Can nationalists be democratic citizens in the age of global migration? Boundaries of political community and their impact on liberal orientation in EU societies

2021 ◽  
pp. 193-218
Author(s):  
Merve Schmitz-Vardar
2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (04) ◽  
pp. 245-250
Author(s):  
A. Speckhard

SummaryAs a terror tactic, suicide terrorism is one of the most lethal as it relies on a human being to deliver and detonate the device. Suicide terrorism is not confined to a single region or religion. On the contrary, it has a global appeal, and in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan it has come to represent an almost daily reality as it has become the weapon of choice for some of the most dreaded terrorist organizations in the world, such as ISIS and al-Qaeda. Drawing on over two decades of extensive field research in five distinct world regions, specifically the Middle East, Western Europe, North America, Russia, and the Balkans, the author discusses the origins of modern day suicide terrorism, motivational factors behind suicide terrorism, its global migration, and its appeal to modern-day terrorist groups to embrace it as a tactic.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-529
Author(s):  
Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot

The Philippines is one of only two states in the world in which absolute divorce remains largely impossible. Through its family laws, it regulates the marriage, family life and conjugal separation of its citizens, including its migrants abroad. To find out how these family laws interact with those in the receiving country of Filipino migrants and shape their lives, the present paper examines the case of Filipino women who experienced or are undergoing divorce in the Netherlands. Drawing from semi-structured interviews and an analysis of selected divorce stories, it unveils the intertwined institutions of marriage and of divorce, the constraints but also possibilities that interacting legal norms bring in the life of Filipino women, and the way these migrants navigate such norms within their transnational social spaces. These findings contribute interesting insights into cross-border divorces in the present age of global migration.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-113
Author(s):  
Francesco Rotiroti

This article seeks to define a theoretical framework for the study of the relation between religion and the political community in the Roman world and to analyze a particular case in point. The first part reviews two prominent theories of religion developed in the last fifty years through the combined efforts of anthropologists and classicists, arguing for their complementary contribution to the understanding of religion's political dimension. It also provides an overview of the approaches of recent scholarship to the relation between religion and the Roman polity, contextualizing the efforts of this article toward a theoretical reframing of the political and institutional elements of ancient Christianity. The second part focuses on the religious legislation of the Theodosian Code, with particular emphasis on the laws against the heretics and their performance in the construction of the political community. With their characteristic language of exclusion, these laws signal the persisting overlap between the borders of the political community and the borders of religion, in a manner that one would expect from pre-Christian civic religions. Nevertheless, the political essence of religion did also adapt to the ecumenical dimension of the empire. Indeed, the religious norms of the Code appear to structure a community whose borders tend to be identical to the borders of the whole inhabited world, within which there is no longer room for alternative affiliations; the only possible identity outside this community is that of the insane, not belonging to any political entity and thus unable to possess any right.


Author(s):  
David Matijasevich

Outside of some states still struggling with post-communist transitions, Europe itself may be the first European democracy to collapse in decades. Though never a bastion of participatory democracy and even subject to continuous criticism due to its democratic deficit, the European Union (EU) has provided hope to those who envision a post-national democratic political community. As such, whether the EU survives its present crisis or not, cosmopolitan democrats will look to the EU as a vindication of their ideals. Though perhaps surprising given their track record, this paper will argue that political scientists, especially those concerned with democratization, can also be optimistic about what the EU has brought to the table in terms of how we conceive processes of democratic development. Throughout the paper it will be demonstrated that the creation and maintenance of the European democracy has challenged much of the literature's fundamental assumptions of what makes democracy work. Five key lessons from the European democratic experience will be presented in an attempt to disrupt some of these assumptions including lessons regarding the diversity of the demos, the contingency of democratic upkeep, the challenges of the state, the role of elites in political transformation, and the necessity of exclusion within inclusive spaces. Though a general theory of democracy will not be presented, suggestions will be made as to how we can incorporate some of these lessons into the dominant approaches to democracy found in the literature.   Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v7i1.214


Author(s):  
Oliver Schmidtke ◽  
Constantin Chira-Pascanut

not available   Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v2i3.171


Author(s):  
Brooke A. Ackerly

Just responsibility is a transformative human rights politics for taking on the complexities, power inequalities, and social normalization of injustice itself. Just responsibility is a human rights theory of political responsibility in which we understand human rights as enjoyed and shared throughout political community (and human rights entitlements as a tool toward that end), political community as defined by its web of networks, not its boundaries, accountability as a political process of discernment, not a power relation, and leadership as a quality of political community, not of individuals within it. Found within and supported by the principles-in-practice of women’s human rights activists, this grounded normative theory of responsibility guides us in a human rights enhancing way to be accountable leaders in political transformation, taking responsibility for global injustice in a just way.


Author(s):  
Fanie du Toit

Embracing risk and ambiguity, rather than closure and certainty, a third typology of reconciliation theorists have emerged. Calling themselves agonists, they emphasize that reconciliation is fundamentally open-ended, deliberative, and has to strive consciously to include “conflict through other means.” Seen through this lens, reconciliation is more a process-oriented activity than an outcomes-driven one. Agonist reconciliation understands its inception as the call, amid conflict, to political community. Its unfolding is described as incessant discourse and debate, and its promise is understood as the commitment never to stop debating the terms of togetherness in a given context. My criticism of this position rests on two points: underestimating what it takes to overcome violence, and its one-sided emphasis on process at the expense of any predetermined outcomes—a situation that would, I argue, be unacceptable especially to those victims of oppression who correctly demand redress and justice as definite predetermined outcomes of reconciliation.


Author(s):  
András Sajó ◽  
Renáta Uitz

This book examines the implications of constitutionalism for the constitutional legal order and the political community which is meant to live by it. The book demonstrates what is at stake in the debate on constitutionalism through numerous examples of political anomalies and abuse of power. It presents stories of constitutional success and failure to give a sense of the current threats, arguing that constitutions are not mere practical applications of political philosophies or opportunistic political deals. The book considers foundational issues related to constitutions and constitutionalism as reflected in influential ideas, political practices, and social dynamics behind the scenes.


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