників освітнього  процесу як необхідної умови попередження насилля у школі.  Опираючись на результати власного дослідницького пошуку, автор пропонує варіант програми  психологічної профілактики шкільного насильства вчителів стосовно учнів. Дана програма спрямована на  формування  у  педагогів  навичок  глибинного  самопізнання  й  пізнання  дітей,  апробування  нових  форм  поведінки та базується на ідеї діалогізації педагогічної взаємодії, оскільки важливо налагодити суб’єкт- суб’єктну взаємодію учня та вчителя й не використовувати монологічну модель спілкування. Наголошено,  що педагоги повинні стимулювати будь-які прояви суб’єктної активності дітей, що сприяють виробленню  у них адекватної оцінки себе та свого оточення, розвитку здатності до самовизначення. Відзначено, що  для   діалогічного   освітнього   середовища   характерними   є   такі   властивості,   як   різноманітність,  динамічність, напруженість, достатність, кожна з яких сприяє високій ефективності освітньої взаємодії,  здійснює істотний вплив на розвиток особистості. Під час занять використано різні тренінгові методи:  рольові ігри, міні-лекції, мозковий штурм, обговорення в загальному колі тощо. Разом із тим поширено  інформацію з актуальних для педагогів питань спілкування з дитиною без агресії, злості та конфлікту.  Представлено  результати  успішної  апробації  програми  психологічної  профілактики  шкільного  насильства  з  боку  вчителів,  що проявилися в розумінні важливості толерантного ставлення до учнів,  набутті практичних умінь відчувати психологічний стан іншої людини та адекватно реагувати на нього,  виявляти доброзичливість, прихильність до школярів та надавати їм необхідну допомогу.  The article actualizes the problem of the prevalence of school violence among elementary school pupils.  Special attention is drawn to the need for dialogical interaction of participants in the educational process as a  necessary condition for preventing violence in school.  Relying on the results of his own research, the author suggests a variant of school violence psychological  prevention program of teachers in relation to pupils. This program is aimed at educating the students the skills of  deep self-cognition and cognition of children, testing new forms of behavior and is based on the idea of pedagogical  interaction dialogization, since it is important to establish subject-subject interaction between the pupil and the  teacher and not use the monologue model of communication. It is highlighted that teachers should stimulate any  manifestation of children's subject activity, which helps to develop an adequate assessment of themselves and their  environment, development of self-determination ability. It is noted that a dialogical educational environment is  characterized by such attributes as diversity, dynamism, intensity, sufficiency, each of them contributes to the high  effectiveness of educational interaction, have a significant impact on the development of personality. During the  classes various training methods were used: role-playing games, mini-lectures, brainstorming, discussions in the  general circle, etc. At the same time, information on relevant for teachers issues about communicating with a child  without aggression, anger and conflict is propagated.  Was presented results of successful approbation of the school violence psychological prevention program  from teacher’s part, manifested in the understanding importance of the tolerant attitude towards pupils, acquiring  practical skills of feeling the another’s person psychological state and react adequately to it, showing benevolence,  adherence to schoolchildren and providing them the necessary assistance. 


Author(s):  
Jean L. Cohen

We typically associate sovereignty with the modern state, and the coincidence of worldly powers of political rule, public authority, legitimacy, and jurisdiction with territorially delimited state authority. We are now also used to referencing liberal principles of justice, social-democratic ideals of fairness, republican conceptions of non-domination, and democratic ideas of popular sovereignty (democratic constitutionalism) for the standards that constitute, guide, limit, and legitimate the sovereign exercise of public power. This chapter addresses an important challenge to these principles: the re-emergence of theories and claims to jurisdictional/political pluralism on behalf of non-state ‘nomos groups’ within well-established liberal democratic polities. The purpose of this chapter is to preserve the key achievements of democratic constitutionalism and apply them to every level on which public power, rule, and/or domination is exercised.


Author(s):  
Zoran Oklopcic

As the final chapter of the book, Chapter 10 confronts the limits of an imagination that is constitutional and constituent, as well as (e)utopian—oriented towards concrete visions of a better life. In doing so, the chapter confronts the role of Square, Triangle, and Circle—which subtly affect the way we think about legal hierarchy, popular sovereignty, and collective self-government. Building on that discussion, the chapter confronts the relationship between circularity, transparency, and iconography of ‘paradoxical’ origins of democratic constitutions. These representations are part of a broader morphology of imaginative obstacles that stand in the way of a more expansive constituent imagination. The second part of the chapter focuses on the most important five—Anathema, Nebula, Utopia, Aporia, and Tabula—and closes with the discussion of Ernst Bloch’s ‘wishful images’ and the ways in which manifold ‘diagrams of hope and purpose’ beyond the people may help make them attractive again.


Author(s):  
Anna Stilz

This book offers a qualified defense of a territorial states system. It argues that three core values—occupancy, basic justice, and collective self-determination—are served by an international system made up of self-governing, spatially defined political units. The defense is qualified because the book does not actually justify all of the sovereignty rights states currently claim and that are recognized in international law. Instead, the book proposes important changes to states’ sovereign prerogatives, particularly with respect to internal autonomy for political minorities, immigration, and natural resources. Part I of the book argues for a right of occupancy, holding that a legitimate function of the international system is to specify and protect people’s preinstitutional claims to specific geographical places. Part II turns to the question of how a state might acquire legitimate jurisdiction over a population of occupants. It argues that the state will have a right to rule a population and its territory if it satisfies conditions of basic justice and facilitates its people’s collective self-determination. Finally, Parts III and IV of this book argue that the exclusionary sovereignty rights to control over borders and natural resources that can plausibly be justified on the basis of the three core values are more limited than has traditionally been thought.


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