The Intellectual Origins of Turkish Radical Republicanism

2020 ◽  
pp. 197-214
Author(s):  
Banu Turnaoğlu
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Secret Society ◽  
The Core ◽  
International Solidarity ◽  
Intellectual Origins ◽  
Head Of Government ◽  
Radical Republicanism

This chapter traces the radical heritage of Turkish republicanism to the political thought of the radical branch of the Young Ottoman secret society. It examines the core republican principles of several leading Young Ottoman radicals: Sağır Ahmed Beyzâde Mehmed, İskender Beyzâde Reşad, and Subhî Paşazâde Nuri. The core notions of their ideology entail freedom from oppression, a deep commitment to popular sovereignty and constitutionalism, an emphasis on political activism and revolution, a stress on international solidarity and peace, and a recognition of the need for social equality. Their republicanism was antithetical to monarchy, and a central aim was the abolition of the sultanate by force, but unlike European republican models they wanted the head of government to be a non-hereditary elected caliph. Although less known than some of their intellectual counterparts, the role they played in the development of Turkish republicanism proved no less pervasive and profound.

Calvinists, Arminians, Socinians: Popular Sovereignty and Natural Rights in Early Modern Political Thought

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-35
Author(s):  
James Moore
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Hugo Grotius

This chapter focuses upon natural rights in the writings of Hugo Grotius, the Levellers and John Locke and the manner in which their understanding of rights was informed by distinctive Protestant theologies: by Arminianism or the theology of the Remonstrant Church and by Socinianism. The chapter argues that their theological principles and the natural rights theories that followed from those principles were in conflict with the theology of Calvin and the theologians of the Reformed church. The political theory that marks the distinctive contribution of Calvin and the Reformed to political theory was the idea of popular sovereignty, an idea revived in the eighteenth century, in the political writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

32. Conclusion: The Future of Parliamentary Politics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Judge ◽  
Cristina Leston-Bandeira ◽  
Louise Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Participation ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
The Core ◽  
Parliamentary Sovereignty ◽  
The Future ◽  
Parliamentary Politics

This concluding chapter reflects on the future of parliamentary politics by identifying key puzzles implicit in previous discussions which raise fundamental questions about what Parliament is and why it exists. The goal is to determine the ‘predictable unknowns’ as starting points for exploring the future. Three principal puzzles that need ‘hard thinking’ in order to understand legislatures are considered: representation, collective decision-making, and their role in the political system. The chapter also examines the difficulties in reconciling ideas about popular sovereignty and direct public participation with notions of parliamentary sovereignty and indirect public participation in decision-making; the implications of the legislative task of disentangling UK law from EU law in the wake of Brexit for Parliament's recent strengthened scrutiny capacity; and how Parliament has integrated the core principles of representation, consent, and authorization into the legitimation of state policy-making processes and their outputs.

scholarly journals ‘To Believe In This World, As It Is’: Immanence and the Quest for Political Activism

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (supplement) ◽  
pp. 28-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathrin Thiele
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constructive Approach ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
The World

In What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari make the claim that ‘[i]t may be that believing in this world, in this life, becomes our most difficult task, or the task of a mode of existence still to be discovered on our plane of immanence today. This is the empiricist conversion.’ What are we to make of such a calling? The paper explicates why and in what sense this statement is of exemplary significance both for an appropriate understanding of Deleuze's political thought and for a most timely conceptualisation of politics in a world so clearly defined by immanence, and nothing but immanence. I argue that Deleuze's rigorously constructive approach to the world is not beyond politics, as some recent readings have declared (e.g. those of Badiou and Hallward). Rather, we have to appreciate that in Deleuze and Guattari's demand for a ‘belief in this world’ the political intersects with the dimension of the ethical in such a way that our understanding of both is transformed. Only after this ‘empiricist conversion’ can we truly think of a Deleuzian politics that does justice to a plane of immanence ‘immanent only to itself’.

Tocqueville and the Tyranny of the Majority

1966 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morton J. Horwitz
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Great Work ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Tyranny Of The Majority

UNTIL the time Alexis de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America, the problem of tyranny of the majority had dominated the political thought of no other nation as it had that of America. In the half century before the appearance of Tocqueville's great work, Americans had maintained a virtual monopoly of concern over the question of how popular sovereignty and individual liberty could peacefully coexist. The French Revolution, it is true, raised similar questions abroad, and if we take Burke's concern as representative, we see that he too was seriously troubled over the prospect that democratic tyranny would become the inevitable offspring of popular sovereignty. But despite Burke's eloquent and penetrating analysis, majority tyranny did not become a major preoccupation of English political thought, and to the extent that there was concern with the problem, as in the debate over the Reform Bill of 1832, discussion was confined to the obvious and straightforward issue of whether the suffrage should be extended. In America, on the other hand, the majority problem continued to be a persistent political issue from the beginning and, even today, a host of public questions revolves around the scope of majority rule. Yet for all the attention Americans paid to the majority question before Tocqueville entered upon the scene, they had hardly scratched the surface, and the Frenchman, therefore, was able to suggest an approach that they had not even considered.

scholarly journals How to think beyond sovereignty: On Sieyes and constituent power

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Rubinelli
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Theories Of Sovereignty ◽  
The French Revolution

Historians and political theorists have long been interested in how the principle of people’s power was conceptualised during the French Revolution. Traditionally, two diverging accounts emerge, one of national and the other of popular sovereignty, the former associated with moderate monarchist deputies, including the Abbé Sieyes, and the latter with the Jacobins. This paper argues against this binary interpretation of the political thought of the French Revolution, in favour of a third account of people’s power, Sieyes’ idea of pouvoir constituant. Traditionally, constituent power has been viewed as a variation of sovereignty, but I show it to be an independent conceptualisation of people’s power. Sieyes’ political theory led him to criticise and refuse contemporary theories of sovereignty in favour of what he understood as a fully modern account of people’s power. Based on extensive research in the archives, I show how Sieyes opposed the deployment of sovereignty by the revolutionary Assemblies and recommended replacing it with the idea of constituent power.

scholarly journals Liberal and conservative political thought in nineteenth-century Serbia Vladimir Jovanovic and Slobodan Jovanovic

Balcanica ◽  
2010 ◽  
pp. 131-153
Author(s):  
Boris Milosavljevic
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Political Scene

Two very influential political philosophers and politicians, Vladimir Jovanovic and Slobodan Jovanovic, differed considerably in political theory. The father, Vladimir, offered an Enlightenment-inspired rationalist critique of the traditional values underpinning his upbringing. The son, Slobodan, having had a non-traditional, liberal upbringing, gradually-through analyzing and criticizing the epoch?s prevail?ing ideas, scientism, positivism and materialism-came up with his own synthesis of traditional and liberal, state and liberty, general and individual. Unlike Vladimir Jovanovic, who advocated popular sovereignty, central to the political thought of his son Slobodan was the concept of the state. On the other hand, Slobodan shared his father?s conviction that a bicameral system was a prerequisite for the protection of individual liberties and for good governance. Political views based on different political philosophies decisively influenced different understandings of parliamentarianism in nineteenth-century Serbia, which in turn had a direct impact on the domestic political scene and the manner of government.

Radical Republicanism

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Wage Labour ◽  
Social Domination ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Radical Republicanism ◽  
Radical Transformation

Republicanism is a powerful resource for emancipatory struggles against domination. Its commitment to popular sovereignty subverts justifications of authority, locating power in the hands of the citizenry who hold the capacity to create, transform, and maintain their political institutions. Republicanism’s conception of freedom rejects social, political, and economic structures subordinating citizens to any uncontrolled power—from capitalism and wage labour to patriarchy and imperialism. It views any such domination as inimical to republican freedom. Moreover, it combines a revolutionary commitment to overturning despotic and tyrannical regimes with the creation of political and economic institutions that realize the sovereignty of all citizens, institutions that are resilient to threats of oligarchical control. This volume is dedicated to retrieving and developing this radical potential, challenging the more conventional moderate conceptions of republicanism. It brings together scholars at the forefront of tracing this radical heritage of the republican tradition, and developing arguments, texts, and practices into a critical and emancipatory body of political and social thought. The volume spans historical discussions of the English Levellers, French and Ottoman revolutionaries, and American abolitionists and trade unionists; explorations of the radical republican aspects of the thought of Machiavelli, Marx, and Rousseau; and theoretical examinations of social domination and popular constitutionalism. It will appeal to political theorists, historians of political thought, and political activists interested in how republicanism provides a robust and successful radical transformation to existing social and political orders.

Human Rights

2018 ◽  
pp. 414-430
Author(s):  
Michael Forman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Personal Integrity ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
The Core

Human rights is a way of articulating appeals for justice and aiming at the juridification of these claims. This chapter reconstructs the political theory of human rights to highlight how solutions to the crises it aims at addressing have been articulated in political theory and practice with the result that rights claims have been expanded from the early assertions of personal integrity, religious freedom, and property of a privileged minority to the demands for social, economic, and cultural rights of the victims of exploitation, imperialism, oppression, and exclusion. This chapter examines the notions of sovereignty that sit at the core of the idea, especially the tension between human rights and popular sovereignty, which can only be temporarily resolved in political practice. It argues that human rights, although incompletely realized, retains its appeal to movements everywhere because it is the best way of realizing justice claims in the context of modernity.

scholarly journals Granice w wizji politycznej współczesnej skrajnej prawicy w Niemczech

Politeja ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1(58)) ◽  
pp. 211-227
Author(s):  
Agata Kałabunowska
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Extreme Right ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The Core ◽  
Strong Focus ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Migration Crisis

Borders in the Political Vision of Contemporary Extreme Right in Germany The article deals with the issue of broadly defined borders in political and ideological programmes of selected extreme right organisations in contemporary Germany (AfD, NPD, IBD). The starting point for the textual and content analysis of actual programs of these organizations is the author’s reflection on the importance of dichotomy in the broader political view of the extreme right. The author claims that the considerably strong focus of the selected right‑wing organisations on the issue of physical or cultural borders does not only derive from the timing of their activism – the so called migration crisis. It is rather pre‑defined by the ideological features of the far right in general. The core ideological elements ascribed to the far right as a stream of political thought, such as nationalism or authoritarianism, are based on the dichotomy and influence on the far right perception of the world.

scholarly journals Michael Tierney and the Intellectual Origins of Blueshirtism, 1920–1938

Fascism ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-107
Author(s):  
Seán Donnelly
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political History ◽  
Political Instability ◽  
General Election ◽  
The Political ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
Comparative Framework ◽  
Intellectual Origins

Abstract The Blueshirts have been one of the most contested and extensively researched subjects in twentieth-century Irish historiography. Debate has focused principally on the extent to which the movement should be understood as a fascist organisation, or as a spontaneous counter-reaction to the domestic political instability that followed Fianna Fáil’s victory in the 1932 general election. However, strikingly little attention has been devoted to tracing the intellectual origins of Blueshirtism in Irish nationalist and republican thought. This article rejects the dominant historiographical representation of the Blueshirts as an aberration in Irish political history and suggests that the movement can only be understood properly in continuity with the political thought of the pre-Civil War period. It is argued, additionally, that the more complex and differentiated ‘hybrid’ theories of ‘fascistization’ developed by scholars like David D. Roberts, António Costa Pinto and Aristotle Kallis provide a useful comparative framework for understanding how nationalist intellectuals such as Michael Tierney, once steadfast in their commitment to the norms of parliamentary democracy, came to endorse a corporatist politics after being voted out of office.

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