The speeches to the People in Cicero's oratorical corpora

2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-175
Author(s):  
Gesine Manuwald

This paper discusses the function of speeches given by Cicero to the popular assembly (contio) as reports about recent political events or decrees. Several of the few extant examples are part of oratorical corpora consisting of speeches from politically difficult periods, namely from Cicero's consular year (63 BCE; Catilinarians) and from his fight against Mark Antony (44–43 BCE; Philippics). Cicero is shown to have applied his oratorical abilities in all these cases to exploit the contio speeches so as to present narrative accounts of political developments in his interpretation and thus to influence public opinion in the short term during the political process and particularly, within an edited corpus, in the long term.

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-56
Author(s):  
Gugun El Guyanie , Okky Alifka Nurmagulita

This article examines the drafting of the Omnibus Law on the Job Creation Bill, the original purpose of which was to facilitate investment or accelerate the economy. Starting from the disharmony of several overlapping regulations, out of sync between one law and another in the investment sector, a universal sweeping law that contains thousands of articles is needed. This study uses the theory of the formation of laws and regulations and the perspective of legal politics, with juridical analysis, to explain how a process of drafting a law, the principles of formation, and the political dynamics that gave birth to it. This paper emphasizes that the process and politics of the Omnibus Law legislation on the Job Creation Bill has minimal public participation and is not transparent. So the legal product of the Job Creation Law is formally flawed, and materially contains articles that are capitalist in content, opening up investment for investors but on the other hand harming the people. In this study, it was also found that the Omnibus Law of the Job Creation Act was born with more character instrumentalist-oligarchic, where the government transplants the Omnibus Law solely as a short-term pragmatic option to spread the 'red carpet' for investors. In other words, the Omnibus Law fails to create an instrumentalist-democratic character, which is oriented towards fulfilling and strengthening the values ​​of the rule of law which is long-term oriented while at the same time creating a sustainable participatory-democratic climate.


Author(s):  
Christian D. Liddy

The exercise of political power in late medieval English towns was predicated upon the representation, management, and control of public opinion. This chapter explains why public opinion mattered so much to town rulers; how they worked to shape opinion through communication; and the results. Official communication was instrumental in the politicization of urban citizens. The practices of official secrecy and public proclamation were not inherently contradictory, but conflict flowed from the political process. The secrecy surrounding the practices of civic government provoked ordinary citizens to demand more accountability from town rulers, while citizens, who were accustomed to hear news and information circulated by civic magistrates, were able to use what they knew to challenge authority.


Res Publica ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-470
Author(s):  
Guido Dierickx

This contribution should be seen as an attempt to retrieve information from restcategories, such as «does not know» and «no answer».  From these, and from other data as well, we constructed 10, mostly summating, indexes of political ignorance. Among them is an index of objective ignorance, that is about political events, persons and situations.  The others aim at more subjective dimensions. Does the respondent feel informed about the political process : about government and party performance, partisan congeniality, modalities of voting, local politics social problems, political issues ?There seems to be some evidence in favor of the following hypotheses.1. The indexes tend to compensate each other: respondents who score low on one index, do not necessarily score low on the next one.2. I t is difficult to ascertain the validity of an index of objective ignorance. Moreover it does by no means express all the (relevant) dimensions of political information.3. A mong indexes of subjective ignorance one should distinguish between «policy» and «political» information ; the latter seems to refer to a situation where strictly political rules of the game, a.o. those of political conflict, prevail.4. Of all indexes the «political issues» index showed the most discriminating power, as well as the most expected associations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-197
Author(s):  
Mitchell B. Lerner

The election of Donald J. Trump unsettled many areas of U.S. foreign policy, but few more than the nation’s relationship with Korea. This article argues that the Trump administration’s vision for the world represents a stark break from the tradition of liberal internationalism and instead seeks to take the United States down a path that reflects the modern business practices of giant American corporations. A suitable label for this vision, as the following pages will show, is “Walmart unilateralism.” This framework abandons the traditional American policies of nation building and alliances based on shared ideological values. Instead, it embraces a more short-term approach rooted in financial bottom lines, flexible alliances and rivalries, and the ruthless exploitation of power hierarchies. This new approach, this article concludes, may dramatically transform the American relationship with Korea. Walmart unilateralism in Korea almost certainly will have some short-time positive ramifications for the United States, but its larger failure to consider the history and values of the people living on the Korean Peninsula may generate serious long-term problems for the future experience of the United States in the region.


2017 ◽  
Vol 09 (04) ◽  
pp. 112-124
Author(s):  
Wei SHAN

The political attitudes of the post-1980s generation in China are important for understanding the country’s political future. Public opinion surveys reveal the post-1980s group as the least nationalistic and more sceptical of the government than the older generations. They show little interest in politics despite their confidence of participating in public issues. In the long term, Beijing will have to face a society led by the more critical and less obedient post-1980s.


Author(s):  
Dmitrii Kaminchenko ◽  

The article covers the topic of the networked identity that is relevant in the context of the rapid informatization of society and politics. The author considers the display of network elements of political and identification processes during the specific political events taking place in France (the movement of "yellow vests"). The analysis shows at least 2 sustainable approaches to the study of networkization of modern political and identification processes. The first focuses on the emergence of a new type of identity (networked). The second emphasizes not the emergence of a new type of identity (networked), but rather the networkization of existing, established types of identities. The author chooses the case method as the main research method to fulfill the task set in the paper. The author chooses the case method as the main research method and identifies five attributes of the networked identity display during political events related to the movement of “yellow vests” in France: a variety of ideas (and identities) among the participants of the movement; a wide and changing (situational, related to fluctuations in the information agenda) set of requirements; structural de-hierarchization of the movement; the geographically dispersed locations of the protest activity and its longevity.


Author(s):  
Mary Elizabeth Fitts

According to the model of coalescence discussed in chapter 4, the political process of merging previously distinct communities should result in the integration of labor and collective identities. In this chapter, mid-eighteenth-century Catawba pottery and items of personal adornment are enlisted to assess whether this was the case for the people living around Nation Ford. Ceramic analysis is used to delineate constellations of practice, thereby providing information about the size of the work groups making pottery as well as the character of interaction between them. Next, patterns in the distribution of artifacts associated with mid-eighteenth-century Catawba adornment, including glass beads and metal fasteners, are examined in an effort to determine if they were being used to communicate generalized Southeastern Indian identities, matrilocal community identities, or both.


Author(s):  
Silvia Marzagalli

The reassessment of the driving forces leading to the French Revolution provoked the rejection of the traditional Marxist interpretation according to which the Revolution was led by an emerging capitalistic bourgeoisie strengthened by long-term industrial and trade growth, and the emergence of interpretations based on political and ideological developments. This chapter argues that demography and economy still offer important keys to understand the origins of the Revolution if they are embedded within a broader analysis, taking social, cultural, and political aspects into account. In stressing the escalation of social tensions provoked by an unequal redistribution of resources, analysis of the demographic and economic developments highlight the background against which the convergence of political and short-term subsistence crises pushed rural and urban masses to revolt in 1789. Without their actions, the political revolution led by a majority of the representatives who met at the Estates-General in 1789 would have been repressed.


2000 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Nelson

A theory of democratic institutions should provide us with a coherent combination of definition and justification. It should explain how it defines democratic institutions and also how they will or should function; but it also should explain why democracy, so understood, is desirable. We are all familiar with stories about the fiscal excesses to which democracies are prone, stories about the ignorance of voters, and stories about the venality of legislators. Some of us may also be suspicious of concepts such as “consent” or “the will of the people” associated with traditional arguments for democracy. Against this background, the current interest in deliberative democracy seems promising. This conception of democracy does not rely, for example, on the idea of rational and knowledgeable voters satisfying preferences they have independent of the political process. Nor does it rely on any notion of an independent popular will. Instead, it offers a picture of the democratic process as one in which men and women engage in constructive discussion, seeking a principled resolution of their differences and developing, over time, a conception of the terms on which they will live with one another.


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