Contract Law Beyond the State

Author(s):  
Prince Saprai

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’.

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-27
Author(s):  
Luara Ferracioli

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.


2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danny Nicol

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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Weinman

Abstract What does the growing tide of displaced persons today teach us about the ongoing paradoxes of human rights regimes, which rely on the particular sovereignty of nation-states for their constitution and application but are framed and normatively justified as universal? Working with Arendt’s defense of ‘the right to have rights’ in response to the problem of statelessness which is the practical lynchpin of these historical and theoretical tensions, I specify that and why any person on earth, regardless of their legal status as a national or resident or non-resident alien, can legitimately expect two things from the political community in which they reside: hospitality and membership.


2014 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford Angell Bates

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.


Author(s):  
O.Y. Khoroshylov

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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mattias Lehtinen ◽  
Tuukka Brunila

The COVID-19 pandemic has made relevant questions regarding the limits and the justifications of sovereign power as nation states utilize high degrees of power over populations in their strategies of countering the virus. In our article, we analyze a particularly important facet of the strategy of sovereignty in managing the affects caused by a pandemic, which we term the ontology of war. We analyze the way in which war plays a significant role in the political ontology of our societies, through its aiming to produce a unified political subject and an external enemy. Taking our theoretical cue from Butler’s thinking on frames of recognizability we extend her theory through augmenting it with affect theory to argue for how the frame of recognizability produced by the ontology of war fails to guide our understanding of the pandemic as a political problem, a failure that we analyze through looking at the affective register. We argue that the main affect that the nation state tries to manage, in relation to the pandemic, through the ontology of war is anxiety. We show that the nation state tries to alleviate anxiety by framing it through the ontology war, this leads to the appearance of a potentially racist and nationalist affective climate where the “enemy” is no longer felt to be the virus, but members of other nations as well as minorities. We argue that the pandemic reveals both the political ontology of war central to the foundation of our political communities, and how this ontology is used by the nation state to manage feelings of anxiety and insecurity. Ultimately, as we will discuss at the end of this article, this leads to failure.


2020 ◽  
pp. 66-105
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Bell ◽  
Wang Pei

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.


2007 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 655-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNE McNEVIN

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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-29
Author(s):  
Anak Agung Ngurah Agung Wira Bima Wikrama

Political parties are the only institution that has the right to propose candi- dates for president and vice president as stipulated in Article 6A paragraph 2 of the 1945 Constitution so that they will have power and legitimacy as heads of state and heads of government. These constitutional rights are not owned by any democratic institution other than political parties. However, in the process of holding the general election, it does not always go as expected, as stated in the KPU’s laws and regulations. There were irregulari- ties committed by candidates and by political parties in the form of Money Politics.According to the political dowry event is in the general election area based on the legal principle of Lex specialis derogat legimitation generaly which states that the law is specific (lex specialis) overrides the general law (lex generalis) the Money Politic event is resolved by an institution, namely Bawaslu (General Election Supervisory Board).Besides the Article 6A paragraph 2 of the 1945, there is also Law Number 10 of 2016 concerning the Second Amendment of Law No. 1 in 2015 concerning the stipulation of Perppu (the governmental regulation of low amandement) Number 1 in 2014 according to the governor’s election, regents and mayors, especially in Article 47, Article 187A,Article 187B, Article 187C and Article 187D which regulates general elections. But in reality there are many irregularities in the implementation of the Constitution and etc.Events in the form of political dowry still occured which is evidenced by the infor- mation given by several witnesses and as the victim and perpetrator of the political dowry. Surprisingly, the General Election Supervisory Board (Bawaslu) as an election watchdog institution mandated by the Act to enforce the prevailing regulations is very difficult to carry out its duties, reminding that Bawaslu has weaknesses in handling the alleged polit- ical dowry. The weakness of Bawaslu is that they do not have the power to take witnesses or people who will be questioned.The author argues that there is a need for a legal protection in the form of a law that provides better opportunities to Bawaslu so that the position of Bawaslu as an election supervisory bord can be much stronger.


Author(s):  
Kenneth Owen

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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