Legitimacy and Democracy

2019 ◽  
pp. 163-185
Author(s):  
Christopher Woodard
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Degree Of Acceptance ◽  
Normative Significance ◽  
Political Decisions

Much contemporary political philosophy emphasizes the distinctiveness of political issues from moral issues. In contrast, utilitarianism seems to treat political issues as a mere subset of moral issues. It also seems to fit a technocratic model of politics, according to which political decisions should be left to experts capable of assessing the relevant facts. This chapter argues that utilitarians can give a richer account of politics, and one that is less technocratic, by attending to the normative significance of legitimacy. It outlines a conception of legitimacy as the degree of acceptance of a procedure. Though this is a sociological property and not a normative one, it has considerable normative significance: it describes the limits of what can be achieved without coercion or disorder. Moreover, since democracy is now, in many contexts, a necessary condition of legitimacy, the account of legitimacy bolsters the utilitarian case for supporting democracy.

Teaching Political Philosophy as Plausible Reasoning

1985 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 8-8
Author(s):  
Larry Arnhart
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
State University ◽  
University Of Chicago ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Idaho State University ◽  
Plausible Reasoning ◽  
Northern Illinois University ◽  
The University

I have taught courses on political philosophy at four schools — the University of Chicago, Rosary College, Idaho State University, and Northern Illinois University. I have had to adjust the style of my teaching to conform to the distinctive character of each school. But I have found that the most fundamental obstacles to winning the attention of students have been the same.Many students have begun my courses with four unfavorable preconceptions. They believe that political philosophy is too abstract. And for that reason they also believe that it has no application to contemporary political issues. Moreover, many students assume that since the classic texts of political thought are old, the ideas they contain must therefore be obsolete. And finally they think that political philosophy is ultimately subjective because no philosopher can prove his ideas to be absolutely true.

What Justice Theory and Climate- Change Politics Can Learn from Each Other

2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (01) ◽  
pp. 18-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Vanderheiden
Keyword(s):  
Justice Theory ◽  
Value Conflicts ◽  
Law Of Peoples ◽  
Political Justice ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Justice As Fairness ◽  
Liberal Conception ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Climate Change Politics ◽  
Political Decisions

Scholars of justice theory often refuse to apply their principles to concrete social or political issues; instead, they develop those principles in abstraction from contemporary value conflicts or policy debates, preferring to remain silent on how justice might inform controversial political decisions. Rawls, for example, casts questions concerning the application of his “justice as fairness” conception across national, generational, and species boundaries as among the several “problems of extension” for which his theory may or may not be equipped, noting that “the idea of political justice does not cover everything, nor should we expect it to” (1993, 20–21). Even where he applies his justice theory to problems of international relations in hisThe Law of Peoples, Rawls describes its application as merely “an extension of a liberal conception of justice for a domestic regime to a Society of Peoples” (1999, 9), as though constructing and applying justice principles are entirely discrete steps, with its application to concrete social or political issues a unidirectional project of wielding static principles as practical tools, offering nothing of importance to a normative theory's development.

scholarly journals The Strength of Issues: Using Multiple Measures to Gauge Preference Stability, Ideological Constraint, and Issue Voting

2008 ◽  
Vol 102 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN ANSOLABEHERE ◽  
JONATHAN RODDEN ◽  
JAMES M. SNYDER
Keyword(s):  
Measurement Error ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Multiple Measures ◽  
Preference Stability ◽  
Issue Area ◽  
Government Involvement

A venerable supposition of American survey research is that the vast majority of voters have incoherent and unstable preferences about political issues, which in turn have little impact on vote choice. We demonstrate that these findings are manifestations of measurement error associated with individual survey items. First, we show that averaging a large number of survey items on the same broadly defined issue area—for example, government involvement in the economy, or moral issues—eliminates a large amount of measurement error and reveals issue preferences that are well structured and stable. This stability increases steadily as the number of survey items increases and can approach that of party identification. Second, we show that once measurement error has been reduced through the use of multiple measures, issue preferences have much greater explanatory power in models of presidential vote choice, again approaching that of party identification.

Issue Salience and Political Decisions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Moniz ◽  
Christopher Wlezien
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Issue Salience ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Decisions

Salience refers to the extent to which people cognitively and behaviorally engage with a political issue (or other object), although it has meant different things to different scholars studying different phenomena. The word originally was used in the social sciences to refer to the importance of political issues to individuals’ vote choice. It also has been used to designate attention being paid to issues by policy makers and the news media, yet it can pertain to voters as well. Thus, salience sometimes refers to importance and other times to attention—two related but distinct concepts—and is applied to different actors. The large and growing body of research on the subject has produced real knowledge about policies and policy, but the understanding is limited in several ways. First, the conceptualization of salience is not always clear, which is of obvious relevance to theorizing and limits assessment of how (even whether) research builds on and extends existing literature. Second, the match between conceptualization and measurement is not always clear, which is of consequence for analysis and impacts the contribution research makes. Third, partly by implication, but also because the connections between research in different areas—the public, the media, and policy—are not always clear, the consequences of salience for representative democracy remain unsettled.

scholarly journals Suicide Is Painless: An Autoethnography of Tragedy

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen V. Lee ◽  
Peter Gouzouasis
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Music Teacher ◽  
Adolescent Female ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Professional Misconduct ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Sociocultural Issues

This autoethnographic duet is an artful inquiry about the tragedy of a beginning music teacher. A painful story about a music teacher and sexual allegations from an adolescent female, our composition blends music and story to transform understandings through creative engagement and push the boundaries to evoke visceral and emotional responses regarding suicide. Sociocultural issues draw deep re ection about wider political issues that arise for teachers who display di culties with moral issues and misguided choices. The epiphany-epiphony (Gouzouasis, 2013) through story and music reveals the cultural irony of ideology and secrecy in professional misconduct. Unfortunately, in this circumstance, the outcome was catastrophic.

scholarly journals TRANSMISI ETIKA KE TATANAN POLITIK PERSPEKTIF MUHAMMAD ABID AL-JABIRI

ALQALAM ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 151
Author(s):  
Nunu Burhanuddin
Keyword(s):  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Ethical System ◽  
National Wealth ◽  
Sufi Order ◽  
Ethical Systems ◽  
Of Greece

Several political issues are presumed having a relationship with the ethical values such as the problems of authority and its distribution, the application of laws, human rights, women emancipation, social justice, the distribution of national wealth, economics justice, and etc. These problems show us the importance of ethical reference to polish the political countenance as well as to straighten up the political manoeuvres that are often full of intrigues, arrogance, and tyranny. The transmission concept from ethics to the political order that has ever been stated by Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) in his book “Politea” on political matters, and his “Nicomachean” on moral issues is presumed inspiring the philosophers both in the West and in the East. This article elaborates Muhammad 'Abid Al Jabiri's thought (1936-…), a Muslim thinker from Morocco who classifies ethical values that are transmitted into political order in the Muslim World consisting of four main variants; (1) subservience ethics, an ethical system that is inherited by Persian sultanate; (2) happiness ethics, an ethical system of Greece; (3) transitory ethics, an ethical system developed by Sufi order; and (4) Muru'ah ethics, an ethical system developed in the Arabian World. According to al-Jabiri, these all four systems still left the important matters dealing with the claim of progressive and futuristic -oriented human dynamics. Therefore, al-Jabiri proposed a recommendation for Arabian and Islamic world in order to exceed such ethical systems and to side with the pious deed ethics and profit that became their tendency.

scholarly journals A Hegelian Reading of Derrida’s The Beast and the Sovereign, Vol. I, to Philosophically Expound Ambedkar’s Critique of Caste in his 1932 “Statement of Gandhji’s Fast”

Symposion ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-96
Author(s):  
Rajesh Sampath ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
The State ◽  
Caste System ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
Political Decisions

This paper will attempt a Hegelian reading of Derrida’s Beast and the Sovereign Vol 1 lectures to unpack certain apories and paradoxes in Ambedkar’s brief 1932 statement on modern India’s founding figure, Gandhi. In that small text Ambedkar is critical of Gandhi’s seemingly saintly attempt at fasting himself to death. Ambedkar diagnoses that Gandhi’s act of self-sacrifice conceals a type of subtle coercion of certain political decisions during India’s independent movement from British colonialism. In order to unpack philosophical assumptions in Ambedkar’s statement, this paper examines Derrida’s startlingly original insights into animality, law, and sovereignty in confronting two of the Western tradition’s giants in political philosophy, namely Hobbes and Schmitt. My intuition is that Derridean deconstruction can be expanded further by deploying certain Hegelian resources. My ultimate aim is to show how Western notions of man, soul, God, the sovereign, and the state begin to dissolve when examining the Hindu metaphysical cosmology of the caste system. My thesis and concluding reflections argue that only by destroying that cosmological system of politico-metaphysical inequality can a true democratic notion of the sovereign state emerge in the Indian context.

Adam Smith’s Foundations for Political Philosophy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schliesser
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
The Status ◽  
Normative Significance ◽  
Order Reflection

This chapter sketches Adam Smith’s political philosophy, which is the activity of a citizen belonging to a particular community at given time and place. This project is neither exclusively descriptive nor only focused on what is commonly thought attainable. For Smith, the historical baseline of one’s time has normative significance. He does not resist changes from the status quo, but whatever changes he proposes are constrained by existing institutional arrangements. Part of the philosopher’s task is to offer visions of society that, while not impossible, are more just and more reasonable. One way in which such a vision can be offered is via historical narrative, which reveals the nature of that baseline and makes visible a second-order reflection on the ways it might be altered. In doing so, the philosopher offers an image that may speak simultaneously to one’s own society and those in others, including future ones.

Inquiring the Political Strategy of Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) in Post-2018 Ethiopia

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-358
Author(s):  
Asabu S. Alamineh ◽  
Birhanu B. Geremew ◽  
Kidanu A. Temesgen
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Qualitative Case Study ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Ethnic Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Political Reconciliation ◽  
Political Decisions

Abstract The upsurge of TPLF led regime to power installed ethnic politics and deconstruction of Ethiopian history with corporate corruption, ultra-vires and pseudo-federalism. The misappropriations of national assets added with autocratic nature of the regime procreated erratic political oppositions and protests since the party set on to power. The political marginalization at intra-party level also created split, which brought state elites in Amhara and Oromia regions to support the acute popular protest. These political scenarios have compelled TPLF to abscond into Mekelle and the coming of reformist leaders to power in 2018. This paper thus aimed to uncover TPLF’s political strategy in post 2018 Ethiopia by employing a qualitative case study with a secondary data obtained from Mass Media, commentaries and digitized outlets. The loss of key political positions and attachment of the regime’s wrong deeds to TPLF has bugging its elites after the coming of the new premiership. As counter to the reformist leaders, TPLF undertook huge militarization, destabilization and proxies, inducing popular fear, supporting like-minded regional oppositions to propagandize sensitive political issues to regain its lost prestige. This power rivalry created political absurdism, where political decisions and policies of the reformists had continued to be officially banned by TPLF in a way that disastrously impacted the survival of the state. Thus, it is important to undertake political reconciliation to freeze the prevailing political deadlocks for the continuation of the polity.

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