scholarly journals The Indian Republic as Governance Guru to the European Union: Does the Subcontinent Offer the Continent a Model for Managing Diversity?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm MacLaren
Keyword(s):  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Constitutional Treaty ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Managing Diversity ◽  
Unity In Diversity ◽  
The Common

The development and working of governance in post-colonial India provides insights into and lessons for the actual European project of integration. The Republic’s founders coined the slogan ‘unity in diversity’, and their creation has enjoyed considerable (unexpected) success in managing linguistic, religious, ethnic, and territorial diversities. In contrast, the Union’s leaders are still struggling to constitute a political community, as the failure of the draft constitutional treaty made clear.Considering wider dimensions of managing cultural diversity, the paper follows the thesis that in political integration projects, law matters and politics does too, but that the political culture prevailing matters most. The success (or failure) of such attempts is ultimately determined not by the framework rules, institutions, and procedures but by the common (or divergent) values, attitudes, and goals of the political actors involved.

Searching for Political Parties in the Past

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Common

Chapter 1 introduces the long and difficult process of the theoretical legitimation of the political party as such. The analysis of the meaning and acceptance of ‘parties’ as tools of expressing contrasting visions moves forward from ancient Greece and Rome where (democratic) politics had first become a matter of speculation and practice, and ends up with the first cautious acceptance of parties by eighteenth-century British thinkers. The chapter explores how parties or factions have been constantly considered tools of division of the ‘common wealth’ and the ‘good society’. The holist and monist vision of a harmonious and compounded society, stigmatized parties and factions as an ultimate danger for the political community. Only when a new way of thinking, that is liberalism, emerged, was room for the acceptance of parties set.

Principals and Agents: From the Convention’s Proposal to the Constitutional Treaty

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas König ◽  
Daniel Finke
Keyword(s):  
Final Outcome ◽  
The Political ◽  
Principal Agent ◽  
Constitutional Treaty ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Voting Rules ◽  
Common View ◽  
Treaty Of Lisbon ◽  
First Order ◽  
The Common

This chapter examines the transformation of the Convention's proposal on the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe to the Lisbon Treaty in the aftermath of the two negative referendums from a principal-agent perspective. It shows that the common view of unitary member states, in which principals and agents share interests in the revision of treaties, can only partially—if not wrongly—explain the Treaty of Lisbon. The principal-agent analysis reveals that the political leaders delegated power to negotiating agents who worked out compromise solutions by partially revising the initial interests of their first order principals, the political leaders. Governmental agents from smaller countries were able to focus the negotiations on a few central reform issues, such as the number of Commissioners and the voting rules of the Council, and they also successfully influenced the final outcome of these issues. A major reason for their success was their credibility, which they could increase by pointing to integration-skeptic voters—particularly in countries that had announced a referendum. Hence, governmental agents increased their bargaining efficiency by referring to voters as their second-order principals.

scholarly journals What Does a Constitution Expect from Immigrants?

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (7) ◽  
pp. 1641-1656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uwe Volkmann
Keyword(s):  
National Culture ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Political System ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
Clear Idea

It is a long-established commonplace in any debate on immigration that immigrants should integrate into their receiving society. But integrate into what precisely? Into the labor market, into the legal order, into the political system, into a national culture whatever this might comprise? The Article tries to approach the question from the legal point of view and looks for hints or clues in the constitution which might help us with the answer. For this purpose, it explores the general theory of the constitution as it has been shaped by its professional interpreters as well as by political actors, the media and the public. The main intuition is that “constitution” is not only a written document, a text with a predefined, though maybe hidden meaning; instead, it is a social practice evolving over time and thereby reflecting the shared convictions of a political community of what is just and right. Talking about constitutional expectations toward immigrants then also tells us something about ourselves: about who we are and what kind of community we want to live in. As it turns out, we may not have a very clear idea of that.

scholarly journals The Denationalization and Agencification of Net Neutrality Policy in Lithuania

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-43
Author(s):  
Deimantas Jastramskis
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Net Neutrality ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Communications Policy ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Stream Model

This paper focuses on the making of communications policy in Lithuania, specifically regarding net neutrality. The study employs a multiple stream model to analyze the conditions of the political process and the activity of political actors. The paper claims that the Lithuanian communications policy has become essentially denationalized since the country’s accession to the European Union. The issue of net neutrality policy has been framed in the context of EU policy, while the national agenda of net neutrality policy lost its significance. The denationalization of the net neutrality policy-making was harmonized with the agencification of policy formulation stage.

British Public Opinion, Colour Issues, and Enoch Powell: a Longitudinal Analysis

1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donley T. Studlar
Keyword(s):  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Longitudinal Analysis ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Expectation ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Government ◽  
Enoch Powell

Relationships between the public and the political elite in Britain are generally thought to be explicable in terms of a ‘strong leadership’ hypothesis, according to which the public responds to initiatives put forward by leading political actors. Reflecting the popular will is not thought to be a highly prized activity among British politicians, who supposedly share the general cultural expectation that the public defers to the wisdom of those more knowledgeable than themselves, the public being content with the opportunity to pronounce electorally on the fitness of the Government at least once every five years. Occasionally voices are heard demanding that more attention be paid to the wishes of the general public, as in recent years in regard to the Common Market and capital punishment, but these demands have so far gone unheeded.

The Grandeur of Biopolitical Science

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 500-503
Author(s):  
Larry Arnhart
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
History Of

John Hibbing's essay is a persuasive defense of biopolitical research. I argue, however, that Hibbing does not go far enough in recognizing the broad vision of biopolitical science as a science of political animals. We need to see this as a science that moves through three levels of deep history: the natural history of the political species, the cultural history of a political community, and the biographical history of political actors in a community. I illustrate this by discussing Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation at these three levels of biopolitical science.

scholarly journals The Russia-EU perspective: national security and counterterrorism from a different angle

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-75
Author(s):  
Milka Malfait
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Inductive Method ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Political Distrust ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Eu

Introduction: Statistics have proven that both the European Union (“EU”) and the Russian Federation (“Russia”) suffer from terrorism in its current form. Intensifying partnerships to combat terrorism would be a good idea. This essay envisages to illustrate a common base for cooperation in the fight against terrorism despite of some general differences in policy and structure between the EU and Russia.Materials and methods: The methodological basis of the research has both an analytical and descriptive nature. As for the analytical nature, sta­tistical, qualitative and comparative analyses were used while researching political phenomena and processes in the sphere of national security and coun­terterrorism. The author also applied the inductive method. The materials observed include the distinct approaches of Russia and the EU in terms of threats to national security including terrorism.Results: The author reveals there are four fundamental issues which ask for more attention in the EU-Russia dialogue on Freedom, Justice and Security and particularly with regard to the fight against terrorism. Firstly, statistics prove that Europe (EU and Russia) are impacted by modern terrorism, yet not by the same cases of terrorism. Secondly, Russia’s experience in counterterrorism is crucial. Thirdly, the scale ‘freedom’ and ‘human rights’ versus ‘security’ has not the same ratio in the EU and in Russia. Fourthly, the concept sovereignty is differently interpreted by the EU, the EU Member States and Russia. Despite all the differences in views, it is clear that the EU could learn a lot from Russia, as one of the key States with considerable experience in the fight against terrorism. Although the EU and Russia face different forms and problems and the roots of Western European terrorism sometimes have a slightly different origin, this does not negate the fact that they could foster cooperation.Discussion and conclusion: The governmental approaches of the EU and Russia on national security were discussed as well as the common grounds for cooperation, namely the threat of terrorism. It is proved that both systems have different features and are not always compatible with each other. The following recommendation of setting up an anti-terrorism working group was provided as well as the advice to eliminate the political distrust.

The Challenge of European Union

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bellamy
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Integration ◽  
International Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Constitutional Treaty ◽  
Intergovernmental Organization ◽  
New Form ◽  
The Eu

This article examines the political challenges of the European Union (EU). It explains that political theorists and scientists alike have viewed European integration as a laboratory for exploring how far the nation state, and the forms of domestic and international politics to which it gave rise, has been affected by the various processes associated with globalization. It discusses the Charter of Rights and Constitutional Treaty of the EU and suggests that the EU can be plausibly characterized as an intergovernmental organization of an advanced kind, a nascent federation of states, and a new form of post-national and post-state entity.

Is architecture relevant for political theory?

2021 ◽  
pp. 147488512110636
Author(s):  
Bart van Leeuwen
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Common ◽  
Build Environment

Is architecture relevant for political theory? That is the key question that structures this excellent collection Political Theory and Architecture, although a number of essays fit a broader formulated theme better, namely, concerning the political relevance of the organization and design of our built environment more generally, including architecture but also spatial planning and urban design. The collection demonstrates that our build environment is not merely a passive backdrop to a political community, but actively shapes aspects of our common political life. This constitutive nature of our built environment figures in many different guises throughout this volume. In this review article, I discuss some of these and conclude that concerns about the ‘common good’ and hence about the discipline of political theory should take reflections on urban design, planning, and architecture into account.

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