scholarly journals An analysis on the variations of the concept of power in the political and social environment

Author(s):  
Ionathan Junges ◽  
Tiago Anderson Brutti ◽  
Everton da Silveira ◽  
Adriana da Silva Silveira ◽  
Claudio Everaldo dos Santos

The concept of power acquires different meanings according to the dimension, the historical cut and the circumstances that are being analyzed. Power has been characterized as the base of state domination over civil society and individuals. However, the concept of power can not be reduced to a univocal sense, because it also occurs in interpersonal relationships and social micro-structures. This article reviews the literature on the subject from the works of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Arendt, Foucault, Bobbio and Bauman, highlighting the various configurations and manifestations of power, mitigating its centralization at the state instance and extending to other dimensions of society.

Author(s):  
Serhii O. Komnatnyi ◽  
Oleg S. Sheremet ◽  
Viacheslav E. Suslykov ◽  
Kateryna S. Lisova ◽  
Stepan D. Svorak

The article deals with the mechanism of impact of sociopsychological phenomena such as the national character and the political mentality in the construction and functioning of civil society. It aims to show the impact of climate, religion, and the perception of happiness on the state of civil society through details of a national nature. The main research method is to compare data from global research on the state of civil society with data from climatic conditions, dominant religions, and happiness indices. The article proves coincidently that these factors are reflected in such essential characteristics of civil society as "openness" and "closed-mindedness". The interaction between the national character and the construction of civil society has two stages. It is concluded that the results obtained are important to evaluate the prospects for the construction and development of civil society in different countries and regions of the world. Further research in this direction involves the study of other aspects of the impact of national character and political mindset on the functioning of civil society.


2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peadar Kirby

This article develops a theoretical framework to consider the symbiotic relationship between civil society, social movements and the Irish state. Civil society, largely through social movements, laid the foundations for an independent Irish state in the half-century before independence. Following independence, the nature of the civil society–state relationship changed; civil society became much more dependent on the state. The article empirically traces the nature of society's relationship to the state since the 1920s, and examines the nature of the political system and its major political party, Fianna Fáil, the structure of the economy, and the dominance of particular understandings of the role of civil society and the nature of society itself. The period since the advent of social partnership in 1987 is examined; this period marks a new attempt by the state to co-opt organised civil society making it subservient to its project of the imposition on society of the requirements of global corporate profit-making. The more forceful implementation of a global free-market project by the Irish state since the 1980s, and the co-option of organised civil society into this project, has left huge space for an alternative to emerge, the potential of which was indicated by the success of the ‘No’ campaign in the 2008 Lisbon referendum campaign.


2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 560-585
Author(s):  
Sinja Graf

This essay theorizes how the enforcement of universal norms contributes to the solidification of sovereign rule. It does so by analyzing John Locke’s argument for the founding of the commonwealth as it emerges from his notion of universal crime in the Second Treatise of Government. Previous studies of punishment in the state of nature have not accounted for Locke’s notion of universal crime which pivots on the role of mankind as the subject of natural law. I argue that the dilemmas specific to enforcing the natural law against “trespasses against the whole species” drive the founding of sovereign government. Reconstructing Locke’s argument on private property in light of universal criminality, the essay shows how the introduction of money in the state of nature destabilizes the normative relationship between the self and humanity. Accordingly, the failures of enforcing the natural law require the partitioning of mankind into separate peoples under distinct sovereign governments. This analysis theorizes the creation of sovereign rule as part of the political productivity of Locke’s notion of universal crime and reflects on an explicitly political, rather than normative, theory of “humanity.”


2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 41-53
Author(s):  
Dudley Knowles

Hegel's account of freedom is complex and difficult. It integrates a doctrine of free agency, a theory of social freedom, and a self-determining theodicy of Spirit. To achieve full understanding, if full understanding is possible, the student must both disentangle and articulate the components, and then fit together the separate pieces into an intelligible whole. And what is true of the whole is true of the parts; each element is in turn complex and controversial.In this paper, I want to investigate one very small aspect of this picture — the political phenomenology of the citizen of Hegel's rational state. Whether we are delineating the contours of free agency or re-telling Hegel's story about the modes of freedom constitutive of the institutions of the modern state, sooner or later we shall have to interpret Hegel's description of the self-consciousness of the typical citizen. We shall have to give some account of what citizens take to be their political standing, and show how both this standing and the citizens' understanding of it contribute to freedom.This should not be a controversial claim. To paraphrase portions of the famous statement at PR §260: The state is the actuality of concrete freedom. Members of families integrated into civil society knowingly and willingly acknowledge their citizenship and actively pursue the ends of the state. They do not live as private persons merely; in understanding, endorsing and acting out their ethical status as citizens they achieve such subjective fulfilment as isnecessaryfor them to be truly free.


2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandro Rogari

The book delineates the emergence of a unitary state from the bedrock of a nation formed over centuries. It retraces the major advances in the integration between the state and civil society achieved in the first fifty years after unification, and the disastrous consequences wrought by the First World War and by Fascism. It underscores the way in which the post-war democratic revival rewound the virtuous process of construction of a state capable of expressing the Italian "plural nation". Despite this, it also stresses the way in which the ethical deterioration and the corruption of the political and administrative class that came to a head during the last twenty years of the twentieth century have again brought to the fore the problem of the construction of shared institutions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 1803-1805
Author(s):  
Dimitar Spaseski

The state has a central place in the political system. Through its structure and positioning the country has the strength to be a unifier of society against its overall division of the various classes and layers, ethnic, cultural and other groups. The legitimacy of all these processes is given by laws that determine the trajectory of all processes and the conditions under which the processes take place. The state, by adopting the highest legal acts such as: the constitution and the laws, achieves one of its most important functions, which is the management of society. The state directs society to promote development, but also punishes and sanction infringements and mistakes. Depending on who exercises power in the state, i.e. whether it belongs to the people, to an individual or to a powerful group, the political system can be determined. The political system in itself includes the overall state relations, the relations in society and the guidelines for the conduct of the policy of the state. A state in which the government is elected by the people through direct elections certainly fulfills the basic requirement for the development of a stable civil society. The political system is one of the sub-systems of the entire civil society. The political system is specific in that all the activities and relations of which it is composed are directed to the state and its functions. The structure of the political system is composed of political and legal norms, political knowledge, political culture and political structure. These elements confirm the strong relationship between the state, the law and the political system. Developed democratic societies can talk about a developed political system that abounds with political culture and democracy. It is the aspiration of our life. Investing in democratic societies we invest in the future of our children. If we separate the subjects of the political system, we will determine that the people are the basis of the political system. All competencies intertwine around people. Political systems are largely dependent not only on the political processes that take place in them every day, but also on the economic performance and the economic power of the states. Economic stagnation or regression in some countries often threatens democracy and its values. We often forget that we cannot speak of the existence of a functioning and well-organized democratic political system without its strong economic support. In conditions of globalization, it is necessary to pay special attention to international positions as the main factor of the political system, for the simple reason that the functions of the state in this process are increasingly narrowing.


Author(s):  
Svіtlana Shumovetska

The article highlights the importance of the communicative component of the professional culture of the border guard officer, which is based on the fact that the profession of the border guard envisages a wide range of interpersonal contacts at different levels, primarily collective concerted actions of the border guards to prevent or terminate illegal actions at border guard areas. The significance of dialogical methods, first of all heuristic conversations, presentations, method of «brainstorming», «round table» method, «business game» method, practical group and individual exercises, discussion of video recordings, for forming of professional culture of future border guards, are revealed in details. The peculiarities of the use of dialogical methods in the system of forming the professional culture of the future border guards, especially during the teaching the educational discipline «Ukrainian for Professional Purposes» at the National Academy of the State Border Guard Service named after Bohdan Khmelnitsky. The subject of special attention in the article is the disclosure of the peculiarities of cadets studying the rules of conversation with citizens who cross the state border at the checkpoints, the specifics of the official communication of the border guard inspector as an element of his professional culture. It has been determined that dialogical methods are important for shaping the professional culture of the future border guards and for optimizing their interpersonal relationships. They allow you to teach the cadets the rules, values and norms of the professional cultural interaction between classmates, the features of professional interaction at the checkpoints. The use of dialogue methods helps to form the skills of the cadets freely, communicatively justified to use linguistic means in different forms, spheres and genres of speech, that is, to provide an appropriate level of communicative component of their professional culture.


Teisė ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 119-135
Author(s):  
Elena Masnevaitė

Pastaraisiais metais Lietuvoje vis labiau diskutuojama dėl politinėms partijoms skiriamų valstybės biu­džeto lėšų, jų didinimo, kontroliavimo ar... areštavimo. Politinės partijos yra tas subjektas, kuris atlieka mediaciją tarp valstybės ir visuomenės. Valstybė yra tuo suinteresuota, todėl skiria joms tam tikrą finan­sinę paramą, tarsi laikydamasi romėniškos maksimos do ut des. Korupcinių grėsmių požiūriu valstybės biudžeto lėšos yra patikimiausias politinių partijų finansavimo šaltinis, tačiau čia taip pat slypi pavojus, jog politinės partijos praras savo prigimtį ir taps kvazivalstybinėmis organizacijomis, atitrūkusiomis nuo visuomenės grupių ir jų „natūralaus“ suinteresuotumo finansiškai paremti joms priimtinas politines pro­gramas ir jų įgyvendintojus. Turint tai omenyje, šiame straipsnyje analizuojami Lietuvos politinių partijų finansavimo iš valstybės biu­džeto būdai ir formos. Remiantis kitų Europos valstybių patirtimi, atskleidžiami diskutuotini pasirinkto valstybinio politinių partijų finansavimo modelio aspektai, neproporcingos viešosios paramos proble­matika. Be to, pateikiamos rekomendacijos tobulinti reglamentavimą, kurio inicijuotos pataisos „įstrigo“ parlamentinėje procedūroje arba po priėmimo netapo reikiamai veiksmingomis. In Lithuania the funds from the state budget assigned to political parties, its growth, control and... arrest have become a topic of increasing debate over the last years. Political parties are the subject who performs mediation between the state and the society. The state is interested in the abovementioned function and therefore it assigns particular financial support to political parties as if conferred with the Roman maxim do ut des. At the standpoint of threats of corruption the state budget allocations are the most reliable source of funding for political parties, however, there is a risk that political parties will be deprived of their nature and turn into quasi governmental organisations that have lost touch with groups of the society and their „genuine” interest to support beneficial political programmes and their executers financially. While taking this into account the article deals with the ways and forms of financing the political parties from the state budget. Arguable issues of the model chosen by the state to fund political parties and the proble­matics of non proportionate public support are revealed in the article with reference to the experience of Eu­ropean states. Moreover, recommendations how to improve legal regulation whose initiated amendments „stuck“ in the parliamentary procedure or did not become due effective after their adoption are provided.


2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (17) ◽  
pp. 1-49
Author(s):  
Cherie Zalaquett Aquea

The objective of this article is to trace the participation of women in the historical sequence of the main milestones of origin and evolutionary development of the Coordinadora Arauco Malleco from the category "body-space/time-territory", approached by the philosopher Francesca Gargallo The subject of study are the bodies located in a space-time that takes place in the surroundings of Lake Lleu Lleu, the axial geopolitical space where, from the Mapuche shamanic perspective, more than 30 years ago the spirit of thunder revived the power and violence of the ancient warriors of theweichan. Two generations of women exposed their bodies in the struggle to recover a liberated territory, transgressing cultural mandates and bearing the costs of confronting the State with prison and a fugitive life. However, the protagonism of women linked to the CAM has been silenced by traditional historiography as well as by the hegemonic masculine discourse of the Coordinadora itself. The becoming militant of women constitutes a complex plot that includes displacement of gender roles in the Mapuche culture and a transition from the political militancy of the weichafe to auxiliary spiritual roles of the machi such as tayilfe, curiche and dungumachife.


Author(s):  
Roberta Rice

Indigenous peoples have become important social and political actors in contemporary Latin America. The politicization of ethnic identities in the region has divided analysts into those who view it as a threat to democratic stability versus those who welcome it as an opportunity to improve the quality of democracy. Throughout much of Latin America’s history, Indigenous peoples’ demands have been oppressed, ignored, and silenced. Latin American states did not just exclude Indigenous peoples’ interests; they were built in opposition to or even against them. The shift to democracy in the 1980s presented Indigenous groups with a dilemma: to participate in elections and submit themselves to the rules of a largely alien political system that had long served as an instrument of their domination or seek a measure of representation through social movements while putting pressure on the political system from the outside. In a handful of countries, most notably Bolivia and Ecuador, Indigenous movements have successfully overcome this tension by forming their own political parties and contesting elections on their own terms. The emergence of Indigenous peoples’ movements and parties has opened up new spaces for collective action and transformed the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the state. Indigenous movements have reinvigorated Latin America’s democracies. The political exclusion of Indigenous peoples, especially in countries with substantial Indigenous populations, has undoubtedly contributed to the weakness of party systems and the lack of accountability, representation, and responsiveness of democracies in the region. In Bolivia, the election of the country’s first Indigenous president, Evo Morales (2006–present) of the Movement toward Socialism (MAS) party, has resulted in new forms of political participation that are, at least in part, inspired by Indigenous traditions. A principal consequence of the broadening of the democratic process is that Indigenous activists are no longer forced to choose between party politics and social movements. Instead, participatory mechanisms allow civil society actors and their organizations to increasingly become a part of the state. New forms of civil society participation such as Indigenous self-rule broaden and deepen democracy by making it more inclusive and government more responsive and representative. Indigenous political representation is democratizing democracy in the region by pushing the limits of representative democracy in some of the most challenging socio-economic and institutional environments.


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