Rationality revisited: Politicisation through planning rationality against the rationality of power

2021 ◽  
pp. 147309522110011
Author(s):  
Esin Özdemir
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
General Position ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rational Thinking ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Substantive Issue ◽  
Rational Consensus ◽  
Definition Of

In this article, I readdress the issue of rationality, which has been so far considered in western liberal democracies and in planning theory as procedural, and more recently as post-political in the post-foundational approach, aiming to show how it can gain a substantive and politicising character. I first discuss the problems and limits of the treatment of rational thinking as well as rational consensus-seeking as merely procedural and post-political. Secondly, utilising the notion of Realrationalität of Flyvbjerg, I discuss how rationality attains a politicising role due to its strong relationship with power. Using the concept of planning rationality aiming at public interest, I present the general position and actions of professional organisations in Turkey, focusing on the Chamber of City Planners, as an example illustrative of my argument. I finally argue that rationality becomes a substantive issue that politicizes planning, when it is put forward as an alternative to authoritarian market logic. In doing so, I adopt the Rancièrian definition of the political, defined as disclosure of a wrong and staging of equality. In conclusion, I first emphasize the importance of avoiding quick rejections of the concepts of rationality and consensus in the framework of planning activity and planning theory and secondly, call for a broader definition of the political; the political that is not confined to conflict but is open to rational thinking and rational consensus.

The Oxford Handbook of Political Representation in Liberal Democracies

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
International Level ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Mass Publics

How can democracies effectively represent citizens? The goal of this Handbook is to evaluate comprehensively how well the interests and preferences of mass publics become represented by institutions in liberal democracies. It first explores how the idea and institutions of liberal democracies were formed over centuries and became enshrined in Western political systems. The contributors to this Handbook, made up of the world’s leading scholars on the various aspects of political representation, examine how well the political elites and parties who are charged with the representation of the public interest meet their duties. Clearly, institutions often fail to live up to their own representation goals. With this in mind, the contributors explore several challenges to the way that the system of representation is organized in modern democracies. For example, actors such as parties and established elites face rising distrust among electorates. Also, the rise of international problems such as migration and environmentalism suggests that the focus of democracies on nation states may have to shift to a more international level. All told, this Handbook illuminates the normative and functional challenges faced by representative institutions in liberal democracies.

State Failure and the Political Violence Phenomenon: A Comparative Analysis of Iraq and Syria Cases

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 170 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Eylem Özkaya Lassalle
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
State Failure ◽  
The Political ◽  
Collective Violence ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War

The concept of failed state came to the fore with the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the USSR and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Political violence is central in these discussions on the definition of the concept or the determination of its dimensions (indicators). Specifically, the level of political violence, the type of political violence and intensity of political violence has been broached in the literature. An effective classification of political violence can lead us to a better understanding of state failure phenomenon. By using Tilly’s classification of collective violence which is based on extent of coordination among violent actors and salience of short-run damage, the role played by political violence in state failure can be understood clearly. In order to do this, two recent cases, Iraq and Syria will be examined.

Social Norms, Choice, and Work

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christie Hartley
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Gendered Division Of Labor

In modern liberal democracies, the gendered division of labor is partially the result of men and women making different choices about work and family life, even if such choices stem from social norms about gender. The choices that women make relative to men’s disadvantage them in various ways: such choices lead them to earn less, enjoy less power and prestige in the labor market, be less able to participate in the political sphere on an equal basis, make them to some degree financially dependent on others, and leave them at a bargaining disadvantage and vulnerable in certain personal relationships. This chapter considers if and when the state should intervene to address women’s disadvantage and inequalities that are the result of gender specialization. It is argued that political liberals can and sometimes must intervene in the gendered division of labor when persons’ interests as free and equal citizens are frustrated.

Prologue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter D. McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Intangible Heritage ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Print Literacy

The section introduces Part II, which spans the period 1946 to 2014, by tracing the history of the debates about culture within UNESCO from 1947 to 2009. It considers the central part print literacy played in the early decades, and the gradual emergence of what came to be called ‘intangible heritage’; the political divisions of the Cold War that had a bearing not just on questions of the state and its role as a guardian of culture but on the idea of cultural expression as a commodity; the slow shift away from an exclusively intellectualist definition of culture to a more broadly anthropological one; and the realpolitik surrounding the debates about cultural diversity since the 1990s. The section concludes by showing how at the turn of the new millennium UNESCO caught up with the radical ways in which Tagore and Joyce thought about linguistic and cultural diversity.

Democracy and Political Culture

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross McKibbin
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social System ◽  
Political System ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

This book is an examination of Britain as a democratic society; what it means to describe it as such; and how we can attempt such an examination. The book does this via a number of ‘case-studies’ which approach the subject in different ways: J.M. Keynes and his analysis of British social structures; the political career of Harold Nicolson and his understanding of democratic politics; the novels of A.J. Cronin, especially The Citadel, and what they tell us about the definition of democracy in the interwar years. The book also investigates the evolution of the British party political system until the present day and attempts to suggest why it has become so apparently unstable. There are also two chapters on sport as representative of the British social system as a whole as well as the ways in which the British influenced the sporting systems of other countries. The book has a marked comparative theme, including one chapter which compares British and Australian political cultures and which shows British democracy in a somewhat different light from the one usually shone on it. The concluding chapter brings together the overall argument.

scholarly journals THE PROTECTION OF THE RICH AGAINST THE POOR: THE POLITICS OF ADAM SMITH’S POLITICAL ECONOMY

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-158
Author(s):  
James A. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
General Attitude ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Natural Forms ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Point Of Departure

AbstractMy point of departure in this essay is Smith’s definition of government. “Civil government,” he writes, “so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” First I unpack Smith’s definition of government as the protection of the rich against the poor. I argue that, on Smith’s view, this is always part of what government is for. I then turn to the question of what, according to Smith, our governors can do to protect the wealth of the rich from the resentment of the poor. I consider, and reject, the idea that Smith might conceive of education as a means of alleviating the resentment of the poor at their poverty. I then describe how, in his lectures on jurisprudence, Smith refines and develops Hume’s taxonomy of the opinions upon which all government rests. The sense of allegiance to government, according to Smith, is shaped by instinctive deference to natural forms of authority as well as by rational, Whiggish considerations of utility. I argue that it is the principle of authority that provides the feelings of loyalty upon which government chiefly rests. It follows, I suggest, that to the extent that Smith looked to government to protect the property of the rich against the poor, and thereby to maintain the peace and stability of society at large, he cannot have sought to lessen the hold on ordinary people of natural sentiments of deference. In addition, I consider the implications of Smith’s theory of government for the question of his general attitude toward poverty. I argue against the view that Smith has recognizably “liberal,” progressive views of how the poor should be treated. Instead, I locate Smith in the political culture of the Whiggism of his day.

scholarly journals Decolonizing regional planning from the Global South: Active geographies and social struggles in Northeastern Brazil

2021 ◽  
pp. 026377582110246
Author(s):  
Federico Ferretti
Keyword(s):  
Regional Planning ◽  
Global South ◽  
Northeastern Brazil ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Literature ◽  
The South ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
Colonial Histories ◽  
Resisting Oppression

This paper addresses the engagement of critical geographers from Northeastern Brazil with regional planning, aiming at transforming society by acting on their region’s spaces. Extending and putting in relation literature on planning theory in the Global South and geographical scholarship on decoloniality, I explore new archives showing how the planning work that these geographers performed from 1957 to 1964 was an example of the ‘South’ re-elaborating and putting into practice notions arising from ‘international’ literature, such as that of ‘active geography’, and pioneering critical uses of instruments, such as mappings and statistics, that have often been associated with technocracy and political conservatism. Connected with peasants’ struggles and with a theoretical framework that is cognisant of the colonial histories and insurgent Black and indigenous traditions in the Northeast, these geographers’ works show that there is no ‘Southern Theory’ without a concrete engagement of scholars with social and political problems, one which is not limited to ‘participation’, but aims at challenging the political powers in place. Although not devoid of contradictions that are analysed here, the experiences of these Southern geographers acting in and for the South can provide precious insights into current (Northern or Southern) scholarly programmes aimed at resisting oppression.

The Political Theory of the Disruption

1916 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold J. Laski
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Political Principles ◽  
The Church

“Of political principles,” says a distinguished authority, “whether they be those of order or of freedom, we must seek in religious and quasi-theological writings for the highest and most notable expressions.” No one, in truth, will deny the accuracy of this claim for those ages before the Reformation transferred the centre of political authority from church to state. What is too rarely realised is the modernism of those writings in all save form. Just as the medieval state had to fight hard for relief from ecclesiastical trammels, so does its modern exclusiveness throw the burden of a kindred struggle upon its erstwhile rival. The church, intelligibly enough, is compelled to seek the protection of its liberties lest it become no more than the religious department of an otherwise secular society. The main problem, in fact, for the political theorist is still that which lies at the root of medieval conflict. What is the definition of sovereignty? Shall the nature and personality of those groups of which the state is so formidably one be regarded as in its gift to define? Can the state tolerate alongside itself churches which avow themselves societates perfectae, claiming exemption from its jurisdiction even when, as often enough, they traverse the field over which it ploughs? Is the state but one of many, or are those many but parts of itself, the one?

The Place of Interests in Hobbes’s Civil Science

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-128
Author(s):  
Elliott Karstadt
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Civil Science ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

Many scholars argue that Hobbes’s political ideas do not significantly develop between The Elements of Law (1640) and Leviathan (1651). This article seeks to challenge that assumption by studying the way in which Hobbes’s deployment of the vocabulary of ‘interest’ develops over the course of the 1640s. The article begins by showing that the vocabulary is newly important in Leviathan, before attempting a ‘Hobbesian definition’ of what is meant by the term. We end by looking at the impact that the vocabulary has on two key areas of Hobbes’s philosophy: his theory of counsel and his arguments in favour of monarchy as the best form of government. In both areas, Hobbes’s conception of ‘interests’ is shown to be of crucial importance in lending a new understanding of the political issue under consideration.

scholarly journals Rethinking Climate, Climate Change, and Their Relationship with Water

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 849
Author(s):  
Demetris Koutsoyiannis
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climatic Variability ◽  
Main Element ◽  
The Political ◽  
Real World Data ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
External Agent ◽  
Historical Investigation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Water Issues

We revisit the notion of climate, along with its historical evolution, tracing the origin of the modern concerns about climate. The notion (and the scientific term) of climate was established during the Greek antiquity in a geographical context and it acquired its statistical content (average weather) in modern times after meteorological measurements had become common. Yet the modern definitions of climate are seriously affected by the wrong perception of the previous two centuries that climate should regularly be constant, unless an external agent acts upon it. Therefore, we attempt to give a more rigorous definition of climate, consistent with the modern body of stochastics. We illustrate the definition by real-world data, which also exemplify the large climatic variability. Given this variability, the term “climate change” turns out to be scientifically unjustified. Specifically, it is a pleonasm as climate, like weather, has been ever-changing. Indeed, a historical investigation reveals that the aim in using that term is not scientific but political. Within the political aims, water issues have been greatly promoted by projecting future catastrophes while reversing true roles and causality directions. For this reason, we provide arguments that water is the main element that drives climate, and not the opposite.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document