Distributive and Relational Equality

2021 ◽  
pp. 22-54
Author(s):  
Christian Schemmel
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Egalitarian Justice ◽  
Special Relevance ◽  
The Way

This chapter develops the expressive perspective on justice on which the overall argument of the book for liberal relational equality is based. It shows that the way social and political institutions treat individuals and groups is of irreducible importance to justice, and that this consideration cannot be satisfactorily accounted for by more traditional distributive theories of egalitarian justice, which focus on according individuals equal shares of justice-relevant goods; paradigmatically goods such as resources, (opportunity for welfare), or basic capabilities. It makes a case for the special relevance for justice of the attitudes expressed by institutions in the treatment of those subject to their power, as that expression constitutes its meaning. That meaning is particularly salient where the treatment gives rise to, or shores up, power and status hierarchies between different individuals and groups.

The Southern Slope of Monsalvat: How Spanish Wagnerism Became Catalan

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-47
Author(s):  
Clinton D. Young
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southern Slope ◽  
Modern Music ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Symphonic Culture ◽  
Similar Dynamic ◽  
The Way

This article examines the development of Wagnerism in late-nineteenth-century Spain, focusing on how it became an integral part of Catalan nationalism. The reception of Wagner's music and ideas in Spain was determined by the country's uneven economic development and the weakness of its musical and political institutions—the same weaknesses that were responsible for the rise of Catalan nationalism. Lack of a symphonic culture in Spain meant that audiences were not prepared to comprehend Wagner's complexity, but that same complexity made Wagner's ideas acceptable to Spanish reformers who saw in the composer an exemplar of the European ideas needed to fix Spanish problems. Thus, when Wagner's operas were first staged in Spain, the Teatro Real de Madrid stressed Wagner's continuity with operas of the past; however, critics and audiences engaged with the works as difficult forms of modern music. The rejection of Wagner in the Spanish capital cleared the way for his ideas to be adopted in Catalonia. A similar dynamic occurred as Spanish composers tried to meld Wagner into their attempts to build a nationalist school of opera composition. The failure of Tomás Bréton's Los amantes de Teruel and Garín cleared the way for Felip Pedrell's more successful theoretical fusion of Wagnerism and nationalism. While Pedrell's opera Els Pirineus was a failure, his explanation of how Wagner's ideals and nationalism could be fused in the treatise Por nuestra música cemented the link between Catalan culture and Wagnerism.

The Challenge of Liberal Legitimacy

2019 ◽  
pp. 63-91
Author(s):  
Gina Schouten
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Gender Norm ◽  
Gender Egalitarianism ◽  
Gendered Division Of Labor ◽  
The Way

There are a few “easy fixes” or “work-arounds” that may appear to dispel the tension between the gender-egalitarian political agenda and a commitment to politically liberal legitimacy. First, we might argue that those who oppose gender egalitarianism are unreasonable, and thus fall outside the justificatory community that liberalism is committed to respecting. Second, we might argue that gender-norm-compliant choices are non-voluntary, and so need not be respected within liberal political institutions. Finally, we might argue that the gendered division of labor violates basic liberties, and so can be politically remediated on those grounds, even if the means of remediation are controversial. This chapter addresses each possibility and shows why they are not promising fixes. The main goals are to show that the problem is genuine and cannot be easily dispelled by some tempting quick fixes, and in so doing to clear the way for consideration of more promising solutions.

The Polarization of the Palestinian Political Field

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 24-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamil Hilal
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Gaza Strip ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
Political Field ◽  
Social Fragmentation ◽  
Current State ◽  
Public Pressure ◽  
The Gaza Strip ◽  
National Reconciliation ◽  
The Way

Arguing that the polarization of the Palestinian political field did not start with Hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, the author analyzes the factors that have eroded the cohesiveness and vitality of the Palestinian polity, namely, the paralysis of Palestinian political institutions, territorial and social fragmentation, and egregious outside interference. In this context, and in the absence of an internal Palestinian debate about the objectives of holding elections under occupation, the author shows that the timing and circumstances of the 2006 legislative elections were bound to precipitate the current state of disarray. Finally, he considers the way forward, highlighting the potential of public pressure in promoting national reconciliation.

Methodology in Karl Marx

1970 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph O'Malley
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Political Criticism ◽  
Political Journalism ◽  
Systematic Effort ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Way

The development of Marx's mature social and political theory may be traced back in his writings to his political journalism of 1842–43, where a germinal doctrine on man's social nature supports a normative concept of the nature and function of political institutions. But his developing theory first achieved a measure of systematic rigor in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. This work, Marx's earliest major theoretical writing, has lately received increased attention from scholars. My purpose here is to complement existing studies by highlighting certain methodological features of the work, specifically the way in which Marx combined elements of philosophical and political criticism in a systematic effort to develop his own political theory in opposition to the method and institutional conclusions of Hegel.

Do Democratic Institutions Constrain or Inform? Contrasting Two Institutional Perspectives on Democracy and War

1999 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Single Observation ◽  
Domestic Political Institutions ◽  
The Way

How do domestic political institutions affect the way states interact in international crises? In the last decade we have witnessed an explosion of interest in this question, thanks largely to the well-known claim that democratic states do not fight wars with one another. Work on the “democratic peace” has generated a number of theoretical arguments about how practices, values, and institutions associated with democracy might generate distinctive outcomes. Although the level of interest in this topic has focused much-needed attention on the interaction between domestic and international politics, the proliferation of competing explanations for a single observation is not entirely desirable. Progress in this area requires that researchers devise tests not only to support different causal stories but also to discriminate between them.

Public relations: Theorizing the contestation of security technology

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 531-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Monsees
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Security Technology ◽  
Vital Part ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
Security Practices ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

This article contributes to the emerging literature on publics within critical security studies. Its particular focus is on contestation in the context of diffuse security technology. Contemporary security practices are characterized by diffusion and dispersion. As a result, contestation of security technology is also dispersed and diffuse and requires an account of publics that is sensitive to this aspect. The article conceptualizes ‘multiple publics’ as a mode of fundamental contestation of established political institutions. In order to do so, it discusses previous approaches to sociotechnical controversies and material participation. As a result of this discussion, it becomes apparent that we need a concept of publics that does not reduce political contestation to a pre-existing set of institutions. I develop a notion of publicness that emphasizes the way in which publics are embedded in societal struggles. This is achieved by reading John Dewey as a theorist to whom contestation is a vital part of democracy. It becomes possible to understand contestation against diffuse security practices – such as surveillance – as forms of emerging publics, even though they might not feed back into governmental decisionmaking.

Politicising Deleuzian Thought, or, Minority's Position within Marxism

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (Suppl) ◽  
pp. 119-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guillaume Sibertin-Blanc
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Double Effect ◽  
The Social ◽  
Revolutionary Politics ◽  
The Way

This text provides an analysis of the Deleuzian theory of minorities. Its hypothesis is that this theory produces a double effect of interpellation: upon a materialistic reading of the philosophy of Deleuze, and upon the theoretical and political heritage of Marxism. Concerning the first aspect, the thesis of an actual multiplication of ‘becomings-minoritarian’ reopening ‘the question of the becoming-revolutionary of people, at every level, in every place’, has to be referred to the Deleuzo-Guattarian analysis of the conjuncture – namely, to a diagnosis of the global capitalist system's dynamisms and the contradictions they produce in the social, juridical and political institutions of national States. Concerning the second aspect, I confront the adversities faced by minorities with the schema of the classes struggle, and I examine certain links (of continuation and integration, but also differentiation) between the processes of ‘proletarianisation’ and ‘becoming-minoritarian’, that is to say, between two ways of problematising the collective subject of a revolutionary politics of emancipation. Finally I assert that the concept of ‘becoming-minoritarian’ makes of the possibility of an unprecedented internationalism the way to a renewal of the two concepts between which the horizon of modern political thought extends, and around which the tradition of political liberalism and thinkers of a revolutionary politics have never ceased to confront one another: autonomy and universality.

Democracy and Economic Rights

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Narveson
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Democracy ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Worker Participation ◽  
Selling Point ◽  
Means Of Production ◽  
The Way

We have long been accustomed to thinking of democracy as a major selling point of Western institutions. That a set of political institutions should be democratic is widely regarded as the sine qua non of their legitimacy. So widespread is this belief that even those whose institutions do not look very democratic to us nevertheless insist on proclaiming them to be such (though the number taking this gambit dropped dramatically around the end of 1989). Meanwhile, an adulatory attitude toward democracy has arisen in many quarters, and many theorists have taken up anew the idea that if democracy is the way to go in political institutions, then it must also be the way to go in “other” areas, notably in economic and social institutions. So there has arisen a call for “economic democracy” — which is taken to mean, especially, that the “means of production” should be managed by their constituent workers in concert rather than by some few who own, or act for the owners of, those enterprises. Robert Dahl, in his influential Preface to Economic Democracy, sums it up nicely when he proclaims a “stronger justification” for worker participation: “If democracy is justified in governing the state, then it must also be justified in governing economic enterprises; and to say that it is not justified in governing economic enterprises is to imply that it is not justified in governing the state.”

An African Perspective on Global Governance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Kwasi Tieku ◽  
Linnéa Gelot
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
African Union ◽  
Global System ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
Daunting Task ◽  
African Perspective ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines the challenging idea of an African perspective on global governance. The extraordinary diversity of continental Africa in terms of religious beliefs, political institutions, social structures, and economic outlooks makes it a daunting task to discern a distinct African perspective. To avoid overgeneralization, homogenization, and essentialization of the different views that may exist, the chapter focuses on the African Union (AU) to represent a collective African position on global governance, arguing that global governance is thus viewed in relational terms. In this context, the steering capacity (i.e. governance) is the responsibility of the entire community and not the responsibility of a select few. This collectivist-driven conception of global governance is reflected in the way African states seek to exercise their agency on global issues and in the global system. The relational idea adds another dimension to the rationalistic ideas embedded in conventional narratives of global governance.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 265-288
Author(s):  
Laurens E. Tacoma
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Political Function ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Institutional Landscape ◽  
Christian Discourse ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Way

The conclusion brings the major characteristics of Roman political culture together and discusses the implications of the approach. It sketches some of the connections between the seven cases. It addresses the question of the extent to which Roman political culture changed over time. The boundaries of the subject in space and time are delineated in order to investigate to what extent it is justifiable to regard Roman political culture as a single, homogenous entity. It discusses the implications of the spread of Roman political culture over the rest of the institutional landscape. The emergence of an alternative, Christian discourse is sketched, focusing on the way it appropriated elements of traditional political culture. It addresses institutional longevity: how can we explain the continuation of political institutions that served no apparent political function?

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