scholarly journals The Political Power of Proxies: Why Nonstate Actors Use Local Surrogates

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 119-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Assaf Moghadam ◽  
Michel Wyss
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Political Power ◽  
High Capacity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
Political Value ◽  
The Relationship

Studies of conflicts involving the use of surrogates focus largely on states, viewing the relationship between sponsors and proxies primarily as one in which states utilize nonstate actors as proxies. They have devoted far less attention to sponsor-proxy arrangements in which nonstate actors play super-ordinate roles as sponsors in their own right. Why and how do nonstate actors sponsor proxies? Unlike state sponsors, which value proxies primarily for their military utility, nonstate sponsors select and utilize proxies mainly for their perceived political value. Simply put, states tend to sponsor military surrogates, whereas nonstate actors sponsor political ancillaries. Both endogenous actor-based traits and exogenous structural constraints account for these different approaches. An analysis of three case studies of nonstate sponsors that differ in terms of ideology and capacity—al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the People's Protection Units in Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon—confirms this argument, but also suggests that the ability and desire to control proxies varies with the sponsor's capacity. High-capacity nonstate sponsors such as Hezbollah behave similarly to state sponsors, but remain exceptional. Most nonstate sponsors are less dominant, rendering the relationships to their proxies more transactional and pragmatic, and ultimately less enduring than those of state sponsors and their clients.

The Gallic Singularity and the Royal Mistress

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-66
Author(s):  
Christine Adams
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Realm

The relationship of the French king and royal mistress, complementary but unequal, embodied the Gallic singularity; the royal mistress exercised a civilizing manner and the soft power of women on the king’s behalf. However, both her contemporaries and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians were uncomfortable with the mistress’s political power. Furthermore, paradoxical attitudes about French womanhood have led to analyses of her role that are often contradictory. Royal mistresses have simultaneously been celebrated for their civilizing effect in the realm of culture, chided for their frivolous expenditures on clothing and jewelry, and excoriated for their dangerous meddling in politics. Their increasing visibility in the political realm by the eighteenth century led many to blame Louis XV’s mistresses—along with Queen Marie-Antoinette, who exercised a similar influence over her husband, Louis XVI—for the degradation and eventual fall of the monarchy. This article reexamines the historiography of the royal mistress.

A Kingdom Cleared of Castles: the Role of the Castle in the Campaigns of Robert Bruce

2008 ◽  
Vol 87 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID CORNELL
Keyword(s):  
Political Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Capital ◽  
The North ◽  
Edward Ii ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The Military ◽  
Political Value

In 1314 the English-held castles of Roxburgh, Edinburgh and Stirling were seized and destroyed by Robert Bruce. This was the pinnacle of a policy by which Bruce systematically slighted the castles he seized in Scotland. The reign of Edward II has been seen as a period in which the military value of the castle was in decline and by analysing the role the castle played in the campaigns of Bruce it is possible to assess the importance a successful contemporary commander attached to the castle during this period. Bruce had first-hand experience of the castle at war and knew of its limitations. In 1306, however, he seized and garrisoned a number of castles preparing to use them for a specific purpose, but defeat in the field rendered them redundant. On his return in 1307 Bruce initiated a policy of destruction. Castles in the north of Scotland were slighted as they were the regional focus of the political power of his Scottish enemies, and militarily they were of little value to Bruce. In the Lowlands the first-rate castles of Scotland were destroyed precisely because they were so militarily powerful. Bruce recognised that these castles, used aggressively, were indispensable to the English war effort, and consequently he undertook a prolonged and expensive campaign to reduce them, a campaign which involved the tactic of both surprise assault and, more importantly, the set-piece siege. In 1314 the imminent English campaign led Bruce to launch an unprecedented offensive against the English-held castles of Roxburgh, Edinburgh and Stirling. These castles were subsequently slighted despite their inextricable association with the Scottish Crown. Bruce recognised that, unlike the English, he did not need to occupy castles in Scotland to fight the war. Although in Ireland a small number of castles were occupied, and Berwick was also garrisoned by Scottish troops, in northern England Bruce did not attempt to occupy English castles. Those which were seized were destroyed, an indication that Bruce never intended a conquest of Northumberland. Indeed Bruce never undertook a serious campaign aimed at the seizure of the first-rate castles of Northumberland despite their frequently perilous state. Instead he sought to gain political capital by threatening their loss and so placing enormous pressure on the English Crown. That the castle featured prominently in the campaigns of Bruce demonstrates it was not in decline. Bruce understood the continued military and political value of the castle, but he was able to exploit its inherent vulnerabilities in order to gain victory in war.

scholarly journals The optimal size of a political party based on the Shapley-Shubik Power Index

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuuki Maruyama
Keyword(s):  
Political Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Power Index ◽  
The Political ◽  
Optimal Size ◽  
Party Size ◽  
The Relationship

Shapley-Shubik Power Index per person (SSPIPP) is defined as the ratio of a political party's Shapley-Shubik Power Index in Parliament to the number of people who voted for the party. SSPIPP can be regarded as the political power each of them has. This model reveals the relationship between the party size and SSPIPP and shows it in a graph. The graph is M-shaped and reveals the optimal party size that maximizes SSPIPP. According to this model, the more votes required to pass bills in Parliament, the smaller the optimal party size becomes. This model also predicts that in countries which require a supermajority vote to pass bills, party system fragmentation tends to last long.

Neoliberal Pleasure: Intimate Talk about Female Sexual Experience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Couper
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Sexual Experience ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Response ◽  
Significant Contributor ◽  
Conflicting Discourses

Sociolinguists have investigated the language of sexual violence and consent at length, but sexual pleasure remains largely overlooked. Sexual pleasure has often been forgotten in the battle against rape culture, but this discussion centers it. First, relevant concepts from the sociolinguistic scholarship are positioned alongside queer feminist conceptions of sexual pleasure. The discussion then turns to New Zealand case studies of conversations in intimate friendships about sexual pleasure to demonstrate how navigating conflicting discourses transforms sexual pleasure into a neoliberal project. A critical response is offered in a consideration of pleasure activism and how further sociolinguistic attention can harness the political power of pleasure. Sexual pleasure is a significant contributor to advancing sexual liberation, and sociolinguistic efforts to understand these complexities are important. Without paying attention to how sexual experiences are made sense of in intimate conversations, there is a risk of ensnaring pleasure in traps of faux empowerment discourse and neoliberal constraints.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann Chapoutot
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sacred Place ◽  
The Past ◽  
Place Of Origin ◽  
Totalitarian Regimes ◽  
The Relationship

This introductory chapter examines the scope of the relationship between National Socialism and antiquity, a topic that historians appear to neglect despite the fact that there have been precedents as to the political use of history—appealing to the past to justify political power in the present—which is a frequent phenomenon, all the more so in totalitarian regimes that seek to anchor their revolutionary political intentions in the depths of historical precedent. The possibilities afforded by the past appear, moreover, to have held great significance for National Socialism. Nazi Germany had coveted and revered the past as a sacred place of origin.

Wright’s Afromodern Search for Political Freedom

2018 ◽  
pp. 26-44
Author(s):  
Lewis R. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Black People ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Freedom ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
As If

Lewis R. Gordon argues that Wright’s writings cast light on the suffocating world produced by colonialism, enslavement, and racism, in which black people are treated as if they simply don’t matter. Wright showed that blacks in the United States are fundamentally historically excluded from the political, aesthetic, and epistemic institutions of the only world to which they are indigenous. By pulling readers into places “they wished never to go,” he demonstrated how the erosion of black political power in fact increased political impotence among humankind. Wright, argues Gordon, was particularly prescient about the relationship between the racist state and twentieth-century fascism. They jointly eradicate conditions of political appearance and freedom, replacing them with unilateral rule.

The Prudent Dissident: Unheroic Resistance in Sophocles'Antigone

2011 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennet Kirkpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractMost contemporary political theorists who have interpreted Sophocles'Antigonehave focused on the fearsome clash between Antigone and Creon. The relationship between Antigone and her weaker, more cautious sister Ismene has not garnered similar attention. This essay addresses this gap by revisiting the tantalizing possibility that Ismene played a more significant role in resisting Creon than has often been assumed. The essay shifts the analysis ofAntigone, first, by illuminating the complex and fraught relationship between two women and emphasizing the political and legal challenges that they face together as women. Second, the essay shifts focus from vertical power relations—that is, between the individual and government—to horizontal power relations between disempowered outsiders. On this reading,Antigonereveals less about the downfall of a character than it does about the political power of the weak and disadvantaged.

scholarly journals Framtidsfantasier

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 47-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Sotevik
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Preschool Teachers ◽  
Group Interview ◽  
The Political ◽  
First Case ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Critical Perspectives

The present article explores how situated queerness takes place in relation to the construction of child and childhood. Lee Edelman (2004) argues that the child is opposed to, and in need of protection from contact with, homosexuality, which means that the queer cannot be part of the political fantasies of the future in which the child is central. In view of this, but unlike Edelman, I argue in this article that the child is part of different future fantasies, where the child is not necessarily separated from queerness. Here, I present contemporary connections between the child and queerness and analyze how possibilities and limitations appear in relation to this. Through two case studies, the article takes on a multi-sited approach (Marcus 1995), following when queerness is introduced on arenas where childhood is constructed. The first case is located to a preschool where the staff recently carried out hbtq-education and -certification and the analyzed data is one group interview with five preschool teachers and their principle. The second case is located in social media and consists of reactions on the presence of lesbian characters in the children’s comic Bamse, where 326 commentary posts around this topic are analyzed. Based on critical perspectives on age and sexuality, this article discuss what normalizations about childhood and heterosexuality are being made, and how these normalizations condition how queer sexuality can be present within the two childhood arenas represented in the material. Conclusions drawn are that both in the preschool and in the adults’ reactions to children’s culture, heterosexuality passes unnoticed, while queerness is made something remarkable. The relationship between queer and childhood can here be understood as both requested and questioned, which I present as conditioned queerness, and the child and childhood as spaces where different discourses about the child’s best and desirable future are negotiated.

Power and the Control of Capital

1994 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Winters
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Relationship

This essay reviews three recent books on the political economy of finance in postcolonial Asia and Latin America and suggests a framework for examining the relationship between political power and varying patterns of control over investment resources. The stress is on the constraints different controllers of capital can impose on state leaders, the conditions under which policymakers can subvert these constraints, and how conflicts within the state over the trajectory of policy are mediated by who (or what) supplies critical investment resources and the institutional channels through which the resources flow.

Political Power and Judicial Review in Italy

1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 492-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARY L. VOLCANSEK
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Political Power ◽  
National Government ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Impact ◽  
The Relationship

This essay traces the development of the power of the Italian Constitutional Court, the political impact of its policies, and its reception by the public and the other institutions of government. The relationship between the Court and Parliament is presented as one characterized by a synchronization of powers, and the Court has demonstrated reluctance to interfere in conflicts among the various branches of the national government. That timidity has not, however, carried over into its treatment of referenda or of national versus regional prerogatives. The Constitutional Court is, according to this analysis, a part of the national governing elite, and its most controversial decisions have been ones safeguarding the interests of that elite. By carefully acting as “quasi-guardians,” the Constitutional Court judges have cemented a solidly positive reputation and nurtured an aura of legitimacy that is rare among Italian political actors.

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