Liberalism, Democracy, and Development: Philosophical Dilemmas in Third World Politics

1982 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramesh Thakur
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Third World ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Democratic Equality

In Western societies, the democratic franchise came after the liberal state was firmly established. In Third World countries, the imposition of liberal democracy may generate contradictions between the market and traditional sectors of the polity. Furthermore, liberalism favours restrictive authority in order to safeguard individual rights against the state. In Third World contexts, the more urgent need may be for an interventionist state that will create conditions of minimum democratic equality for all. A government subject to constitutional checks and judicial review may cut across the developmental requirement of permissive authority. These abstract issues of political philosophy can be profitably discussed with respect to recent controversies in India.

Globalization and the death of liberal democracy

1998 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Cammack
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Third World ◽  
Economic Globalization ◽  
Economic Liberalization ◽  
The State ◽  
The West ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third World

It is doubtful as to whether the countries of the Third World are likely to move to the kind of liberal democracy that is regarded as characteristic of the West. In particular, parties are often remaining ‘parties of the State’ and not organizations truly competing with each other. This is in part a consequence of economic globalization, as the requirements of global economic liberalization do not fit with the requirements of democracy. In such a context, clientelism around the State may be inevitable and it contributes to ensuring that the main party in the country, and indeed all parties become ‘parties of the State’, as is the case in Mexico or Malaysia and perhaps in the Ukraine and South Africa. Thus, globalization does not mean the end of the State, but possibly the end of liberal democracy.

scholarly journals Islam as a Civilizational Threat: Constitutional Identity, Militant Democracy, and Judicial Review in Western Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 1228-1256
Author(s):  
Malthe Hilal-Harvald
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The State ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Imminent Threat ◽  
Constitutional Identity

AbstractMultiple laws and regulations in Western Europe have been enacted on the premise that headscarves and face veils constitute an existential threat to the constitutional identity of the respective legal systems. Thus, the logic of militant democracy as a justification for restricting fundamental rights have been applied in order to restrict the freedom to manifest one’s religion. Yet, the politicymakers claiming to defend the constitutional identity through militant democracy have not been able to prove the existence of a concrete, imminent threat against the state from the women who wear headscarves or face veils. Nonetheless, the European judiciaries have taken the political claim at face value and allowed the restrictions without compelling the political decision-makers to provide substantive justifications. Thus, the cases of headscarves and face veils offer a prism, through which we can study fundamental paradoxes of liberal democracy and constitutionalism.

The Sovereignless State and Locke's Language of Obligation

2000 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Scott
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Sovereign Authority ◽  
Liberal Thought

Modern liberal states are founded on individual rights and popular sovereignty. These doctrines are conceptually and historically intertwined but are in theoretical and practical tension. Locke's political theory is a source for proponents of both doctrines, and the same tension that runs through modern liberal thought and practice can be found in his theory. Rather than define the state in terms of a single sovereign authority, Locke constructs a sovereignless commonwealth with several coexisting claimants to supreme authority. He rejects sovereignty as what unifies the state, and he wants to replace the discourse of sovereignty theory with a language of obligation that will help bind together the sovereignless state. This language permits its adherents to articulate the reasonable basis and limits of political power. An understanding of Locke's sovereignless state helps us better comprehend the tensions embodied in discourses about individual natural rights, popular sovereignty, and governmental authority heard in the liberal state.

A Confucian Theory of Rights

2019 ◽  
pp. 240-284
Author(s):  
Tongdong Bai
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
The State ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
The Public ◽  
Value Neutrality

This chapter shows that some of the Confucian ideas, though apparently in conflict with some of the “democratic ideas” or ideas considered essential to rights, can be made compatible with rights. But clearly, Confucians have a more ambitious agenda. Given the Confucian continuum and harmony model between the private and the public, they also reject the mainstream liberal idea that the state should remain value-neutral, and stay out of the realm of the private. Instead, the state has a duty to promote virtues, including some of those that are considered to be in the realm of the private. For a liberal democracy to function well, the promotion of some virtues is necessary. That is, the virtues a liberal state needs to and should promote have to be “thicker” than what the liberal value neutrality or even a later Rawlsian would endorse.

LIBERAL ASSOCIATIONISM AND THE RIGHTS OF STATES

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 425-449
Author(s):  
David Estlund
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Moral Basis ◽  
The Right

AbstractIt is often argued that if one holds a liberal political philosophy about individual rights against the state and the community, then one cannot consistently say that a state that violates those principles is owed the right of noninterference. How could the rights of the collective trump the rights of individuals in a liberal view? I believe that this debate calls for more reflection, on the relation between liberalism and individualism. I will sketch a conception of liberalism (“liberal associationism”) in which there is nothing awkward about saying that associations, as such, have some moral (not just, say, legal) rights to noninterference. If liberal associationism is compelling in general terms then, if states (or some of them) can be shown to be associations in the relevant respects, then liberalism itself will supply the moral basis for a right of that kind, held by a state or people as such, to nonintervention.

Libertarianism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bas Van Der Vossen
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
The State ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Limited Role

Libertarianism is a theory in political philosophy that strongly values individual freedom and is skeptical about the justified scope of government in our lives. Libertarians see individuals as sovereign, as people who have a right to control their bodies and work, who are free to decide how to interact with willing others, and who cannot be forced to do things against their will without very strong justification. For some, the argument in support of this view hinges on the principle of self-ownership. To them, individual rights are morally foundational, the basic building blocks of their theory. Many others, however, take a broader view, arguing that societies flourish when they offer people large degrees of freedom in both personal and economic matters. As a result, libertarianism sees the state as playing at most only a very limited role in matters concerning distributive justice. Libertarians are skeptical about calls to reduce material inequality for its own sake, strongly favor free trade, and defend opening borders for migrants. They see policies that violate these commitments as inevitably involving wrongs against free and equal persons.

Health Informatics Education in the Third World

1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (04) ◽  
pp. 270-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Rienhoff
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Health Informatics ◽  
Third World ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Collaboration Network ◽  
Educational Tools ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third World

Abstract:The state of the art is summarized showing many efforts but only few results which can serve as demonstration examples for developing countries. Education in health informatics in developing countries is still mainly dealing with the type of health informatics known from the industrialized world. Educational tools or curricula geared to the matter of development are rarely to be found. Some WHO activities suggest that it is time for a collaboration network to derive tools and curricula within the next decade.

The Open Society and the Democracy to Come: Bergson, Deleuze and Guattari

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Baugh
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
The State ◽  
Open Society ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
The People ◽  
To Come ◽  
Polar Opposite ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Gain Access

In Bergsonism, Deleuze refers to Bergson's concept of an ‘open society’, which would be a ‘society of creators’ who gain access to the ‘open creative totality’ through acting and creating. Deleuze and Guattari's political philosophy is oriented toward the goal of such an open society. This would be a democracy, but not in the sense of the rule of the actually existing people, but the rule of ‘the people to come,’ for in the actually existing situation, such a people is ‘lacking’. When the people becomes a society of creators, the result is a society open to the future, creativity and the new. Their openness and creative freedom is the polar opposite of the conformism and ‘herd mentality’ condemned by Deleuze and Nietzsche, a mentality which is the basis of all narrow nationalisms (of ethnicity, race, religion and creed). It is the freedom of creating and commanding, not the Kantian freedom to obey Reason and the State. This paper uses Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, and Deleuze and Guattari's Kafka: For a Minor Literature, A Thousand Plateaus and What is Philosophy? to sketch Deleuze and Guattari's conception of the open society and of a democracy that remains ‘to come’.

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.

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