scholarly journals Progressive Eras, Periods of Reaction, and Constitutional Change

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danny Nicol
Keyword(s):  
Social Influence ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
General Phenomenon ◽  
Labour Government ◽  
Liberal Government ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Right

This article argues that “political herding” plays a crucial role in driving and shaping constitutional change. It links the prevalence of political herding to a psychological phenomenon, “social influence.” It goes on to argue that constitutional change is often driven by the desire for certain substantive policies, which in turn are determined by whether, in a particular epoch, the political community is herding in a progressive or reactionary direction. Contending that the general phenomenon whereby political communities go through recurrent swings to the left or to the right has been neglected by scholars, this essay aims to give this phenomenon the centrality it merits in relation to the evolution of the British constitution. Accordingly it considers the 1906 Liberal government, the 1945 Labour government and the lengthy succession of post-1979 neoliberal governments, analyzing how substantive progressive and reactionary programs led to constitutional change. Finally this article considers the legitimacy both of political herding itself, and of political herding's impact on constitutional change.

Citizenship and Paternalism*

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-27
Author(s):  
Luara Ferracioli
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Right

Do states have a right to exclude prospective immigrants as they see fit? According to statists, the answer is a qualified yes. For these authors, self-determining political communities have a prima facie right to exclude, which can be overridden by the claims of vulnerable individuals. However, there is a concern in the philosophical literature that statists have not yet developed a theory that can protect children born in the territory from being excluded from the political community. For if the self-determining political community has the right to decide who should form the self in the first place, then that right should count against both newcomers by immigration and newcomers by birth. Or so the concern goes. This chapter defends statism against this line of criticism and defends a new account of the value of citizenship for children.

Contract Law Beyond the State

2019 ◽  
pp. 199-230
Author(s):  
Prince Saprai
Keyword(s):  
Contract Law ◽  
Regional Level ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Primary Motivation ◽  
European Context ◽  
General Law ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Right

This chapter reflects on the increasing emergence of transnational efforts at both the global and regional level to bring about the greater convergence of national contract law regimes. The divergences between contract law regimes are seen as major obstacles to free trade, and removing these barriers is the primary motivation behind these initiatives. This chapter argues, using European Union (‘EU’) efforts to harmonize contract law in Europe as an illustration, that such efforts face a significant legitimacy burden, because on the republican view of contract law the principle of state sovereignty protects the freedom of states to interpret and balance the values that shape contract law in ways that reflect local needs, beliefs, customs, and so forth. That freedom protects the right to self-determination and is both constitutive and expressive of the political communities that nation states embody and represent. In the European context, there is no similar political community that legitimates the EU’s efforts to bring about the harmonization of the general law of contract. Furthermore, even if the issue of legitimacy could be overcome, it’s unclear that harmonization in the European context could be justified. The economic case made by the European Commission for convergence is based on questionable empirical assumptions, and attempts to bring about convergence face serious efficacy constraints due to the fact of ‘normative pluralism’.

The Case for Repealing the Second Amendment? The Historical Barriers to Constitutional Change

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-607
Author(s):  
David T. Konig
Keyword(s):  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Second Amendment ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Popular Constitutionalism

The controversy surrounding the Second Amendment—“the right of the people to keep and bear arms”—is, to a large extent, historical in nature, redolent of other matters in this country’s legal and constitutional past. But the historical analogies that might support the Amendment’s repeal do not permit easy conclusions. The issue demands that legal historians venture beyond familiar territory to confront unavoidable problems at the intersection of theory and practice and of constitutional law and popular constitutionalism. An interdisciplinary analysis of Lichtman’s Repeal the Second Amendment illuminates the political, legal, and constitutional dimensions—as well as the perils—of undertaking the arduous amending process permitted by Article V of the U.S. Constitution.

Destituent Power

2020 ◽  
pp. 123-138
Author(s):  
Markus Patberg
Keyword(s):  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Eu

This chapter takes up the public narrative of ‘We, the multitude of Europe’, which suggests that the only hope for progressive change in the EU lies in a politics of disruption, and asks whether this idea can be defended based on a systematic model. To that end, it resorts to the political theory of destituent power, according to which opposition to or withdrawal from public authority can function as a legitimate trigger for constitutional change. Distinguishing between anti-juridical and juridical conceptions of destituent power, the chapter discusses to what extent the disruptive political strategies put forward by protest movements in the EU can be regarded as justifiable. Focusing on the juridical strand as the more plausible one, it argues that ideas of destituent power as ‘state civil disobedience’ run into a problem of authorization. By contrast, popular sovereignty-based approaches illuminate a neglected dimension of constituent power: the right to dismantle public authorities without the intention to create new ones. While such a model of destituent power in part captures the actions and demands of EU protest movements, it can only complement, not replace, the constructive side of constituent power.

The centrality of politeia for Aristotle’s Politics: Aristotle’s continuing significance for social and political science

2014 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford Angell Bates
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Global Concern ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Regime Analysis

Political theorists today are addressing issues of global concern confronting state systems and in so doing are often forced to confront the concept of Homo sapiens as a ‘political animal’. Thus theorists considering Aristotle’s Politics attempt to transcend his polis-centric focus and make the case that Aristotle offers ways to address these global concerns by focusing on Empire. This article, contra Dietz et al., argues that Aristotle’s political science is first and foremost a science of politeia and that this approach to the operation and working of political systems is far superior to recent attempts at regime analysis in comparative politics. Thus Aristotle’s mode of examining political systems offers much fruit for those interested in approaching political phenomena with precision and depth as diverse manifestations of the political communities formed by the species Aristotle called the ‘political animal’. From this perspective, focusing on the politeia constituting each political community permits an analysis of contemporary transformations of political life without distorting what is being analyzed.

scholarly journals AESTHETIC INSTRUMENTATION FOR FORMING IMAGINED COMMUNITIES: THE PHENOMENON OF THE NATIONAL ANTHEM

2021 ◽  
pp. 212-231
Author(s):  
O.Y. Khoroshylov
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Method ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Anthem ◽  
Critical Content ◽  
Building Process ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Right

The article is devoted to the study of the experience of using aesthetic tools in the formation of national groups. The object of the research is the state anthems, as a concentrated manifestation of the self-interpretation of the political community. The methodology of this article is based on constructivism, which interprets nations as imaginary communities and focuses the attention of the researcher on the practice of using soft technologies of collective integration. It`s addressed to the problem of using literary texts in the processes of collective integration made it possible to include not only representatives of political, but also creative elites in the list of subjects of social engineering. It has been proved that the political significance of the national anthem is manifested through "texts` violence". It`s the ability of the ruling circles to transmit group values to the subordinate array, which is achieved due to the legislative consolidation of a generally binding status for a certain text and due to the aesthetic impact on the consciousness of members of the community. The research methodology is presented by the using the procedures of the comparative method. It was carried out in such clusters as: justification of the right to exist (source of legitimation), "We are the image" of the commonality, common heroes, imaginary geography. It was achieved the identification of statistical patterns and features of the studied text arrays with analytical procedures for critical content analysis of the national anthems of European states. The results of the study confirmed the effectiveness of the procedures and tools of social engineering as one of the scenarios for the creation of national collectives in the European cultural area, substantiated the expediency of using the approved methodology to identify the cultural means of the nation-building process within the borders of Europe, and revealed the prospects of its application in relation to countries of the non-European cultural area.

Just Hierarchy between Citizens

2020 ◽  
pp. 66-105
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Bell ◽  
Wang Pei
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Political System ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Willingness To Serve ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Political Meritocracy ◽  
China Today

This chapter turns to just hierarchies between citizens—mainly strangers to one another—in modern large-scale political communities. It argues that hierarchies between rulers and ruled in such communities are justified if the political system selects and promotes public officials with above-average ability and a willingness to serve the political community over and above their own private and family interests. The chapter demonstrates that this kind of ideal—the “political meritocracy”—helped to inspire the imperial political system in China's past and Chinese political reformers in the early twentieth century, and may help to justify the political system in China today. However, the meritocratic system needs to be accompanied by democratic mechanisms short of competitive elections at the top that allow citizens to show that they trust their rulers and provide a measure of accountability at different levels of government. In the Chinese context, however, there is a large gap between the ideal and the reality. Thus, this chapter recommends that a judicious mixture of Confucian-style “soft power” combined with democratic openness, Maoist-style mass line, and Daoist-style skepticism about the whole political system can help to reinvigorate political meritocracy in China.

Irregular migrants, neoliberal geographies and spatial frontiers of ‘the political’

2007 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 655-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNE McNEVIN
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Multidimensional Approach ◽  
Irregular Migration ◽  
Irregular Migrants ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Right ◽  
Economic Zones

AbstractIn this article I argue that the demands of irregular migrants to belong to political communities constitute key contemporary sites of ‘the political’. I also argue that geographies associated with neoliberal globalisation (transnational production circuits, special economic zones and global cities) are implicated in irregular migration flows and in new conceptions of political belonging. In relation to these claims, I reflect upon recent mobilisations in the US context, in which hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants and their supporters asserted the right to belong. I suggest that similar claims to belong are likely to proliferate and that neoliberal geographies may provide some clues as to where and how these contemporary frontiers of the political might proceed. I conclude by suggesting that a multidimensional approach to political belonging provides a sound conceptual starting point for the analytical and normative challenges raised by both the claims of non-status migrants and the sovereign practices of contemporary states.

‘The Torment of Our Powerlessness’: Addressing Indigenous Constitutional Vulnerability through the Uluru Statement’s Call for a First Nations Voice in Their Affairs

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Constitutional Reform ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Suitable Solution ◽  
Constitutional Culture ◽  
Legal Uncertainty ◽  
Parliamentary Supremacy ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Right

This article analyses and explores the Uluru Statement from the Heart’s call for a constitutionally guaranteed First Nations voice in their affairs, as constitutional reform intended to address the ongoing problem of Indigenous constitutional vulnerability and powerlessness. It contends that a First Nations voice is a suitable solution: it coheres and aligns with Australian constitutional culture and design which recognises, represents and gives voice to the preexisting political communities, or constitutional constituencies. The article evaluates, compares and attempts to refine drafting options to give effect to a First Nations constitutional voice, by reference to principles of constitutional suitability, responsiveness to concerns about parliamentary supremacy and legal uncertainty, and assessment of political viability. The article concludes that the proposal for a constitutionally enshrined First Nations voice strikes the right conceptual balance between pragmatism and ambition, for viable yet worthwhile constitutional change. With appropriate constitutional drafting and legislative design, such a proposal offers a ‘modest yet profound’ way of meaningfully addressing Indigenous constitutional vulnerability, by empowering the First Nations with a voice in their affairs.

Price Fixing and the Political Community, 1778–1779

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Owen
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Regulation ◽  
State Constitution ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right

In 1779, Pennsylvanians undertook a bold experiment in economic regulation—forming price-fixing committees to reverse wartime inflation. This chapter analyzes the committees’ structure and the context in which they were created. Winter 1778 saw great political turbulence: the evacuation of Philadelphia, treason trials, and an attempt to rewrite the state constitution. By 1779, defenders of the constitution were using price-fixing committees as a means of defending a Constitutionalist vision of government in which the people held the reins of power and the right to shape that government. Though the committees struggled to establish universal legitimacy, they helped legitimate a robust participatory political culture based upon popular sovereignty. This culture, though, remained turbulent, as in the Fort Wilson Incident of October 1779, in which militiamen surrounded the house of Republican politician James Wilson. This chapter investigates how Constitutionalists defended their vision of political culture even during periods of great upheaval.

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