scholarly journals Democracy and the Environment: How Political Freedom Is Linked with Environmental Sustainability

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5522
Author(s):  
Elias G. Carayannis ◽  
David F. J. Campbell ◽  
Evangelos Grigoroudis

This paper aims to explore a possible relationship between democracy and the environment, more specifically between freedom and environmental sustainability (environmental performance). The conceptual lenses of the Quadruple and Quintuple Innovation Helix Frameworks were used as they emphasize the importance of democracy and ecology (environmental sustainability) for knowledge and innovation and vice versa. The empirical model focused on the following research question: What is the correlation between political freedom and environmental performance? In essence, all countries in the world with a population of one million or more were included (a total of 156 countries), and the reference year was 2016. The empirical outcome of the correlation analysis was a positive Pearson correlation of about 0.56 (or 0.73 if we examine regional country groups), and, perhaps even more significantly, this correlation was significant at the 0.001 level (two-tailed). The correlation results lend themselves to the following interpretation: The higher the political freedom in a country, the more likely it is to have a higher environmental performance. Similarly, the lower the political freedom in a country, the more likely it is to have a lower environmental performance. As a preliminary proposition, therefore, democracy, environmental sustainability, and innovation-driven knowledge economies may have a highly symbiotic and synergistic dynamic and non-linear relationship.

Author(s):  
Еlena Аnatolievna Kranzeeva

The relevance of studying political consciousness and behavior is determined by the contradictions of sociopolitical processes in society. Political con-sciousness as a reflection of social groups’ attitude to the sociopolitical structure and development of the country, various political institutions in sociolo-gy has been studied quite widely. However, the au-thor notes that the political consciousness and be-havior of women has extremely rarely been the sub-ject of independent analysis. The purpose is to study and describe the types of political conscious-ness and behavior of women in modern Russia. A comparative analysis of age, education, settlement, socio-professional, reproductive characteristics in-fluence on women's political consciousness is car-ried out based on empirical data from the World Val-ues Survey (WVS). Using correlation analysis, the author identifies four analytically constructed types of political consciousness and behavior of women: efficient, activist, massificated, absentee types. In conclusion, it is shown that the political conscious-ness and behavior of women is an independent sub-ject of sociological analysis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Edwards ◽  
Leonidas Montes

We analyze Milton Friedman’s two visits to Chile, in March 1975 and November 1981. We rely on a number of sources, including Friedman’s archives, press archives in Chile and the rest of the world, interviews, and the papers and recollections of some of those who accompanied Friedman during his meeting with Pinochet. Although Friedman’s 1975 visit has been widely discussed, his 1981 visit has been largely neglected. However, this visit was particularly important as it preceded a severe currency and banking crisis, stemming from an overvalued fixed exchange rate. The crisis put at risk the influence of the “Chicago Boys” and the political and economic liberalization process. We analyze Friedman’s views regarding Chile’s pegged exchange rate strategy followed between 1979 and 1982, and his position on economic and political freedom.


Philosophy ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 10 (40) ◽  
pp. 394-408
Author(s):  
R. F. Alfred Hoernlé

A few months ago General Smuts, as Rector of St. Andrews University, addressed a stirring appeal to the youth of the world to dedicate itself to the defence of the threatened cause of Freedom. As a young man, General Smuts fought in the Anglo-Boer war for the political freedom of the South African Republics. As a member of the British War Cabinet during the Great War, he was prominent among the Allied leaders in what was declared to be a war to “make the world safe for democracy”. As a signatory of the Treaty of Versailles, he was the first outstanding statesman who, on the very morrow of the signing, had the courage to confess the inadequacies of that settlement, and to appeal to a war-torn world to lay aside the passions of bitter conflict and return to sanity and co-operation. In the League of Nations, which he, more than anyone else, helped to conceive and bring into being, he has sought to create the machinery for the peaceful co-operation between nations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Sofik Handoyo ◽  
Fury Khristianty Fitriyah

The study aims to reveal the correlation of governance attributes of the government with state’s environmental sustainability. The governance attributes of government in this study refer to the index of control of corruption, regulatory quality, and political stability. Meanwhile, the state’s environmental sustainability refers to the index of the state’s environmental performance. The period of investigation is the year of 2014 and involves 177 countries. Person correlation analysis was applied in this study to identify the degree of correlation between independent variables (control of corruption, regulatory quality, and political stability) dependent variable (environmental sustainability). Independent variables were measured using the World Governance Index (WGI) published by the World Bank. Environmental Performance Index (EPI) issued by The Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy (YCELP) was proxied for measuring environmental sustainability. The results indicate that the state’s control of corruption, the state’s regulatory quality and state’s political stability are positively associated with the state’s environmental sustainability. The correlation coefficients are 0.230 (=0.01), 0.193 (  =0.01), and 0.167 (  =0.01) respectively. Even though there is a positive correlation between a state’s governance attributes and state’s environmental sustainability, however, the degree of correlation is weak. It implies that the state’s governance is not a powerful instrument to predict the state’s environmental sustainability.


ALQALAM ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Budi Harsanto

The fall of Enron, Lehman Brothers and other major financial institution in the world make researchers conduct various studies about crisis. The research question in this study is, from Islamic economics and business standpoint, why the global financial crisis can happen repeatedly. The purpose is to contribute ideas regarding Islamic viewpoint linked with the global financial crisis. The methodology used is a theoretical-reflective to various article published in academic journals and other intellectual resources with relevant themes. There are lots of analyses on the causes of the crisis. For discussion purposes, the causes divide into two big parts namely ethics and systemic. Ethics contributed to the crisis by greed and moral hazard as a theme that almost always arises in the study of the global financial crisis. Systemic means that the crisis can only be overcome with a major restructuring of the system. Islamic perspective on these two aspect is diametrically different. At ethics side, there is exist direction to obtain blessing in economics and business activities. At systemic side, there is rule of halal and haram and a set of mechanism of economics system such as the concept of ownership that will early prevent the seeds of crisis. Keywords: Islamic economics and business, business ethics, financial crisis 


Professare ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Claudemir Aparecido Lopes

<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>


Author(s):  
Emma Simone

Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world: A Heideggerian Study explores Woolf’s treatment of the relationship between self and world from a phenomenological-existential perspective. This study presents a timely and compelling interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s textual treatment of the relationship between self and world from the perspective of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Drawing on Woolf’s novels, essays, reviews, letters, diary entries, short stories, and memoirs, the book explores the political and the ontological, as the individual’s connection to the world comes to be defined by an involvement and engagement that is always already situated within a particular physical, societal, and historical context. Emma Simone argues that at the heart of what it means to be an individual making his or her way in the world, the perspectives of Woolf and Heidegger are founded upon certain shared concerns, including the sustained critique of Cartesian dualism, particularly the resultant binary oppositions of subject and object, and self and Other; the understanding that the individual is a temporal being; an emphasis upon intersubjective relations insofar as Being-in-the-world is defined by Being-with-Others; and a consistent emphasis upon average everydayness as both determinative and representative of the individual’s relationship to and with the world.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 38-43
Author(s):  
MARIETA EPREMYAN ◽  

The article examines the epistemological roots of conservative ideology, development trends and further prospects in political reform not only in modern Russia, but also in other countries. The author focuses on the “world” and Russian conservatism. In the course of the study, the author illustrates what opportunities and limitations a conservative ideology can have in political reform not only in modern Russia, but also in the world. In conclusion, it is concluded that the prospect of a conservative trend in the world is wide enough. To avoid immigration and to control the development of technology in society, it is necessary to adhere to a conservative policy. Conservatism is a consolidating ideology. It is no coincidence that the author cites as an example the understanding of conservative ideology by the French due to the fact that Russia has its own vision of the ideology of conservatism. If we say that conservatism seeks to preserve something and respects tradition, we must bear in mind that traditions in different societies, which form some kind of moral imperatives, cannot be a single phenomenon due to different historical destinies and differing religious views. Considered from the point of view of religion, Muslim and Christian conservatism will be somewhat confrontational on some issues. The purpose of the work was to consider issues related to the role, evolution and prospects of conservative ideology in the political reform of modern countries. The author focuses on Russia and France. To achieve this goal, the method of in-depth interviews with experts on how they understand conservatism was chosen. Already today, conservatism is quite diverse. It is quite possible that in the future it will transform even more and acquire new reflections.


Author(s):  
Karen J. Alter

In 1989, when the Cold War ended, there were six permanent international courts. Today there are more than two dozen that have collectively issued over thirty-seven thousand binding legal rulings. This book charts the developments and trends in the creation and role of international courts, and explains how the delegation of authority to international judicial institutions influences global and domestic politics. The book presents an in-depth look at the scope and powers of international courts operating around the world. Focusing on dispute resolution, enforcement, administrative review, and constitutional review, the book argues that international courts alter politics by providing legal, symbolic, and leverage resources that shift the political balance in favor of domestic and international actors who prefer policies more consistent with international law objectives. International courts name violations of the law and perhaps specify remedies. The book explains how this limited power—the power to speak the law—translates into political influence, and it considers eighteen case studies, showing how international courts change state behavior. The case studies, spanning issue areas and regions of the world, collectively elucidate the political factors that often intervene to limit whether or not international courts are invoked and whether international judges dare to demand significant changes in state practices.


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