scholarly journals Dynamics of Defiance: Government Power and Rural Resistance in the Arkansas Ozarks

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Blake Perkins
Keyword(s):  
Government Power ◽  
Arkansas Ozarks

Systematic Government Access to Private-Sector Data in Israel

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omer Tene
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
National Security ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Competing Interests ◽  
Government Power ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
The One ◽  
Sector Data

Israel is a democracy committed to the protection of human rights while at the same time trying to contain uniquely difficult national security concerns. One area where this tension is manifest is government access to communications data. On the one hand, subscriber privacy is a constitutional right protected by legislation and Supreme Court jurisprudence; on the other hand, communications data are a powerful tool in the hands of national security and law enforcement agencies. This chapter examines Israel’s attempt to balance these competing interests by empowering national security agencies while at the same time creating mechanisms of accountability. In particular, Israel utilizes the special independent status of the attorney general as a check on government power.

Government Discourses on Entrepreneurship: Issues of Legitimization, Subjugation, and Power

2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lew Perren ◽  
Peter L. Jennings
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Government Power ◽  
The World ◽  
New Business ◽  
Government Involvement ◽  
Market Driven ◽  
Government Websites ◽  
The Impact

The belief in market–driven ideology and the assumption that new business ventures create jobs and foster innovation has embedded entrepreneurship into political discourse. Academics have analyzed government policies on entrepreneurship, but they have tended to share the same underlying beliefs in the function of entrepreneurs within the economic machine. This article explores selected dimensions of the impact of those beliefs by using critical discourse analysis to show how government websites around the world portray entrepreneurs and their role in society. Discourses of government power and self–legitimization are revealed that manifest themselves in a colonizing discourse of entrepreneurial subjugation. The article concludes by challenging government rhetoric on entrepreneurship and questioning the motives underpinning the agenda of government involvement in supporting entrepreneurs.

Transition and the Pitfalls of Nondemocratic Institutions: A review of Constitutionality in Ethiopia

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-87
Author(s):  
Tadesse Melaku
Keyword(s):  
Case Analysis ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Constitutional Review ◽  
The Past ◽  
Government Power ◽  
Review Mechanism ◽  
And Control ◽  
Regional Elections ◽  
Do So

Ethiopia has undertaken important political reforms after the fall of authoritarianism in 2018. This article examines the performance of Ethiopia’s constitutional review mechanism amid the ongoing political and institutional reforms in the country. The study focuses on the process and merit of the constitutional ruling to delay the 2020 national and regional elections because of the coronavirus pandemic, thereby extending the government’s tenure. It further unravels the challenges posed by nondemocratic institutions of the past regime in navigating the transition. In doing so, this study draws on legal, documentary and case analysis, and a literature review. While the mandate extension comes as no surprise, the reasoning of the decision to do so was disappointing for many, dashing the hope and sense of a constitutional moment that accompanied the highly publicised constitutional hearing process in June 2020. The judgment reveals an endemic deficiency of the institutional system. Thus, it is imperative for Ethiopia to establish an independent constitutional umpire to check and control the exercise of government power and support the transition to multiparty democratic governance in the country.

Economic Diversification, Homogeneity of Interests, and the Impartiality of Government

2021 ◽  
pp. 377-398
Author(s):  
Petrus Olander
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Economic Diversification ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Government Institutions ◽  
Competing Interests ◽  
Sectoral Structure ◽  
Government Power

Can economic diversification constrain elites from shaping government institutions to their own advantage? This chapter reviews scholarly work that suggests it can. Elites frequently use government institutions to cement their position and enrich themselves at the expense of others, but to overcome opposition to their own advancement they must form coalitions. The ability to form coalitions is conditioned by the compatibility of underlying interests; the more diverse the economy, the less cohesive the underlying interests are, making it harder for the elites to form collusive coalitions. This chapter outlines political theory and recent research on the role played by diverse and competing interests in shaping the exercise of government power, democratization, and institutional reform. Considering the sectoral structure of the economy can help us better understand ongoing economic and political processes such as reconcentration of economic activities, the position of transient labor, and state-led efforts for economic diversification.

Press Performance, Human Rights, and Private Power as a Threat

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Edwin Baker
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Press Freedom ◽  
Magic Bullet ◽  
Market Failures ◽  
Free Press ◽  
Government Power ◽  
The Press ◽  
Private Power

The essay concerns the manner private power threatens the proper democratic role of the press or mass media. But first, Part I examines two preliminary conceptual matters involved in locating this discussion in the context of a conference on private power as a threat to human rights: 1) the relation of human rights to private power in general. This relation is complicated due to fact that human rights can themselves be seen as the assertion of private power against government or against collective power while, depending on how conceptualized, human rights can be improperly threatened by private power even while private power operates in a generally lawful manner; 2) involves the relation of press freedom and human rights. Here I argue that human rights are ill-conceived if offered as embodying any particular right in respect to the press—more specifically, I argue that a free press is not a human right—but argue instead that an ideal media order that is embodied in a broad conception of free press provides the soil in which human rights can flourish and the armor that offers them protection. Both government power and private power are necessary for and constitute threats to these supportive roles of a free press.Political-legal theory—or in constitutional democracies, possibly constitutional theory—should offer some guide to how the tightrope between government as threat and government as source of protection against private threats ought to be walked. That is, the goal is to find both proper limits on government power and proper empowerment of government to respond to private threats. Part II examines the variety of private threats to the proper role of the press. It focuses on two forms of threats: first, market failures that can be expected in relatively normal functioning of the market; second, problems related to the purposeful use of concentrated economic power. Responsive policies are multiple—no magic bullet but varying different governmental (as well as private) responses are appropriate. However, Part III illustrates this point by considering only two types of governmental policies, both of which I have recently been involved in advocating: first, government promotion of dispersal of concentrated power by means of ownership rules and policies; second, tax subsidies in the form of tax credits for a significant portion of journalists salaries as a means to correct for underproduction of journalism on theory that this journalism generally produces significant positive externalities.

scholarly journals TraceTogether: Pandemic Response, Democracy, and Technology

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hallam Stevens ◽  
Monamie Bhadra Haines
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Government Power ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
Pandemic Response ◽  
And Control

Abstract On 20 March 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Singapore government released a new app called TraceTogether. Developed by the Ministry of Health, SG United, and GovTech Singapore, the app uses the Bluetooth capability of smartphones to store information about other smartphones that have come into close proximity with your own. These data facilitate the government’s process of “contact tracing” through which they track those who have potentially come into contact with the virus and place them in quarantine. This essay attempts to understand what kinds of citizens and civic behavior might be brought into being by this technology. By examining the workings and affordances of the TraceTogether app in detail, the authors argue that its peer-to-peer and open-source technology features mobilize the rhetorics and ideals of citizens science and democratic participation. However, by deploying these within a context that centralizes data, the app turns ideals born of dissent and protest on their head, using them to build trust not within a community but rather in government power and control. Rather than building social trust, TraceTogether becomes a technological substitute for it. The significant public support for TraceTogether shows both the possibilities and limitations of citizen science in less liberal political contexts and circumstances.

scholarly journals Furtive Encryption: Power, Trust, and the Constitutional Cost of Collective Surveillance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Vagle
Keyword(s):  
Civil Liberties ◽  
The United States ◽  
Search And Seizure ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Electronic Communications ◽  
Government Power ◽  
Surveillance Programs ◽  
Power Trust ◽  
Government Surveillance ◽  
The Right

Recent revelations of heretofore secret U.S. government surveillance programs have sparked national conversations about their constitutionality and the delicate balance between security and civil liberties in a constitutional democracy. Among the revealed policies asserted by the National Security Agency (NSA) is a provision found in the “minimization procedures” required under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. This provision allows the NSA to collect and keep indefinitely any encrypted information collected from domestic communications — including the communications of U.S. citizens. That is, according to the U.S. government, the mere fact that a U.S. citizen has encrypted her electronic communications is enough to give the NSA the right to store that data until it is able to decrypt or decode it.Through this provision, the NSA is automatically treating all electronic communications from U.S. citizens that are hidden or obscured through encryption — for whatever reason — as suspicious, a direct descendant of the “nothing-to-hide” family of privacy minimization arguments. The ubiquity of electronic communication in the United States and elsewhere has led to the widespread use of encryption, the vast majority of it for innocuous purposes. This Article argues that the mere encryption by individuals of their electronic communications is not alone a basis for individualized suspicion. Moreover, this Article asserts that the NSA’s policy amounts to a suspicionless search and seizure. This program is therefore in direct conflict with the fundamental principles underlying the Fourth Amendment, specifically the protection of individuals from unwarranted government power and the establishment of the reciprocal trust between citizen and government that is necessary for a healthy democracy.

scholarly journals The Left and the Church in Greece: The ambiguity of political and religious domain relationships

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 103-134
Author(s):  
Niki Papageorgiou
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Government Power ◽  
Full Independence ◽  
Leftist Party ◽  
New Policies ◽  
One Year ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

The occupation of government power by a leftist party in Greece (in January 2015) has formed a new political landscape and given rise to new political expectations after a long period of administration by the so-called system parties. The left-wing party, SYRIZA, was voted by Greek citizens as a new political force that could bring new policies, as it had the ambition to solve the country’s economic problems, bring social justice and tackle the severe humanitarian crisis caused by the recent long economic crisis. Regarding the religious field, the fixed aim of leftist parties was the separation between the State and the Church, which would lead to the full independence of the State from any religious or ecclesiastical influence, as well as the seizure of church assets by the State, the obligation for the clergy’s payroll to be covered by the Church, and similar demands regarding many other issues that shape the relationship between the State and the Church in Greece. This paper investigates especially the relationship between SYRIZA and the Church of Greece during the one-year period of the left-wing government, through the official discourse and political practices of the governing leftist party. For this purpose, the left-wing government’s political practices and stance towards the “religious issue,” as they are expressed by the party’s official press medium, the Avgi newspaper, are analyzed.

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