Fighting for Virtue

Author(s):  
Duncan McCargo

This book investigates how Thailand's judges were tasked by the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX) in 2006 with helping to solve the country's intractable political problems—and what happened next. Across the last decade of Rama IX's rule, the book examines the world of Thai judges: how they were recruited, trained, and promoted, and how they were socialized into a conservative world view that emphasized the proximity between the judiciary and the monarchy. The book delves into three pivotal freedom of expression cases that illuminate Thai legal and cultural understandings of sedition and treason, before examining the ways in which accusations of disloyalty made against controversial former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra came to occupy a central place in the political life of a deeply polarized nation. The book navigates the highly contentious role of the Constitutional Court as a key player in overseeing and regulating Thailand's political order before concluding with reflections on the significance of the Bhumibol era of “judicialization” in Thailand. In the end, under a new king, who appears far less reluctant to assert his own power and authority, the Thai courts may now assume somewhat less significance as a tool of the monarchical network.

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 51-65
Author(s):  
Paul R. DeHart ◽  

In Pagans & Christians in the City, Steven D. Smith argues that in contrast to ancient Rome, ancient Christianity, following Judaism, located the sacred outside the world, desacralizing the cosmos and everything in it—including the political order. It thereby introduced a political dualism and potentially contending allegiances. Although Smith’s argument is right so far as it goes, it underplays the role of Christianity’s immanent dimension in subverting the Roman empire and the sacral pattern of antiquity. This division of authority not only undermined the Roman empire and antique sacral political order more generally—it also subverts the modern state, which, in the work of Hobbes and Rousseau, sought to remarry what Western Christianity divorced.


Author(s):  
Namig MAMMADOV

This article examines and analyzes the history of the formation and development of the National Outlook Movement in Turkey, its ideology and social base and the main driving forces, as well as the main political parties and their activities. The article also analyzes the historical circumstances that influenced the formation and development of the movement, including the role of the movement's leader, prominent scientist and researcher, professor Najmeddin Erbakan, as well as the reasons for his entry into the political arena and its consequences. The role of N. Erbakan in the political life of Turkey was investigated and tried to be evaluated. It was noted that, the main ideology of the National Outlook parties is a free market economy without interest, the strengthening of production, the establishment of a just society in which basic human rights are protected, and so on.The first openly political Islamist political party in Turkish history was the National Order Party, formed on January 30, 1970. However, the party did not last long and was closed in 1971 by a decision of the Constitutional Court. Instead, party representatives formed the National Salvation Party in October 1972. This party, like all other political parties in Turkey, was closed after the 1980 coup. However, it became a partner of the government for the first time, and one of the most important decisions of this government was send of Turkish forces to Cyprus.With the permission of the National Security Council, the Welfare Party (WP) was formed in 1983 under the leadership of Ahmet Tekdal, representing the same direction. After the lifting of political bans, N. Erbakan was re-elected party leader. The 1990s marked a new stage in the development of the National Outlook movement. The Welfare Party's reputation began to rise. In the 1995 elections, the party won 21 percent of the vote. In 1996, N. Erbakan formed a coalition government with the True Path Party, led by Tansu Chiller. This government resigned as a result of the February 28 process, and the party was dissolved. The members of the party formed the Virtue Party. Disagreements between innovative and conservative groups within the party led to the formation of two political parties, the Justice and Development Party and the Felicity Party, after the party was dissolved in 2001.


Author(s):  
Anthony Trollope

‘Though a great many men and not a few women knew Ferdinand Lopez very well, none of them knew whence he had come.’ Despite his mysterious antecedents, Ferdinand Lopez aspires to join the ranks of British society. An unscrupulous financial speculator, he determines to marry into respectability and wealth, much against the wishes of his prospective father-in-law. One of the nineteenth century’s most memorable outsiders, Lopez’s story is set against that of the ultimate insider, Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium. Omnium reluctantly accepts the highest office of state; now, at last, he is ‘the greatest man in the greatest country in the world’. But his government is a fragile coalition and his wife’s enthusiastic assumption of the role of political hostess becomes a source of embarrassment. Their troubled relationship and that of Lopez and Emily Wharton is a conjunction that generates one of Trollope’s most complex and substantial novels. Part of the Palliser series, The Prime Minister’s tale of personal and political life in the 1870s has acquired a new topicality in the early twenty-first century.


Author(s):  
Nataliya A Sverdlova

The article is devoted to the problem of studying bilingualism. The object of study is the mechanism of acquiring a non-native language, considered in the context of the hermeneutic approach. For a deeper analysis of the process of acquiring a non-native language, the role of mental and metapsychic categories on the way to bilingual understanding of new knowledge about the world is considered. The activity of a person in the conditions of personal choice is a complex one, where the central place is given to consciousness. Understanding, as a function of consciousness, becomes a key issue in the interpretation of the reality where the bilingual is. The interpretation of all components of the “new” (other) culture and the world goes through language. The native language of the bilingual is associated through a particular set of “presetting” and “pre-understanding”. Gaining new experience in the conditions of conscious choice leads to the emergence of a double format of perception of the world, which does not contradict human nature, is a condition of completeness of the world view. The tasks of the researcher included the representation of linguistic personality in terms and concepts of hermeneutics; the definition of the basic mental processes that are characteristic of the formation of bilingual linguistic personality; the study of interference as a natural process and the result of the interpretation of the phenomena of reality. The article attempts to explain the role of consciousness and understanding in bilingual speech activity and to define the essence of interlanguage interference in the light of the applied approach. In interaction of conceptual and linguistic spheres of the system, appears for the interference systems. Due to irreversible changes in the structure of linguistic consciousness, interlingual interference becomes a natural process that can disrupt decoding under certain communication conditions.


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 ◽  
pp. 74-86
Author(s):  
Alexandra Arkhangelskaya

The history of the formation of South Africa as a single state is closely intertwined with events of international scale, which have accordingly influenced the definition and development of the main characteristics of the foreign policy of the emerging state. The Anglo-Boer wars and a number of other political and economic events led to the creation of the Union of South Africa under the protectorate of the British Empire in 1910. The political and economic evolution of the Union of South Africa has some specific features arising from specific historical conditions. The colonization of South Africa took place primarily due to the relocation of Dutch and English people who were mainly engaged in business activities (trade, mining, agriculture, etc.). Connected by many economic and financial threads with the elite of the countries from which the settlers left, the local elite began to develop production in the region at an accelerated pace. South Africa’s favorable climate and natural resources have made it a hub for foreign and local capital throughout the African continent. The geostrategic position is of particular importance for foreign policy in South Africa, which in many ways predetermined a great interest and was one of the fundamental factors of international involvement in the development of the region. The role of Jan Smuts, who served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 to 1924 and from 1939 to 1948, was particularly prominent in the implementation of the foreign and domestic policy of the Union of South Africa in the focus period of this study. The main purpose of this article is to study the process of forming the mechanisms of the foreign policy of the Union of South Africa and the development of its diplomatic network in the period from 1910 to 1948.


2019 ◽  
pp. 512-519
Author(s):  
Teymur Dzhalilov ◽  
Nikita Pivovarov

The published document is a part of the working record of The Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee on May 5, 1969. The employees of The Common Department of the CPSU Central Committee started writing such working records from the end of 1965. In contrast to the protocols, the working notes include speeches of the secretaries of the Central Committee, that allow to deeper analyze the reactions of the top party leadership, to understand their position regarding the political agenda. The peculiarity of the published document is that the Secretariat of the Central Committee did not deal with the most important foreign policy issues. It was the responsibility of the Politburo. However, it was at a meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee when Brezhnev raised the question of inviting G. Husák to Moscow. The latter replaced A. Dubček as the first Secretary of the Communist party of Czechoslovakia in April 1969. As follows from the document, Leonid Brezhnev tried to solve this issue at a meeting of the Politburo, but failed. However, even at the Secretariat of the Central Committee the Leonid Brezhnev’s initiative at the invitation of G. Husák was not supported. The published document reveals to us not only new facets in the mechanisms of decision-making in the CPSU Central Committee, the role of the Secretary General in this process, but also reflects the acute discussions within the Soviet government about the future of the world socialist systems.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019/2 ◽  
pp. 5-39
Author(s):  
Darius Baronas

ANNOTATION. This article is the first attempt of the biographic research of Grand Duchess Uliana Algirdienė of Lithuania (d. 17/03/1392), based on the critical analysis of primary sources. It is also aimed at pointing out the reflection of the role of women in the pagan Lithuanian society. The research was carried out by means of the analytical and comparative method of historical source analysis with a view to separate as distinctly as possible the information derived from contemporary sources from the images imposed by later historiographic tradition. The article questions the stereotypes related to Uliana’s great political power in Lithuania’s political life that are well-established in modern historiography and present-day cultural memory. With this an attempt is made to draw attention to the problematic nature of information derived from historical sources as well as to more distinctly define the frames imposed by the political culture of pagan Lithuania which clearly marked the boundaries for the political activities of women representing the ruling dynasty. This article for the most part dwells on the issues related to the coverage of Algirdas and Uliana’s marriage and the period of their married life up to Algirdas’ death in 1377. KEYWORDS: Uliana, Algirdas, Simeon, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Moscow, Tver, Rus’, women


2017 ◽  
pp. 126-169
Author(s):  
S.E. Tariverdieva

The article deals with the development of the coregency system of Augustus and Agrippa from 29 to 18 BC: from formal and actual disparity of the coregents to their formal equality with the dominance of the princeps auctoritas. Particular attention is paid to the earlier stages of this development and to the crisis of 23 BC. The coregency system created by Augustus is often regarded by modern historians as means of ensuring uninterrupted succession of power. Agrippa as his coregent often is thought to have assumed the role of the regent who temporally replaces the princeps, just as it was in formal monarchies, or that of the tutor of the future rulers. However, the Roman system of state administration did not allow such type of regency. The princeps coregent, who was his equal in formal credentials but his inferior in terms of auctoritas, in case of the princeps death had to become the next princeps as his immediate successor. It is unlikely that later he was expected to voluntarily give up his power in favour of younger heir and to vanish from the political life altogether. The inheritance system under Augustus was like a ladder with the princeps at the top, the coregent who was also the immediate successor one step below, heirs of the next degree further down. In case of death of one of them, successors shifted one step up. The coregency had one more function: geographically it allowed Augustus and Agrippa to rule jointly the empire while staying in different parts of it.В статье исследуется развитие системы соправления Августа и Агриппы с 29 по 12 гг. до н. э.: от формального и фактического неравенства соправителей до их формального равенства при преобладании auctoritas принцепса, причём особое внимание уделяется раннему этапу этого развития и кризису 23 г. до н. э. Институт соправления, созданный Августом, часто рассматривается, как средство обеспечения бесперебойного перехода власти, причем Агриппе, как соправителю, НЕРЕДКО отводится роль регента, временно замещающего принцепса или воспитателя будущих правителей. Однако римская система государственного управления не предполагала регентства. Соправитель принцепса, равный ему по формальным полномочиям, но уступавший по auctoritas, в случае его смерти должен был СТАТЬ следующим принцепсом, ближайшим его наследником. Вряд ли предполагалось, что в будущем он должен добровольно уступить власть более молодому наследнику и исчезнуть из политической жизни. Система наследования при Августе представляла собой нечто вроде лестницы, на вершине которой стоял принцепс, на следующей ступени соправитель, он же избранный преемник, ниже наследники следующей очереди в случае смерти когото из них происходило продвижение наследников по ступеням вверх. Кроме того, соправление имело и иное значение позволяло Августу и Агриппе совместно управлять империей, находясь в разных ее частях.


2004 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Herb

Several Arab monarchies have held reasonably free elections to parliaments, though all remain authoritarian. This article compares the Arab monarchies with parliaments in other parts of the world, including both those that became democracies, and those that did not. From this I derive a set of prerequisites, potential pitfalls, and expected stages in the monarchical path toward democracy. This helps us to understand not only the democratic potential of the parliamentary experiments in the Arab monarchies, but also the role these parliaments play in the political life of these authoritarian regimes.


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