The Stakes of Decolonization, 1945–1960

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Talbot C. Imlay
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Common Position ◽  
Human Individual ◽  
Post War

In examining the efforts of European socialists to forge a common position towards the issue of post-war empires, this chapter highlights some of the political stakes involved in decolonization. As debates between European and Asian socialists suggest, the process of decolonization witnessed a struggle between competing rights: national rights, minority rights, and human (individual) rights. Each set of rights possessed far-reaching political implications, none more so than minority rights, as they were often associated with limits on national sovereignty. These limits could be internal, such as constitutional restraints on the working of majority rule; but they could also take the form of external constraints on sovereignty, including alternatives to the nation state itself. The victory of the nation state, in other words, was inextricably tied to the defeat of minority rights as well as the growing predominance of human rights.

scholarly journals Responding to Norm Indeterminacy outside the Nation-State Frame

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 611-630
Author(s):  
Jonathan White
Keyword(s):  
Regional Integration ◽  
National Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
European Politics ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Level ◽  
Ways Of Coping ◽  
Post War ◽  
Political Form

AbstractI examine responses to norm indeterminacy in the transnational context, focusing on regional integration in post-War Europe. I argue that the development of the European Union has been facilitated by the use of a legitimizing device whereby policy decisions at a European level are cast as beyond the scope of reasonable political disagreement and therefore distinct from the conditions which make democracy a desirable political form at the national level. This rejection of the political significance of norm indeterminacy has led to a widely diagnosed trend of “depoliticization” in European politics. The paper examines how best to understand this trend, and explores how an adapted account of “enlightened localism” might offer better ways of coping with indeterminate norms.

Liberalism: Interacting to Conserve

Politics ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-126
Author(s):  
Paul Treanor
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Current Usage ◽  
Post War

Post-war liberalism should be defined in terms of its promotion of (social) interaction. It is not to be seen as the opposite of communitarianism, as current usage implies, nor is it individualist. In practice it strengthens the nation state. It has a purpose, too, for given an innate but not perfect human conservatism, maximising interaction will minimise change. This conservatism does seem to exist, but liberalism is ‘ideological’ in concealing it as a goal. With success, for no change-directed and specifically anti-interactive normative theory has emerged Partly, perhaps, because it would lie outside the concept of the political entirely.

Property

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Barducci
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Private Property ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Law Of War ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Commons ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 6 will focus primarily on the political implications of Grotius’ theory of ‘limited’ property as they concerned the relationship between the sphere of individual rights, the social contract, and the prerogatives of civil power. From the debate on the abolition of tithes in the early 1640s to the controversy between Filmer and Locke in the 1680s, the debates on property rights revolved around how much individuals could impropriate from the commons stock and, accordingly, on the limits and prerogatives of civil power in regulating private property. Grotius’ theory of property, along with his analysis of the law of war, were also components of Dutch and English expansion overseas.

Netizens, Revolutionaries, and the Inalienable Right to the Internet

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-114
Author(s):  
Tok Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Corporate Ownership ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
Media Corporations

This chapter examines the political implications of communal vernacular online art such as memes, mashups, and more. The tensions between these communal processes, and the various claims to authority, ownership, and censorship by institutions such as nation-states and media corporations, have erupted in epic cultural clashes regarding the very nature of art, freedom of speech, and politics. Such new moves challenge dominant regimes and dominant modes of thought, and are reconfiguring people’s relationship to the nation-state, traditional media, and corporate ownership of culture.

Complaint-making as political participation in contemporary Russia

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 243-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura A. Henry
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Political Liberalization ◽  
Democratic Change ◽  
The Russian Federation

Prior to December 2011, instances of widespread collective mobilization were relatively rare in contemporary Russia. Russian citizens are more likely to engage in a different means of airing grievances: making an official complaint to the authorities. This article considers how complaint-making, as a variety of political participation, may contribute either to authoritarian resilience or to political liberalization. The political significance of complaints made to the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Russian Federation is examined. Since it is the broader political context that shapes the significance of complaints, in the absence of meaningful elections individualized appeals to the state are unlikely to promote democratic change, although they may allow for redress of individual rights violations.

Religious Minorities in Southeast Asia

2020 ◽  
pp. 135-160
Author(s):  
Amy L. Freedman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Ethnic Violence ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
The World ◽  
Opening Up

Chapter five studies the process of successful democratization in Indonesia after 1998. During the transition and consolidation of democracy, Indonesia was rocked by religious and ethnic violence. Despite the levelling off of some kinds of conflict, threats and violence remained high against minority communities in Indonesia, particularly against the Ahmadiyah. Much of the explanation for persisting nature of the violence can be explained by: firstly, the political timidity of elected officials to stand up to religious groups pushing greater intolerance on a range of issues; and secondly, the Ahmadis’ self-identification as Muslims. The Rohingya, as well as Muslims more generally, are scapegoats and viewed as extreme ‘outsiders’ in a society now opening up to the world. The chapter concludes that democratic reforms cannot be considered complete or consolidated until minority rights, human rights more generally, are protected, and that democracy, modernity, and secularism do not necessarily coincide.

Of Drag and Push Democracies

2016 ◽  
pp. 34-60
Author(s):  
Mickias Musiyiwa ◽  
Marianna W. Visser
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Objective Assessment ◽  
Objective Evaluation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Electoral Fraud ◽  
Popular Songs

This chapter interrogates political discourse in popular songs of Shona expression with a view to establish the nature of their evaluation of state performance in Zimbabwe in the period, 2000-2015. By analysing the themes and the language of the songs (verbal, nominal and other constructions and figurative language), we aim to demonstrate the extent to which the songs, composed and performed by pro-opposition artists, objectively assess the performance of the Zimbabwean state. We exclude songs of pro-state musicians for the reason that, their assessment of state functionality is pro-state and therefore explicitly biased. They largely function as a vehicle for state propaganda, employed for the political discursive domination of the citizenry. In doing so they ignore or even glorify state repression, political violence, electoral fraud, insecurity of citizens, lawlessness and human rights violations, as well as the general degradation of the state system. Our observation is that, anti-state songs' depiction of the Zimbabwean nation-state as a case of death-resurrection is a more or less objective evaluation of the state's functionality. In addition to that, we argue that a much more objective assessment of Zimbabwe's performance should have been ‘a collapsed-and-partially-resuscitated state.'

scholarly journals Boundary Crossers: The Transformation of Civil Society Elites in Indonesia’s Post-Authoritarian Era

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 120-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haryanto
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The State ◽  
Boundary Crossing ◽  
The Political ◽  
Civil Society Organisations ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Authoritarian Politics

This article discusses the strategies used by the leaders of civil society organisations (CSOs) to cross the boundary between the field of civil society and the field of the state. Moreover, it examines the implications of this boundary crossing for post-authoritarian politics in Indonesia. In doing so, it tries to answer two questions: First, what are the strategies used by CSO leaders in boundary crossing? Second, what are the political implications of this boundary crossing for Indonesia’s post-authoritarian politics? Using Bourdieu’s field theory as its conceptual framework and drawing on qualitative interviews with CSO leaders, this article scrutinises the mobility of CSO leaders in different sectors: agrarian, anti-corruption, law, and human rights. It identifies two main strategies used in boundary crossing: direct and indirect strategies. Such strategies tend to be individual rather than organisational. Neither strategy is exclusive; CSO leaders do not limit themselves to particular strategies but may combine them and use them simultaneously. Another finding is that, when crossing to the state field, CSO leaders may increase or reduce their capital, or even lose it. Furthermore, boundary crossing has several significant implications for post-authoritarian politics in Indonesia: it generates sectoral policies; it creates political linkages; and finally, it leads CSO leaders to exert political control within the state field.

scholarly journals Political aspects in Hans Blumenberg’s philosophy

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (41) ◽  
pp. 523 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Heidenreich
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Community ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Single Subject ◽  
Hans Blumenberg ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The World ◽  
Extensive Exchange ◽  
Post War

The scientific community in the humanities agrees that the work of the German post-war philosopher Hans Blumenberg is fascinating, compelling and inspiring, although the texts remain to some extent hard to understand. His extensive exchange with authors like Carl Schmitt, Jacob Taubes or Hannah Arendt show the often forgotten and sometimes systematically hidden political aspects of his philosophy. The theory of modernity, the theory of myth and of course his metaphorology are the main areas of debate which can be checked for their political implications and ramifications. However, the a priori exclusion of republican arguments and ideas points to a systematic problem in Blumenberg’s thought. All his thinking remains in the framework of what has been called “subject-philosophy”, it seems. While his early publications allowed a certain critique of ideology (from the perspective of metaphorology), this gesture almost disappears in his later writings. It is basically the single subject which works on myth, which seems to project “significance” (Bedeutsamkeit) into the world, which makes sense of his life in anecdotes. However, human self-assertion is always a common project, an inherited technique which creates not only myths but also institutions and law. The political aspects in Blumenberg’s work therefore also make transparent the limitations of his thought.

Rise of xenophobic nationalism in Europe: A case of Slovenia

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 271-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alenka Kuhelj
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Nation State ◽  
European Court ◽  
Large Groups

The article focuses on rise of nationalism and xenophobia in Slovenia. It starts by considering the issue of unrecognized minorities in Slovenia (former Yugoslavia nations) that have no minority rights, despite being large groups, as many international organizations for the protection of minorities have pointed out. A particular issue in this relation for Slovenia is the ‘Erased’ – the individuals who did not acquire Slovenian citizenship when Slovenia seceded from federal Yugoslavia – and despite the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decision, the Slovenian state has still not recognized their rights, which were violated in the post-independence period. The article also examines two other minorities in Slovenia, the Jews and the Roma. The article finds Slovenia to be a closed, non-globalised society which, in spite of its constitutional declaration to protect the rights of minorities and other national communities, is seeking to retain a politically and culturally homogeneous nation state.

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