Neoliberal ideas of government and the political empowerment of economists in advanced nation-states: the case of Israel

Author(s):  
Ronen Mandelkern
1989 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 787-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akhil Gupta

Economists and political scientists have become increasingly interested in the political economy of India during the past decade and particularly during the past three or four years. The titles under review will be valuable not only to India specialists but also to comparative scholars because of the intriguing mix of conditions found in India. More like a continent than a country in its diversity, India is in some ways very similar to densely populated, predominantly rural and agricultural China, differing most perhaps in the obstinacy and depth of its poverty. In the predominant role played by the state within an essentially capitalist economy, it is closer to the model of Western social democracies than it is to either prominently ideological capitalist or socialist nation-states; like other countries in the “third world,” the state in India plays a highly interventionist developmental role. Finally, since Independence it has pursued, more successfully than most nation-states in Latin America and Asia, policies of importsubstituting industrialization and relative autarchy. In terms of its political structures, India differs from most newly industrialized countries (NICs) in that it generally continues to function as a parliamentary democracy. The federal political system creates an intriguing balance of forces between central and the regional state governments, which are often ruled by opposition parties with agendas, ideologies, and organizational structures quite different from those of the central government.


Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 236
Author(s):  
Joanna Kulska

The increasingly acknowledged post-secular perspective has resulted in the emergence of some new approaches theorizing this phenomenon. One such approach has been the concept of religious engagement, which calls for the redefinition of the perception of religious non-state actors towards including them as important partners in the process of identifying and realizing political goals. According to this view, due to the multidimensional role played by religious communities and non-state religious actors, they need to be recognized as pivotal in creating a new form of knowledge generated through encounter and dialogue of the political decision-makers with these subjects. Among numerous others, the challenge of migration calls for enhanced debate referring to both political and ethical issues. When such a perspective is applied, the question is raised of the duties and limits of nation-states using more or less harsh political measures towards refugees and migrants based on the concept of security, but also short-term political goals. In the face of a state’s lack of will or capacity to deal with the problem of migration, the question of religion serving not only as the service-provider but also as the “trend-setter” with regard to fundamental ethical questions needs to be considered.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Biti

Across the postimperial East Central Europe, whose geopolitical space was reconfigured on the model of West European nation-states, unprocessed human residues proliferated as the collateral effects of politically guided national homogenizations. These positional outsiders, who were prevented from becoming legible within the newly established political spaces, take center stage in Kafka’s narratives, not only in the form of their characters but also their narrators and ultimate authority. They passionately attach themselves to the zones of indistinction, which the modern societies’ “egalitarian discrimination” has doomed them to, thus trying to turn their enforced dispossession into a chosen self-dispossession. I argue that Kafka’s narratives owe their elusive ultimate authority precisely to this persistent translation of the political state of exception of his agencies into their literary state of exemption. They are at constant pains to transfigure the imposed state of exception through its peculiar fictional adoption, but Kafka’s ultimate narrative authority nevertheless takes care to keep an edge over their efforts. It is precisely this never-ending gradation of subversive mimicry in Kafka’s works that his postcolonial successor J. M. Coetzee most admired.


Author(s):  
Thomas P. Anderson

This chapter explores a concept of the nation-state defined in terms of leagues, friendships, and amity between England and France in King John. The play consistently describes the evolving relationship between nations in terms of friendship and hospitality. Constance’s desperate question, ‘France friend with England! What becomes of me?’ (2.2.35) after the rival nations become momentary allies, captures the challenge that national sovereignty poses to a subject’s liberty. In its depiction of this geo-political friendship, King John interrogates the powerful claims of an emerging bureaucratic network of authority exemplified by the Bastard’s relationship with what the play calls ‘borrowed majesty’ (1.1.4) and ‘perjured kings’ (3.1.33). In arguing that King John makes explicit the political condition of friendship in depicting rival nation-states, the chapter makes the case that the Bastard’s new sovereign relationship radically redefines a political subject as a bawd or broker in a bureaucratic network with radical, albeit unrealized, political potential. The Bastard—a bureaucrat with royal blood—is well aware that his fugitive survival and political efficacy are contingent on how he responds to the unintended contours of the sovereign decision, to its collateral effects that exceed ordered and absolute power, in other words, to that which allows him to act legitimately, with bureaucratic sovereignty, both inside and outside of the law.


This chapter analyzes evolution to the end of furnishing a general theory of economic change. The analysis is applicable to both organisms and organizations. The general theory presented here is based on four analytical constructs: symmetry, scale, complexity, and collapse. Complexity is modeled as a force, similar to gravitation. Evolution is understood as a condition exhibiting an increase in morphological complexity. In the final analysis, economic change is linked to the structure of the political state. Pathologies of economic change, including morphostasis (in other words reaching a stage where growth and development are anemic due to the system's form and structure becoming static), necessitate a rethinking of political organization. Polycentricity and the principle of subsidiarity, with a praxis inspired by sovereign cities, are imperative for the continuous evolution of societies, and hence economies. In this future, nation-states become subsidiary. Sovereign cities replace nation-states on the ‘international' stage.


2021 ◽  
pp. 263-308
Author(s):  
Theodor Meron

This chapter describes the author’s own practice, as Court President, on early release of prisoners serving sentences imposed by the ICTY, ICTR, or the Mechanism, one which followed the practice of his predecessors. Early releases or pardons of prisoners are often delicate and controversial in nation-States. In international criminal tribunals, the political, national, ethnic and religious context makes early releases even more difficult and contentious. Interested States, victims’ organizations, NGOs and media often vent their anger at some releases by harsh attacks against the Presidents that rendered them. In Rwanda, early releases of persons convicted by the ICTR or the Mechanism have not been welcome. In the former Yugoslavia, convicted persons who have been released have often been celebrated upon their return to their own local and national communities. These releases have, however, been criticized by other communities in the former Yugoslavia.


Gaining Voice ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 97-122
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Clark ◽  
Ray Block

A healthy representative democracy requires that citizens be politically involved, and it is especially important to consider the political involvement of groups that are marginalized, such as African Americans. Building on the political empowerment hypothesis, the chapter argues that an increased black seat share and black representation ratio should be associated with increased black political involvement. Using 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study data, the chapter describes how in states with an increased black seat share in the legislature blacks are more likely to be highly interested in politics and are more likely to vote. In states with a higher black representation ratio, blacks are more inclined to persuade others to vote. Black representation in the US House does not increase black political involvement, despite being the focus of many scholarly works of political empowerment.


Author(s):  
Jochen Böhler

In Central Europe, 1918 marked not only the demise of the German, Austrian, and Russian Empires, but also the rise of a multitude of nation states. Poland, re-erected after 123 years of partition, was at the center of events, independence having been the dream of its elites since the nineteenth century. But the formation of the Polish Second Republic was not the result of a united effort of the whole Polish nation, its political leaders, and military units—first and foremost the legendary “Legions”—during and after the Great War. In reality, in late 1918, there was no united Polish nation, leadership, or army to speak of. The rural masses did not take up the call to arms, the political factions were at war with one another, and the country was on the brink of a domestic war, while marauding soldiers killed Jews and harassed the whole civilian population.


Author(s):  
Helen F. Siu

Physical symbols are not to be changed arbitrarily, but empires have related to subject populations with political notions quite different from and rather differently than those of modern nation-states. Sovereignty often means something different at the political center than in the margins, and the cultural kaleidoscope we call Hong Kong is a result of numerous historical landmarks on these notions. We are all too familiar with these events and how their political history is told today. Therefore, I would rather explore the social and cultural meanings of people’s lives on the ground; we may find interesting stories there that do not fit into any standard political categories.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul De Grauwe ◽  
Yuemei Ji

Abstract We argue that the case for the existence of some deterministic force that condemns countries in the periphery to stay in the periphery indefinitely, is weak. Countries that are in the periphery today can become part of the core and vice versa. We also argue that the long run success of the Eurozone depends on a continuing process of political unification. Political unification is needed because the Eurozone has dramatically weakened the power and legitimacy of nation states without creating a nation at the European level. This is particularly true in the field of stabilization. The political willingness to go in this direction, however, is non-existent today. There is no willingness to provide a common insurance mechanism that would put taxpayers in one country at risk of having to transfer money to other countries. Under those conditions the sovereign bond markets in the Eurozone will continue to be prone to instability.


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