scholarly journals Institutional Engineering, Management of Ethnicity, and Democratic Failure in Burundi

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filip Reyntjens
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Management ◽  
The Political ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Exogenous Factors ◽  
Democratic Failure ◽  
Constitutional Constraints ◽  
Ethnic Divide

This article argues that constitutional engineering along consociational lines in Burundi – explicitly accommodating ethnicity rather than attempting to suppress it – was instrumental in reducing the political role of ethnicity, but that other endogenous and exogenous factors also played a role. After surveying developments since 1988, this article focuses on the 2005 polls. The outcome of the parliamentary elections suggests that the “disappearance of the ethnic factor,” extolled by many at the time, was achieved by constitutional constraints rather than by social or political dynamics. Nevertheless, with regard to the country's most important and lethal historical problem, the ethnic divide, constitutional engineering has proved hugely effective. Burundi's main cleavage is now between (and within) parties rather than ethnic groups, and when violence occurs it is political rather than ethnic. Burundi's current crisis is therefore not a failure of consociationalism but of democracy.

Something Gleaming

Theoria ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (165) ◽  
pp. 92-117
Author(s):  
Bronwyn Leebaw
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Common Concern ◽  
The Way

What kinds of lessons can be learned from stories of those who resisted past abuses and injustices? How should such stories be recovered, and what do they have to teach us about present day struggles for justice and accountability? This paper investigates how Levi, Broz, and Arendt formulate the political role of storytelling as response to distinctive challenges associated with efforts to resist systematic forms of abuse and injustice. It focuses on how these thinkers reflected on such themes as witnesses, who were personally affected, to varying degrees, by atrocities under investigation. Despite their differences, these thinkers share a common concern with the way that organised atrocities are associated with systemic logics and grey zones that make people feel that it would be meaningless or futile to resist. To confront such challenges, Levi, Arendt and Broz all suggest, it is important to recover stories of resistance that are not usually heard or told in ways that defy the expectations of public audiences. Their distinctive storytelling strategies are not rooted in clashing theories of resistance, but rather reflect different perspectives on what is needed to make resistance meaningful in contexts where the failure of resistance is intolerable.

Reevaluating the Role of Ideology in Chile

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Giancarlo Visconti
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Electoral Strategies ◽  
Crisis Of Representation

ABSTRACTVoters’ ideological stances have long been considered one of the most important factors for understanding electoral choices in Chile. In recent years, however, the literature has begun to call this premise into question, due to several changes in the Chilean political landscape: the current crisis of representation, the high programmatic congruence between the two main coalitions, the decline in the political relevance of the dictatorship, and the rise of nonprogrammatic electoral strategies. In addition to these transformations, Chile switched to voluntary voting in 2012. This article studies whether ideology still informs electoral choices in Chile in an era of voluntary voting. It implements a conjoint survey experiment in low-to-middle-income neighborhoods in Santiago, where voters would be expected to be less ideological. It shows that candidates’ ideological labels are crucial for understanding the electoral decisions of a large part of the sample, particularly among likely voters.

II. The Political Role of the Parlement of Paris, 1715–23

1965 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-200
Author(s):  
J. H. Shennan
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Legal Structure ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Parlement Of Paris

The most recent biographer of Montesquieu has written:…the similarity between the ideas of the former president a tnortier and those of the parlements is sometimes striking.…The king, they admit, is the legislator and the fount of justice. The parlements, however, are the repositories of his supreme juris-diction. To remove it from them is to offend the laws of the state and to overthrow the ancient legal structure of the kingdom.…This tradition of the parlements inspired and was inspired by the political doctrine of Montesquieu; and when the President writes of the monarchy of his own day…as being the best form of government that men have been able to imagine, it is monarchy supported by this tradition which he has in mind.

The Political role of the judiciary : The Belgian case

Res Publica ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 371-384
Author(s):  
Lode Van Outrive
Keyword(s):  
Easy Access ◽  
The Political ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Selection System ◽  
Advisory Body ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
External Conditions ◽  
Recruitment And Selection

We set out by tracking the political vicissitudes of the administration of justice and their connections with a range of phenomena: the neglect by politicians; a series of events and scandals and the very curious reactions of the judicial apparatus; several parliamentary investigation commissions without much effect. Then we take a critical look at partisan politicisation of the magistrature: negative evalution of their output thrives to it; but there are also partisan appointments and promotions, even absence and refusal of training. Many contextual factors hinder a normal, acceptable process of politicisation: over- and underregulation, bad legislation, misconception on contra! over the administration of justice and over judges, non-democratic decisionmaking within the organisation of the magistrature, the development of wrong relationship inside the trias politica; but also other more external conditions were not met neither.  We wind up with an examination of the assesment of recent governmental proposals: an improvement of criminal and judicial inquiries; foundation of a national advisory body for the magistrature; simplification of the legislation; modernisation of the courts activities; a more objective recruitment and selection system; more easy access to justice etc. The question raises as to wether it suffices to tinker with the sy stem of the administration of justice alone ... Between the Belgian and the Italian situations are similarities and relevant differences. 

scholarly journals Seat of Empire; The Political Role of Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg

1951 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 703
Author(s):  
Leonard W. Labaree ◽  
Carl Bridenbaugh
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Role

scholarly journals Apuntes para una mecánica política del paisaje (Ilustrados con algunas escenas barcelonesas) | Notes on the politics of landscape (Illustrated with a few scenes of Barcelona)

ZARCH ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Ténez Ybern
Keyword(s):  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Recent History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Group ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

Si asumimos que el paisaje es el resultado perceptible de la relación dinámica entre un determinado grupo humano y su medio; esa definición que se cuenta entre las de más consenso entre aquellos que dicen hacer paisajes, suscita de inmediato ciertas preguntas: ¿Cuál es el papel de aquel que pretende crear paisajes, si el paisaje es un proceso que se da por si solo? ¿Hasta qué punto incide cambiar el aspecto de un lugar en esa relación entre la gente y su entorno cotidiano?El texto pretende explorar las consecuencias de esas paradójicas preguntas, a partir de una primera hipótesis: la del carácter intrínsecamente político del proyecto del paisaje. De esta hipótesis parte la intención de mostrar la evolución de la reflexión sobre ese papel político del hacer paisajes, en el que el hacedor de paisajes que está siempre situado entre los equilibrios de poder que se establecen entre las instituciones y la gente. A partir de aquí, se analizan algunos momentos clave de la historia de ese paisaje político, donde el “hacedor de paisajes” intenta encontrar su lugar.En el horizonte del texto, aparecen también imágenes de la historia reciente de mi ciudad, a modo de ilustración de lo dicho. If we accept that landscape is the perceptible result of the dynamic relationship process between a specific human group and an environment, this definition, which enjoys the most acceptance among those people who ‘make landscape’, immediately raises certain questions: What is the role of the person who aims to create landscapes, if landscape is a process that takes place on its own? To what point does this affect the relationship between people and their daily setting?This article initially aims to explore the consequences of that paradox through a first hypothesis: the intrinsically political nature of the landscape project. This hypothesis springs from the intention of describing the evolution of the reflection on this political role of making landscape, in which ‘landscape makers’ constantly find themselves affected by the balance of power established between institutions and people. Subsequently, analysis will be conducted on a series of key periods in the history of the political landscape in which landscape makers endeavour to find their place.Pictures of the recent history of my city appear interspersed within the text, in order to illustrate what has been described.

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