scholarly journals The Dilemma of Democracy: Collusion and the State of Exception

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark McGovern
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Paradigm Case ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
The North ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
British State

In what sense might the authoritarian practices and suspension of legal norms as means to combat the supposed threat of “terrorism,” within and by contemporary western democratic states, be understood as a problem of and not for democracy? That question lies at the heart of this article. It will be explored through the theoretical frame offered in the work of Giorgio Agamben on the state of exception and the example of British state collusion in non-state violence in the North of Ireland. The North of Ireland provides a particularly illuminating case study to explore how the state of exception—the suspension of law and of legal norms and the exercise of arbitrary decision—has increasingly become a paradigm of contemporary governance. In so doing it brings into question not only the traditional conceptualization of the “democratic dilemma” of liberal democratic states “confronting terrorism” but also challenge dominant paradigms of transitional justice that generally fail to problematize the liberal democratic order. After outlining Agamben’s understanding of the state of exception the article will chart the development of “exceptional measures” and the creation of a permanent state of emergency in the North, before critically exploring the role of collusion as an aspect of counter-insurgency during the recent conflict. The paper will argue that the normalization of exceptional measures, combined with the need to delimit the explicitness of constitutional provision for the same, provided a context for the emergence of collusion as a paradigm case for the increasing replication of colonial practices into the core activity of the contemporary democratic state.

Environmentalists, Nuclear Waste, and the Politics of Passive Exclusion in Germany

2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Hunold
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Nuclear Waste ◽  
Environmental Movement ◽  
The State ◽  
Radioactive Wastes ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Ecological Democracy ◽  
Over Time

In this essay I examine the dispute between the German GreenParty and some of the country’s environmental nongovernmentalorganizations (NGOs) over the March 2001 renewal of rail shipmentsof highly radioactive wastes to Gorleben. My purpose indoing so is to test John Dryzek’s 1996 claim that environmentalistsought to beware of what they wish for concerning inclusion in theliberal democratic state. Inclusion on the wrong terms, arguesDryzek, may prove detrimental to the goals of greening and democratizingpublic policy because such inclusion may compromise thesurvival of a green public sphere that is vital to both. Prospects forecological democracy, understood in terms of strong ecologicalmodernization here, depend on historically conditioned relationshipsbetween the state and the environmental movement that fosterthe emergence and persistence over time of such a public sphere.

Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Criminal Law Bill

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus D. Dubber
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Criminal Code ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Penal State ◽  
State 1

Part III of Dual Penal State uses dual penal state analysis to generate a comparative-historical account of American penality. With comparative glimpses at Germany and, to a lesser extent, England, it distinguishes between two responses to the shared challenge of legitimating state penal power in a modern liberal democratic state: (1) the failure to appreciate the legitimatory challenge of modern state penal power in particular (United States) and of modern state power in general (England); and (2) the failure to address the legitimatory challenge of modern state penal power as an ongoing existential threat to the legitimacy of the state (Germany). Chapter 6 undertakes a critical analysis of Jefferson’s 1779 draft of a criminal law bill for the State of Virginia, concluding that it fell well short of a criminal code that reflected the ideals of the American legal-political project as spelled out, for instance, in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence of 1776.

The Crisis of Minorities in Ethnic States: The Case of Palestinian Citizens in Israel

1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naditn Rouhana ◽  
Asʿad Ghanem
Keyword(s):  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
International System ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Group Rights ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Ethnic Affiliation ◽  
Democratic State

The vast majority of states in the international system, democratic and non-democratic, are multi-ethnic (Gurr 1993). A liberal-democratic multi-ethnic state serves the collective needs of all its citizens regardless of their ethnic affiliation, and citizenship—legally recognized membership in the political structure called a state—is the single criterion for belonging to the state and for granting equal opportunity to all members of the system. Whether a multi-ethnic democratic state should provide group rights above and beyond individual legal equality is an ongoing debate (Gurr & Harff 1994).

scholarly journals When the State Speaks, What Should It Say? The Dilemmas of Freedom of Expression and Democratic Persuasion

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 1005-1019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Brettschneider
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
The State ◽  
Hate Groups ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
State Action ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Legitimate State ◽  
The One ◽  
Value Neutrality

Hate groups are often thought to reveal a paradox in liberal thinking. On the one hand, such groups challenge the very foundations of liberal thought, including core values of equality and freedom. On the other hand, these same values underlie the rights such as freedom of expression and association that protect hate groups. Thus a liberal democratic state that extends those protections to such groups in the name of value neutrality and freedom of expression may be thought to be undermining the values on which its legitimacy rests. In this paper, I suggest how this apparent paradox might be resolved. I argue that the state should protect the expression of illiberal beliefs, but that the state (along with its citizens) is also obligated to criticize publicly those beliefs. Distinguishing between two kinds of state action—coercive and expressive—I contend that such criticism should be pursued through the state's expressive capacities in its roles as speaker, educator, and spender. Here I extend the familiar idea that law, to be legitimate, must be widely publicized; I contend that a proper theory of the freedom of expression obligates the legitimate state to publicize the reasons that underlie rights, in particular reasons that appeal to the entitlement of each citizen subject to coercion to be treated as free and equal. My theory of freedom of expression is thus “expressive” in two senses: it protects the entitlement of citizens to express any political viewpoint, and it emphasizes a role for the state in explaining these free-speech protections and persuading its citizens of the value of the entitlements that underlie them.

‘Seeking a Legal Form’: Joyce Cary’s

2019 ◽  
pp. 54-84
Author(s):  
Katherine Isobel Baxter
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
Legal Form ◽  
The North ◽  
Legal Questions ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Indirect Rule ◽  
District Commissioner

Chapter Three examines a later incarnation of the District Commissioner in Joyce Cary’s Mr Johnson. The chapter shows how, despite the novel’s ironic critiques of the figure of the District Commissioner and the policy of indirect rule, Cary reinstates the heroized exceptionalism dramatized in earlier popular District Commissioner fiction. The chapter also explores the precarious position of Mr Johnson himself as educated southerner within the administration of the North. The chapter presents the novel in terms of its animation of legal questions and the state of exception that underpinned indirect rule. The chapter’s discussion is contextualised through reference to W. R. Crocker’s scathing memoir of colonial service, Nigeria: A Critique of British Colonial Administration (1936).

Standing “Aloof” from the State: Thoreau on Self-Government

2005 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Lane
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Specific Model ◽  
The State ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Democratic Experience ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Self

Long an icon of the American cultural tradition, Henry Thoreau has recently been welcomed into political theory as a theorist whose political writings go beyond the essays on resistance to government, and contain ideas deeply important for understanding the American contribution to democratic experience. I extend this new appreciation by showing how Thoreau presents a specific model of self-government, individual self-government, that occurs under the frequently irrelevant roof provided by liberal democratic state institutions. Thoreau's model of self-government imagines women and men who are largely free of, or indifferent to, the state; but fully involved in an everyday experience that is deeply political because it allocates values for the individual. Walden is, in this sense, less an escape from government than it is an escape to it. Thoreau spans the spectrum of political philosophy, from Socrates′ concern with justice in the individual, to Nietzsche's model of the self as a governable community, but Thoreau's work is unique, and distinctively American, in its model of a hard-headed individual self-government based upon an unsentimentalized natural world.

scholarly journals Fracturing the “Exception”: The Legal Sanctioning of Violent Interrogation Methods in Israel since 1987

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 818-838
Author(s):  
Irit Ballas
Keyword(s):  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Legal Regime ◽  
The Law

This article examines the legal constructs governing the use of violent interrogation methods in Israel since 1987. It explores the shift from a sweeping suspension of the prohibition on torture to a fractured legal regime in which the different elements of interrogation—the perpetrator, the victim, the time of the interrogation, and the space in which it takes place—are effectively excluded from the prohibition on torture by means of separate legal constructs. I show how each of these constructs creates a narrow, seemingly proportional exception to ordinary law. Together, the four types of exception facilitate the sanctioning of state violence. I use this case to analyze the available configurations of the state of exception, distinguishing them from each other by what they exclude from ordinary law. By showing how the proliferation of legal constructs produces an entire ecosystem of different exceptions, I point to the inherent link between the suspension of the law and its proliferation: both create legal categories that rationalize and legitimize state violence.

scholarly journals Kant’s foedus pacificum: Path to peace or prolegomena to neoliberalism and authoritarian corporatist globalization in contemporary liberal democratic states?

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Terence M. Garrett
Keyword(s):  
Public Policies ◽  
State Level ◽  
Structural Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
World Peace ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Society Of The Spectacle ◽  
Democratic State

Immanuel Kant’s language and concept of foedus pacificum (league of peace) combined with his call for a spirit of trade promised a prescription for world peace—“seeking to end all wars forever.” Nation-state level cooperation between liberal democracies has borne out Kant’s analysis to some effect. A consequence of the twin pursuits of foedus pacificum and spirit of trade has ironically resulted in the exploitation of society. Today’s international corporations adversely affect public policies ostensibly designed to protect citizens through an anti-democratic market-based ideology within the State—as seen through the lenses of Foucauldian post-structural theory and Debord’s society of the spectacle. The author proposes that globalist-corporatist control of governing apparatuses is now exposed for its authoritarian tendencies. This action could result in the ultimate destruction of the representative democratic state with the onset of neoliberalism and authoritarianism.

scholarly journals Er friheden taget ud af friskolen?

Politik ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tore Vincents Olsen
Keyword(s):  
Private Schools ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Academic Quality ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Pedagogical Freedom

The article investigates the last 15 years’ changes in the Danish law regarding private schools and asks to what extent the ideological and pedagogical freedom of the private schools have become more restricted. It traces the changes back to general concerns with integration of cultural and religious minorities and with the academic quality of schools, the latter in light of the international competitiveness of Danish society. e article nds that the freedom of the schools has become more limited and discusses whether the e orts to limit their freedom go beyond what is legitimate from a liberal democratic point of view. e article nds that it is legitimate for a liberal democratic state to presuppose ability for political autonomy among its citizens, but it is controversial for the state to demand that schools instill speci c values and loyalties into their students. 

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