political freedoms
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2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-258
Author(s):  
Jacek Srokosz

The article analyses the model of authoritarian meritocracy and its legitimisation on the example of the Chinese People’s Republic. The discussed model is based on three principles: 1. power is exercised by a monoparticle elite that legitimises its position on the basis of moral and substantive criteria; 2. patriarchal and anti-democratic governance; 3. the authorities’ policy aims to meet the material needs of citizens, but without granting them political rights. The Communist Party of China in its official narrative, on the one hand, refers to the assumptions of Maoism, but on the other hand, to a much greater extent — especially in the field of economic cases and the operation of the administrative apparatus — to the Confucian tradition. The model of authoritarian meritocracy in China should be treated as an ongoing experiment, whose final shape has a much more local nature than universal one, which it tries to claim. Nevertheless, the economic success and rapid modernization progress of the “Central State” undermined the theses formulated in the West after 1989 that economic development must be accompanied by the implementation of liberal democracy principles. For this reason, the Chinese authoritarian meritocracy may be perceived as a real alternative to the existing hegemonic vision of the West — the need to combine a free market economy with political freedoms and autonomy of individuals.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 13587
Author(s):  
Octaviano Rojas Luiz ◽  
Enzo Barberio Mariano ◽  
Hermes Moretti Ribeiro da Silva

Through a systematic literature review, this article aims to evaluate the impacts of various concepts of pro-poor innovations (PPI) on the five instrumental freedoms in Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach. For this, 165 articles were analysed to summarize the main influences of the pro-poor innovation on each type of instrumental freedom: political freedoms, economic facilities, transparency guarantees, social opportunities, and protective security. In general, the results indicate a positive influence of the innovation concepts for distinct types of freedom, with emphasis on the expansion of social opportunities and economic facilities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (23) ◽  
pp. 13407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro A. B. Lima ◽  
Gessica M. K. Jesus ◽  
Camila R. Ortiz ◽  
Fernanda C. O. Frascareli ◽  
Fernando B. Souza ◽  
...  

This paper identifies, through a literature review, how 53 circular economy (CE) practices are related to the capability approach (CA) proposed by Sen. The main goal was to identify how a virtuous cycle between CE and CA can be developed. Five instrumental freedoms (IF) were analysed: economic facilities, social opportunities, protective security, political freedoms, and transparency guarantees. These relationships were analysed in three flows: CE practices positively impacting IF, CE practices negatively impacting IF, and the feedback influence of IF on CE practices. The results show that 32 of the 53 practices previously mentioned have not yet been studied from the CA context, which indicates that there are several research opportunities. From the practices considered, 72 articles were analysed in the final sample. The results suggest that several CE practices are aligned with the CA, considering that all five IF were identified as positive outcomes of CE practices. However, in some contexts, certain practices can have negative outcomes, which indicates that CE, at least in some cases, may not be considered as sustainable, as it decreases IF and, therefore, the social aspect of sustainability. The results also highlight that there is a feedback from IF to CE, in such a way that investing in the expansion of IF can facilitate the development of CE practices. Therefore, this study concludes that CE is indeed a way to fully operationalize sustainable development.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Perry Johansson

This article offers a new perspective on the Swedish protests against the Vietnam War by placing it in its broader global Cold War context. As a case study on ‘people's diplomacy’ and ‘united front strategy’, it acknowledges the importance of Chinese and Vietnamese influences on the peace campaigns in Sweden and aims, as far as possible, to reconstruct Hanoi's motives, strategies and actions to create and direct Sweden's policy and opinion on the war. With the extremely generous political freedoms granted it by official Sweden, Hanoi was able to find new international allies as well as organise political propaganda manifestations from their Stockholm base. In the end, North Vietnam's version of the war as being about national liberation fought by a people united in their resistance to a foreign, genocidal, aggressor won a large enough share of the opinion in the West to force the American political leadership to give up the fight. Hanoi's Diplomatic Front in Sweden was one of the important battlefields behind that victory


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Brady

Poetry and Bondage is a groundbreaking and comprehensive study of the history of poetic constraint. For millennia, poets have compared verse to bondage – chains, fetters, cells, or slavery. Tracing this metaphor from Ovid through the present, Andrea Brady reveals the contributions to poetics of people who are actually in bondage. How, the book asks, does our understanding of the lyric – and the political freedoms and forms of human being it is supposed to epitomise – change, if we listen to the voices of enslaved and imprisoned poets? Bringing canonical and contemporary poets into dialogue, from Thomas Wyatt to Rob Halpern, Emily Dickinson to M. NourbeSe Philip, and Phillis Wheatley to Lisa Robertson, the book also examines poetry that emerged from the plantation and the prison. This book is a major intervention in lyric studies and literary criticism, interrogating the whiteness of those disciplines and exploring the possibilities for committed poetry today.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 85-111
Author(s):  
Hatice Rümeysa Dursun

Despite being shaken by the Arab Spring, authoritarian structures still exist in the regions of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Th is situation highlights the importance of studying the continuity of authoritarian structures more comprehensively. In addition to approaches that reduce authoritarianism to intra-state factors, literature has developed over the last decade emphasizing the importance of international factors. This literature in particular emphasizes the politics, economics, and diplomacy established by the West and that ties are effective in the continuity of authoritarianism in non-Western countries. This study attempts to explain Ben Ali’s period and the continuity of authoritarianism in Tunisia in the context of this developing new literature. Although Tunisia underwent a relatively positive transformation process after the Arab Spring, Ben Ali’s authoritarian rule was supported by the West as a model of an economic miracle and democratic stability; this administration managed to survive for 23 years. The study’s main argument can be expressed as follows: While the economic liberalization process imposed on Tunis by Western actors caused an increase in socio-economic inequalities, the instrumentalization of democracy by the West again served to suppress civil and political freedoms. Instead of focusing on the obstacles and opportunities in front of the transition to democracy in the post-Arab Spring period, examining theinternational factors influencing the continuity of authoritarianism in the Ben Ali period will shed light on how authoritarian structures still survive in MENA.


Orthodoxia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 51-72
Author(s):  
A. D. Gronsky

In August 2020, the presidential elections took place in Byelorussia, which, according to official data, were won by A. G. Lukashenko by a wide margin. The announcement of the preliminary election results provoked a protest reaction of the opposition forces, who declared the results to be falsified and mobilized part of the Byelorussian population for mass street protests. The authorities deemed these actions illegal and used force to suppress them. This gave the opposition and protesters grounds to criticize the authorities with renewed vigor, accusing them of violence and infringement of political freedoms. The representatives of the Orthodox Church (the Byelorussian Exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate) as well as of the Roman Catholic Church in Byelorussia reacted to the situation in the country, which caused a significant resonance in Byelorussia itself and abroad. The Byelorussian Exarchate did not support any of the conflicting sides, whereas Metropolitan Pavel, patriarchal exarch, unambiguously advocated the soonest cessation of the civil confrontation. At the same time, a few representatives of the clergy of the Byelorussian Exarchate publicly took the side of the protestors, including Archbishop Artemy of Grodno, but their statements were supported neither by the Synod of the Exarchate nor by the absolute majority of its bishops. The Roman Catholic Church, which has considerably smaller congregations in Byelorussia, also called for an end to the confrontation, but at the same time was much more immersed in the political agenda, poorly concealing its support for the opposition and protesters; the head of the Byelorussian Catholics at that time, Metropolitan T. Kondrusievicz, indirectly sympathized with the opposition as well. Despite the actual difference in the two churches' attitudes to the political situation, they both similarly appealed to spirituality and faith as a means of overcoming the conflict.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Gerald Daly

The need for physical distancing during this COVID-19 pandemic has raised the need for innovative campaign methods to be developed by election contestants because conventional campaign methods such as rallies, public meetings, etc. are prohibited in some jurisdictions. Distant and online election campaigning may be seen as restrictive to both contestants and voters alike due to physical and technological barriers that appear. To what degree is this true? Find the answer and more by following the lecture and read the paper.


Author(s):  
Udit Bhatia ◽  
Fabio Wolkenstein

Abstract The expulsion of party members for the expression of dissent is a common practice in democratic states around the world, which can have momentous consequences for individual parties and the political system at large. In this article, we address the question of whether limitations on party members’ free speech can be defended on normative grounds. Drawing on a conception of parties that sees them as broader membership organisations that allow citizens to exercise political agency in a unique fashion, as well as on insights from the broader normative-theoretical literature on organisations, we build a strong presumptive case that interference with party members’ political freedoms is normatively problematic. Exploring numerous weighty arguments in favour of limiting freedom of speech within parties, we find that none of them provides a knock-down argument against our case. The argument we advance has important implications for contemporary theoretical debates about parties and partisanship, and for the regulation of parties’ internal affairs more generally.


2021 ◽  
pp. 2150008
Author(s):  
Jason Chiam Chiah Sern ◽  
Tai Wei Lim

This paper examines the case studies of three East Asian entities (Thailand, Myanmar and Hong Kong) battling both the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic as well as socio-political unrest simultaneously. While Thailand/Myanmar and Hong Kong are different in geographical/demographic sizes and the former two are sovereign states while the latter is a Special Administrative Region (SAR), they have similar challenges in experiencing cosmopolitan pro-democracy movements (made up of young activists) pitted against the governments determined to maintain control in what political scientists may characterize as illiberal political systems. While Thailand and Myanmar may be much larger in terms of geographical/demographic sizes, much of the recent political activism occurred in the capital city of Bangkok (a city of about 8 million people) and Yangon (also having about 7 million in population and being the former capital of Myanmar before the military elites had moved the capital to Naypyidaw in anticipation of political unrests). In the case of Myanmar, the demonstration and protests have effectively spread nationwide. Both cities are similar in size to Hong Kong that is with approximately 7 million inhabitants. Both Bangkok and Hong Kong are also cosmopolitan cities with high exposure to global commerce, ideas and tourism while Yangon is a fast-developing urban commercial capital city. In terms of ideologies and political systems, both Bangkok and Hong Kong have nominal liberal democratic systems that have limits imposed on political freedoms while Myanmar was liberalizing and democratizing before the military coup on February 1, 2020. These similarities make them suitable candidates for comparative studies, including analyzing their differences in managing the political challenges.


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