Rethinking

2021 ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Sharath Srinivasan
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Political ◽  
Peace Studies ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Strategic Studies

This chapter introduces the study’s orientation to understanding peacemaking in civil wars and different attempts to explain failed peacemaking in the Sudans. The chapter critiques mainstream peacemaking scholarship – from bargain approaches in realist and strategic studies to liberal democratic constitutionalism and reformist statebuilding – as well as prominent alternatives from political economy and conflict and peace studies, highlighting that they share in common problematic conceptions of politics as amenable to logics of ‘making’. This clears ground for the book’s novel theoretical critique of peacemaking drawing on Hannah Arendt’s political thought. Contemporary peacemaking risks undervaluing the political component in civil wars, risks emphasizing making an edifice for politics over civil political action itself, and risks producing means that violently overrun the sought after ends of peace. The chapter calls for a tragic understanding of peacemaking that compels, first of all, a need to carefully rethink what peacemaking is doing in attempts to make or build peace.

When Peace Kills Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharath Srinivasan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Original Contribution ◽  
Close Range ◽  
Civil Politics ◽  
Political Realm

When Peace Kills Politics explains the role of international peacemaking in reproducing violence and political authoritarianism in Sudan and South Sudan in recent decades. Srinivasan explains how Sudan’s landmark north–south peace process that achieved the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement fueled war in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile alongside how it contributed to Sudan’s failed political transformation and newly independent South Sudan’s rapid descent into civil war. Concluding with the conspicuous absence of ‘peace’ when non-violent revolutionary political change came to Sudan in 2019, Srinivasan examines at close range why outsiders’ peace projects may displace civil politics and raise the political currency of violence. With an original contribution to theorizing peace and peacemaking drawing upon the political thought of Hannah Arendt, the book is an analysis of the tragic shortcomings of attempting to build a non-violent political realm through neat designs and tools of compulsion, where the end goal of peace becomes caught up in idealized constitutional texts, technocratic templates and deals on sharing spoils. When Peace Kills Politics demands a radical rethinking of the project of peace in civil wars, grounded in a more earnest commitment to civil political action.

The Scholastic and Conciliar Roots of Samuel Rutherford’s Political Philosophy

2020 ◽  
pp. 208-226
Author(s):  
Simon J. G. Burton
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Way

Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex remains a source of perennial fascination for historians of political thought. Written in 1644 in the heat of the Civil Wars it constitutes an intellectual and theological justification of the entire Covenanting movement and a landmark in the development of Protestant political theory. Rutherford’s argument in the Lex Rex was deeply indebted to scholastic and Conciliarist sources, and this chapter examines the way he deployed these, especially the political philosophy of John Mair and Jacques Almain, in order to construct a covenantal model of kingship undergirded by an interwoven framework of individual and communal rights. In doing so it shows the ongoing influence of the Conciliarist tradition on Scottish political discourse and also highlights unexpected connections between Rutherford’s Covenanting and his Augustinian and Scotistic theology of grace and freedom.

scholarly journals The Political Economy of Violent Conflict Within States

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Achim Wennmann
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Criminal Violence ◽  
The Cold War

The political economy of violent conflict is a body of literature that investigates how economic issues and interests shape the dynamics associated to violent conflict after the Cold War. The literature covers an area of research focusing on civil wars—the predominant type of conflict in the 1990s and early 2000s—and an area of research focusing on other types of violent conflict within states, such as permanent emergencies, criminal violence, and political violence associated to turbulent transitions. The first area involves four themes that have come to characterize discussions on the political economy of civil wars, including research on the role of greed and grievance in conflict onset, on economic interests in civil wars, on the nature of conflict economies, and on conflict financing. The second area responds to the evolution of violent conflict beyond the categories of “interstate” or “civil” war and shows how political economy research adapted to new types of violent conflict within states as it moved beyond the “post-Cold War” era. Overall, the literature on the political economy of violence conflict emphasizes the role of informal systems behind power, profits and violence, and the economic interests and functions of violence underlying to violent conflict. It has also become a conceptual laboratory for scholars who after years of field research tried to make sense of the realities of authoritarian, violent or war-affected countries. By extending the boundaries of the literature beyond the study of civil wars after the Cold War, political economy research can serve as an important analytical lens to better understand the constantly evolving nature of violent conflict and to inform sober judgment on the possible policy responses to them.

The Political Economy of Burke&s Analysis of the French Revolution

1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. G. A. Pocock
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Single Structure ◽  
History Of ◽  
The French Revolution

There are, perhaps, in the end only two ways in which a historian may undertake the study of a document in the history of political thought. One may consider it as a text, supposed to have been intended by its author and understood by its reader with the maximum coherence and unity possible; the historian's aim now becomes the reconstitution of the fullest possible interpretation available to intelligent readers at the relevant time. Alternatively, one may consider it as a tissue of statements, organized by its writer into a single document, but accessible and intelligible whether or not they have been harmonized into a single structure of meaning. The historian's aim is now the recovery of these statements, the establishment of the patterns of speech and thought forming the various contexts in which they become intelligible, and the pursuit of any changes in the normal employment of these patterns which may have occurred in consequence of the statements’ being made.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Sharath Srinivasan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
International Intervention ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
Civil Politics

The book’s Introduction situates the reader in recent decades of recurrent wars and failed peacemaking attempts in the Sudans, giving central focus to the reproduction of armed conflict during and after the negotiation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The chapter introduces its central aims to prize open how contemporary peacemaking works and how it may go wrong, to understand why this might be inherent in peacemaking, and to open up ways to rethink peacemaking. The book’s touchstone for assessing peacemaking, ‘non-violent civil politics’, is explained and the book’s grounding in the political thought of Hannah Arendt is summarized. The book’s central arguments are introduced, notably that, tragically, the ends and means of making peace in civil wars often risks debilitating not fostering non-violent civil politics, in turn motivating violence and reinforcing its currency. Following this is a detailed chapter-by-chapter summary of the book, explaining its thematic, episodic and chronological structure. The chapter ends with a brief history, and foundational position, on war, politics and international intervention in the Sudans, helpful to those with less familiarity with these countries as well as accounting for the author’s interpretation of that history as an anchor to the study.

Strikers and the State: A Comment

1978 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Shalev
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
The Political ◽  
Acting Out ◽  
Strike Activity ◽  
Institutional Approach ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Political Perspective

Douglas Hibbs's article, ‘On the Political Economy of Long-Run Trends in Strike Activity’, is the most recent of several comparative studies of the strike which explicitly reject the narrowly institutional approach characteristic of the ‘industrial relations school’ in favour of a broader socio-political perspective. These new approaches have the advantage of reminding us that industrial conflict is something more than an accident in the collectivebargaining process. Rather, the strike constitutes one working-class strategy – political action is another – in the acting out of class conflict in a capitalist society.

Immanence, transindividuality and the free multitude

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (8) ◽  
pp. 865-887
Author(s):  
Daniela Voss
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Real ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual

Since the late 1960s there has been a resurgence of interest in Spinozism in France: Gilles Deleuze was among the first who gave life to a ‘new Spinoza’ with his seminal book Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (1968). While Deleuze was primarily interested in Spinoza’s ontology and ethics, the contemporary French philosopher Étienne Balibar focuses on the political writings. Despite their common fascination for Spinoza’s relational definition of the individual, both thinkers have drawn very different consequences from the Spinozist inspiration regarding the relevance of his philosophy for a contemporary ethical and political thought. Deleuze draws from Spinoza an ethics of the encounter, an ‘ethology’ that is concerned with the composition of bodies on a plane of immanence. Balibar, on the contrary, deals with the modes of communication that we institute between one another and that are always effectuations on two levels at once: the real and the imaginary. Whereas Deleuze emphasizes the conception of a univocal plane of immanence, Balibar insists on a double expression of the real and the imaginary in any transindividual practice. The aim of this paper is to compare and finally assess their respective contributions to a conception of collective political action: the question of constitution of the ‘free multitude’.

scholarly journals The Political Economy of Colonisation: Carl Bernhard Wadström’s Case for Abolition and Civilisation

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Ahlskog
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Classical Political Economy ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
Alternative Reading

<p>This article is an analysis of the Swedish abolitionist and Swedenborgian Carl Bernhard Wadstr&ouml;m&rsquo;s (1746&ndash;1799) writings in the British anti-slavery debate in the years between 1788 and 1795. Previous historical scholarship has seen Wadstr&ouml;m primarily as a Swedenborgian visionary on a quest for religious fulfilment in Africa. An alternative perspective on Wadstr&ouml;m&rsquo;s writings is offered in this article by highlighting his comparatively overlooked polemical publications and Parliamentary testimonies in the British anti-slavery debate. Instead of treating Wadstr&ouml;m&rsquo;s writings and colonial plans as manifestations of his Swedenborgian dreams, they are reassessed as contributions to the contemporary anti-slavery debate. The focus is on how Wadstr&ouml;m participated and argued in this debate in order to show the ideological tenets underlying his views. Wadstr&ouml;m is linked to the Scottish Enlightenment discourse by showing how he uses the concepts of classical political economy in his argumentation for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. Through this alternative reading of Wadstr&ouml;m&rsquo;s writings, it is possible to gain another entry point into the complex and motley character of late eighteenth-century political thought in Northern Europe.</p>

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily C. Nacol
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
For Profit

This chapter briefly discusses three insights into early modern British engagement with risk: the presence of a distinct conceptual refinement in late seventeenth-century sources; the tight relationship between risk and trust in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century political thought and political economy; and the character of the political subject, which is worked out in the early modern engagement with risk. Beyond these three observations, the chapter also argues that early modern British engagement with risk offers two narratives—views of risk that persist in our own time and shape our orientation toward an unknown future. These include accounts of risk as a threat to security, as well as depictions of risk as an opportunity to be exploited for profit or gain.

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