scholarly journals The Puzzle of Abu Ghraib: Are Democratic Institutions a Palliative or Panacea?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Davenport ◽  
Will H. Moore ◽  
David Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
The State ◽  
Abu Ghraib ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Global Evidence

The events of Abu Ghraib exposed politicians, journalists, military and law enforcement personnel, NGOs, activists and ordinary citizens to the potential brutality of state repression. Many were left stunned that the agents of a liberal democracy would perpetrate such horrific acts against individuals in the state's control. Such shock makes sense if one believes that liberal democratic institutions constrain leaders from acting on the utilitarian incentive to employ torture during interrogations. While such a belief is apparently widespread, is it consistent with the recent historical record? Extant theories of repression and global evidence about torture suggest that it is not. We distinguish among three mechanisms that might constrain the use of torture in liberal democracies: voice, veto, and freedom of expression. We then argue that voice is unlikely to have a strong effect when the state is faced with violent dissent, and that the effect of veto and freedom of expression will be substantially reduced when the state is faced with a violent challenge. To test our hypotheses we use data from 146 countries covering the years 1980-1999 and investigate the extent to which voice, veto, or freedom of expression inhibit countries' use of torture both in times of quiescence and in times when dissidents challenge the state with violence. We find that rather than being aberrant, state-sponsored torture like that in Abu Ghraib is perfectly consistent with both theory and previous experience. More specifically, democratic institutions reduce the probability that a state uses torture in only limited circumstances.

Liberal-Democratic Torture

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-34
Author(s):  
William L. d'Ambruoso
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Standard Definition ◽  
Norm Violations ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Pattern Of Recurrence

This chapter gives a primer on liberal-democratic torture. A brief summary of the historical record shows that liberal democracies have repeatedly engaged in “stealth” coercive interrogation, which the chapter argues usually qualifies as torture by the UN Convention against Torture’s standard definition. What can explain the pattern of recurrence that emerges? Previous work is a useful starting point but leaves important questions unanswered. Lack of monitoring can invite norm violations, but torture is not always hidden. Racism and anger make states and individuals more likely to torture, but they do not tell us why torture often occurs in conjunction with demands for intelligence. Realist and rational choice arguments help to explain the frequent connection between torture and intelligence needs, but they fail to address critical lurking puzzles: Why do people believe torture works? And how do torturers justify these norm-breaking deeds to themselves and others?

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.

Fear the State: Repression and the Risks of Resistance in the Middle East

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah L. Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
The State ◽  
Complete Analysis ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Citizen Activism ◽  
Citizen Empowerment ◽  
State Responses

In the authoritarian state system that characterizes Kuwait, Jordan and Egypt, digital citizen activism has been met with increasingly stiff penalties. Egypt has more than 40,000 people in jail for political crimes. Kuwait has revoked the citizenship of individuals who have overtly challenged the state. And Jordan has had a sharp down turn in freedom of expression and civil liberties. In Jordan, new election rules have disempowered Islamist political parties. In all three of these countries, states are fighting to secure increasingly volatile public spheres. But can security and stability be achieved through repression. As so many political thinkers have stressed, states that use violence to maintain legitimacy show signs of increased fragility. This chapter will explore state responses to citizen empowerment in Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait in order to add a more complete analysis of the costs of citizen resistance, both to individuals and the state.

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 A theoretical exposition of State Capture as a means of state formation: The case of South Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petrus Croucamp
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Research Result ◽  
The State ◽  
Fragile States ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
State Capture ◽  
Political Economies

This theoretical exposition aims to add to existing theory on state design and the durability of the liberal democratic experiment. This paper is written on the case of South Africa and the rise of contending regime narratives on the interaction between the state and the economy. The notion of the state being ‘captured’ may well be a nomenclature typical of a great number of states in developing political economies. While the scholarly analysis of weak or fragile states is, to a significant extent, embedded in South African political theory, the notion of a captured state is often conflated with the conceptual confines of the corrupt or criminalized state. The research result – or theoretical contribution this article makes – is to substantiate the postulation that state capture as a feature of state formation also reflects the emergence of a contending or alternative regime preference with a distinct moral justification supplementing liberal democratic experiments. Experimental liberal democracies are more prone to such constitutional or regime challenges. While systemic patronage is a regime preference, which often co-exists with liberal regime imperatives within the constitutional domain of liberal regimes, this paper reviews the state capture as the manifestation of sectarian interests in the formal economy encroaching on the domain of the constitutional state to gain a competitive advantage within the market/economy.

The Russian nationalist movement at low ebb

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Verkhovsky
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Subsequent Increase ◽  
Nationalist Movement

This chapter examines changes in the Russian nationalist movement from Russia’s annexation of Crimea until the State Duma elections in September 2016. Since 2014, the nationalist movement has been split over which side to support in the war in Ukraine. Then, with the subsequent increase in state repression of ultra-rightists, the movement lapsed into total decline. The chapter traces activities in various sectors of Russian nationalism, discussing the separate trajectories of the pro-Kremlin and oppositional nationalists, as well as the latter group’s further subdivision into groups that support or oppose the ‘Novorossiia programme’. Attention is paid to the complex relationship and interaction between the various groups of nationalists, as well as to their interaction with the powers-that-be and with the liberal opposition.

When the State Speaks, What Should It Say?

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Brettschneider
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
The State ◽  
Hate Groups ◽  
New Approach ◽  
State Action ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Theory Of Value ◽  
The Right ◽  
Equal Citizenship ◽  
The Ideal

How should a liberal democracy respond to hate groups and others that oppose the ideal of free and equal citizenship? The democratic state faces the hard choice of either protecting the rights of hate groups and allowing their views to spread, or banning their views and violating citizens' rights to freedoms of expression, association, and religion. Avoiding the familiar yet problematic responses to these issues, this book proposes a new approach called value democracy. The theory of value democracy argues that the state should protect the right to express illiberal beliefs, but the state should also engage in democratic persuasion when it speaks through its various expressive capacities: publicly criticizing, and giving reasons to reject, hate-based or other discriminatory viewpoints. Distinguishing between two kinds of state action—expressive and coercive—the book contends that public criticism of viewpoints advocating discrimination based on race, gender, or sexual orientation should be pursued through the state's expressive capacities as speaker, educator, and spender. When the state uses its expressive capacities to promote the values of free and equal citizenship, it engages in democratic persuasion. By using democratic persuasion, the state can both respect rights and counter hateful or discriminatory viewpoints. The book extends this analysis from freedom of expression to the freedoms of religion and association, and shows that value democracy can uphold the protection of these freedoms while promoting equality for all citizens.

Confucian Perfectionism

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Chan
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Liberal Conception ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Conception Of The Good ◽  
The Right

Since the very beginning, Confucianism has been troubled by a serious gap between its political ideals and the reality of societal circumstances. Contemporary Confucians must develop a viable method of governance that can retain the spirit of the Confucian ideal while tackling problems arising from nonideal modern situations. The best way to meet this challenge, this book argues, is to adopt liberal democratic institutions that are shaped by the Confucian conception of the good rather than the liberal conception of the right. The book examines and reconstructs both Confucian political thought and liberal democratic institutions, blending them to form a new Confucian political philosophy. The book decouples liberal democratic institutions from their popular liberal philosophical foundations in fundamental moral rights, such as popular sovereignty, political equality, and individual sovereignty. Instead, it grounds them on Confucian principles and redefines their roles and functions, thus mixing Confucianism with liberal democratic institutions in a way that strengthens both. The book then explores the implications of this new yet traditional political philosophy for fundamental issues in modern politics, including authority, democracy, human rights, civil liberties, and social justice. The book critically reconfigures the Confucian political philosophy of the classical period for the contemporary era.

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.

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