Sovereignty, Justice, and Political Power

2020 ◽  
pp. 110-143
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Frazer
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
King Lear ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Family Stories ◽  
Sovereign Authority ◽  
Forms Of Violence

King Lear intertwines two family stories: one of disinheritance and the consequent crisis of sovereignty that follows on the division of territory and political authority; the other of legitimacy, illegitimacy, resentment, and revenge against a father. The political plot of King Lear puts sovereign authority, patriarchal authority, political strategy, and violence into juxtaposition with the claims of social justice. The play puts into question the idea of a ‘sovereign body’, in particular in its treatment of economic and social transformations in attitudes to value and exchange, and in its meditation on the way sovereign power destroys human and social bodies. These themes can be reflected in interpretations of the drama that emphasize loneliness and meaninglessness. The drama also focuses on forms of violence which track social status, and instantiate forms of authority, including sovereignty.

If in Doubt, Leave it Out? EU Precaution in WTO Regulatory Space

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Flett
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Level ◽  
Eu Law ◽  
The European Union ◽  
International Organisations ◽  
Balanced Approach ◽  
Available Information

This article reviews the way in which the concept of precaution, as commonly referenced in EU law, is received in the WTO. It argues that precaution is not a principle, but one facet of a principle of making rational judgments based on available information, the other facet of which is “that risk is worth taking”. Systematically pursuing high cost measures in response to low risks is not a balanced approach, and has probably contributed to the scepticism with which the concept is viewed in the WTO. However, this article goes on to argue that, without needing to be a principle, precaution is the determining legal feature in the SPS Agreement, because, unlike in the European Union, there is no legislative harmonisation of SPS measures at international level, WTO Members being free to set their own appropriate level of protection. In fact, the concept of precaution is relevant in the context of many other WTO provisions and is in some respects quite close to the concept of subsidiarity. Notwithstanding this, the first WTO SPS cases, driven by regulatory exporters and an interventionist WTO, have excessively emphasised scientific issues, masking policy judgments that the WTO has neither the legal nor the political authority to sustain. The article concludes that the proper way forward necessitates closer political, legal and administrative links between the WTO and other relevant international organisations, and a move away from consensus in the latter.

Shikar in the Princely Reserves

2018 ◽  
pp. 220-261
Author(s):  
Vijaya Ramadas Mandala
Keyword(s):  
Political Authority ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Political Alliances ◽  
Game Hunting ◽  
Big Game Hunting

Chapter 4 examines the complex relations between the British and Indian princes in relation to shikar and the political subtext of power politics at play. The reconstitution of Indian ruling values and identities between the British and Indian princes under the umbrella of big-game hunting is an important arena of colonial fabric. The Britons successfully mobilized these in establishing elitism and hierarchy in the realm of hunting, and enlisting the support of the Indian princes for the continuation of the colonial enterprise. The other important aspect of hunting in India was shikar in the princely reserves, maintained exclusively by Indian rulers for the highest ranks of the colonial elite. Hunting on such occasions was an extravagant affair involving state elephants and other elaborate entourage, in a powerful display of ancient and more recent ruling privileges, and underlining critical political alliances between the princes and the Raj. For the British, the royal shikars lent ritual credence to their political authority in a staged show of solidarity with the traditional rulers of the land. While confirming the solidarity of the ruling classes, the shikar expeditions also tested the strength of bonds between the British and Indian rulers. The colonial government’s endeavour to devise a series of British royal tours in the princely states involving big-game shoots and associated courtly trappings implies a shared aristocratic lineage and desire to promote the idea of Indian empire.

scholarly journals Toronto Civic Workers Bargaining Without a Base: The Significance of 2012

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlo Fanelli
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
City Council ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Workplace Democracy ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Public Sector Unions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This article explores how the politics and economics of austerity has influenced collective bargaining between the CUPE Locals 79/416 and the city of Toronto. I explore the relationship between neoliberalism and workplace precarity, drawing attention to the importance of the municipal public sector to trade unionism and the political potential of urbanized Left-labour radicalism. Following this, I provide an overview of the repeated attempts by City Council to extract concessions from unionized workers with a focus on the concession-filled 2012 round of bargaining and its relationship to earlier rounds. In what follows I discuss the implications of austerity bargaining for Locals 79 and 416 members, drawing attention to the repercussions this may have for other public sector workers. To conclude, I propose an alternative political strategy for municipal public sector unions, stressing the importance of a radicalized labour approach. It is my contention that this requires the development of both alternative policies and an alternative politics rooted in demands for workplace democracy and social justice.

Displacing Political Islam in Indonesia

Itinerario ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Chiara Formichi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Political Force ◽  
Building Process ◽  
The One

ABSTRACT This article investigates the narrative of Islamic nationalism in twentieth-century Indonesia, focussing on the experience of, and discourse surrounding, the self-identified Islamist Darul Islam movement and its leader, S. M. Kartosuwiryo (1905–1962). I offer a narrative of the independence struggle that counters the one advanced by Indonesia's Pancasila state, and allows us to capture subtleties that old discussions of separatism—with their assumption of fixed centres and peripheries—cannot illuminate. The article unfolds three historical threads connected to ideas of exile and displacement (physical and intellectual), and the reconstitution (successful or failed) that followed from those processes. Starting from the political circumstances under which Kartosuwiryo retreated to West Java after the Dutch reinvasion of 1947—in a form of physical exile and political displacement from the centre of politics to the periphery, from a position of political centrality to one of marginality and opposition—I then transition to an elaboration of Kartosuwiryo's ideology. His political strategy emerges as a form of voluntary intellectual displacement that bounced between local visions of authority, nationalist projects, and transregional imaginations in order to establish the political platform he envisioned for postcolonial Indonesia. Lastly, I argue that the elision of Islam from the reconstructed narrative of Kartosuwiryo's intentions, characterised as separatist and anti-nationalist, was a key aspect of Indonesia's nation-building process. It is my final contention that official Indonesian history's displacement of Kartosuwiryo's goals away from Islam and into the realm of separatism allowed for two reconstitutive processes, one pertaining to political Islam as a negative political force, and the other to Kartosuwiryo as a martyr for Islam.

scholarly journals Dynamics of Change in Customary Actor Authority After Determining the Status of Indigenous Villages in Siak Regency

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-168
Author(s):  
Husni Setiawan
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Traditional Leaders ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Status ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Method Analysis

This study discusses the status of adat which has the power of formal law which gradually impacts on the addition and strengthening of political rights of traditional leaders. This phenomenon occurs in the Sakai Minas Traditional Village, Siak Regency. The community of the traditional village made a rule that the chief (Village Chief) must come from ethnic Sakai or who have blood ties with the Sakai community. On the other hand, there is a dichotomy of the political rights of people outside of Sakai Ethnicity. This study aims to analyze the strengthening of the authority of indigenous actors in Kabupaten Siak. This study uses a qualitative method. Analysis of data using emik based on the results of in-depth interviews and related documents. The results of the study showed that after the establishment of Sakai Minas Traditional Village status, customary actors experienced formal political authority (de jure) strengthening compared to before the establishment of traditional village status. Strengthening this authority comes from the interpretation of the Perda Kabupaten Siak No. 2 of 2015 concerning the Establishment of Traditional Villages.

Political and Technical Moments in Development: Agropolitan Development Revisited

1985 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Friedmann
Keyword(s):  
Rural Development ◽  
Small Proportion ◽  
Dynamic Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Alternative Strategies ◽  
Agricultural Communities ◽  
The People

The problem addressed is one of strategy and practice: how to promote agricultural and rural development in peasant societies in ways that will benefit the large majority of the people. In a number of earlier essays, the author had proposed what he called a strategy of agropolitan development which would stress the importance of linking a self-generated process of dynamic change from within agricultural communities to the larger processes of central guidance by the state. The strategy involved a substantial devolution of power to small territorial units within the overall system of societal guidance. In the present paper the desirability of such a devolution is considered in terms of political, ecological, and technical–administrative arguments. As a political strategy, agropolitan development requires a commitment on part of national elites, and this may be difficult to obtain. Alternative strategies, on the other hand, although possibly successful when measured in terms of production, are unlikely to involve more than a small proportion of the peasant population. The political choice, then, would seem to be between planning for equality and political self-determination at the lowest levels of territorial governance or planning for inequality and political autocracy.

Politics in the Age of Salvation

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noah Salomon
Keyword(s):  
Political Authority ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Political Critique ◽  
Islamic Politics ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

This chapter presents a story that makes an interesting set of claims about the nature of political authority in Islam. First, it made the point that the notion of an intellectual vanguard that could awaken the Sudanese to their true responsibilities under Islam (and indeed show them what true Islam was) was deeply offensive, not just to Sufis, but to secularists and practicing Muslims of all stripes. Next, it is important to recognize that in this story, just as in the political strategy of the Inqadh, al-Turabi uses Islam to disarm political critique. The remainder of the chapter addresses the following question What might it mean to leave Islamic politics untranslated? It does so by looking at a vision of the Islamic state that “not only [finds itself, but positions itself] in competition or confrontation with social scientific forms of knowledge.”

From Recurring Reference to Identity Trait: the Emergence of Social Justice in the Political Discourse of the European Communities (1950-1986)

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-284
Author(s):  
Lorenzo MECHI
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Regional Policy ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
European Identity ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
The Social ◽  
Single European Act

Although the ECSC and the EEC were originally endowed with a narrow social di­mension, in the 1950s references to both Communities as promoters of social jus­tice were rather common in the European Parliament, especially in the speeches of Christian Democratic and Socialist members. In the following years, the progres­sive implementation of the social legislation of the two treaties, the first discus­sions on the launch of a regional policy, and the signing of the first association agreements with third countries, contributed to further spreading the idea of a pecu­liar European sensitivity to solidarity, fairness and inclusion. Widely shared in the European Parliament from the late 1960s, the perception of the Community as a natural bearer of social justice soon began to also permeate the statements of the other institutions, and was then formalized by the Declaration on European Identity approved by the Copenhagen summit of December 1973. From that moment on, the idea of social justice as a guiding principle of the entire European project was echoed in all solemn occasions, to be finally inserted in the founding treaties in 1986 by the Single European Act.

The Political Structure of the State of Kedah 1879–1905

1970 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharom Ahmat
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Structure

The structure and organization of the Kedah political system, like those of the other patriachal Malay states in the Peninsula, was based essentially on that of the Malacca Sultanate. Under this system, the apex and centre of the organisation was the Sultan, whose political authority was strengthened by the belief that he was endowed with the magical attributes of a “divine king”. This is evident in his title, Yang di-Pertuan (He who is made Lord); and is also manifested in the elaborate court ceremonials and rituals; the clothing, weapons, domestic adornments and a special vocabulary reserved exclusively for royalty. The political functions of the Sultan were very comprehensive covering the fields of internal administration, the defence of the country, and matters relating to external affairs.

scholarly journals Reinvestigating the Political Position of the Citizen in Plato’s „Republic”

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 23-43
Author(s):  
Stephen Oppong Peprah
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Cooperative Interaction ◽  
The Political ◽  
Orthodox Interpretation ◽  
Political Position ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Ideal

In this paper, I argue that in the Republic Plato justifies the political authority of the guardians in light of the principle of partnership — a principle which fits coherently with other Platonic principles which undergird his political theory, including optimum functionality, social justice and power. Therefore, I argue that, by their respective professions, there is a cooperative interaction between the guardians and the producers as partners within the political structure of the ideal polis towards attaining the eudaemonistic goals of both the individual and the polis. I contrast this with the orthodox interpretation that Plato justifies political authority using the idea of the Good — an interpretation which holds that since the citizens cannot grasp the Good, they assume an insignificant political position, including the allegations that they are cogs, slaves, morally obtuse, and politically inept.

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