Justified Lawbreaking

2019 ◽  
pp. 116-163
Author(s):  
Burke A. Hendrix
Keyword(s):  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Aboriginal Communities ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Political Actors

What kinds of strategies toward laws and political procedures are those facing persistent injustice permitted to adopt? While civil disobedience is straightforward, other cases are more challenging. This chapter outlines a set of possible strategies, and it evaluates two in depth: circumvention and nullification. In some circumstances, political actors might improve their own conditions by circumventing certain kinds of laws or political procedures, such as through illegal forms of lobbying intended to influence election outcomes. The chapter argues that circumvention of electoral or other laws would be permissible where it can reduce profound harms. The chapter then turns to the case of armed nullification, in which an Aboriginal group takes up arms at the borders of its territories to prevent the exercise of state laws or policies. The chapter argues that such nullification is often permissible, even if it must be pursued carefully to avoid harm to Aboriginal communities themselves.

Transnational Advocacy Networks and Conditionality

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Vasilev
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Structural Change ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Transnational Advocacy ◽  
Advocacy Networks ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Transnational Advocacy Networks ◽  
Privileged Position ◽  
Transnational Networking ◽  
Legal Structures

Chapter 4 explores the mechanisms through which political actors in positions of power can be influenced to dismantle unjust decision-making and legal structures from which they benefit. It is argued that when such actors are hostile towards principled reform and have the ability to withstand democratic challenges to their privileged position, a combination of civil disobedience and intervention by actors external to the society is required to compel them out of their intransigence. The chapter presents conditionality and transnational networking as practical expressions of this mode of structural change and considers how these practices can inform future efforts at principled reform.

In the Street

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Çiğdem Çidam
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Street Politics ◽  
Democratic Action ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Antonio Negri ◽  
Ways Of Being

The 2010s were a decade of protests, and if the initial few months of 2020 are any indication, various forms of street politics, including spontaneous protests, demonstrations, acts of civil disobedience, and occupations are here to stay. Yet, contemporary discussions on the democratic significance of such events remain limited to questions of success and failure and the relative virtues of spontaneity and organization. In the Street: Democratic Action, Theatricality, and Political Friendship moves beyond these limited and limiting debates by breaking the hold of a deeply engrained way of thinking of democratic action that falsely equates spontaneity with immediacy. The book traces this problematic equation back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s account of popular sovereignty and demonstrates that insofar as commentators characterize democratic moments as the unmediated expressions of people’s will and/or instantaneous popular eruptions, they lose sight of the rich, creative, and varied practices of political actors who create those events against all odds. In the Street counters this Rousseauian influence by appropriating Aristotle’s notion of “political friendship” and developing an alternative conceptual framework that emphasizes the theatricality of democratic action through a critical engagement with the works of Antonio Negri, Jürgen Habermas, and Jacques Rancière. The outcome is a new conceptual lens that brings to light what is erased from contemporary discussions of democratic events, namely the crystallization of political actors’ hopes in the novel ways of being that they staged and the alternative forms of social relations that they created in and through the intermediating practices of political friendship.

Animal Activism and Interspecies Change

2019 ◽  
pp. 185-201
Author(s):  
Eva Meijer
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Stray Dog ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
Animal Agency

In Chapter 7, the author focuses on the role of non-human animals as agents of social and political change. This role is not usually acknowledged in theory or in animal activism, because non-human animals are not seen as political actors or as agents of social change, even though they act politically and influence human political institutions and practices. This is problematic because it does not recognize non-human animal agency, and reinforces viewing them as mute, in contrast to human actors, which reaffirms anthropocentrism and unequal power relations. We therefore need to explore non-human animal activism and possibilities for interspecies political change. In this chapter, the author first discusses non-human animal acts of resistance, and investigates whether these acts can be seen as civil disobedience. She then turns to the relation between non-human animal oppression and the oppression of human groups via a discussion of intersectionality. This is followed by a discussion of the question of speaking for others, and options for assisting other animals as activists. The final section discusses how stray dog agency can function as a starting point for change.

Embracing Complexity: Diaspora Politics as a Co-Construction

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-36
Author(s):  
Élise Féron
Keyword(s):  
Host Countries ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Diaspora Politics

Building on cases of conflict-generated diaspora groups, the article proposes to understand diaspora politics as a co-construction between a series of actors that is not limited to home and host states. It argues that repeated attempts to understand diaspora politics as mostly produced by home or host countries is the result of an unwillingness to embrace the fundamentally disruptive nature of diasporas in interstate politics. Diasporas are hybrid political actors that have connections, not only with their countries of origin and of residence, but also with other diaspora groups located in the same country or elsewhere as well as with other actors at the transnational level. Taking stock of state-based approaches to diaspora politics, as well as of analyses focusing on internal diaspora matters, the article shifts the focus towards the interstate and transnational dimensions of diaspora politics and emphasises their potential to move across levels and spheres of engagement

The Alevi Diaspora – Its emergence as a political actor and its impact on the homeland

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 342-353
Author(s):  
Zeynep Arslan
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Religious Group ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Political Actor ◽  
Literature Research ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Official Recognition

Through comparative literature research and qualitative analysis, this article considers the development of Alevi identity and political agency among the diaspora living in a European democratic context. This affects the Alevi emergence as political actors in Turkey, where they have no official recognition as a distinct religious identity. New questions regarding their identity and their aspiration to be seen as a political actor confront this ethno-religious group defined by common historical trauma, displacement, massacre, and finally emigration.

Different versus Equal: The 1920s

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Woloch
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Equal Rights Amendment ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Single Sex ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Woman's Party ◽  
Women's Politics

This chapter revisits Adkins and considers the feud over protective laws that arose in the women's movement in the 1920s. The clash between friends and foes of the Equal Rights Amendment—and over the protective laws for women workers that it would surely invalidate—fueled women's politics in the 1920s. Both sides claimed precedent-setting accomplishments. In 1923, the National Woman's Party proposed the historic ERA, which incurred conflict that lasted for decades. The social feminist contingent—larger and more powerful—gained favor briefly among congressional lawmakers, expanded the number and strength of state laws, saw the minimum wage gain a foothold, and promoted protection through the federal Women's Bureau. Neither faction, however, achieved the advances it sought. Instead, a fight between factions underscored competing contentions about single-sex protective laws and their effect on women workers.

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