scholarly journals Nigerian Pentecostalism, Alternative State, and the Question of Accountability

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benson Ohihon Igboin

The debate on the status of the Nigerian state has been controversial, but it portends more towards a failing state, because it has low to very low levels of state capacity. Most state institutions do not have the capacity to inspire socio-economic confidence in the citizenry. Coupled with prevailing insecurity and the inability of the state to address it, many people find an alternative source of hope and confidence within Christianity, and particularly an African Pentecostal state-like formation that makes its leadership a multinational and cross-regional political leadership of a sort. While the political leadership of the failing state would be examined as the main cause for thriving Pentecostalism, there remains the question of accountability on both sides of the spectrum; especially as both concern the same citizenship, whom I will argue are cheated both ways, and yet somehow hold ambivalent attitudes towards accountability. Since there is little attention devoted to demand for accountability at both state and alternative state levels, this paper will do a contrastive analysis of both leaderships and show that the issue of accountability remains unresolved at both ends.

Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Schupmann

Chapter 2 reinterprets Schmitt’s concept of the political. Schmitt argued that Weimar developments, especially the rise of mass movements politically opposed to the state and constitution, demonstrated that the state did not have any sort of monopoly over the political, contradicting the arguments made by predominant Weimar state theorists, such as Jellinek and Meinecke. Not only was the political independent of the state, Schmitt argued, but it could even be turned against it. Schmitt believed that his contemporaries’ failure to recognize the nature of the political prevented them from adequately responding to the politicization of society, inadvertently risking civil war. This chapter reanalyzes Schmitt’s political from this perspective. Without ignoring enmity, it argues that Schmitt also defines the political in terms of friendship and, importantly, “status par excellence” (the status that relativizes other statuses). It also examines the relationship between the political and Schmitt’s concept of representation.


China Report ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 000944552110470
Author(s):  
Rudolf Fürst

Deepening globalisation and worldwide availability of free information and ideas raise concerns of the communist China’s political leadership about the stability of the regime and the sustainability of the state ideological orthodoxy. Therefore, the state’s tightening control of the public communication to curtail the domestic criticism and occasional public discontent is becoming framed and legitimised in terms of cultural security as a non-traditional security concern. This study argues that the restrictive impacts of the politicisation of culture in the centralised agenda of President Xi Jinping reinvigorate China’s anti-Western narratives and attitudes. The research focuses on the state’s cultural security-related and applicable strategy in the political and institutional agenda and media. Moreover, the study also traces the state cultural security policy in the field of the civic and non-governmental sector, religious and ethnic minorities policy, literature, film and audiovisual sectors. The findings assess the concern that the intellectually anachronistic, self-restraining and internationally hostile policy devaluates China’s cultural potential and complexity.


2011 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 887-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK DINCECCO ◽  
GIOVANNI FEDERICO ◽  
ANDREA VINDIGNI

We examine the relationships between warfare, taxation, and political change in the context of the political unification of the Italian peninsula. Using a comprehensive new database, we argue that external and internal threat environments had significant implications for the demand for military strength, which in turn had important ramifications for fiscal policy and the likelihood of constitutional reform and related improvements in the provision of nonmilitary public services. Our analytic narrative complements recent theoretical and econometric works about state capacity. By emphasizing public finances, we also uncover novel insights about the forces underlying state formation in Italy.“The budget is the skeleton of the state, stripped of any misleading ideologies.”Sociologist Rudolf Goldscheid, 19261


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (35) ◽  
pp. 38-51
Author(s):  
Marţian Iovan

Abstract The author analyzes in this paper principles and ides of philosophy of law issued by Mircea Djuvara, which preserve their contemporaneity, being useful for the perfecting of the state institutions and of the democracy not only at national level, but also at European Union one. His ideas and logical demonstration on the rational fundamentals of law, the autonomy of the moral and legal conscience, the specificity of truth and of juridical knowledge, the philosophical substantiation of power and Constitution, the principles of the democracy and the connections between the political power and the law are just few of the original elements due to which Djuvara became an acknowledged and respected personality not only in Romania, but also in the experts clubs of the Europe between the two World Wars.


2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-134
Author(s):  
Daniela Popescu

"The Escape to Turkey. Ways and Methods of Illegal Border Crossings into Turkey from the perspective of SSI documents (1945-1948). Romania`s first years after the communist regime took political power in Romania, concurrent with the onset of the Cold War, meant a reshuffle of the state institutions at first and later a dramatic impact on people`s lives. The political and institutional purges were the first signal that soon repression and terror will follow, thus prompting numerous Romanian citizens to leave the country. Yet, due to the strict surveillance of the Secret Police Services which did not easily allow traveling to Western countries, the only way to escape was through illicit border crossings. One of the most common destinations was Turkey, with documents issued between 1945 and 1948 by the Secret police services revealing an impressive number of such cases. Keywords: Illegal border crossings, escape, communism, Romania, Turkey. "


1985 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID H. KAMENS

This article argues that the nation-building process in the post-World War II era often results in changes in the definitions of adolescence and in the status of youth. This happens because both nation building and economic development have become the responsibilities of modern states. Using the work of John Meyer and his students (1978, 1979), I argue that these state-sponsored activities are guided by institutional “recipes” for development that are embodied in world system ideology. A key component of this ideology is the idea that rational action results from the activities of appropriately socialized individuals. As a result, harnessing the motivation of individuals to collective goals becomes a central concern of modern states. Efforts to do so have produced a number of institutional forms that have diffused rapidly throughout the periphery, for example, educational expansion. The adoption of other institutional devices to link individuals to the state depends on the internal characteristics of national societies. We focus on one such process and develop an index to measure it: the political incorporation of youth in the state.


Author(s):  
Taef El-Azhari

This chapter analyse the status of eunuchs in Islam, compared to other civilizations. One monitor the different types of eunuchs and their evolution from serving in the harem section under early Abbasids to become intrusted with intelligence, insignia among other vital posts. The significant period of caliph al-Amin d. 813, where one see his love affairs with eunuchs and public perception to such behaviour. One do examine how third gendered eunuchs became army commanders, dominating the political affairs of the empire in early 10th cntury. That is in full collaboration with royal mothers, concubines, among other courtiers. How legendary Mu’nis al-Khadim reinstated a caliph, and toppled another for his own interests, although he has no biological future. Such domination by eunuchs, made them occupy almost all top positions in the state. The result, was the declaration of the first sole eunuch as a governor of a Muslim state in 966; Kafur of Egypt. That took place with some resentment from some intellectuals, but chroniclers did not report much dismay to the phenomena.


2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-15
Author(s):  
ALEXANDER V. TSYURUMOV ◽  
◽  
ANDREY A. KURAPOV ◽  

The article is devoted to the study of one of the most important problems of modern historical science - the history of the formation of the Russian multinational state. Special attention is paid to the comparative analysis of the state and political statuses of the national autonomies of Russia - the Kalmyk Khanate and the Hetman's Ukraine. The statehood of the Kalmyk nomads arose after their entry into the Russian state in the first half of the 17th century. It is shown that the nature of the Russian-Kalmyk relations during this period makes it possible to define them as a protectorate of Russia over the Kalmyk uluses. The article examines the formation of the Russian-Kalmyk interaction, the evolution of the status, territorial framework and geopolitical position of the Kalmyk Khanate. At the beginning of the second quarter of the 18th century. After the Kazakhs of the Younger Zhuz migrated to Emba, the Kalmyk lands partially lost their border status and began to increasingly resemble the inner territory of the Russian Empire. A gradual transformation of political autonomy into administrative one begins. The article describes the main features of the autonomy of the Kalmyk Khanate in the period of the 17th - early 18th centuries: the preservation of the traditional administrative structure, the concentration of administrative, judicial, legislative and fiscal power in the hands of the secular elite, the inheritance of the supreme power in the Torgout dynasty. The paper determines that the new geopolitical status of the Kalmyk Khanate after the second quarter of the 17th century also changed the state policy in relation to it - the system of government of the khanate was unified, political independence was eliminated, the khanate was being integrated into the general imperial administrative and political system. The restrictive policy of Russia in relation to the Kalmyk Khanate, the government's interference in the hereditary question contributed to the beginning of the political fragmentation of the Khanate in the second half of the 20s - the first half of the 30s of the 18th century, political crises of the second half of the 18th century, and the crisis of 1771. The material presented in the article makes it possible to highlight general patterns in the political status of the Kalmyk Khanate and Ukraine in the 17-18th centuries.


2008 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samer Alatout

Three elements dominated scholarship on Israeli water politics and policymaking in the 1950s: (1) the state is often taken to be a fully established actor since its inception in 1948; (2) Israeli water policymaking was dominated by geopolitical and regional concerns over security and access to shared water resources; (3) water was, and continues to be, a scarce resource. This article argues that these elements result in the depoliticization of Israeli water policies and offers three counterarguments. First, the totality of any state is an ever-illusive construct. Second, Israeli water politics had an internal dimension that has to be investigated in its own right. Third, scarcity did not acquire the status of a "fact" until the mid-1950s. In fact, the struggle over the notions of water abundance and scarcity was an essential part of working through the political conflicts over the meaning of Jewish subjectivity, the boundaries of the state, and its right to intervene in civil society.


Asian Survey ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine Adeney

Abstract After the defeat of the Taliban, Afghanistan entered a period of constitutional flux. The 2004 Constitution rejected formal ethnic representation in state institutions. This Constitution, therefore, provides no defense against perceived or actual domination of the state by any one particular ethnic community. This could lead to increased ethnic resentment and conflicts.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document