Conclusion: More Security, More Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 269-284
Author(s):  
Andrew W. Neal
Keyword(s):  
State Of Exception ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Security Practices ◽  
Parliamentary Politics

The conclusion reasserts that professional politicians are more active on security than ever before, and that although parliamentary politics is deeply unfashionable among critical scholars, it is precisely this unfashionableness that makes it so important in this context. If ‘security’ can increasingly be found in this most ‘normal’ of political arenas, then we cannot seriously maintain that security is inherently exceptional and anti-political. The chapter revisits the debate on security as a state of exception, arguing that if security is increasingly part of normal politics, and not a damaging exception to it, then we need to rethink our very understanding of security. The exclusions, prerogatives, taboos, boundaries, hierarchies and symbolic inequalities that elevated security above normal politics have been diluted by new security practices and problematisations. As these have proliferated, they have spilled into the normal political arena and the activities of politicians. The chapter demonstrates this argument by summarising the book’s story of UK security politics over four decades from the 1980s onwards, discussing issues of parliamentary marginalisation, influence, voice, and oversight. Finally, the chapter concludes that more security does not mean less politics, it means more.

scholarly journals Explaining the moderate platform of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood: Against the inclusion-moderation hypothesis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Hanlie Booysen
Keyword(s):  
Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
Target Audience ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Primary Target ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Primary Driver ◽  
Political Objective ◽  
Moderate Policy ◽  
Parliamentary Politics ◽  
Over Time

<p>Throughout its existence, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB) has consistently maintained a moderate policy on governance. The main aim of this study is to explain this moderation. Previous literature has usually explained moderation in similar movements by an “inclusion-moderation hypothesis”, which holds that moderation results when movements have the opportunity to participate in pluralist political processes. However, the SMB has been progressively excluded from the Syrian political arena since 1963. The inclusion-moderation hypothesis implies, as its converse, that exclusion leads to radicalisation. This study shows that contrary to this expectation, the SMB’s ultimate exclusion from the Syrian political arena in 1982 was in fact the primary driver of its moderate policy. The SMB also participated in parliamentary politics in its early history, and therefore has not moderated over time, as the inclusion-moderation hypothesis would require. Thus, the inclusion-moderation hypothesis does not work for this case, and this dissertation advances an alternate explanation for the SMB’s continued commitment to a moderate policy on governance.  This study’s central thesis is that the SMB’s moderate policy on governance can be explained by the Brotherhood’s primary target audience, that is to say, the political force which, in the SMB’s view, can deliver its political objective. As this definition implies, the target audience shifts over time, in accordance with changing circumstances. In 1980, the primary target audience comprised diverse actors in opposition to the al-Asad government: the Fighting Vanguard, the Syrian ulama, and the secularist opposition. In 2001, the audience was the Bashar al-Asad government. In 2004, it was the secularist opposition; and in 2012, it was the foreign sponsors of the secularist opposition.</p>

Combatting the Crisis

2018 ◽  
pp. 185-217
Author(s):  
Adrian May
Keyword(s):  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Sans Papiers ◽  
Modes Of Governance ◽  
Parliamentary Politics ◽  
Nicolas Sarkozy ◽  
New Millennium

This chapter charts the political responses of Lignes in the new millennium, as securitisation methods, crises and states of exception replaced consensual liberalism as the dominant modes of governance after 9/11. Rather than the review’s normal pessimistic stance, a reshuffled editorial board instead emphasised the need to reconstruct active, political agency to resist the governments of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy. An issue devoted to the militant Trotskyist David Rousset set the tone at the start of the new millennium, as Rousset’s experience in combatting concentration camps prompted the review to investigate the controversial use of migrant retention centres on French soil and theories of the State of Exception between Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. New routes to active political agency are then produced, firstly via Jacques Ranciere’s account of the eruption of new political voices and sans papiers activism. Lastly, Alain Badiou’s emphasis on extra-parliamentary politics the Idea of Communism is contrasted to Daniel Bensaïd’s stress on the need for a new, militant political party in the run-up to the 2012 presidential elections.

scholarly journals Explaining the moderate platform of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood: Against the inclusion-moderation hypothesis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Hanlie Booysen
Keyword(s):  
Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
Target Audience ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Primary Target ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Primary Driver ◽  
Political Objective ◽  
Moderate Policy ◽  
Parliamentary Politics ◽  
Over Time

<p>Throughout its existence, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB) has consistently maintained a moderate policy on governance. The main aim of this study is to explain this moderation. Previous literature has usually explained moderation in similar movements by an “inclusion-moderation hypothesis”, which holds that moderation results when movements have the opportunity to participate in pluralist political processes. However, the SMB has been progressively excluded from the Syrian political arena since 1963. The inclusion-moderation hypothesis implies, as its converse, that exclusion leads to radicalisation. This study shows that contrary to this expectation, the SMB’s ultimate exclusion from the Syrian political arena in 1982 was in fact the primary driver of its moderate policy. The SMB also participated in parliamentary politics in its early history, and therefore has not moderated over time, as the inclusion-moderation hypothesis would require. Thus, the inclusion-moderation hypothesis does not work for this case, and this dissertation advances an alternate explanation for the SMB’s continued commitment to a moderate policy on governance.  This study’s central thesis is that the SMB’s moderate policy on governance can be explained by the Brotherhood’s primary target audience, that is to say, the political force which, in the SMB’s view, can deliver its political objective. As this definition implies, the target audience shifts over time, in accordance with changing circumstances. In 1980, the primary target audience comprised diverse actors in opposition to the al-Asad government: the Fighting Vanguard, the Syrian ulama, and the secularist opposition. In 2001, the audience was the Bashar al-Asad government. In 2004, it was the secularist opposition; and in 2012, it was the foreign sponsors of the secularist opposition.</p>

Controlling the ‘Gorgon’ of state power in the state of exception: a reply to Professor Tushnet

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colm O’Cinneide
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
State Power ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Emergency Powers ◽  
Constitutional Culture ◽  
The Impact

Mark Tushnet’s paper is an interesting extension of his recent work on how constitutional democracies can control the use of emergency powers. His analysis is useful in drawing attention to the often-overlooked impact of political dynamics in times of emergency. However, Tushnet is too ready to accept that political processes will be able to control the grant and use of emergency powers. He also is too quick to draw a sharp dichotomy between effective political and ineffective legal processes. Political processes can be active and useful in reining in the excesses of emergency powers, but usually only if they play out against the backdrop of a vibrant constitutional culture where the potential for abuse of emergency powers is recognised. The impact of legal and supranational controls plays an important role in shaping this constitutional culture, in particular by ‘dampening’ down the abuse of emergency powers and limiting the scope of action available to the executive. Focusing upon the potential of political means alone to control the application of state power in emergency states of exception is to underestimate the capacity of wider constitutional dynamics to play a key role, even if the political arena may be where the ultimate battles are fought out.

PENSAMENTO POLÍTICO EM GIORGIO AGAMBEN

Professare ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Claudemir Aparecido Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Political Freedom ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Control ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social

<p class="resumoabstract">O professor Giorgio Agamben tem elaborado críticas à engenhosa estrutura política ocidental moderna. Avalia os mecanismos de controle estatal, nos quais os denomina ‘dispositivos’, cuja força está na imbricação às normas jurídico-teológicas com seus similares ritos e liturgias. Suas ocorrências e legitimidade preponderam no tecido social cuja organização sistêmica se põe quase como elemento natural e não cultural. O texto tem por objetivo explorar a concepção política de Agamben sobre a política contemporânea, especialmente considerando seu livro: ‘Estado de Exceção’, cuja investigação apresenta a possibilidade de atenuação dos direitos de cidadania e o enfraquecimento da prática da liberdade política e o processo de relação dos indivíduos no meio social através da redução das subjetividades ‘autênticas’. Analisamos ainda a transferência do mundo sacro elaborado pelos teólogos católicos presente na modernidade à política cuja democracia moderna faz do homem (sujeito) tornar-se objeto do poder político. Faz também, reflexão dos conceitos de subjetivação e dessubjetivação relacionando-os às implicações políticas do homem moderno. A pesquisa é bibliográfica com ênfase na análise dos conceitos elaborados por Agamben, especialmente quanto ao ‘dispositivo’. Conclui que o indivíduo ocidental, de modo geral, sofre o processo de dessubjetivação e está ‘nu’, indefeso e alienado politicamente. Ele precisa voltar-se ao processo de ‘profanação’ dos dispositivos para libertar-se das vinculações orientadoras que forçosamente o descaracteriza enquanto ser ativo e livre.</p><p class="resumoabstract"><strong>Palavras-chave</strong>: Política. Liberdade. Subjetivação.</p><h3>ABSTRACT</h3><p class="resumoabstract">Professor Giorgio Agamben has been criticizing the ingenious modern Western political structure. It evaluates the mechanisms of state control, in which it calls them 'devices', whose strength lies in the overlap with legal-theological norms with their similar rites and liturgies. Its occurrences and legitimacy preponderate in the social fabric whose systemic organization is almost as a natural and not a cultural element. The text aims to explore Agamben's political conception of contemporary politics, especially considering his book 'State of Exception', whose research presents the possibility of attenuating citizenship rights and weakening the practice of political freedom and the individuals in the social environment through the reduction of 'authentic' subjectivities. We also analyze the transfer of the sacred world elaborated by the Catholic theologians present in the modernity to the politics whose modern democracy makes of the man - subject - to become object of the political power. It also reflects on the concepts of subjectivation and desubjectivation, relating them to the political implications of modern man. The research is bibliographical with emphasis in the analysis of the concepts elaborated by Agamben, especially with regard to the 'device'. He concludes that the Western individual, in general, suffers the process of desubjectivation and is 'naked', defenseless and politically alienated. He must turn to the process of 'desecration' of devices to free himself from the guiding bindings that forcibly demeanes him while being active and free.</p><p class="resumoabstract"><strong>Keywords</strong>: Politics. Freedom. Subjectivity. </p><p> </p>

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