Theresa May’s disjunctive premiership: Choice and constraint in political time

Theresa May’s premiership is widely acknowledged to have been a failure, but political commentators and the scholarly literature have, thus far, tended to focus on May’s misuse of her agency. This article argues that May’s premiership presents a particularly powerful example of the need to disentangle structure and agency when assessing prime ministerial performance. Drawing upon the work of Stephen Skowronek, it sets out a framework of evaluating prime ministerial agency in ‘political time’. This is then used to show how the conditions and circumstances in which May governed limited the feasibility, increased the costs, and compromised the effectiveness of her actions in office. We argue that this confirms that May was a victim of circumstances as much as a victim of her own agency.

Democracy’s critical infrastructure: Rethinking intermediary powers

Ever since the 19th century, political parties and free media were widely deemed indispensable for the proper functioning of representative democracy. They constituted what one might call the critical infrastructure of democracy, an infrastructure which enabled citizens to use their basic rights effectively and also to reach each other (and be reached). Both intermediary institutions are undergoing major structural transformations today (or might disappear altogether, if processes of ‘disintermediation’ continue). It has proven difficult to judge these changes, partly because we lack a proper account of the distinctive normative roles of intermediary institutions beyond standard claims of ‘connecting citizens to the political system’. The essay argues that intermediary powers remain indispensable in staging political conflict, in providing external and internal pluralism and in properly structuring political time.

The Religious Roots of the American Concept of Human Rights

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the primary source of the modern concept of human rights – the United States Declaration of Independence, a document directly related to the “Jefferson’s Bible” quilted by the author of the Declaration T. Jefferson. The author emphasizes that the United States of America were perceived by Jefferson as New Israel, the idea traditionally supported by the dominant US ideology, which determines the nature of foreign policy and the interpretation of international law. Tracing historical dynamics of Jeffersonian ideas, the author briefly analyses the current state of human rights concept in international law in its constant political time-serving changes. The author concludes that the concept of human rights does not have its own ontology, and in modern conditions becomes the basis of the idea of the West exceptionalism in relation to the rest of the world. The article notes that the idea upheld by the West concerning the primacy of human rights over the principle of State sovereignty leads to the collapse of the entire system of international relations and international law and means permanent war.

Critique of Reflective Modern Theory in Contemporary Political Science

The article studies the main lines of criticism of the theory of reflexive modernism. It is proved that in modern political science it unfolds around certain provisions of the theory of reflexive modernism. It is substantiated that Eurocentrism of the definition and interpretation of reflexive Art Nouveau, characteristic of the studies of U. Beck, A. Giddens, and J. Habermas, is criticized. A critical attitude towards eurocentrism of reflexive modernism provoked the formation of the idea of the probability and reality of the multiplicity of modernities (for example, Asian concepts of compressed modernity and enhanced modernization). It is proved that the most important vectors of criticism of the theory of reflexive modernism are: (1) the role and functions of political time and chronopolitics in different cultures and political systems; (2) the functional characteristics of political actors, primarily the state and citizen; (3) the scientific position according to which political and politics in the framework of the realities of reflexive modernism cannot remain in a stable form, therefore it is inevitable to identify new institutional characteristics of modernity that significantly expand the concept of radical modernism; (4) the need to clarify such a characteristic feature of reflective modernity as changing the system of control over the means of violence; (5) the search for the limits of application of the theory of reflexive modernism in the study of political processes in the modern world.

Interaction of EU and UK copyright in a post-Brexit world: will video games get more protection than they bargain for?

The UK's approach to copyright and its adoption of a closed list of categories of work has led to unforeseeable gaps in protection in video games and fails to recognize the intellectual creativity that has gone into various elements of a video game, such as in-game animation. However, the CJEU's decision in Cofemel (C-683/17) has sought to harmonize copyright in the EU and provides two simplified requirements for subsistence of copyright allowing for expansive protection and open ended categories of work. This decision broadens out copyright in a way which may fill in some of the gaps of protection for video games but at what cost? This article explores how Cofemel might impact the video games industry in practice, as well as the ways in which the UK courts might address Cofemel in light of its direct conflict with UK legislation at a critical political time where the UK is about to depart from the EU.

Exposiciones de mujeres y exposiciones feministas en España. Un recorrido por algunos proyectos realizados desde la II República hasta hoy, con acentos puestos en lo autobiográfico = Women’s Exhibitions and Feminist Exhibitions in Spain: A Journey Through some Projects Carried out Since The 2nd Republic until the Present, with some Biographical Highlights

Este artículo repasa la historia de las exposiciones de mujeres en España desde los años treinta, como precedente de las primeras exposiciones feministas de los años noventa, contextualizándolas en su momento político. Profundiza en algunos de los proyectos comisariados por la autora, en los que rescata a artistas ignoradas por las historias del arte contemporáneo, especialmente las artistas Pop de los años sesenta, como pioneras del arte feminista.AbstractThis essay examines the history of women’s exhibitions in Spain since the 1930s, considering said shows as a precedent for the first feminist exhibitions in the 1990s, and providing them with a context within their political time. This text delves in some of the projects curated by the author, in which she rescued a number of women artists who had been ignored by the usual histories of contemporary art –especially the female Pop artists from the 1970s– as pioneers of feminist art.

Public Space, Public Time: Constitution and the Relay of Authority in Arendt’s On Revolution

In On Revolution, Hannah Arendt addresses the central conundrum of legitimacy: the source of authority to found a new political form. On Arendt’s account, for revolutionary founding to evade the twin dangers of an infinite regress or a vicious circle, and to succeed in the constitution of a political body, it must enact and invoke both a worldly and a temporal component. To understand the bond between authority, constitution, and constituent power, Arendt thus analyzes the exchange between political space and political time. For the inauguration of a stable and secure public space, the events of founding must permit the independence of what it founds, unbinding the founding deed from the worldly object. For the inauguration of enduring public time, the constitutional document must contain a principle of self-preservation or endurance, allowing the present to appeal to both the past (ancestors) and the future (descendants). By thus distinguishing the authority of a constituted document, which maintains jurisdiction through time, both from the public theater within which the people’s plurality, creativity, and power can flourish, and from inaugural violence, the authoritative relay between space and time also sustains a politics of inheritance that moves between binding and unbinding.

‘How soon was now?’: A retrospective on the popularity of nouveau vintage

Fashion is a product and reflection of time and tantamount to modernity. The promise of which rests in the future, thus fashion is forever looking forward in the ambition to be ‘new’. Vintage fashion, namely clothes from past periods apprehend this perpetual cycle, often adopted by alternative groups of consumers to create different looks as a subcultural trend. This trend has in recent times been subsumed by capitalism while the label ‘vintage’ has become a marketing term applied to new mass-produced fashions. What can be understood from society’s attitude to progress and the promise of modernity by this remaking of the past into a pastiche? Fashion can prove to be a perfect conduit through which to understand complex conceptualisations of time, and more specifically the concept of 'political time'. What people wear can further cast a light on public consciousness and its faith in development and hope for a better future. This article will consider conceptions of time and modernity as a theoretical tool to reflect on the development of nouveau vintage, which is a recreation of vintage styles and fashion, mass produced for a wider market. Including the role of memory and dialectics, nouveau vintage can be thought of as a refusal for development, while demonstrating fashion is a cultural object worthy of philosophical enquiry.

Editors’ Introduction

By taking as a point of departure post-1945 self-proclaimed anti-fascist movements, whose claim to combat fascism has often been discarded as politically irrelevant or bombastic, this introduction invites readers to speculate on the rhetorical value implied in the word fascism. Although the term carries within it an almost abysmal capacity for political oversimplification, we argue that it also possesses an undeniable rhetorical value whose function as a catalyst for action against forms of political, economic, and social oppression deserves our attention. In the first part of this introduction we offer a brief but salient overview on the historiography dedicated to defining fascism and on current debates surrounding the recent rise of the radical right on the world stage. In the second part, we address the relatively smaller attention received by anti-fascism post-1945 and discuss possible reasons for why that has been the case. We conclude by showing how the articles collected in this issue invite us to rethink our definitions of fascism and anti-fascism so that we can better understand our current political time.

Judicial Review in the Cycles of Constitutional Time

The cycles of constitutional time affect the work of the federal judiciary in multiple ways. Because of life tenure, the judiciary is a lagging indicator of the cycles of politics. Hence judicial time is often out of sync with political time. Judicial review is shaped by the strategy of partisan entrenchment: the political parties attempt to install jurists who will be ideologically sympathetic. The cycles also affect the political supports for judicial review—the reasons why politicians accept judicial review and have helped to construct the power of the federal courts over time. Politicians support judicial review and construct how judges practice it because judicial review performs important tasks and manages problems for politicians over the long run, even if they disagree with particular decisions.