A theory of social programs, legitimacy, and citizen cooperation with the state

2021 ◽  
pp. 002234332110427
Author(s):  
Abraham Aldama
Keyword(s):  
Intrinsic Motivation ◽  
Strategic Interaction ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Programs ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
The Face ◽  
Game Theoretic

Aid and social programs are commonly used to fight insurgencies. However, sometimes they fail to achieve their goal of increasing citizen cooperation with the state. I propose a series of game-theoretic models that focus on the strategic interaction between a state and a citizen in the face of a challenge to the state’s monopoly of power by an insurgency. I argue that even if the provision of aid or social programs increases citizens’ intrinsic motivation to cooperate with the state, it does not necessarily translate into more cooperation. I show that citizen cooperation depends on whether the increase in the provision of aid is accompanied by an increase in the use of violent or hard tools by the state, the citizens’ expectation of future rewards, and the insurgency’s response. The models thus provide a rationale for why even if social programs increase state legitimacy, they may fail to increase citizen cooperation.

Yu.F. Samarin’s Model of the National State: Between Archaic and Modern

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 149-155
Author(s):  
Alexey B. Panchenko
Keyword(s):  
Rural Community ◽  
Fundamental Difference ◽  
The State ◽  
Basic Unit ◽  
National State ◽  
Basic Model ◽  
The Face ◽  
Identical Position ◽  
Ethnocultural Community ◽  
Communicative Space

Yu. F. Samarin’s works are traditionally viewed through the prism of his affiliation with Slavophilism. His view of the state is opposed to the idea of the complex empire based on unequal interaction of the central power with the elite of national districts. At the same time it was important for Samarin to see the nation not as an ethnocultural community, but as classless community of equal citizens, who were in identical position in the face of the emperor. Samarin’s attitude to religion and nationality had pragmatic character and were understood as means for the creation of the uniform communicative space inside the state. This position for the most part conformed with the framework of the national state basic model, however there still existed one fundamental difference. Samarin considered not an individual, but the rural community that owned the land, to be the basic unit of the national state. As the result the model of national state was viewed as the synthesis of modernistic (classlessness, pragmatism, equality) and archaic (communality) features.

The Prophetic Voice of the Church in a Democratic South Africa – A Theological Reflection

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lufuluvhi Maria Mudimeli
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
The State ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black Liberation Theology ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Church

This article is a reflection on the role and contribution of the church in a democratic South Africa. The involvement of the church in the struggle against apartheid is revisited briefly. The church has played a pivotal and prominent role in bringing about democracy by being a prophetic voice that could not be silenced even in the face of death. It is in this time of democracy when real transformation is needed to take its course in a realistic way, where the presence of the church has probably been latent and where it has assumed an observer status. A look is taken at the dilemmas facing the church. The church should not be bound and taken captive by any form of loyalty to any political organisation at the expense of the poor and the voiceless. A need for cooperation and partnership between the church and the state is crucial at this time. This paper strives to address the role of the church as a prophetic voice in a democratic South Africa. Radical economic transformation, inequality, corruption, and moral decadence—all these challenges hold the potential to thwart our young democracy and its ideals. Black liberation theology concepts are employed to explore how the church can become prophetically relevant in democracy. Suggestions are made about how the church and the state can best form partnerships. In avoiding taking only a critical stance, the church could fulfil its mandate “in season and out of season” and continue to be a prophetic voice on behalf of ordinary South Africans.

Party Standstill in an Era of Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
External Environment ◽  
The State ◽  
Extreme Right ◽  
Significant Modification ◽  
Interest Management ◽  
The Face ◽  
Short Run

Chapter 5 discusses the premises of the emergence of the cartel party with the parties’ resilience to any significant modification in the face of the cultural, societal, and political changes of the 1970s–1980s. Parties kept and even increased their hold on institutions and society. They adopted an entropic strategy to counteract challenges coming from a changing external environment. A new gulf with public opinion opened up, since parties demonstrated greater ease with state-centred activities for interest-management through collusive practices in the para-governmental sector, rather than with new social and political options. The emergence of two sets of alternatives, the greens and the populist extreme right, did not produce, in the short run, any impact on intra-party life. The chapter argues that the roots of cartelization reside mainly in the necessitated interpenetration with the state, rather than on inter-party collusion. This move has caught parties in a legitimacy trap.

From the Law of Ransom to the Law of Release

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Smiley
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Law ◽  
New System

This chapter charts the “Law of Release,” a new system of rules that replaced the Law of Ransom. These rules were based on treaties signed from 1739 onward, but also on a variety of lesser agreements and unwritten understandings and the Islamic legal tradition. They were renewed frequently, and structured captivity as late as the 1850s. This chapter will explore the basic structures of the Law of Release—how captives were found, released, and sent home, and how slaveowners were convinced, coerced, or compensated to cooperate. I argue that while release was initially limited to Istanbul, and to the most visible captives, it extended both into elite households, and outward along the Ottoman corridors of power. This process tested the limits of the Ottoman state, forcing the state to cooperate with Russian officials for the benefit of both. They did so in the face of resistance from captors.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Volume 3

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
Personal Morality ◽  
George Sher ◽  
Parent Child Relationships ◽  
David Enoch

This volume features ten papers in political philosophy, addressing a range of central topics and represent cutting-edge work in the field. Papers in the first part look at equality and justice: Keith Hyams examines the contribution of ex ante equality to ex post fairness; Elizabeth Anderson looks at equality from a political economy perspective; Serena Olsaretti’s paper studies liberal equality and the moral status of parent–child relationships; and George Sher investigates doing justice to desert. In the second part, papers address questions of state legitimacy: Ralf Bader explores counterfactual justifications of the state; David Enoch examines political philosophy and epistemology; and Seth Lazar and Laura Valentini look at proxy battles in just war theory. The final three papers cover social issues that are not easily understood in terms of personal morality, yet which need not centrally involve the state: the moral neglect of negligence (Seana Valentine Shiffrin), the case for collective pensions (Michael Otsuka); and authority and harm (Jonathan Parry).

Legitimacy

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
International Courts ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Supranational Institutions

This collection brings together scholars of jurisprudence and political theory to probe the question of ‘legitimacy’. It offers discussions that interrogate the nature of legitimacy, how legitimacy is intertwined with notions of statehood, and how legitimacy reaches beyond the state into supranational institutions and international law. Chapter I considers benefit-based, merit-based, and will-based theories of state legitimacy. Chapter II examines the relationship between expertise and legitimate political authority. Chapter III attempts to make sense of John Rawls’s account of legitimacy in his later work. Chapter IV observes that state sovereignty persists, since no alternative is available, and that the success of the assortment of international organizations that challenge state sovereignty depends on their ability to attract loyalty. Chapter V argues that, to be complete, an account of a state’s legitimacy must evaluate not only its powers and its institutions, but also its officials. Chapter VI covers the rule of law and state legitimacy. Chapter VII considers the legitimation of the nation state in a post-national world. Chapter VIII contends that legitimacy beyond the state should be understood as a subject-conferred attribute of specific norms that generates no more than a duty to respect those norms. Chapter IX is a reply to critics of attempts to ground the legitimacy of suprastate institutions in constitutionalism. Chapter X examines Joseph Raz’s perfectionist liberalism. Chapter XI attempts to bring some order to debates about the legitimacy of international courts.

Plebiscitary Politics and the Threats to Legality

2019 ◽  
pp. 275-289
Author(s):  
Claudius Härpfer
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Face ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Relationship

In recent times we find many plebiscitary acts that seek to democratically legitimize political processes in any direction. They have in common that they interrupt the normal routine of representative democracies to a certain degree and create an extra-daily state of affairs, which entails not only direct but also indirect consequences. The text attempts to systematize some of these mechanisms from a Weberian perspective using Brexit as an example. After a brief overview of Weber’s short-term politically inspired statements on plebiscitary democracy, the text systematizes Weber’s understanding of the state as a bureaucratic apparatus that requires any kind of leader to be controlled. Subsequently, the text discusses the relationship between domination, legality, and rationality in order to finally point out the danger of erosion of truth and legality through the emergence of competing consensus communities in the face of competing conceptions of order.

Islamists between revolution and the state: an epilogue

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Ghani Imad
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Heavy Burden ◽  
New Type ◽  
Political Realities

The problematic addressed in this article is the challenge initiated by the Arab revolutions to reform the Arab political system in such a way as to facilitate the incorporation of ‘democracy’ at the core of its structure. Given the profound repercussions, this issue has become the most serious matter facing the forces of change in the Arab world today; meanwhile, it forms the most prominent challenge and the most difficult test confronting Islamists. The Islamist phenomenon is not an alien implant that descended upon us from another planet beyond the social context or manifestations of history. Thus it cannot but be an expression of political, cultural, and social needs and crises. Over the years this phenomenon has presented, through its discourse, an ideological logic that falls within the context of ‘advocacy’; however, today Islamists find themselves in office, and in a new context that requires them to produce a new type of discourse that pertains to the context of a ‘state’. Political participation ‘tames’ ideology and pushes political actors to rationalize their discourse in the face of daily political realities and the necessity of achievement. The logic of advocacy differs from that of the state: in the case of advocacy, ideology represents an enriching asset, whereas in the case of the state, it constitutes a heavy burden. This is one reason why so much discourse exists within religious jurisprudence related to interest or necessity or balancing outcomes. This article forms an epilogue to the series of articles on religion and the state published in previous issues of this journal. It adopts the methodologies of ‘discourse analysis’ and ‘case studies’ in an attempt to examine the arguments presented by Islamists under pressure from the opposition. It analyses the experiences, and the constraints, that inhibit the production of a ‘model’, and monitors the development of the discourse, its structure, and transformations between advocacy, revolution and the state.

scholarly journals Neoliberalism is not dead – On political implications of Covid-19

2020 ◽  
pp. 030981682098238
Author(s):  
Miloš Šumonja
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
The State ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Strong State ◽  
Hand Grip ◽  
Right Hand ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face

The news is old – neoliberalism is dead for good, but this time, even Financial Times knows it. Obituaries claim that it had died from the coronavirus, as the state, not the markets, have had to save both the people and the economy. The argument of the article is that these academic and media interpretations of ‘emergency Keynesianism’ misidentify neoliberalism with its anti-statist rhetoric. For neoliberalism is, and has always been, about ‘the free market and the strong state’. In fact, rather than waning in the face of the coronavirus crisis, neoliberal states around the world are using the ongoing ‘war against the virus’ to strengthen their right-hand grip on the conditions of the working classes.

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