Could Populism Be Good for Constitutional Democracy?

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bojan Bugaric
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
Single Form ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Scene

Populism is Janus-faced. There is not a single form of populism but rather a variety of different forms, each with profoundly different political consequences. Despite the current hegemony of authoritarian populism, a much different sort of populism is also possible: democratic and antiestablishment populism, which combines elements of liberal and democratic convictions. When we examine the relationship between populism and constitutional democracy, populism should not be considered in isolation from its host ideology. Examples of democratic, liberal, socially inclusive forms of populism quite clearly show that authoritarianism and anti-pluralism are not necessarily the key elements of populism. However, the paucity of democratic populism also suggests that we have to look at factors other than ideology to understand why nativist and authoritarian populism currently dominates the political scene. Without understanding the political economy of the populist revolt, it is difficult to understand the true roots of populism and, consequently, to devise an appropriate democratic alternative to authoritarian populism. The ascendancy of right-wing nationalist populism today is a symptom of the failure of progressive politics.

scholarly journals The two faces of populism: Between authoritarian and democratic populism

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 390-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bojan Bugaric
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
Single Form

AbstractPopulism is Janus-faced; simultaneously facing different directions. There is not a single form of populism, but rather a variety of different forms, each with profoundly different political consequences. Despite the current hegemony of authoritarian populism, a much different sort of populism is also possible: Democratic and anti-establishment populism, which combines elements of liberal and democratic convictions. Without understanding the political economy of the populist revolt, it is difficult to understand the true roots of populism, and consequently, to devise an appropriate democratic alternative to populism.

On Metaphysics and the Political: A Polemics of Reading Baudelaire in the 1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.

Bridging the Gap between Political and Penal Legitimacy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Henham
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Social Value ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Social Morality ◽  
Penal Policy ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Sentencing Policy ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter argues that the relationship between penal policy and the political economy provides important insights into the political and institutional reforms required to minimize harsh and discriminatory penal policies. However, the capacity of sentencing policy to engage with this social reality in a meaningful way necessitates a recasting of penal ideology. To realize this objective requires a profound understanding of sentencing’s social value and significance for citizens. The greatest challenge then lies in establishing coherent links between penal ideology and practice to encourage forms of sentencing that are sensitive to changes in social value. The chapter concludes by explaining how the present approach taken by the courts of England and Wales to the sentencing of women exacerbates social exclusion and reinforces existing divisions in social morality. It urges fundamental changes in ideology and practice so that policy reflects a socially valued rationale for the criminalization and punishment of women.

Space Making as Artistic Practice: The Relationship between Grassroots Art Organizations and the Political Economy of Urban Development

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1142-1161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shira Zilberstein
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Social And Cultural Capital ◽  
Art Organizations ◽  
Do It Yourself ◽  
The Relationship

Standard narratives on the relationship between art and urban development detail art networks as connected to sources of dominant economic, social, and cultural capital and complicit in gentrification trends. This research challenges the conventional model by investigating the relationship between grassroots art spaces, tied to marginal and local groups, and the political economy of development in the Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen. Using mixed methods, I investigate Do–It–Yourself and Latinx artists to understand the construction and goals of grassroots art organizations. Through their engagements with cultural representations, space and time, grassroots artists represent and amplify the interests of marginal actors. By allying with residents, community organizations and other art spaces, grassroots artists form a social movement to redefine the goals and usages of urban space. My findings indicate that heterogeneous art networks exist and grassroots art networks can influence urban space in opposition to top–down development.

Anarchist, Antisemit, Aufklärer? Vier Beiträge zum Verhältnis von Nietzsches Philosophie und Politik

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 296-311
Author(s):  
Paul Stephan
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Political Commitments ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Four new publications provide an overview of the relationship between Nietzsche’s philosophical thought and his political commitments. Together they highlight the true complexity of Nietzsche’s politics, since some of his ideas can be adapted to anarchist and right-wing positions as much as, for instance, to Frankfurt School critical theory. At the same time, these contributions underscore the limitations of a strictly positivist, or philological approach, since any assessment of Nietzsche’s politics cannot be detached from the political faultlines of the present.

Black Politics in South Africa Today

1990 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-13
Author(s):  
Joe Latakgomo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Minority Government ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Scene ◽  
White Minority

The political scene in South Africa today is perhaps one of the most complex in the modern world. The easiest analysis would be to have the white minority government on the one hand, and the back resistance and liberation organizations ranged against it on the other. Unfortunately, it is not that easy. The white minority itself is torn by divisions and differences in ideology, with essentially two divisions into the right-wing and the centrists. Both camps, however, are themselves divided into various notches on the scale to the right, but never beyond to the left of centrist. That position has been reserved for black politics, which is also positioned at various points on the scale to the left.

Cultivating Science

2018 ◽  
pp. 59-91
Author(s):  
Michitake Aso
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Detailed Knowledge ◽  
Rubber Industry ◽  
Agricultural Improvement ◽  
Rubber Plantations ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Plantation Agriculture ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
The Relationship

Plantation regimes encouraged knowledge production about plant and disease ecologies and the relationship among organisms and their environments more generally. More detailed knowledge about newly introduced plant species, plant and human diseases, and their shared environments was a key ingredient of better, more profitable management of rubber plantations. Chapter 2 explores the process by which agronomy came to support the burgeoning rubber industry after rubber arrived in Indochina in 1897. The French colonial government was not the first to encourage agricultural improvement on the Indochinese peninsula, but the qualitative and quantitative investment that it made in these projects set it apart from previous states. Encouraged by the success of their British and Dutch neighbors, French planters envisioned turning biologically and culturally diverse landscapes into neat rows of hevea. Plantation agriculture also played an important role in defining the political and intellectual scope of the science of ecology in Indochina, encouraging agronomists to direct their energies toward transnational businesses and the colonial project. The process of integrating the efforts of scientists, officials, and planters was not always smooth, however, and this chapter highlights the conflicts and tensions generated by a political economy of plantation agriculture.

Re-Engaging Critical Communication Studies With Social Classes

2020 ◽  
pp. 78-97
Author(s):  
Gökhan Bulut
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Homogeneous Structure ◽  
The Political ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
The Media ◽  
Communication Practices ◽  
The Relationship

This article is an attempt to reestablish the linkage of the political economy of communication with the field of social classes and class relations. Studies in the field of political economy of communication are mostly shaped within the scope of instrumentalist explanation: Social communication institutions such as communication and media are perceived as a very homogeneous structure and these institutions are directly considered as the apparatus of capital and capitalists. However, in this study, it is argued that in capitalist societies, communication, and media should be understood as a field and medium of class struggle loaded with contradictions. Another point is that the political economy of communication is mostly limited to media studies. However, in today's capitalist societies, the media is not the only structure and actor in which communication forms. In this study, communication practices in capitalist society are discussed in the context of class discussions and the relationship between class struggle, culture and communication is discussed.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 213-224
Author(s):  
Silvia M. Lindtner
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Capitalist Production ◽  
Finance Capitalism ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Ideal

This concluding chapter reviews the labor and sites that have long challenged the inevitability of technological progress and its violence. The socialist pitch and the production of hopeful anticipation depend on happiness labor — the labor that produces a feeling of optimism and hope despite the proliferating sense of rising precarity. If one attends to the labor and the instruments of affect that finance capitalism needs, one notices the vulnerability of capitalist production — that is, one notices that the relationship between technology, life, and markets can be otherwise. The chapter then argues that if we attend to the labor that is necessary to nurture and sustain entrepreneurial life, we can mobilize other feelings to subvert the political economy of affect that runs on the promise of happiness. We can subvert the seemingly endlessly spiraling displacement of technological promise if we reframe what counts as intervention by moving away from the ideal types of countercultural heroism.

The Political Economy of Punishment and the Penal State in Latin America

2021 ◽  
pp. 163-198
Author(s):  
Manuel Iturralde
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Penal State ◽  
Global North ◽  
Sociology Of Punishment ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
North And South

In both criminology and the sociology of punishment there has been a rebirth of the political economy of crime and punishment, where the relationship between these phenomena and levels of inequality within a given society is a key aspect, to assess the transformation and features of the crime control fields of contemporary societies and to relate them to different typologies. This chapter will discuss and problematize this perspective through the analysis of Latin American crime control fields. Considering the flaws of general typologies, usually coming from the global north, the chapter will stress the need for a more detailed comparative analysis of the penal state and the institutional structures, dynamics and dispositions present in every jurisdiction, in both the global north and south, that have a direct impact on penal policy and its outcomes.

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