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.

Turnout in Multi-Level Systems

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sona N. Golder ◽  
Ignacio Lago ◽  
André Blais ◽  
Elisabeth Gidengil ◽  
Thomas Gschwend
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
European Level ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Different Levels

Voters face different incentives to turn out to vote in one electoral arena versus another. Although turnout is lowest in European elections, it is found that the turnout is only slightly lower in regional than in national elections. Standard accounts suggest that the importance of an election, in terms of the policy-making power of the body to be elected, drives variation in turnout across elections at different levels. This chapter argues that this is only part of the story, and that voter attachment to a particular level also matters. Not all voters feel connected to each electoral arena in the same way. Although for some, their identity and the issues they most care about are linked to politics at the national level, for others, the regional or European level may offer the political community and political issues that most resonate with them.

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 Constituent power and civil disobedience: Beyond the nation-state?

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E Scheuerman
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Conscientious Objection ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Constitutional Politics ◽  
Proper Interpretation

Radical democratic political theorists have used the concept of constituent power to sketch ambitious models of radical democracy, while many legal scholars deploy it to make sense of the political and legal dynamics of constitutional politics. Its growing popularity notwithstanding, I argue that the concept tends to impede a proper interpretation of civil disobedience, conceived as nonviolent, politically motivated lawbreaking evincing basic respect for law. Contemporary theorists who employ it cannot distinguish between civil disobedience and other related, yet ultimately different, modes of political illegality (e.g. conscientious objection, resistance, revolution). The essay also examines Jürgen Habermas’ recent contributions to a theory of mixed or dualistic (postnational) constituent power, conceding that Habermas avoids many theoretical and political ills plaguing competing radical democratic theoretical retrievals. Nonetheless, Habermas’ attempt to salvage the idea of constituent power as part of his reformist agenda for the European Union not only breaks with his earlier understandable skepticism about the idea but also risks trimming the admirably ambitious sails of his radical democratic interpretation of civil disobedience.

scholarly journals Subsidiarity and Federalism: An Old Concept with Contemporary Relevance for Political Society

1969 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Friesen
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Political Society ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Regional Power ◽  
Single Model ◽  
Human Organization

Historically human societies have never collectively organized, politically or socially, in any singular, standardized and/or universal way. Beginning with the Peace of Westphalia in 1647 the nation-state gradually proliferated as a legitimate manifestation of collective human organization at a global level. This proliferation has culminated in the standardization of a singular means of mobilizing and organizing human societies. The statist age that began in the 16th and 17th centuries consolidated and centralized the political power of the state. Divergent factions and regional power blocks within European states were discouraged, as politics became centralized at the national level. The proliferation of the nation-state represented the standardization of human political organization according to a single model. Given that there are, and have been, a variety of means by which humans identify and organize politically, this suggests that this universal acceptance and entrenchment of one model may be somewhat inappropriate.

Constitutions and Democracy in Post-National Times: A Political-Sociological Approach

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Blokker
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
Democratic Practice ◽  
Political Form ◽  
Functionalist Approach ◽  
Constitutional Pluralism

The modern idea of the constitution is closely tied up with the political form of the nation-state, but the post-national age assists various challenges to this idea, not least due to the emergence of constitutional or quasi-constitutional regimes both beyond and below the nation-state. While a good, and steadily growing, amount of research probes the constitutional dimensions on the international and supranational levels, the domestic dimensions and related transformations, and in particular the implications of constitutional pluralism for meaningful democratic practice, seem, however, less prominent in current debate. Domestic constitutional dynamics and conflict, not least regarding democratic participation, can be fruitfully analysed through the lens of a political-sociological approach to constitutions and constitutionalism. In order to outline such an approach in one specific way, firstly, the recent (re-) emergence of constitutional sociology is discussed. Secondly, constitutional sociology is situated within a wider debate on constitutionalism and democracy. Thirdly, a sociological, ‘historical-functionalist’ approach to the analysis of constitutions is proposed, which is then related to a comparative and interpretative political sociology of constitutional discourses and political, legal, and social critique.

Independence: In or Out of Europe? An Independent Scotland and the European Union

2000 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Happold
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Union Member ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Level ◽  
Question Mark ◽  
National Governments ◽  
European Union Member States ◽  
The Eu

There is a question mark over the future of the nation-state in Europe. National monetary policy has been transferred to the European level in most European Union member States. Over the next ten years the EU will have a stronger role in defence and foreign policy, immigration and law enforcement. The very policies that supposedly define the concept of national sovereignty are no longer the exclusive domain of national governments.

The Closing Triangle: Critical Notes on a Model for Peasant Mobilization in Latin America

1975 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Singelmann
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
National Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Remote Areas ◽  
Power Resources ◽  
Multiple Power ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
Critical Notes

Students of contemporary campesino movements in Latin America have their analyses generally focused on two problem-complexes. One of these entails the macro-structural changes of the larger society within which campesino movements develop. Such changes are represented by the gradual imposition of the nation-state over the more remote regions of the countries, the concomitant decline in the geographic, political, and economic isolation of these remote areas, the emergence of ‘multiple-power domains’ within which ascending groups challenge the political brokerage monopolies of the traditional large landholders over the campesinos within their domains, and the development of clientelistic political structures within which campesino followings become attractive power resources for politicians at the regional and national level.

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.

scholarly journals A historical and judicial approach on the transformation of the European Communities, the predecessors of the European Union, into an institutional model across the region

2021 ◽  
pp. 19-23
Author(s):  
Mihail Poalelungi ◽  
◽  
Mihai Poalelungi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Regional Cooperation ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Level ◽  
Broad Area ◽  
Institutional Governance ◽  
Institutional Model ◽  
The Eu

The process of European integration has never followed a clear path and the current EU predecessors had never been by far the only efforts of the regional integration in Europe. Created in the 1950s, the European Communities as today’s EU predecessors, have overdue emerged in a very broad area populated by international organizations and various cooperation institutions. This organization, only by matching economic and political challenges, succeeded in becoming the most important cooperation forum between European states. Although in the early 1950s the Western European states could often choose between various forms of regional cooperation, today the EU is frequently seen as the only available at the European level option and the only model of institutional governance.

scholarly journals Latin American public opinion vis-à-vis regional integration (1995-2018)

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (199) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
María Victoria Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
National Level ◽  
Influential Factors ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Economy ◽  
The Eu

Literature on opposition to regional integration has concentrated on the European Union (EU). So far, very few systematic attempts have been pursued to explain opposition to regional integration in Latin America or to identify its main influential factors. Based on Latinobarometer surveys, two main findings emerge from this paper. First, it confirms that opposition to regional integration is not a generalised attitude among Latin Americans. Secondly, the way in which citizens across Latin America evaluate regional integration is strongly influenced by the same predictors as in the EU. Together, citizens’ assessments of economic performance (both at the individual and national level) enjoy a preponderance to account for their position regarding regionalism. Others variables, i.e. age, ideological position, and level of education have a more limited explanatory value while occupation is not significant. Thus, economic variables such as citizens’ perceptions of their national and individual economy have proven to be directly linked to support for/opposition to economic integration.

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