Abstract
72.284 ALEBDHA, Fahd —
The poet ʿAli ibn Jabala, also called al-ʿAkawwak, was a little known but significant poet who lived during the late 8th and early 9th c. This article examines his poetry in its political and cultural context to delineate the literary devices exploited by the poet in his poems of praise. Moreover, this paper interprets existing prose anecdotes claiming that al- ʿAkawwak’s panegyric poem to the caliph al-Maʾmun’s commander, Abu Dulaf al-ʿIjli, made the caliph so furious that he ordered the poet’s execution, despite the poet having never composed any verses overtly criticizing the caliph. The argument is made that, within the tense political atmosphere of the time, the style that the poet embraced in praising the two commanders, Abu Dulaf al-ʿIjli and Humayd al-Tusi, intensified al-Maʾmun’s anger toward the poet. [R]
72.285 APRESSYAN, Ruben —
The article analyzes the concept of universality in Oleg Drobnitskii’s ethics. As opposed to most Soviet ethicists of the 1960s and early 1970s, Drobnitskii viewed this concept along the lines of the principle of universality presented in the moral theories of Immanuel Kant and Richard Hare. However, while they considered universality to be a feature of individual moral thinking in the forms of maxims, principles, and evaluations, Drobnitskii understood universality as the main feature of moral requirements and essentially external to the moral agent, representing to her social relations and the ‘general laws of history.’ It was conceptually significant in Drobnitskii’s approach to universality that he analyzed it within the context of a more general concept of morality — as a mode of normative regulation of behavior. In this capacity, universality was presented as a characteristic of general appeal, or the general way in which a moral requirement is binding. [R, abr.]
72.286 BALLACCI, Giuseppe —
In the literature there are two well-established but opposite readings of Arendt: as an agonistic theorist and as a deliberative one. In between these two positions a smaller number of scholars have argued that in Arendt these two dimensions can to a large extent be reconciled. This paper follows this third path but tries to bring it one step further. In particular, it defends the idea that those scholars who have proposed this third reading of Arendt have fallen short of revealing the degree to which deliberation and agonism are, for her, interwoven. Through an original reading of Arendt’s views on judgment, persuasion, distinction and Eichmann’s banality, the paper clarifies why, for her, agonism and deliberation are not only compatible but actually mutually dependent. [R, abr.]
72.287 BANG, Jiun —
Actors in international politics have been driven predominantly by two (maybe three) logics of social interaction: fighting, bargaining, and some arguing. Yet, if international politics is characterized by a lack of determinate laws unlike its domestic corollary, it would be unrealistic to expect leaders to simply rely on a singular mode of evaluating facts based primarily on cognition and interests. In turn, I offer quarreling to address this gap. As a type of affective social interaction based on the subjective validity of one’s feelings and thus one that goes beyond mere disagreement to disapproval, quarreling tries to establish who is right about what is right. I establish a theoretical framework based on Kant’s intuitions of a quarrel (streiten) and in so doing clarify both the purpose and utility of quarreling. [R, abr.]
72.288 BASU, Jacqueline —
John Rawls characterizes political rationality as narrowly self-regarding and therefore incapable of motivating political other-regard, selfmoderation, or cooperative behavior. He ascribes these cooperative properties solely to reasonable, or principled, reasoning. This article evaluates Rawls’s account of rationality by investigating his characterization of the democratic modus vivendi, which builds upon this account: Rawls asserts that the democratic modus vivendi is inherently unstable because it lacks the cooperative properties of the reasonable. These critiques entail positive claims about rational democratic equilibrium that are contradicted by formal accounts of self-enforcing democracy. The article demonstrates that the democratic modus vivendi can achieve robust stability because the rational can express the cooperative properties that Rawls reserves to the reasonable. By working within Rawls’s seminal account of political reasoning to revise the properties he ascribes to rationality, this article offers a novel motivation for theoretical engagement with the rational and its role in political cooperation. [R, abr.]
72.289 BHORAT, Ziyaad —
Some scholars maintain that the Hobbesian man, commonwealth, or both are analogous — or even identical — to an automaton. Yet automata as a concept remains relatively underexplored in Hobbes’s corpus. This paper aims to address this gap. Standing at the margin between nature and artifice, animate and inanimate, we find three heads of Hobbesian automata emerging from (1) the texts he translated, (2) the mechanical artifices that surrounded him, and (3) the physiology he greatly appreciated. These new contributions provide a fuller account of the rich, lively world of Hobbes’s political thought — one that moreover reemphasizes his Aristotelian influences. [R]
72.290 BOETTKE, Peter J. ; CANDELA, Rosolino A. —
What is the relationship between central planning, pervasive shortages, and soft budget constraints under socialism? In this paper, we address this question by exploring the evolution of János Kornai’s work on the operation of real-world socialism. In doing so, our goal is to reframe Kornai’s contributions to the political economy of socialism by focusing on the epistemic conditions under non-market decision-making. From this perspective, we argue that the dysfunction facing socialist economies is not one based fundamentally on a misalignment of incentives in enforcing hard budget constraints and eliminating shortages. Rather, soft budget constraints are a consequence of competition between firms in a non-profit setting, utilized as a means to monetize the control over state-owned resources through the creation of pervasive shortages. [R]
72.291 BRAGUES, George —
Social philosopher H. Spencer (1820-1903) found worldwide fame by promising to provide a systematic and complete scientific account of human reality, culminating in a moral code oriented around the principle of equal freedom. Although his attempted proof of this principle is fundamentally flawed, it is possible to remove its defects and make Spencer’s moral theory viable. [R]
72.292 CANIHAC, Hugo —
This paper reconstructs the political thought of Sir Neil MacCormick (1941-2009), the founder of “constitutional pluralism,” one of the most influential legal theories of the E today. It argues that his legal theory is underpinned by a coherent and original political theory of postsovereignty. But, contrary to many current interpretations, this article argues that normatively, constitutional pluralism is not a purely liberal theory. Neither is it inherently illiberal, as has been contended. Instead, this article spells out the hybrid institutional design imagined by N. MacCormick and inspired by the thought of D. Hume, as well as the lineaments of an ethical theory of post-sovereignty he developed. The political theory of constitutional pluralism is shown to open up an important, if not fully developed, avenue to escape some shortcoming commonly associated with post-sovereignty. [R, abr.]
72.293 CATANZARO, Andrea —
By moving on from the findings of literature concerning the connections between the Leviathan and the Hobbesian translations of the Homeric poems, this article aims to problematize these relationships further with regard to the Behemoth. Three principal issues will be taken into account – the prophecy, the ruling over the Militia, and the mixed monarchy – given that, although themes typical of the philosopher’s political thought, their peculiarities in the Behemoth enable us to draw attention to possible significant political connections between Hobbes’s translations of the Iliad and Odyssey and his narrative of the English Civil War. [R]
72.294 CHAMBERLAIN, James A. —
Joseph Carens develops one of the most prominent cases for open borders in the academic literature on the basis of freedom and equality. Yet the implementation of his social membership theory would mean that immigrants who have not yet lived in a country long enough to become members would be excluded from political and social rights, thus raising the possibility of their domination and subordination by citizens. Can we theorize the relationship between freedom and community differently? French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy does just that, by showing how to think freedom and community as mutually constitutive. Nancy thus offers the resources for an alternative case for open borders, grounded on the claim that the freedom of community entails openness to the outside. [R, abr.]
72.295 CONSTANTINOU, Costas M. ; OPONDO, Sam Okoth —
This article examines the intersection of biopolitics with diplomacy and engages its dynamic re-envisioning as biodiplomacy. It revisits Michel Foucault’s peripheral attention to diplomacy and his framing of the concept in his writings on raison d’état and the government of the living. The article suggests that biodiplomacy can help us understand better the complexity of global biopolitical projects, moving us beyond governmentality and sensitizing us about the continuous negotiation of the meaning and materiality of particular ways of living vis-à-vis other ways of being. Specifically, the article addresses modes of existence peculiar to the postcolony or encompassing antithetical value systems and argues that biodiplomacy opens up a wider field of ethical and cosmopolitical possibilities by making visible the interconnected plurality of human and non-human forces. [R]
72.296 CONTI, Gregory —
This paper offers a new reading of the political thought of the mid-Victorian jurist and intellectual James Fitzjames Stephen. Contrary to impressions of Stephen as a conservative or religious authoritarian, this article recognizes the liberal character of Stephen’s thought, and it argues that investigating Stephen’s liberalism holds lessons for us today about the structure of liberal theory. Stephen articulated robustly both technocratic and pluralistic visions of politics. Perhaps more stridently than any Victorian, he put forward an argument for the necessity and legitimacy of expert rule against claims for popular government. Yet he also insisted on the plurality of perspectives on public affairs and on the ineluctable conflict between them. Because both of these facets existed in his work, he fit within the liberal ranks, but he did not show how the two dimensions fit together. [R, abr.]
72.297 COX, Gary W. —
Following the coalition literature highlighting intraparty politics (e.g., Giannetti and Benoit 2009; Laver 1999; Strøm 2003), I address the wellknown “portfolio allocation paradox” (Warwick and Druckman 2006) by introducing a new model of government formation based on two main assumptions. First, no actor has a structural advantage in the negotiations leading to government formation. Second, all actors who can deprive the coalition of a majority (or other critical threshold size) must be included in the negotiations — not just parties. Whereas standard bargaining models are inconsistent with Gamson’s Law, the model proposed here implies that equilibrium portfolio allocations should be mostly Gamsonian but with a small-party bias, as the empirical literature has long found. Empirically, I show that my model outperforms the literature’s standard specification (due to Browne and Franklin 1973). [R, abr.]
72.298 CZERNECKI, Igor —
I argue that revisiting Alexis de Tocqueville’s interpretation of the role of religion in maintaining civil liberties in democracies allows for a more nuanced understanding of the crisis that liberal democracy finds itself in around the world. I use Christopher Lasch to link this insight with the Identity Politics theories that attempt to explicate our current predicament, and contrast the function assigned religion in rightwing movements today with Tocqueville’s understanding of its salutary function. [R]
72.299 DOCKSTADER, Jason ; MÛKRÎYAN, Rojîn —
Recently, some have read Turkish political developments from the perspective of Carl Schmitt’s political theory. This paper offers a Schmittian answer to the Kurdish question. By applying Schmitt’s conceptual framework, this paper argues that the Kurds, especially in their struggles for autonomy and independence, can be viewed as fulfilling Schmitt’s criterion for tellurian partisanship and forming an at least nascent constituent power. We argue that Turks and Kurds are enemies in Schmitt’s explicitly political sense. They constitute a threat to each other’s political existence. The Kurds exhibit the behavior of a Schmittian people or nation. They aim to govern themselves, and so instantiate the de facto attributes of state sovereignty. They thus seek to constitute themselves as a free and independent people, thereby achieving a genuine political existence in the Schmittian sense. [R, abr.]
72.300 DORZWEILER, Nick —
For the past half-century, critical pedagogy has represented perhaps the most influential response to traditional ‘banking’ models of education and the political obedience and social conformity they are purported to engender. Precisely because of its lasting impact, however, it has tended to overshadow other possible visions of the critical political potential of education. I trace the origins and development of a distinctive yet under-discussed concept in Michel Foucault’s late ethical work — psychagogy — to pursue an alternative depiction of education as a critical political practice. Attending to the origins and meaning of psychagogy in Foucault’s work is valuable, I argue, for two reasons. On the one hand, the concept offers a vision of political education that avoids reproducing problematic juridical binaries — truth and ideology, rationality and irrationality, absolved and condemned — that Foucault believed inhered in Enlightenment-era conceptions of emancipation. [R, abr.]
72.301 DYMOND, Jeffrey —
This article contributes to a growing debate over the sources for the account of the formation of the state found in Book 1 Chapter 2 of Machiavelli’s Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio. While recent scholarship has questioned the longstanding belief that Book 6 of Polybius’s Histories is the chapter’s principal source, I will argue here that Machiavelli is indeed indebted to Book 6, but in a different manner than previously observed. I will demonstrate this by reconstructing the interpretation of Book 6 that emerged in early sixteenth century Florence before situating the Discorsi within it. [R]
72.302 EVANS, Peter —
Twenty-first-century Brazil’s political evolution is a window on the dynamics of contemporary political transitions. The inability of Brazil’s Workers’ Party to sustain its social democratic project and the subsequent rise of the reactionary regime of Jair Bolsonaro are, in turn, part of a global pattern of political change. Karl Polanyi’s vision of the ‘double movement,’ in which the dominance of the market vies with the countervailing movement for social protection, offers an analytical springboard for reflecting on these political transitions. Trying to understand the movement for social protection leads to examining ebbs and flows in the momentum of mobilization. Trying to understand how market dominance leads to reaction brings us back to Polanyi’s advocacy of ‘crass materialism’ as a lens for looking at reaction, and from there to consideration of how the structural power of capital undercuts efforts at social protection and opens the door to reaction. [R] [See Abstr. 72.1283]
72.303 FINLAYSON, James Gordon —
I argue that a common view of Habermas’s theory of public reason, which takes it to be similar to Rawls’s ‘proviso’, is mistaken. I explain why that mistake arises, and show that those who have made it have thus overlooked the distinctiveness of Habermas’s theory and approach. Consequently, I argue, they tend to wrongly infer that objections directed at Rawls’s ‘proviso’ apply also to Habermas’s ‘institutional translation proviso’. Ironically, Habermas’s attempt to rebut those objections leads him to advance a peculiar, and ultimately indefensible, thesis about the cognitive requirements of democratic citizenship for secular citizens. I argue that the underlying problem that Habermas takes the peculiar thesis to solve is not that the public reason requirements of the secular state are unfair towards religious citizens, or biased towards secular views of the world, but that the nature of religious arguments, and of scientism, as Habermas understands these, prevents citizens who adhere to them from participating in discourse. [R, abr.]
72.304 FRANKE, Mark F. N. —
The contemporary international regime of law and politics regarding human migration largely follows Immanuel Kant’s contradictory approach, supporting the cosmopolitical rights of humans to move and expect hospitality while privileging the rights of sovereign states to assert territorial security against movement. IR scholars informed by Jacques Derrida’s ethical theory argue that one may press this tension to positive dynamics through affirmation of the aporia that a secured home is a requirement for the possibility of the hospitality that might undo conflict between migrants and emplaced citizens. Yet, the attraction of Derrida’s critical Kantianism and this revival of hospitality depends on asserting the primacy of habitation to how citizen subjects stand with respect to foreigners who move. [R, abr.]
72.305 FURUTA, Takuya —
This paper suggests that the emergence of the Cambridge School of history of political thought can best be understood in terms of two competing visions of the relationship between history and social science, focusing on Peter Laslett and Quentin Skinner. Although Laslett is often distinguished as a founder of the Cambridge School, this paper suggests an alternative view by emphasizing the theoretical discontinuity between Laslett and Skinner rather than their continuity. Laslett, a practitioner of Karl Manheim’s ideas, promoted the idea of a comprehensive scientific social history, within which intellectual history was located. This paper argues that Skinner broke with Laslett’s idea. For Skinner, (1) Laslett was a positivist who applied the natural scientific model to intellectual history; (2) Laslett’s positivism was actually ‘contextualism’; and (3) the alternative to Laslett’s contextualism was the history of ideology. [R, abr.]
72.306 GAMBINO, Elena —
This article takes up the commonplace antagonism between ‘second wave’ lesbian feminism and ‘third wave’ queer theory and politics, and argues that the antagonism itself is both historically and politically reductive. First, I make the case that ‘third wave’ queer theory actually shares its central concern — namely, accountability for intra-group inequalities — with lesbian feminism. However, I argue that ‘third wave’ queer theories ultimately founder in their bid for a more reflexive political praxis by tending to hold others — lesbian feminists — accountable for ongoing inequalities rather than grappling with them directly. By contrast, I show that lesbian feminists from the late 1970s to the late 1980s developed a reparative politics that succeeds where ‘third wave’ theories stumble by developing relationships of mutual accountability around issues of race and racism, and by establishing processes by which to repair these relationships when they founder. [R, abr.]
72.307 GIANNETTI, Roberto —
The reconstruction of Gramsci’s political theory carried out by Norberto Bobbio focuses on the notion of civil society. According to Bobbio, one of the most original features of the Prison Notebooks is encapsulated in the innovative interpretation that Gramsci gave of civil society as part of the superstructure rather than, as Marx had argued, as an aspect of the substructural base. Starting from this conception of civil society, new light could be shed on some of the themes that characterized Gramsci’s reflection: the distinction between “hegemony” and “direct domination”, the importance of ideologies, the function of the intellectuals. I argue that Bobbio has always maintained that Gramsci’s departure from “scientific” Marxism does not mean that he does not belong to the Marxist tradition and that the author of the Notebooks is not a liberal but a revolutionary thinker. [R, abr.]
72.308 GORECKI, Maciej A. —
In [“Ineffective and counterproductive? The impact of gender quotas in open-list proportional representation systems”, Ibid., 15(1), March 2019 : 1-33; Abstr. 69.5167] Michael Jankowski and Kamil Marcinkiewicz (2019) study the effects of gender quotas on the electoral performance of female candidates in open-list proportional representation (OLPR) systems. Their study is a critical reanalysis of the Polish case, in particular the regularities demonstrated in a 2014 study that I coauthored. We argued there that at the micro level (candidate level), the effects of quotas were somewhat “paradoxical”: following the installation of quotas, women candidates tend to perform worse relative to their male counterparts than they did during the pre-quota period. Jankowski and Marcinkiewicz claim to demonstrate that those “paradoxical” effects are minor and thus practically negligible. In this note, I argue that their conclusion is largely a result of the particular methodological choices made by these authors. [R, abr.]
72.309 GOTTESMAN, Alex —
This paper examines the concept of isēgoria. It looks especially at Herodotus, comparing his use of the term to that of other authors. The term does not primarily refer to ‘the equal right to speak in the assembly’. Rather, it is a ‘language ideology’ that characterizes the bearing of the free, full citizen. Isēgoria was a negative concept, defined by what it was not more than what it was: not flattery; not fearful; not indirect. Isēgoria could only exist in a community of complete equality, and was threatened when someone became too powerful or too important. It can best be translated as ‘the speech of equals before equals’. [R]
72.310 GREGSON, John —
Neoliberalism, in various ways, is radically new. It is nevertheless constructed from the conditions of liberal modernity, the inadequacies of which are crucial to neoliberal success. Liberalism in practice restricts moral agency through an impoverished, structurally-reinforced conception of practical reasoning, as A. MacIntyre argues, and this is important to understanding neoliberal durability. This article argues that a bureaucratic culture that fails to evaluate or critically question the ends it pursues is both symptomatic of liberal inadequacies and a key factor in neoliberal success. Beyond its purely explanatory power, there is a political relevance to MacIntyre’s Aristotelian-inspired politics of local community. It is from those practices and communal movements that embody alternative conceptions of the good, that those interested in resisting neoliberalism can learn how it becomes possible to successfully challenge aspects of the contemporary social order. [R]
72.311 GREY, Sam —
The idea of forgiveness is omnipresent in the transitional justice literature, yet this body of work, taken as a whole, is marked by conceptual, terminological and argumentative imprecision. Equivocation is common, glossing moral, theological, therapeutic and legal considerations, while arguments proceed from political, apolitical and even antipolitical premises. With forgiveness as a praxis linked to reconciliation processes in at least ten countries, concerns have grown over its negative implications for the relationship between the state and victims of state-authored injustices. Many of these debates reference Hannah Arendt. Drawing from a range of Arendt’s published and unpublished work, this article challenges the academic claim that forgiveness has no place in the politics of reconciliation. [R, abr.]
72.312 HALL BLANCO, Abigail R. —
The world suffered a great loss with the death of Walter Williams (1936-2020). He was an accomplished economist, a master teacher, and gifted public intellectual who skillfully articulated and defended the ideas of a free society — with a remarkable life story. [R]
72.313 HANLEY, Ryan —
A symposium. Introduction by David Lay WILLIAMS, pp. 568-574. Articles by Brandon TURNER, “Fénelon and the refinement of self-love”, pp. 575-579; Alexandra OPREA, “François Fénelon: modern philosopher or conservative theologian?”, pp. 580-586; Gianna ENGLERT, “Fénelon and the political summum malum of self-love”, pp. 587-592; Geneviève ROUSSELIÈRE, “Fénelon, a conservative mind?”, pp. 593-598. Reply by the author, pp. 599-604.
72.314 HOSKINS, Te Kawehau ; BELL, Avril —
Political encounters between settler governments and indigenous communities are freighted with the unresolved issues of indigenous independence asserted under ongoing conditions of colonial domination. Within political science, these encounters have been primarily theorised and analysed as struggles of indigenous communities for political recognition from settler states. Further, the politics of recognition is widely understood as colonising by indigenous scholars, with some arguing for an alternative politics of (indigenous) resurgence and refusal, a ‘turning away’ from the state. We argue that in the case of Māori in Aotearoa ‘turning up’ is the ethical and correct practice of politics, a practice stemming from the relational ontology of the Māori world. Thus ‘turning up’ rather than ‘turning away’ can, for Māori, itself be a practice of refusal. [R, abr.]
72.315 JOHNSON, Peter —
In this article I examine R. G. Collingwood’s discussion of the Albigensian Heresy, the second of the four examples of barbarism that Collingwood gives in his book, The New Leviathan. Collingwood’s political philosophy is my focus throughout. My aim is to explain why a twentiethcentury philosopher understands a medieval heresy as a barbarism that is as grave a potential threat to civilization as the other barbarisms that he lists, including Nazi Germany. This is something which he thinks has a clear relevance to the modern world, as do Simone Weil and John Rawls whom I discuss in the article, who nevertheless come to radically different conclusions from Collingwood. I clarify Collingwood’s often compressed treatment, and identify the beliefs of the Heresy which provoke Collingwood’s rejection of them. [R]
72.316 KAUFMANN, Katharina —
Realists and non-ideal theorists currently criticise Rawlsian mainstream liberalism for its inability to address injustice and political conflict, as a result of the subordination of political philosophy to moral theory (Bernard Williams), as well as an idealising and abstract methodology (Charles W. Mills). Seeing that liberalism emerged as a theory for the protection of the individual from conflict and injustice, these criticisms aim at the very core of liberalism as a theory of the political and therefore deserve close analysis. I will defend Judith N. Shklar’s liberalism of fear as an answer to these challenges. I will argue that the liberalism of fear maintains realism’s conflictual and inherently political thrust while also integrating a perspective on injustice. [R, abr.]
72.317 KIERSTEAD, James —
The Great Speech of Protagoras in Plato’s dialogue (Prot. 320c8-328d2) is now widely seen as an expression of democratic theory, one of the earliest substantial expressions of democratic theory on record. At the same time, there have long been (and still are) arguments to the contrary, the most formidable presentation of which is an article by Peter Nicholson that appeared in these pages in 1981. I address Nicholson’s skeptical arguments head-on and in full, in a way that has not yet been done. By doing so, I hope to put skeptical arguments of this sort to rest, and to confirm Protagoras’ Great Speech once and for all as an early, and very interesting, fragment of democratic theory. [R]
72.318 KÖNIG, Pascal D. —
Existentialist philosophy offers an understanding of how trying to eliminate ambiguities that inevitably mark the human condition only seemingly leads to freedom. This existentialist outlook can also serve to shed light on how democratic politics may similarly show tendencies which aim at overcoming immanent tensions. Such tendencies in democratic politics can be clarified using Sartre’s notion of ignorance — and truth as its counterpart. His concept of ignorance goes beyond merely facts or knowledge and refers to a mode of being. It expresses a subject’s desire to avoid, rather than confront, resistances stemming from the world. Based on a distinction of different forms in which this orientation can manifest itself, this article shows how democratic politics, too, can be threatened by ignorance as a way of doing politics. [R, abr.]
72.319 KOVAČEVIĆ, Bojan ; SIMENDIĆ, Marko —
In The Mandrake, Machiavelli uses the form of a comedic play to point at a way of establishing a constitution suitable for people who put their personal interest before the common good. We first present the play’s characters as champions of an age that is radically deprived of sense and purpose. In Ligurio’s plan to win over the beautiful but married Lucretia, we recover the guidelines for the peaceful creation of a new constitution within the shadows of the old political system which, debilitated and weak, offers no resistance. Finally, in this seemingly frivolous play, we uncover a pathway to a hidden revolution, accomplished by the statesman’s bravado and his advisor’s cunning. In The Mandrake Machiavelli sketches up the scenario [of] how to establish a good constitution within a corrupt republic. [R, abr.]
72.320 LAMY, Jérôme —
This article analyzes Bruno Latour’s transition from theology to sociology between the late 1960s and the mid-1970s. The study crossanalyzes the philosophical field of the 1970s with the progress of interaction rituals specific to disciplinary integration. By examining his Master’s degree in philosophy and a lecture carried out during his thesis, plus the report of his stay in Ivory Coast, it is possible to identify several stages of a disciplinary bifurcation. First anchored to the metaphysical sector of the philosophical field, Latour — like his masters André Malet, Jean Brun and Claude Bruaire — tried to dissolve the boundary between philosophy and theology. Nourished with Rudolf Bultmann’s hermeneutics — which generates a particularly powerful emotional energy —, the young philosopher drew from the new theological resources provided by Vatican II Council the instruments for a conversion to sociology. [R, abr.]
72.321 LEE Shinkyu —
How political communities should be constituted is at the center of Hannah Arendt’s engagement with two ancient sources of law: the Greek nomos and the Roman lex. Recent scholarship suggests that Arendt treats nomos as imperative and exclusive while lex has a relationship-establishing dimension and that for an inclusive form of polity, she favors lex over nomos. This article argues, however, that Arendt’s appreciation occurs within a general context of more reservations about Rome than Roman-centric interpretations admit. Her writings show that lex could not accommodate the agonistic spirit and Homeric impartiality that helped the Greeks achieve human greatness and surpassing excellence. Arendt also points out that Roman peace alliances occurred at the expense of disclosive competition among equals and assumed some form of domination. [R, abr.]
72.322 LEHTO, Otto ; MEADOWCROFT, John —
In a number of works, James M. Buchanan set out a proposal for a ‘demogrant’ — a form of universal basic income that applied the principles of generality and non-discrimination to the tax and the transfer sides of the scheme and was to be implemented as a constitutional rule outside the realm of day-to-day politics. This article shows it was a logical application of [Buchanan’s] theoretical framework to the problem of inefficient and unfair welfare systems when reform to the basic institutions of majoritarian democracy was not forthcoming. The demogrant aims to end the problems of majority cycling and rent-seeking that plague contemporary welfare states and therefore offers a model of welfare without rent-seeking — a constitutional welfare state. We compare Buchanan’s demogrant model to other universal basic income and negative income tax models and consider the most important criticisms. [R, abr.]
72.323 LEIPOLD, Bruno —
Karl Marx characterized the 1848 June Days uprising as a class struggle between proletarians and the bourgeoisie. But modern investigations have shown that the insurgents actually consisted primarily of artisans and not proletarians. They have also undermined Marx’s claim that one of the primary forces used to defeat the insurgency, the Mobile Guard, was recruited from the lumpenproletariat, when in fact they shared the same social background as the insurgents. As a result of these findings, critics have questioned the adequacy of Marx’s class analysis and concluded that he was wrong to describe the June Days as a class struggle. I argue that the empirical findings represent serious shortcomings in Marx’s account and need to be properly incorporated into our understanding of the uprising. [R, abr.]
72.324 MacKENZIE, Michael K. —
A number of scholars have argued that we should pay closer attention to the role that philanthropy plays in shaping our societies. Philanthropic foundations are inherently political. They use private money for public purposes, and they receive tax advantages for the donations they make, but they typically lack transparency and public accountability. I argue that elite philanthropy may also violate three other democratic principles: (1) the all-affected principle; (2) the principle of non-arbitrary power; and (3) the provisionality principle. In response, I argue that we should consider using innovative democratic institutions — such as participatory budgeting processes — to decide how philanthropic funds should be used and distributed. Taking measures to democratize philanthropy would help mitigate some of the democratic concerns with elite philanthropy while acknowledging the important role that philanthropy plays in shaping our present, unequal societies. [R]
72.325 MILLER, Benjamin —
I argue that we cannot fully understand Aristotle’s position on political stability and state preservation in the Politics with paying close attention to his Eudemian Ethics. We learn from considering the Politics and the Eudemian Ethics in concert that even ‘correct’ regimes are unstable when citizens do not possess full virtue. Aristotle introduces his formal account of the knowledge requirements for virtue in Eudemian Ethics 8.3, and he applies these knowledge requirements as an explanation for state decline in Politics 2.9 when discussing the Spartans. If we primarily focus on the Nicomachean Ethics as Aristotle’s single essential ethical work, we will not learn the lesson he intends his readers to take away from the Spartan discussion in the Politics: that virtue requires correct understanding of the hierarchy and structure of the good life. [R, abr.]
72.326 MIŃSKI, Radomir —
In 2011, it has been a centenary since the best-known book by Robert Michels titled Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der Demokratie modernen was first published. This work, together with the formulation “the iron law of oligarchy,” is the most recognizable component of the scientific achievements of this German-Italian sociologist. In the second half of the 20th c., Michels’s thesis about the contradiction between the organization and democracy had a significant impact on the development of the sociology. “The iron law of oligarchy” inspired many scholars from the US, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, where to present day Political Parties is regarded as the classic work in the field of sociology of politics. Unfortunately in Polish humanities, Michels has been played quite marginal part. Up until today, there has been no Polish translation of Michels’s main book. [R, abr.]
72.327 MULIERI, Allessandro —
What was it like to speak of and think about democracy in Machiavelli’s time? This paper first reconstructs the pre-modern language of democracy in late Medieval and humanist political thought (from the translation of Aristotle’s Politics in the thirteenth century to Machiavelli’s context) discussing its conceptual implications. Second, it analyses Machiavelli’s ideas on pre-modern democracy vis-à-vis books 3 and 4 of Aristotle’s Politics and book 6 of Polybius’ Histories. Situating Machiavelli into earlier reflections on democracy shows that while Machiavelli’s thought provides crucial conceptual innovations, his debt to the classical sources on democracy is much deeper than a simple and unqualified rejection of the latter’s languages. [R]
72.328 NEWMAN, Saul —
Recent debates in liberal political theory have sought to come to terms with the post-secular condition, characterised by deep religious pluralism, the resurgence of right-wing populism, as well as new social movements for economic, ecological and racial justice. These forces represent competing claims on the public space and create challenges for the liberal model of state neutrality. I argue for a more comprehensive engagement between liberalism and political theology. In considering two contrasting approaches to political or public theology — C. Schmitt’s and J. Moltmann’s — I argue that liberal political theory can and should open itself to a diversity of social movements and ecological struggles that pluralise the political space in ways that unsettle the boundary between the secular and religious. [R, abr.]
72.329 OLSEN, Niklas —
This article re-examines the relation between neoliberalism and democracy by illustrating that, from its inception, neoliberal ideology was characterized by an attempt to contest notions of representative democracy by arguing that the market is more democratic than the polity can ever be. This attempt was closely linked to the invention of a specific figure — the sovereign consumer — carried out by the somewhat overlooked Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises in the 1920s as part of an attempt to delegitimize socialism and re-invent liberalism as a positive program. Portraying Mises as the very inventor of this paradigm, I show that his idea of the sovereign consumer hinged on the idea of democracy as a method of choosing and sought to re-invent the market as the democratic forum par excellence. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 72.279]
72.330 ORSI, Roberto —
Since the end of the Cold War, a number of authors have affirmed the relevance of Carl Schmitt’s concept of Grossraum for contemporary international politics. This article reviews those claims and argues that Grossraum has little to offer in analytical terms to enhance our understanding of the international political situation in this early 21st c. Those authors who wish to revive Grossraum for the sake of their theoretical work overlook vitally important components of this concept. Furthermore, their claims fail to meet the criteria of Reinhart Koselleck’s structural iterability. [R]
72.331 OSTROWSKI, Marius S. —
In the early twentieth century, European Social Democracy was confronted with newly-salient problems of foreign and international policy thanks to rising tensions between the European ‘great powers’. Eduard Bernstein, founder of ‘revisionist’ Marxism, played an increasingly central part in the ensuing debates within the socialist movement. Yet his position on questions of colonialism, antiimperialism, militarism, pacifism and diplomacy has — like much of his later work — been hitherto inadequately explored and often misunderstood. This article reevaluates Bernstein’s foreign policy thought, and argues that the First World War provoked a profound shift in his views — expressed in texts that deserve wider recognition in the canon of socialist internationalism. [R]
72.332 PAGANELLI, Maria Pia —
The method of analysis Adam Smith uses is relatively similar to the method economics generally uses today, especially the subfield of experimental economics. The method of analysis that Smith uses is coherent and consistent throughout his whole work. He searches for constant variables and then sees what variables are changed by exogenous changes. In particular, Smith looks for the constancy in human nature, and analyzes how historical and material circumstances change the incentives that the constant human nature faces. This method, applied to human conduct in all its aspects, makes it easy for many economists today to see some continuity between Smith’s political economy and today’s economic science. [R]
72.333 PALMEN, Ritva —
This paper, analyses the way in which Thomas Aquinas (1274) understood and explained our inclination to compare ourselves to other people. In addition to more general questions about comparison in Aquinas, it explores the various mechanisms that we use for estimating ourselves and how these estimations can be considered either successful or flawed. My claim is that in combining elements from both Christian theology as well Aristotelian ethics, Aquinas’ moral philosophy includes an important but thus far neglected implicit discussion of social comparison; in addition, it also comprises the idea of the need to estimate one’s own capacities and abilities accurately. [R]
72.334 PAUSCH, Markus —
Democracy has come under pressure in many countries in recent years. Authoritarian tendencies, populism and the cult of leadership threaten pluralistic societies in Europe and other parts of the world. But democracy is more than just a method of finding a majority; it is inextricably linked to the fight against oppression and injustice in all contexts of life. Especially in times of democratic crisis, it is necessary to focus on its core aspects. The political thinking of French philosopher and writer Albert Camus, who died in 1960, offers the basis for a redefinition of democracy that is linked to and dependent on rebellion. From his reflections, a radical theory of democracy can be derived that is based on the absurdity of the world, its incompleteness, revolt and resistance to authoritarianism, on doubt, dialogue and foreignness. [R]
72.335 PEREIRA, Anthony W. —
The Harvard political science professor Samuel P. Huntington (1927-2008) made visits to Brazil in 1972 and 1974 to advise the government about ‘decompression’ or regime liberalization. The literature on Brazil’s dictatorship references these visits as having had a major causal impact. This article argues that his influence on Brazilian regime change is greatly exaggerated. It also argues that Huntington, who became a leading theorist of democratization, had an interest in and commitment to democracy that was more recent and circumstantial than is often thought. This helps to explain the current period of democratic ‘deconsolidation’ associated with the rise of authoritarian national populism in Brazil. [R]
72.336 PEYS, Christopher —
This essay offers a review of both Roach’s Decency and Difference: Humanity and the Global Challenge of Identity Politics [U. Michigan, 2019] and Steele’s Restraint in International Politics [Cambridge U.P., 2019]. Exploring the concept-driven modes of analysis employed in each of these two texts, this essay investigates how Roach and Steele theorize the moral, socio-psychological, and political struggles inherent to the notions of decency and restraint. This review is not only devoted to understanding Roach’s and Steele’s respective arguments about how global politics has been conditioned by the tensions inherent to decency and restraint but, also, to reflecting on how these two scholars suggest we deal — theoretically and practically — with the complexities of these two notions in today’s world. [R, abr.]
72.337 PROMISEL, Michael E. —
Plutarch’s Parallel Lives was once considered a preeminent source of ethical and leadership instruction. But despite generations turning to the Lives for leadership education, we lack clarity concerning how the Lives cultivate leadership. In fact, Plutarch offers the key to this puzzle in a tripartite theory of leadership education evident throughout his corpus. Leaders should be educated through: 1) philosophical instruction, 2) experience in public life, or 3) literary synthesis – and, ideally, some combination of all three. Plutarch’s Lives, this article contends, exemplifies the third form of education, literary synthesis, which exhibits the influence of philosophical principle and moral character on political conduct. [R, abr.]
72.338 PROZOROV, Sergei —
The article critically engages with G. Agamben’s reading of Rousseau in order to explore the affinities between the two authors’ subtractive approach to political subjectivation. In The Kingdom and the Glory. Agamben argues that Rousseau’s Social Contract reproduces, in a secularized manner, the providential paradigm of government, whose origins Agamben finds in early Christianity. This paradigm establishes a fictitious articulation between transcendent sovereignty and immanent government, presenting particular acts of government as emanating from general divine laws. We shall demonstrate that Rousseau was neither unaware of the problematic character of this paradigm nor did he venture to conceal its problems, but, on the contrary, he highlighted them throughout the Social Contract, whose key motif was the danger of the contamination of general will by particular acts, identities or interests. The same wariness of particularism characterizes Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker, often read as entirely heterogeneous to the political project of the Social Contract. [R]
72.339 RAPIN, Ami-Jacques —
While it is generally known that the word terrorism originated in the French Revolution, the exact circumstances of its emergence are much less known. First used publicly by Tallien, the neologism had actually been shaped by Pierre-Louis Roederer. From the outset, the latter had given it a conceptual scope by integrating it into a reflection on the characteristics of the use of terror for political purposes. [R]
72.340 RIBAREVIĆ, Luka —
Thomas Hobbes plays a major role in Commodity Production and Associated Labour in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy, a seminal study of the development of political economy written by Dag Strpić. According to Strpić, Hobbes established a new methodological and categorial framework for the understanding of the political community in modernity. Departing in that respect from the vast majority of interpretations of Hobbes’ philosophia civilis, Strpić reads Hobbes not only as the founder of modern political theory, but of classical political economy as well. In the article the political-economic aspect of Hobbes’ science of politics is examined through a critical analysis of the dialogue Strpić engages in with the influential interpretation of C. B. Macpherson. [R. abr.]
72.341 ROGER, Antoine —
It is possible to draw upon Marx’s thinking without emphasizing an automatic relationship between an economic ‘base’ and a political ‘superstructure’. The development of capitalism must then be understood as resulting from the ‘conceptual separation’ of the economic and political issues. However, the research that favours this approach fails to provide the tools for a precise and systematic study of the political work which makes this separation possible. For his part, through the development of field theory and the emphasis on the notion of symbolic power, P. Bourdieu offers the means to analyse the political work of multiple agents, but he does not formulate a theory of capitalism tailored to his findings. It seems worthwhile to take up and extend some of his proposals to open up avenues of thought in this direction. [R, abr.]
72.342 ROLLO, Toby —
The emerging field of comparative political theory (CPT) seeks to expand our understanding of politics through intercultural dialogues between diverse systems of political thought. CPT acknowledges diverse modes of political understanding, yet the field is still methodologically focused on textual forms of political practice and learning. I argue that the privileging of political literature in CPT has been inherited from orthodox political theory and the history of political thought and that the prioritizing of text over oral and enactive practices places constraints on intercultural dialogue. First, methodological focus on texts inhibits dialogue with Indigenous traditions that do not prioritize text in the same way or to the same extent in the reproduction of political culture. Second, the incorporation of oral traditions tends to conflate orality with text in ways that obfuscate the contribution of enactive performance. [R]
72.343 SAUNDERS-HASTINGS, Emma —
Institutions today face calls to return “tainted” donations from controversial donors like the Sackler family. Such critiques of “dirty money,” while gaining in public salience, are prone to charges of puritanism or of hypocrisy. This paper recovers a distinctive position on dirty money, capable of responding to these charges, from the early speeches and writings of Frederick Douglass. In Great Britain in 1846, Douglass delivered a series of speeches claiming that the Free Church of Scotland had “made itself responsible for slavery” by accepting donations from American slaveholders, and he led a public campaign to “Send back the money.” Douglass’s argument centers on the claim that accepting money and other gifts can distort political relationships and subvert political judgment. [R, abr.]
72.344 SIMPSON, Sid —
Adorno and Horkheimer’s legacy is incomplete without reference to their infamous political quietism. To thinkers such as Habermas, this was the unfortunate consequence of their alleged evacuation of reason. Attending to the treatment of Nietzsche in Dialectic of Enlightenment illuminates the distinct irony of such charges. Here, in their most popular book, Nietzsche is presented as precisely that which they praised him for warning against elsewhere: an advocate of cruelty animated by a reactionary morality. I contend that this exaggeration is not accidental, but rather illustrative; the authors present a consciously hyperbolized version of Nietzsche in order to articulate how he made possible his own misappropriation, and to distinguish themselves sharply from Nietzsche given their disagreements about the necessity of reason. [R, abr.]
72.345 SIMS, Stephen Patrick —
This article explores what Cicero as a political thinker can offer to the study of international relations. Although previous readings of Cicero have emphasized his Stoic influences and his natural law teaching as the basis of a cosmopolitan world society, I emphasize the way in which Cicero can deepen the concept of international society. International society relies on certain norms and institutions to function properly, such as international law, sovereignty, and the use of war to restrain violence and redress injustice. We find all these concepts articulated clearly in Cicero’s moral and political thought. Cicero also shows the limits of these institutions and norms, explaining why none of them is absolute. Finally, Cicero adds to our theorizing about international society by drawing attention to the role of honor, ruling, and inequality in international society. [R, abr.]
72.346 STEWART, Edmund —
This article considers a longstanding problem: what does the word τύραννος mean? And if it means ‘bad / tyrannical ruler’, why are good rulers called tyrants? The solution proposed here is that tyranny is not a fixed state of being, or not being, but instead a gradual process of development. To be called a tyrant, a ruler need not embody all the stereotypical traits of tyranny. If tyranny is, by definition, unconstitutional and illegitimate rule, then there may be no clear moment at which one ceases to be a general or king and becomes a tyrant, only a process by which the tyrant gradually strengthens his rule and develops the negative attributes associated with absolute and illegitimate power. [R, abr.]
72.347 TREGENZA, Ian —
This article examines the widespread and varied reception of Hilaire Belloc’s The Servile State (1912) in Australia from the time of its publication to the mid-20th c. Belloc’s claim that market capitalism was giving rise to a series of legislative reforms which entrenched the inferior, servile status of the working classes was of particular interest in Australia where innovations such as compulsory industrial arbitration were pioneered. In the 1930s Belloc’s ideas inspired the Catholic Action movement, and they were subsequently developed in the debates around post-war reconstruction by a range of figures including the radical professor of philosophy John Anderson. [R]
72.348 TROJAN, Cody —
Neo-republicans position J. Harrington (1611-1677) as a seminal figure in a tradition that asks what set of institutions grant the individual freedom from domination. This article argues that the signal emphasis on freedom diverts us from the broader question of legitimacy motivating Harrington’s republicanism. Harrington contends that the liberty property confers is a necessary but insufficient condition for de jure government. The popular liberty that a broad distribution of wealth secures must be supplemented by a Roman concept of authority in order for the regime to become legitimate. Republican legitimacy requires the marriage of popular power and aristocratic virtue; it demands both the wide distribution of property and the integration of authority as auctoritas into the political constitution. [R, abr.]
72.349 ULAŞ, Luke —
There exists a longstanding debate over the global institutional implications of Kant’s political philosophy: does such a philosophy entail a federal world government, or instead only a confederal ‘league of nations’? However, while the systematic nature of Kant’s tripartite ‘doctrine of right’ is well recognised, this debate has been conducted with all but exclusive focus on ‘international right’ in particular. This article, by contrast, brings ‘cosmopolitan right’ firmly into view. It proceeds by way of engagement with the two Kantian arguments made in defence of a ‘league of nations’ in discussion of international right, each of which appeals to aspects of states’ supposed ‘personhood’: the first appeals to states’ distinctive moral personality; the second to states’ physical manifestation. The article considers what happens when we assess these arguments not just in light of the demands of international right, but also in light of cosmopolitan right, and thus in light of public right more comprehensively. [R, abr.]
72.350 VUJEVA, Domagoj —
The author deals with Hegel’s reception of political economy in the Philosophy of Right, showing that reception to be decisive for the development of Hegel’s legal and political philosophy and its mature form, but also for his understanding of the modern natural law tradition and the theory of social contract. Relying on the findings of D. Strpić, the author argues that Hegel considered “civil society” to be the place of realization of the contractual idea of the state. The “laws” immanent to modern market economy, which were “discovered” by political economy, make in Hegel’s view contractual constitution of the state superfluous and provide at the same time the internal measure for the critique of the contractual theory. This, however, does not mean that Hegel accepts the social model of classical political economy, nor its understanding of the relation between the state and society. [R, abr.]
72.351 WALBY, Sylvia —
Social theory is developing in response to the coronavirus (COVID) crisis. Fundamental questions about social justice in the relationship of individuals to society are raised by Delanty in his review of political philosophy, including Agamben, Foucault and Žižek. However, the focus on the libertarian critique of authoritarianism is not enough. The social democratic critique of neoliberalism lies at the center of the contesting responses to the COVID crisis. A social democratic perspective on public health, democracy and state action is contrasted with the antistatists of left and right. This is addressed in debates on the relationship between science and governance, the place of crisis in theories of change and the conceptualization of alternative forms of social formation. [R, abr.
72.352 WEISS, Anja —
Globalization and cross-border studies have changed the ways in which sociological theorists think about space. Rather than viewing society as integrated, placing individual and collective actors in clearly bounded spaces nested within each other, this article combines several differentiation theories of society as a first step towards achieving an abstract language that can account for a plurality of comprehensive social contexts, thus relating actors to socio-spatial contexts in various ways. Starting with Simmel, the article discusses how some social contexts, such as the state, use the territory to gain exclusivity, whereas other social contexts are non-territorial in nature. Further types combine social and spatial differentiation. The article expands on Simmel’s socio-spatial forms with the help of newer systems theories proposed by Luhmann and Walby and Bourdieu’s field theory. [R, abr.]
72.353 WILLIAMS, David —
A close engagement with John Stuart Mill’s writings on the practice of British rule in India shows Mill was a much more uncertain and anxious imperialist than he is often presented to be. Mill was acutely aware of the difficulties presented by the imperial context in India, he identified a number of very demanding conditions that would have to be met if Britain’s imperial mission was to be successful, and he was very troubled by the dangers posed to this mission from politics in Britain. Toward the end of his life, Mill become much more pessimistic about the progressive possibilities of British colonialism, in part because of what he thought had happened after the transfer of British rule from the East India Company to the British state. [R, abr.]
72.354 WILLIAMS, Gregory P. —
Few living Marxists are more famous, yet Perry Anderson’s theory of international relations (IR) remains underexplored. This article is an interpretive analysis of Anderson and finds a coherent, albeit changing and at times contradictory, IR theory. It marks three phases of his theorizing: an internationalism, which sought to combat Cold War rhetoric of Western powers; a structuralism that attributed the Westphalian system to a synthesis of ancient and medieval modes of production; and a clear-headed radicalism of great power politics and increased agency. Yet this periodization also shows consistency of thought, one that emphasized hegemony, the complex totality, and a historicized view of sovereignty. Anderson’s IR theory traverses Marxist thought, such as that of the Gramscians, world-systems analysts, and those returning to Trotsky’s notion of uneven and combined development. His neo-Marxism is a distinct alternative to, yet relevant for, other radical traditions. [R]
72.355 WILSCH, Tobias —
Realists about laws of nature and their Humean opponents disagree on whether laws ‘govern’. An independent commitment to the ‘governing conception’ of laws pushes many towards the realist camp. Despite its significance, however, no satisfactory account of governance has been offered. The goal of this article is to develop such an account. I base my account on two claims. First, we should distinguish two notions of governance, ‘guidance’ and ‘production’, and secondly, explanatory phenomena other than laws are also candidates for governance. My goal is to develop a unified account which captures both guidance and production as well as the governance of phenomena, such as essence and logical consequence. The account of governance I develop belongs to the family of modal accounts, which was popularized by David Armstrong, but it also employs essentialist resources. [R, abr.]
72.356 WYLLIE, Robert —
Aristotle does not explain why ordinary citizens who lack the virtue of justice nevertheless praise justice and the law. Indignation (nemesis), defined as pain at the undeserved gains of others, is a promising candidate in the list of means regarding virtues and passions in Book 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics. However, as many scholars have noted, Aristotle’s description of indignation as a mean is flawed. Moreover, indignation is the only characteristic in the list that disappears from the inquiry thereafter. I argue that Aristotle obliquely criticizes indignation for aligning envy, a base passion, with conventional justice. Aristotle’s subtle critique reveals that envy motivates ‘the many’ to support justice, an unsavory conclusion which he does not highlight. [R]
72.357 YARISH, Jasmine Noelle —
Entering the discussion of the current political climate as a possible “Third Reconstruction,” this article reads Octavia E. Butler’s recent New York Times bestselling novel, Parable of the Sower, to re-center the fugitive politics that brought about the first Reconstruction in the long struggle for Black liberation and engender what I am calling an abolitionist politics of self-care. Butler’s main character, Lauren Oya Olamina, operates as literary archive that brings together an initial canon of Black feminist intellectual visionaries, each of whom contributed to the long project of Reconstruction, and provides tangible practices for abolition democracy steeped in an attentiveness to interdependence and sustainability, all ecological, emotional, and political. [R]
72.358 ZANOTTI, Laura —
This article critiques Kantian ethics for being based upon an ontological imaginary that starts from the substantialism of Newtonian physics. Substantialism shapes Western political philosophy’s view about who we are as subjects and how the world works. In this ontological imaginary, validation of ethics is based upon universality and abstractions. Furthermore, Kantian ethics underscores an anthropocentric and theocratic vision of how to govern societies. I argue Kantian criteria are not only insufficient to make good choices but are also conducive to wrong ones, since they elicit self-appeasement in international intervention, and contribute to the conceptual repertoire of coloniality. I propose that an ontology of entanglements opens possibilities for overcoming the shortcomings of an ethos based upon abstractions and possibly for correcting some of its moral failures. [R, abr.]
72.359 ZIEGFELD, Adam —
Duverger’s Law states the single-member district plurality rules should produce two-party competition. In district-level election races where this expectation holds, what political behaviors — ranging from elites’ strategic formation of political parties to voters’ strategic abandonment of losing candidates — account for these outcomes? Using data from state elections in India, this article demonstrates that no single mechanism accounts for most electoral outcomes consistent with Duverger’s Law. However, mechanisms related to the behavior elites, far more than voters, produce convergence on two-party competition. This article uncovers relatively little evidence of outcomes driven by strategic voting, instead finding that much of the convergence on two parties is attributable to various forms of strategic entry in which parties selectively field candidates in certain races. [R, abr.]