Neo-Hobbesianism in the DPRK: A Provisional Theory of Authoritarianism

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-262
Author(s):  
Alzo David-West

Abstract This article presents an original historical-philosophical conception that attempts to discern the matter, form, and power of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (dprk). A panoramic and problematizing cognitive framework, the theory configurates 629 years of sociopolitical history from 1392 to 2021 and then comparatively discusses the dprk system in relation to ancient democracy and liberal democracy from Pericles to Samuel P. Huntington. The article is divided into three parts, which outline the theory and its principles, map historical foundations and political phases, and address social relations, state will, and political reality. Description and analysis convey the thesis that the dprk polity is home to a Neo-Hobbesian formation: a hybrid state entity that is historically modern, politically absolutist, and illiberally democratic, with a transforming cross-civilizational physiognomy. By design, the “soft” theory is conceived to stimulate academic discussion and debate, not declare a final solution.

2020 ◽  
pp. 52-57
Author(s):  
Эдиль Канатбеков

В статье рассматривается политическая культура Кыргызстана как одна из важных основ политической жизни общества. Уделяется внимание на необходимость развития политической культуры общества, как фундаментальной основы цивилизации, основ существования общества и общественных отношений. В работе анализируется сущность политической культуры. Описывается проблема формирования политической культуры Кыргызстана как одной из актуальных тем, на протяжении многих лет. Рассматривается формирование и становление политической культуры Кыргызстана, как очень трудоёмкий и долговременный процесс, обусловленный определенными аспектами политико-культурологического характера. Политическая культура конкретной общности состоит из представлений индивидов, их взглядов, политических ценностей, политической идеологии и символики, политических норм, стандартов, стереотипов. Каждый субъект страны являясь гражданином так или иначе становиться свидетелем и даже участником политической реальности, тем самым на основе этих элементов и опыта человек формирует собственный взгляд и определяет для себя систему ценностей и линию поведения. Макалада Кыргызстандын саясий маданияты коомдун саясий турмушунун маанилүү негиздеринин бири катары каралат. Цивилизациянын фундаменталдык негизи, коомдун жана коомдук мамилелердин негиздеринин маңызы катары коомдун саясий маданиятын өнүктүрүү зарылдыгына көңүл бурулган. Изилдөө ишинде саясий маданияттын маани-маңызына анализ жүргүзүлгөн. Кыргызстанда саясий маданияттын калыптануу көйгөйү көп жылдардан бери актуалдуу темалардын бири катары эсептелинет. Кыргызстандын саясий маданиятынын калыптанышы жана калыптануусу саясий жана маданий мүнөздүн айрым аспектилерине байланыштуу өтө эмгекчил жана узак мөөнөттүү процесс катары каралат. Белгилүү бир коомдун саясий маданияты жеке адамдардын идеяларынан, алардын көз караштарынан, саясий баалуулуктарынан, саясий идеологиясынан жана символдорунан, саясий нормаларынан, стандарттарынан, стереотиптеринен турат. Өлкөнүн ар бир субъектиси, ошол өлкөнүн жараны болуп туруп, кандайдыр бир жол менен саясий чындыктын интригасынын күбөсү, ал тургай, катышуучусу болуп калат, ошентип, адам ушул элементтердин жана тажрыйбанын негизинде өзүнүн көз карашын калыптандырат жана өзү үчүн баалуулуктар системасын жана жүрүм-турум линиясын аныктайт. Тhe article considers the political culture of Kyrgyzstan as one of the important foundations of the political life of society. Attention paid to the need to develop the political culture of society as the fundamental basis of civilization, the foundations of the existence of society and social relations. The paper analyzes the essence of political culture. The article describes the problem of forming the political culture of Kyrgyzstan as one of the topical issues for many years. The article considers the formation and formation of the political culture of Kyrgyzstan as a very labor-intensive and long-term process, due to certain aspects of political and cultural character. Тhe Political culture of a particular community consists of individual representations, their views, political values, political ideology and symbols, political norms, standards, and stereotypes. Each subject of the country, being a citizen, in one way or another becomes a witness and even a participant in the intrigue of political reality, thereby the basis of these elements and experience, a person forms his own view and defines for himself a system of values and a line of behavior.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tan Paulina Candra Agista ◽  
Faruk . ◽  
Suzie Handajani

Bourdieu’s concepts of legitimacy and symbolic capital have provided invaluable insights for the structures of social relations. These concepts have been used by many researchers in many different fields. However, there is a lack of academic discussion using these two concepts to study the connection between legitimacy and the practice of symbolic capital in the field of kebaya. Referring to this fact, this study aims to fill the gap. Therefore, this project is intended to examine how legitimacy is gained by an Indonesian female kebaya designer, Anne Avantie, and how the symbolic capital operates in the field of kebaya. In an attempt to collect the data, a close observation on a kebaya show held by Anne Avantie had been done and some articles about her had been read. Meanwhile, this project applies a qualitative method. The research finding shows that Avantie initially received legitimacy as a kebaya designer from consumers and then followed by many other important parties such as politicians, many organizations and institutions. This success generates the symbolic capital that puts her as a kebaya trandsetter and enables her to change the doxa of kebaya. Keywords: legitimacy, symbolic capital, doxa, field of kebaya


Lex Russica ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 154-160
Author(s):  
S. N. Tokareva

The relevance of the work lies in the study of regulatory legal acts of the Soviet rule, which became the first experience of creating norms of law in the changed socio-political reality, based on new principles, including criminal law.The purpose is to analyze the Guidelines on the criminal law of the RSFSR of December 12, 1919, revealing the features of the content of the document.In the process of research, general scientific methods of the sphere of humanitarian knowledge (e.g. system, structural and functional) were used. Special methods were also applied: technical and legal analysis, specification, interpretation, historical description. Legal experience is analyzed from the standpoint of the relationship of events and phenomena, as well as taking into account their development in a specific historical situation.As early as the end of 1917 the RSFSR People’s Commissariat of Justice headed by the left SR I.Z. Steinberg announced the creation of the Soviet criminal code. The developed document is recognized as an independent normative act, a monument of criminal law, which corresponded to the principle of continuity and was transitional between the legislation of the Russian Empire and the RSFSR.When the leadership of the RSFSR People’s Commissariat of Justice became bolshevik, a working group was created, and as a result, on December 12, 1919, Guidelines on the criminal law of the RSFSR were adopted. The document was the first existing codified act in the field of Soviet criminal law.The guidelines are a small text, the content of which resembles the general part of criminal law. Despite this, it has several fundamental differences from the previous legislation. The main mechanism is repression, and the priority is the interests of workers.The crime is considered as a violation of the order of social relations protected by criminal law. It is defined as an act or omission of an act dangerous for public relations, causing the need for the state authorities to fight against criminals. Despite the fact that the Guidelines identified the stages of the crime, they did not affect the measure of repression, which is determined by the degree of danger of the offender.The task of punishment is to protect public order from the offender and prevention of a crime. Punishments appear in the form of adaptation of the criminal to public order, isolation and, in exceptional cases, physical destruction. However, the punishment should not cause unnecessary and excessivr suffering to the offender. In general, the Guidelines became the basis for the further development of legal doctrine and criminal law, as well as directed the vector of law enforcement activities of new judges.


Author(s):  
Oleksandra Demianenko

The article attempts to analyze the conceptual foundations of the study of civil society (theoretical and methodological foundations) comprehensively in order to generalize research material on this subject. Different approaches to the concept and phenomenon of civil society in the historical context of their formation are analyzed and systematized. Taking into account complex content and the form of a civil society as a subject of research, the author offers an approach to its analysis, providing three dimensions of the study: a theoretical; a historical; and a practical one. The emphasis is on the importance of the economic component in the emergence of the phenomenon of a civil society in the socio-political reality and the significance of changes in the economic realm to update goals and objectives, as well as the structure of a civil society. Contemporary investigation of civil society involves research of information technologies that affect the level of openness and mobility of any knowledge and information; globalization processes that shape the new economic landscape of the world and, therefore, become the subject of civil society due to inevitable social-economic conflicts and contradictions; migration processes that affect the value system of both migrants and settled population, which leads to the formation of completely new subjects and objects of influence of civil society; ecological problems, which do not have a pronounced nationality and directly affect humanity as a whole, which leads to the emergence of international environmental movements. A separate problem in considering the theory of civil society is the level of personal interactions in modern conditions. The emergence of planetary problems and, accordingly, the interests of people allow distinguishing three levels of social relations, which have their own characteristics and directly affect the approaches to the implementation of civil society. Such levels are local level of interrelations (within the framework of separate communities, professional or cultural communities); national level of interrelations (at the state level or interstate regional interrelations); supranational level of interrelations (environmental issues, war and peace issues, disarmament, etc.). Keywords: Civil society, capitalism, labor market, mass movements, economic inequality, justice, conflict of interests, institutionalization


2019 ◽  
pp. 34-55
Author(s):  
Natasha Behl

Chapter 3 focuses attention on women’s unequal experience of the Indian state through an examination of the debates surrounding the 2012 gang rape. Chapter 3 examines both the progressive political opening and the retrenchment of patriarchal norms following Jyoti Singh’s murder, and argues that this opening and retrenchment are emblematic of the Indian state’s radical promise of equality and its horrific failure to achieve this equality. An analysis of politicians’ responses demonstrates how gendered norms operate to exclude women in the name of inclusion. This analysis highlights the difficulty of eradicating gendered violence through legal reform, demonstrates the unpredictability of the political process, and shows how gendered norms operate in the public sphere to undermine and frustrate progressive change. The chapter outlines the difficulty of turning to the law as a liberatory strategy in a liberal democracy and shifts attention to other spheres of life as potential sources for more egalitarian social relations.


Having defeated global socialism in the competition, liberalism and democracy proved their superiority. Having freed themselves from obvious external threats, domestic political challenges began to acquire increasing importance. Internal factors mean both the problems of each particular democratic society and the problems of conceptual understanding of liberal democracy in the contemporary context. It turns out that populism in the last 5 years has become the most dangerous problem in a number of young and mature democracies. The populist rhetoric of politicians is aimed at the part of the electorate that is ignorant and eager to hear quick solutions to complex systemic problems. This is especially dangerous for societies in which a political nation has not yet been formed, which is just beginning to take its first steps towards its own institutionalization and therefore requires the attention and concrete action of responsible civil society. Exacerbations of the chronic problems of society remain unnoticed by many influential politicians. The problem of developing complex solutions to the new challenges of our time, in particular the need to understand what price society pays for the dogmatic faith in the permanent liberalization of the democratic process and the inclusion of various groups, is being solved. The necessity of adapting the structures of liberal democracy to the new conditions of the prevailing modern political reality in order to maintain political security is noted. A proposal is made to look pragmatically at the state of affairs of modern liberalism.


PCD Journal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
Premakumara De Silva

My main premise is that for anthropologists of post-colonial societies (but not only), 'democracy' should be regarded as one of many traditional ethnographic topics (such as kinship, religion, Caste, etc.) which ethnographers study to unpack the socio-cultural institutions and practices of the societies under investigation. The hypothesis behind this approach is that the moment democracy enters a particular historical and socio-cultural setting it becomes what Michelutti calls "vernacularized", and through vernacularisation it produces new social relations and values which in turn shape political rhetoric and political culture (2007). The process of vernacularisation of democratic politics, she means the ways in which values and practices of democracy become embedded in particular cultural and social practices, and in the process become entrenched in the consciousness of ordinary people (2007: 639-40). Democratic practices associated with popular politics often base their strength and legitimacy on the principle of popular sovereignty versus the more conventional notions of liberal democracy. These popular forms of political participation are often accompanied by a polarisation of opinions and political practices between the so-called 'ordinary people' and the elites. Looking at democratisation processes through the prism of vernacularisation will therefore help to understand how and why democracy grounds itself in everyday life and becomes part of conceptual worlds that are often far removed from theories of liberal democracy.


2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 670-670
Author(s):  
Patrick Vander Weyden

In this book David W. Roberts provides an interesting descriptive account of recent Cambodian politics. The guiding principle of his study is the evaluation and implementation of the Paris Peace Agreement (PPA), which was signed in 1993. The main thesis in the book is that the content of the PPA mainly served the interests of international actors such as the United States and China, without taking into account the Cambodian political reality. In Roberts's view, the PPA developed from the Western ideal of liberal democracy, with multiparty elections as its central component and with total disregard for the Cambodian political context.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giorgio Baruchello

Starting with a prescient 1998 quote on the impending decline of US liberal democracy into right-wing, strong-man-based demagogy, this paper outlines Richard Rorty’s political philosophy, which I believe can help us understand perplexing political trends in today’s political reality well beyond the US alone. Specifically, I tackle three key-terms encapsulating the thrust of Rorty’s political philosophy, i.e. “liberalism of fear”, “bourgeois” and “postmodernism”. Also, I address a contraposition that explains how Rorty would approach and attempt to defend liberal democracy from contemporary right-wing, strong-man-based degenerations, namely the priority of “poetry” over “philosophy”. Essentially, if one wishes to win in the political arena, she must be armed with the most effective rhetorical weaponry, however good, solid and well-argued her political views may be. Finally, some remarks are offered on the role that “philosophy” can still play within the same arena.


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