Parties and Projects

2019 ◽  
pp. 137-165
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
National Politics ◽  
San Pedro ◽  
Zero Sum

This chapter explores the cutthroat world of party politics in San Pedro, focusing on its assumptions, rules and effects on political thought and practice. Party politics is organized almost entirely around the local clientelist distribution of development “projects”—which can be anything from electricity, to water, a job, or a stove—to the exclusion of national politics. Candidates from nearly a dozen party factions promise projects for votes. This is a zero sum situation rife with corruption that structurally excludes the majority, resulting in division and resentment, as villagers take an active role in consigning their neighbors to abandonment—a brutal democratization of sovereign power. Through these processes, Sampedranos have learned to think of development in reduced and local ways rather than nationally, and to blame their leaders and each other for poverty. But this also fueled earnest critiques of clientelism and calls to distribute resources to the most vulnerable.

Simone Weil

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Marovich
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Intellectual Curiosity ◽  
Creation Theology ◽  
Simone Weil

Few of Giorgio Agamben’s works are as mysterious as his unpublished dissertation, reportedly on the political thought of the French philosopher Simone Weil. If Weil was an early subject of Agamben’s intellectual curiosity, it would appear – judging from his published works – that her influence upon him has been neither central nor lasting.1 Leland de la Durantaye argues that Weil’s work has left a mark on Agamben’s philosophy of potentiality, largely in his discussion of the concept of decreation; but de la Durantaye does not make much of Weil’s influence here, determining that her theory of decreation is ‘essentially dialectical’ and still too bound up with creation theology. 2 Alessia Ricciardi, however, argues that de la Durantaye’s dismissal of Weil’s influence is hasty.3 Ricciardi analyses deeper resonances between Weil’s and Agamben’s philosophies, ultimately claiming that Agamben ‘seems to extend many of the implications and claims of Weil’s idea of force’,4 arguably spreading Weil’s influence into Agamben’s reflections on sovereign power and bare life.

scholarly journals Homo Sacer sebagai Figur Politis dan Kaitannya dengan Dunia Pendidikan Tinggi

Humaniora ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 335
Author(s):  
Ferdinand Indrajaya
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
General View ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
The Third

Article is an outcome from writer’s reflection from his reading on Homo Sacer, Sovereign Power and Bare Life, a book by Giorgio Agamben, an Italian 20th century philosopher. The reading concerns with the three chapters which are Homo Sacer, The Ambivalence of The Sacred, and The Sacred Life, and also the preface of chapters. Generally, this article proposes two main things. First, Agamben’s description on Western modern political practice, developed from the Greek until today. Second, writer’s reflection on educational system in Indonesia, especially the higher education level in nowadays, through Agamben’s perspective. Structurally, article is divided into three parts. First, the Preface, is a general view to Agamben’s political thought which will stand as a background to the second part from this article, Homo Sacer. On the third part, Education as Bare Life, is writer’s reflection on higher education system in Indonesia borrowing the political perspectives from Agamben.    

scholarly journals THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT AND PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
MAX SKJÖNSBERG
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Promising Area ◽  
History Of ◽  
Parliamentary History ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

This review article considers the potentially fruitful relationship between the history of political thought and parliamentary history through a survey of recent books on Britain and France. Traditionally, this relationship has not been intimate, as the major historians of political thought have concentrated on linguistic and philosophical contexts, alongside political economy. However, as historians of political thought turn to concepts such as political representation, constitutionalism, party politics, and parliamentarism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it would be beneficial for parliamentary history to play a greater role. In order to place arguments in their non-intellectual contexts effectively, historians of political thought must become more careful analysts of events, institutions, and quotidian politics, as well as broader historiographical contexts, importantly the history of state formation. This review article argues that the development of parliamentarism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is an especially promising area for considering theory and practice in unison.

History and Theory: The Norman Conquest in Early Stuart Political Thought

1986 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann P. Sommerville
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
English History ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Continental Thought ◽  
History And Theory

Orthodoxy maintains that English political thinking before Hobbes was based upon an unphilosophical, precedent-bound reading of history. According to J. G. A. Pocock, Sir Edward Coke typically held that English customary law was pre-historical and that the continuity of English traditions had never been broken by conquest. Conquerors possessed sovereign power; in England there had been no conqueror; so there was no supra-legal sovereign. English liberty was deducible from history. Pocock's thesis is inadequate since Coke and many others admitted that there had been a conquest. Their claims rested not upon English history but upon theoretical premises characteristic of Continental thought. Coke's concept of custom was itself theory-laden. Rival theories were largely indifferent to the question of the Norman Conquest, a non-issue in political debate.

Cruel Populism

2019 ◽  
pp. 166-192
Keyword(s):  
Party Politics ◽  
San Pedro ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
Authoritarian Politics

This chapter examines how authoritarian politics in San Pedro Necta operates. It begins with an overview of different Guatemalan populisms in the 20th century, and then examines the populist rhetoric and strategy of the FRG as it played out in San Pedro. It describes how FRG populism tapped into and reinforced and tapped into a sense of powerlessness, as well as the kinds of resentments created by party politics. Authoritarian populism reinscribed neoliberal democracy’s foundational limits as it tapped into wells of insecurity, mistrust, uncertainty, and resentment created by its failures. It appealed to corporeal needs and perceived grievances, gaining followers without ideological resonance and despite revulsion at national candidates and policies.

The generalised bio-political border? Re-conceptualising the limits of sovereign power

2009 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 729-749 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICK VAUGHAN-WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Relative Simplicity ◽  
Political Border ◽  
The One

AbstractThis article is a response to calls from a number of theorists in International Relations and related disciplines for the need to develop alternative ways of thinking ‘the border’ in contemporary political life. These calls stem from an apparent tension between the increasing complexity of the nature and location of bordering practices on the one hand and yet the relative simplicity with which borders often continue to be treated on the other. One of the intellectual challenges, however, is that many of the resources in political thought to which we might turn for new border vocabularies already rely on unproblematised conceptions of what and where borders are. It is argued that some promise can be found in the work of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, whose diagnosis of the operation of sovereign power in terms of the production of bare life offers significant, yet largely untapped, implications for analysing borders and the politics of space across a global bio-political terrain.

scholarly journals The party politics of Euroscepticism in times of crisis: The case of Greece

Politics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofia Vasilopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Issue Salience ◽  
National Politics ◽  
New Parties ◽  
Economic Dimension ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Issue Competition ◽  
Of Greece

This article traces the trajectory of party Euroscepticism in Greece drawing upon theories of issue competition. It demonstrates that the economic dimension of the multiple crises facing the European Union (EU) contributed to a Eurosceptic shift in public opinion, the electoral success of Eurosceptic parties, new parties populating the Europhile end of the spectrum, and the formation of a coalition government united not by ideological affinity but by a common Eurosceptic and anti-austerity agenda. Mainstream parties maintained their pro-EU agendas and challenger parties offered both pro- and anti-EU policy options to the electorate. The prospect of power resulted in the progressive softening of Euroscepticism among challenger parties. EU issue salience was relatively high across the party system and remained so during the crisis. Although Greek parties justified their pro- and anti-EU attitudes using a number of frames, economic arguments were prevalent at the height of the crisis and challenger parties of the left intensified their claims of the EU interfering in national politics. The findings have implications for our understanding of the evolving nature of Euroscepticism and the ways in which it may feature in domestic party politics.

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