Introduction: Questioning the Punitive Paradox

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Insa Lee Koch
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
The State ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
The Core ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
State Coercion

The introduction starts with what many have seen as a worrying paradox: the illiberal turn that liberal democracies have taken with, or perhaps because of, popular support. While commentators have focused on ‘why’ liberal democracy has taken an illiberal turn, the book proposes an alternative starting point that focuses on the ‘how’ and the ‘what’: what democracy means to some of Britain’s most marginalized citizens in the first place and how these citizens engage with the state. It is by shifting the analytical focus to these questions that a more encompassing legacy of state coercion than commonly acknowledged in narratives of the punitive turn can be brought into focus, as well as the possibility of its critique and subversion. The introduction sets out council estates as a historical and ethnographic setting for such a project, outlines the methodology, and introduces the anthropological framework at the core of the book.

Should Epistemic Injustices Be Redressed by the “Corrective Virtues”?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
The State ◽  
Epistemic Injustice ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
State Action ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Status ◽  
Miranda Fricker

This chapter examines the kind of wronging of a person involved in cases of epistemic injustice and whether or not epistemic injustice, so understood, is better remedied by state action or by what Miranda Fricker calls the “corrective virtues.” It is argued that there is a trade off between arguing that such injustices are very pervasive, or identifying what it is distinctively to wrong a person in their capacity as a knower. Focusing on the idea of an epistemic capacity, it is argued that the core sense of the concept involves cases where a person attempts to disqualify another from the status of being an epistemic subject at all. It is a form of expressively injurious speech or conduct that attack a person’s status thereby indirectly undermining their rights. This attempt to introduce stratification into the standing of free and equal citizens explains why both Fricker and her critics are partially correct. There is an ethos inherent to liberal democracy that requires that citizens refrain from interfering in the legitimate projects of others. When the state speaks in its expressive capacity it both exemplifies, and seeks to entrench, such an ethos at the level of individual conduct.

Geographies of Diplomacy

Geography ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Spatial Dynamics ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
The Core ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Building Process ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Spatial Dimensions ◽  
External Actors

From the micro-geographies of specific diplomatic sites to the global imaginations of world politics that inform diplomatic relations, diplomacy has countless spatial dimensions. In recent years, scholars from various disciplines, including geography and International Relations (IR), have begun the task of critically engaging with geographical questions that diplomacy raises. At the core of this endeavor is foregrounding the often overlooked significance of space in diplomatic practice. At a micro-scale, diplomacy is comprised of a collection of activities and materials that are necessarily located somewhere in space. These specific “sites” of diplomacy have their own spatial organization—from the seating plan of a state dinner to the offices and corridors of embassies and foreign ministries—and these locations are shaped by their unique micro-geographies. The spatial dynamics of both spectacular and mundane diplomatic sites have led scholars to draw on the core geographical concept of “place” in analyzing diplomatic practice. Location has an emotional and affective agency that influences our perception of events; decisions as to where diplomacy takes place are as significant as the diplomatic actions themselves. Beyond specific sites, scholars have also considered how diplomacy plays a much wider role in the spatialization of world politics. First, diplomacy is an act closely associated with the functionality of the state. Performing the capacity to represent a polity through engagement with external actors is a legitimacy-building process and a key tool of statecraft. Second, the act of diplomacy also has transformative potential. Encounters between states that take place in diplomatic settings can mediate disputes, ignite arguments, and generally reshape how relations between actors are imagined. Research into the geographies of diplomacy benefits from a great breadth of perspectives. At a time when technological innovation and forces of globalization have given rise to “new” diplomatic actors and practices, multiple disciplinary perspectives have highlighted the changing spatial dynamics of diplomacy. In particular, innovative theoretical and methodological approaches have been developed to study alternative diplomatic actors both “above” and “below” the state. This challenge to traditional notions of who and what might be considered as diplomatic actors suggests that scholarly work on the geographies of diplomacy sits at the forefront of engagement with the rapidly changing terrain of contemporary diplomatic practice. The works included in this bibliography were selected to reflect current trends in this vibrant and rapidly evolving subfield. They are, however, only a sample of the wider work associated with the geographies of diplomacy and should be seen as a starting point for engagement with the literature.

scholarly journals Politics, Ethics, and Religion

wisdom ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-96
Author(s):  
Balázs M. MEZEI
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
United States Today ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Democratic Systems ◽  
Political Form ◽  
Communist Countries

In this essay, I argue that religion is centrally important in the future of liberal democracy in the Western sense of the word. Without the values of religion, we may have to face the emergence of authoritarian and totalitarian forms of political existence. My starting point is the experience of the so-called post-Communist countries. The essence of this experience is that liberal democracy as a political form may lack genuine content if the society, in which it exists, is devoid of the fundamental human attitudes essential for sustaining such a democracy. This experience can be complemented by the experience we have in the European Union or in the United States today, because even in these organizations we witness clear signs of the loss of common values, which endangers the proper functioning of stable democratic systems. However, some form of religion – traditional or renewed – may help to revitalize the values and their subjective basis, the proper human attitudes to encounter the danger of the decline of contemporary liberal democracies.

Communication, Ideology, and Democratic Theory

1990 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
James F. Bohman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Communicative Action ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Fourth Condition ◽  
The Core ◽  
Theory Of Communicative Action ◽  
Starting Point

Using Habermas' theory of communicative action and his remarks on the legitimacy of the state under modern social conditions as a starting point, I combine normative democratic theory with the critique of ideology. I first outline four necessary-but-not-sufficient conditions of communication for democratic decision making: such agreements must (1) be formally and procedurally correct, (2) be cognitively adequate, (3) concern issues on which consensus or compromise can be reached, and (4) be free of ideology. The first three conditions form the core of a normative democratic theory, one that is not purely procedural, as many have argued it is. I then discuss the fourth condition and establish the relation between ideology and democracy. Taken together, these conditions not only provide an answer to troubling questions for democratic theory but also delineate the extent to which politics is rational and political claims are “truthlike.”

scholarly journals The ‘body politic’ in ancient China

2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chun-chieh Huang
Keyword(s):  
Body Politic ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Core ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Inside Out ◽  
Chinese Philosophers ◽  
State Functions

The ‘body politic’ occupies the core position in traditional Chinese political thinking. This is strongly supported by the fact that, for most ancient Chinese philosophers, self-cultivation was taken as the starting point of a programmatic way leading to the management of the world. The aim of this essay is to analyze the meaning and significance of the prevailing ‘body politic’ of ancient China.In section two, the Chinese ‘body politic’ is placed within a comparative frame with the ideas of Plato (428–347 BCE) and Hobbes (1588–1679). It is argued that the ‘body politic’ in China is far from an abstract or theoretical discourse; the state was epistemologically taken as an extension of the human body, which is integral and organic in itself. Thus the body served as a metaphor or symbol to explain the organization and functionality of the state.Section three details the ‘body politic’ in three ways. First, due to the comparability between the state and the body, the ruling of the state, as that of the body, should also commence with a kind of inside-out, morality-concerned self-cultivation. Second, there is a complicated interdependency between state functions, which are similar to those of the body. Third, if there is a center of dominancy gathered through the interactive process of the body, then a kind of political autocracy can thus be extrapolated in by the ‘body politic’.The conclusion points out that, in ancient Chinese body-thinking, the mind-heart had its socio-political dimensions, and the ‘body’ is no less than a psychosomatic one. Since the unification of China in 221 BCE, Confucianism had gradually gained the political vantage and become the imperial ideology. However, the ancient ideal of the ‘Confucianization of politics’ was thus transformed to the reality of the ‘politicization of Confucianism’.

Untimely Development, Ugly History:A Drama in Muslinand the Rejection of National-Historical Time

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-183
Author(s):  
Mary L. Mullen
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Core

This article considers the politics and aesthetics of the colonial Bildungsroman by reading George Moore's often-overlooked novel A Drama in Muslin (1886). It argues that the colonial Bildungsroman does not simply register difference from the metropolitan novel of development or express tension between the core and periphery, as Jed Esty suggests, but rather can imagine a heterogeneous historical time that does not find its end in the nation-state. A Drama in Muslin combines naturalist and realist modes, and moves between Ireland and England to construct a form of untimely development that emphasises political processes (dissent, negotiation) rather than political forms (the state, the nation). Ultimately, the messy, discordant history represented in the novel shows the political potential of anachronism as it celebrates the untimeliness of everyday life.

Corporate culture as a driver of the corporate security of foreign military-industrial enterprises

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (12) ◽  
pp. 2363-2380
Author(s):  
S.B. Zainullin ◽  
O.A. Zainullina
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Culture ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
The State ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Corporate Security ◽  
Industrial Enterprises ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Military

Subject. The military-industrial complex is one of the core industries in any economy. It ensures both the economic and global security of the State. However, the economic security of MIC enterprises strongly depends on the State and other stakeholders. Objectives. We examine key factors of corporate culture in terms of theoretical and practical aspects. The article identifies the best implementation of corporate culture that has a positive effect on the corporate security in the MIC of the USA, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan ans China. Methods. The study employs dialectical method of research, combines the historical and logic unity, structural analysis, traditional techniques of economic analysis and synthesis. Results. We performed the comparative analysis of corporate culture models and examined how they are used by the MIC corporations with respect to international distinctions. Conclusions and Relevance. The State is the main stakeholder of the MIC corporations, since it acts as the core customer represented by the military department. It regulates and controls operations. The State is often a major shareholder of such corporations. Employees are also important stakeholders. Hence, trying to satisfy stakeholders' needs by developing the corporate culture, corporations mitigate their key risks and enhance their corporate security.

The Constitutional Principle of Accountability: A Study of Contemporary South African Case Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuks Okpaluba
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Constitutional Principle ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Law ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
The Many

‘Accountability’ is one of the democratic values entrenched in the Constitution of South Africa, 1996. It is a value recognised throughout the Constitution and imposed upon the law-making organs of state, the Executive, the Judiciary and all public functionaries. This constitutional imperative is given pride of place among the other founding values: equality before the law, the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution. This study therefore sets out to investigate how the courts have grappled with the interpretation and application of the principle of accountability, the starting point being the relationship between accountability and judicial review. Therefore, in the exercise of its judicial review power, a court may enquire whether the failure of a public functionary to comply with a constitutional duty of accountability renders the decision made illegal, irrational or unreasonable. One of the many facets of the principle of accountability upon which this article dwells is to ascertain how the courts have deployed that expression in making the state and its agencies liable for the delictual wrongs committed against an individual in vindication of a breach of the individual’s constitutional right in the course of performing a public duty. Here, accountability and breach of public duty; the liability of the state for detaining illegal immigrants contrary to the prescripts of the law; the vicarious liability of the state for the criminal acts of the police and other law-enforcement officers (as in police rape cases and misuse of official firearms by police officers), and the liability of the state for delictual conduct in the context of public procurement are discussed. Having carefully analysed the available case law, this article concludes that no public functionary can brush aside the duty of accountability wherever it is imposed without being in breach of a vital constitutional mandate. Further, it is the constitutional duty of the courts, when called upon, to declare such act or conduct an infringement of the Constitution.

In a word, I’ve been there

2019 ◽  
pp. 246-256
Author(s):  
A. K. Zholkovsky
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Core Problem ◽  
Typical Solution

In his article, A. Zholkovsky discusses the contemporary detective mini-series Otlichnitsa [A Straight-A Student], which mentions O. Mandelstam’s poem for children A Galosh [Kalosha]: more than a fleeting mention, this poem prompts the characters and viewers alike to solve the mystery of its authorship. According to the show’s plot, the fact that Mandelstam penned the poem surfaces when one of the female characters confesses her involvement in his arrest. Examining this episode, Zholkovsky seeks structural parallels with the show in V. Aksyonov’s Overstocked Packaging Barrels [Zatovarennaya bochkotara] and even in B. Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago [Doktor Zhivago]: in each of those, a member of the Soviet intelligentsia who has developed a real fascination with some unique but unattainable object is shocked to realize that the establishment have long enjoyed this exotic object without restrictions. We observe, therefore, a typical solution to the core problem of the Soviet, and more broadly, Russian cultural-political situation: the relationship between the intelligentsia and the state, and the resolution is not a confrontation, but reconciliation.

OWNERSHIP IN THE REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA AND THE STATE AS THE HOLDER OF THE PROPERTY RIGHT UNDER THE CONSTITUTION IN 1991

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 1993-2005
Author(s):  
Shemsije Demiri ◽  
Rudina Kaja
Keyword(s):  
Legal Aspect ◽  
State Ownership ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
State Function ◽  
Dominant Form ◽  
Republic Of Macedonia ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Republic

This paper deals with the right to property in general terms from its source in Roman law, which is the starting point for all subsequent legal systems. As a result of this, the acquisition of property rights is handled from the historical point of view, with the inclusion of various local and international literature and studies, as well as the legal aspect devoted to the respective civil codes of the states cited in the paper.Due to such socio-economic developments, state ownership and its ownership function have changed. The state function as owner of property also changed in Macedonia's property law.The new constitutional sequence of the Republic of Macedonia since 1991 became privately owned as a dominant form of ownership, however, state ownership also exists.This process of transforming social property into state or private (dissolves), in Macedonia starts from Yugoslavia through privatization, return and denationalization measures, on which basis laws on privatization have been adopted. Because of this, there will be particularly intensive negotiations regaring the remaining state assets.

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