Hapoel Tel Aviv and Israeli Liberal Secularism

Author(s):  
Tamir Sorek

This chapter analyzes the rhetoric of hardcore Hapoel Tel Aviv (Israel) football and basketball fans, and quantitatively examines the many people who sympathize with various teams. Our study reveals that stadium rhetoric is actually an expression of fundamental struggles between competing definitions of Israeliness. The rhetoric of Hapoel fans in the realm of Israeli sport is an uncommon combination of socialism, anti-nationalism and anti-racism. However, rather contradictorily, this rhetoric also lined with violence, sexism, classism, and Germanophobia. In addition, hardcore Hapoel fans use terminology associated with the Holocaust in a provocative manner. This rhetoric is partly related to the demographic of both the hardcore fans and the wider circle of sympathizers who tend to be mostly middle class and far more secular than the fans of other teams. It is argued that the transgressive rhetoric of Hapoel fans is partly related to the decline in the political power of the secular elite in Israel. These insights are based on an online survey that was conducted in September 2012, and the website and forums of Hapoel Tel Aviv fans, fans’ songs available on YouTube, as well as interviews with fans.

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-36
Author(s):  
Arjun Tremblay

Jacob Levy describes three variants of the separation of powers in the 31st Annual McDonald Lecture in Constitutional Studies, only one of which is germane to this reflection. The first variant he describes is based solely on the independence of the judiciary from both the executive and legislative branches of governments; consequently, this variant encompasses both presidential and parliamentary systems under its conceptual ambit. Another variant, which Levy attributes to Montesquieu, envisages the separation of powers between executive, judicial, and legislative branches as a way of allowing for the “pooled”1 rule of “the one” (i.e. monarch), “the few” (i.e. aristocrats), and “the many” (i.e. the people). Levy also describes a distinctly American variant of the separation of powers undergirded by a system of checks and balances. This variant was designed to ensure “mutual monitoring between executive and legislative”2 and it vests the legislative branch with the power to impeach the executive in order to “maintain effective limits on the political power and the political ambition of the president.”3


2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Armando Boito ◽  
Alfredo Saad-Filho

The political conflicts during the Workers’ Party administrations led by Luís Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff have been driven by disputes between two fractions of the country’s bourgeoisie: the internal and the internationalized bourgeoisie. Their ideologies, policies, institutions, and forms of political representation have determined government policies and outcomes. These processes have unfolded within an authoritarian democracy whose structures have not been challenged by the party. The party’s limited power and continuing timidity have produced an aggressive reaction by the internationalized bourgeoisie and the upper middle class, leading to a severe crisis in the administration of President Dilma Rousseff. Durante os dois governos do Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), chefiados por Luís Inácio Lula da Silva e por Dilma Rousseff, os conflitos políticos têm sido conflagrados por disputas entre duas facções burguesas do país: a burguesia interna e a burguesia internacionalizada. Suas respectivas formas de representações políticas, ideologias, programas, bem como instituições têm determinado políticas governamentais e seus resultados. Esses processos evoluíram em uma democracia autoritária, cujas estruturas não foram contestadas pelo PT. A timidez contínua e o poder limitado do partido têm produzido uma reação agressiva por parte da burguesia internacionalizada e da classe média alta, levando a uma crise severa na administração da Presidente Dilma Rousseff.


2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 2197-2227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Goldoni ◽  
Christopher McCorkindale

This paper posits a (very British!) call to arms, and does so in five steps. In part A, we address the need for constitutional fictions by which the many surrender political power to the few, in the name of stability, order and security. In part B, however, we will show that conflict is both a necessary and a core principle of political constitutionalism—that it is the latent possibility of conflict, the (re)awkening of the many where the few abuse that power, that acts as the final check on government. In part C, we trace the steps by which recent re-interpretations of the work of J.A.G. Griffith, with a focus on the work of Tomkins and Bellamy, have reduced politics to its parliamentary form, thereby closing—rather than “enlarging”—the “areas for argument and discussion”—a narrow view of the constitution to which, admittedly, Griffith himself might have subscribed. In part D, we will assess the limits of such a narrow reading of the political and argue that a more dynamic and reflexive approach is needed if we are to remain in—or recover to—rude constitutional health. Finally, in part E, we will use the political and constitutional background to the devolution of legislative and executive power to Scotland in order to demonstrate the power of political conflict, in extraordinary moments, to expose, break down and create new constitutional fictions.


Slavic Review ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Béla K. Király

In the particular case of Hungary, neo-serfdom is to be seen as an economic, political, and social evolution in which the political power of the nobility, especially that of the gentry, grew considerably; the demesne lands of the lords disproportionately increased at the expense of the serfs' rustical lands; the lords' seigneurial jurisdiction over their peasants increased; and the lords' management of their economy shifted from receiving rents to producing for markets. It was a system of social stagnation in which the evolution of cities and an urban middle class, a potential counterbalance to the nobility, was made impossible, and the serfs had no way out of their degrading environment and status. These conditions developed rapidly after the suppression of the Dózsa revolt of 1514, the greatest peasant movement of discontent in Hungary. As a result, the peasants were bound to the soil. The national Diet of 1547, however, enacted the serfs' right of migration, a freedom which was re enacted several times more.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-66
Author(s):  
Christine Adams

The relationship of the French king and royal mistress, complementary but unequal, embodied the Gallic singularity; the royal mistress exercised a civilizing manner and the soft power of women on the king’s behalf. However, both her contemporaries and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians were uncomfortable with the mistress’s political power. Furthermore, paradoxical attitudes about French womanhood have led to analyses of her role that are often contradictory. Royal mistresses have simultaneously been celebrated for their civilizing effect in the realm of culture, chided for their frivolous expenditures on clothing and jewelry, and excoriated for their dangerous meddling in politics. Their increasing visibility in the political realm by the eighteenth century led many to blame Louis XV’s mistresses—along with Queen Marie-Antoinette, who exercised a similar influence over her husband, Louis XVI—for the degradation and eventual fall of the monarchy. This article reexamines the historiography of the royal mistress.


Author(s):  
Mark I. Vail

This chapter situates the book in theoretical and empirical contexts. It provides a brief overview of competing theoretical approaches to explaining trajectories of economic reform in continental Europe in the era of austerity and transnational neoliberalism since the early 1990s. Since standard analyses of “neoliberal” reform fail to capture these dynamics of economic reform in continental Europe, as do conventional institutionalist and interest-based accounts, it argues for an approach that emphasizes the political power of ideas and highlights the influence of national liberal traditions—French “statist liberalism,” German “corporate liberalism,” and Italian “clientelist liberalism.” It provides a brief overview of the remainder of the book, which uses a study of national liberal traditions to explain trajectories of reform in fiscal, labor-market, and financial policies in France, Germany, and Italy, three countries that have rejected neoliberal approaches to reform in a neoliberal age.


Author(s):  
Christian D. Liddy

The exercise of political power in late medieval English towns was predicated upon the representation, management, and control of public opinion. This chapter explains why public opinion mattered so much to town rulers; how they worked to shape opinion through communication; and the results. Official communication was instrumental in the politicization of urban citizens. The practices of official secrecy and public proclamation were not inherently contradictory, but conflict flowed from the political process. The secrecy surrounding the practices of civic government provoked ordinary citizens to demand more accountability from town rulers, while citizens, who were accustomed to hear news and information circulated by civic magistrates, were able to use what they knew to challenge authority.


Author(s):  
Balázs Trencsényi ◽  
Michal Kopeček ◽  
Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič ◽  
Maria Falina ◽  
Mónika Baár ◽  
...  

The success of the Bolshevik Revolution confirmed that economic backwardness was not necessarily an obstacle for socialism, as it triggered the radicalization of leftist movements in the region. Yet this also led to polarization of the left on questions of Soviet-Russian developments and possible cooperation with non-socialist parties, as well as agrarian and national questions. While in many countries social democracy entered the political mainstream in the 1920s, its position was undermined by the rise of right-wing authoritarianism. In turn, the Great Depression made the communist position more plausible, but the Stalinization of communist parties and the imposition of socialist realism alienated most intellectual supporters. Eventually, some radical leftists turned against the communist movement attacking its dogmatism and the Stalinist show trials. At the same time, the rise of Nazism forced leftist groups to seek a common ground, first in the form of “Popular Front” ideology, and, during the war, in the form of armed partisan movements.


1968 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-269
Author(s):  
André Vachet

Division of power and social integrationExplanation of some of the recent challenges to western democracy may be found in a re-examination of Montesquieu's thought. Here we find the theory of the separation of power to be far more complex than is implied in the simple divisions of legislature, executive, and judiciary. For Montesquieu, the separation of power is more a social division than a political or juridical one. He contemplated returning the organs of political power to various social forces, e.g. monarchy, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie, and that then the self-assertion of forces would be restrained by the resistance of other social groups. The realization of its goals would require every important social group to integrate itself both to society and to the state and to seek its goals through realization of the general good.Since Montesquieu's time, political structures would seem to have been very little changed even though social structures have been greatly altered by the rise of economic powers. Political institutions have been losing touch with the vital forces of society and these have had to find other channels of expression. The personalization of power, the rise of the executive, violence, and increasing paternalism may be viewed as phenomena of compensation by which attempts are being made to bridge the gap between the structures of political power and those of a society which has been restructured.Revigoration of parliamentary democracy would seem to require that all vital social forces be reintegrated into the political system and be given meaningful channels of political expression. Failure to make such changes opens the way to identification of the political powers with technocracy and the increasing general use of violence in the resolution of social problems.


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