Haitian Sovereignty

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurent Dubois
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Haitian Revolution ◽  
Plantation System

“Haitian Sovereignty” explores three intertwined legacies of the Haitian Revolution on political thought and practice in the country: the largely hostile reaction to it outside the country, the formation of new political institutions and structures, and, most importantly, the creation of a new set of cultural, social, and economic structures that Jean Casimir has called the “counter-plantation” system. This chapter identifies both the main currents and critical counter-currents within each of these legacies, calling attention to the aspects of the latter legacies that seem to be the most valuable and worth comprehending and nourishing in constructing new Haitian futures.

“All would be equal in the effort”: Santo Domingo's “Italian Revolution”, Independence, and Haiti, 1809-1822

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Eller
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Santo Domingo ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The Haitian Revolution ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
Plantation System

AbstractThis article explores the colony of Santo Domingo just after it had passed from French back to Spanish hands in 1809. Although impoverished and at the very margins of the Caribbean plantation system, revolutionary winds were nonetheless buffeting the colony. Using the testimony of a failed 1810 conspiracy known as the “Italian Revolution”, the article explores the enduring inequalities present in Santo Domingo, the immediate influence of the Haiti to the west, and the beginnings of Latin American independence more generally. Whereas Spanish authorities and other Caribbean elites might have dismissed the colony as marginal to the political events, therefore, the conspiracy sheds light on its importance to subaltern travelers and migrants from neighboring islands. Finally, it shows the tremendous concrete and symbolic importance of the Haitian Revolution on the neighboring colony, complicating a historiography that often argues for conflict, and not interrelation, between the two sides of Hispaniola.

Radical Republicanism

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Wage Labour ◽  
Social Domination ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Radical Republicanism ◽  
Radical Transformation

Republicanism is a powerful resource for emancipatory struggles against domination. Its commitment to popular sovereignty subverts justifications of authority, locating power in the hands of the citizenry who hold the capacity to create, transform, and maintain their political institutions. Republicanism’s conception of freedom rejects social, political, and economic structures subordinating citizens to any uncontrolled power—from capitalism and wage labour to patriarchy and imperialism. It views any such domination as inimical to republican freedom. Moreover, it combines a revolutionary commitment to overturning despotic and tyrannical regimes with the creation of political and economic institutions that realize the sovereignty of all citizens, institutions that are resilient to threats of oligarchical control. This volume is dedicated to retrieving and developing this radical potential, challenging the more conventional moderate conceptions of republicanism. It brings together scholars at the forefront of tracing this radical heritage of the republican tradition, and developing arguments, texts, and practices into a critical and emancipatory body of political and social thought. The volume spans historical discussions of the English Levellers, French and Ottoman revolutionaries, and American abolitionists and trade unionists; explorations of the radical republican aspects of the thought of Machiavelli, Marx, and Rousseau; and theoretical examinations of social domination and popular constitutionalism. It will appeal to political theorists, historians of political thought, and political activists interested in how republicanism provides a robust and successful radical transformation to existing social and political orders.

The Black American Jacobins: Revolution, Radical Abolition, and the Transnational Turn

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 633-646 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Dahl
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Specific Model ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Racial Exclusion ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Haitian Revolution

While scholars of African American political thought have done a remarkable job centering focus on black thinkers, they still largely frame their endeavor in reference to the geo-political boundaries of the U.S. nation-state, thereby ignoring the transnational and diasporic dynamics of black politics. The consequence is that alternative traditions of thought in the Americas—e.g., Caribbean traditions—are cast as irrelevant to questions of racial exclusion in U.S. political thinking. I seek to correct nation-centric perspectives on U.S. political thought and development by demonstrating the utility of the “transnational turn.” Drawing on the framework developed in C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins, I trace how an influential cohort of abolitionists in the antebellum United States looked to the Haitian Revolution as a model for the overthrow of slavery. Engaging the writings and speeches of David Walker, James Theodore Holly, and Frederick Douglass, I then argue that radical abolitionists operated in the same ideological problem-space as Haitian revolutionaries and adopted a specific model of revolution as much indebted to Haitian political thought as Anglo-American models of anti-colonial revolt. By implication, racially egalitarian movements and moments in U.S. political development cannot be adequately understood with exclusive reference to national traditions of thought.

Fighting Corruption

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Arena
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Roman Republic ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
The Public ◽  
Republican Rome ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Late Roman

Corruption was seen as a major factor in the collapse of Republican Rome, as Valentina Arena’s subsequent essay “Fighting Corruption: Political Thought and Practice in the Late Roman Republic” argues. It was in reaction to this perception of the Republic’s political fortunes that an array of legislative and institutional measures were established and continually reformed to become more effective. What this chapter shows is that, as in Greece, the public sphere was distinct from the private sphere and, importantly, it was within this distinction that the foundations of anticorruption measures lay. Moreover, it is difficult to defend the existence of a major disjuncture between moralistic discourses and legal-political institutions designed to patrol the public/private divide: both were part of the same discourse and strategy to curb corruption and improve government.

scholarly journals Political Institutions and Coups in Dictatorships

2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402199716
Author(s):  
Nam Kyu Kim ◽  
Jun Koga Sudduth
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
The Creation

Does the creation of nominally democratic institutions help dictators stay in power by diminishing the risk of coups? We posit that the effectiveness of political institutions in deterring coups crucially depends on the types of plotters and their political goals. By providing a means to address the ruling coalition’s primary concerns about a dictator’s opportunism or incompetence, institutions reduce the necessity of reshuffling coups, in which the ruling coalition replaces an incumbent leader but keeps the regime intact. However, such institutions do not diminish the risk of regime-changing coups, because the plotters’ goals of overthrowing the entire regime and changing the group of ruling coalition are not achievable via activities within the institutions. Our empirical analysis provides strong empirical support for our expectations. Our findings highlight that the role of “democratic” institutions in deterring coups is rather limited as it only applies to less than 38% of coup attempts.

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