Political Theory Commons^™

When Equality Matters, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Equality is at the heart of liberal, democratic political theory. Despite this, there is considerable disagreement about how we should understand equality in the context of liberal politics. Several different conceptions of equality (e.g., equality of opportunity, equality of welfare outcomes, and equality of basic rights) will recommend different and often conflicting policies and institutions. Further, we can expect, in democratic societies, that citizens will disagree on the correct conception of equality. This leads to the diversity problem of equality— there is no one conception of equality that will be acceptable to all citizens. This is compounded by the complexity …

The Composition Of History: A Critical Point Of View Of Michel Foucault's Archaeology, Javier Gálvez Aguirre

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The author discusses in "The composition of History: a critical point of view of Michel Foucault's archaeology" a very specific aspect within the work of Foucault: the role of the philosophies of history in the composition of historical discourse. The philosophies of history of pre-revolutionary Europe were able to show a discursive continuity that does not tally with the discontinuities that are sought in Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical project. The question that is asked following the analyses of these discourses does not fully escape from the analyses of the knowledge-power apparatuses: how is it possible that the practical-political nature of …

“A New Way Of Thinking”: Frantz Fanon’S True Opinion On Violence, Caroline D. Renko

The Downtown Review

In an attempt to clear Frantz Fanon’s name, on account of his opinion on the role of violence in decolonizing a nation, this paper focuses on two important chapters in his last book, The Wretched of the Earth. By closely reading his articulation of the Algerian war and the wounds brought on by mental illness at such a time, Fanon’s true opinion concerning violence becomes clear. For too long, he has been seen and used as a proponent for inciting violence, but this is a misconception that has been perpetuated by devaluing the importance of his descriptions of the …

It Could Never Last: Why British Sovereignty And Its Influence Since 1945 Resulted In Brexit, Jeffrey Brandt

Master's Theses

The EU Referendum of June 2016 marked a watershed moment for the United Kingdom, as it sought to once again reassert its sovereignty and retake its place in the world as an independent state, free from European Union infringement. The British are usually seen as the cussid ones in Europe, stubbornly holding on to their principles and traditions of sovereignty. But why is that? Carefully tracing UK history, particularly from the end of the Second World War to the present day, it becomes understandable why the result of the 2016 referendum should not be quite a surprise. Studying events in …

The Spirit Is Willing, But The Flesh Is Weak: Contemporary Pan-Africanism And The Challenges To A United States Of Africa, Adesola Adeyemo

Master's Theses

Establishing a ‘United States of Africa’ to the average individual is deemed as a mythical idea in contemporary Africa, irrespective of the popularity of this idea several years ago. Today, the idea is idealized as overambitious – considering the balkanized state of the continent post-colonialization. Because of this, attempts made since then have favored enforcing regional integration over continental integration. Undeniably, this idea would not have come into being if it wasn’t for the concept of Pan-Africanism - which has for long guided the political and socio-economic policies created on the continent. The goal of this research is …

Chinese Government’S Inability To Use Film – One Of The Most Powerful Cultural Tools Of Soft Power Expansion – To Achieve Its Soft Power Expansion Goals: Lessons For China To Tackle Its Soft Power-Deficit Problem, Kyungin Kim

International Political Economy Theses

Many scholars of Chinese soft power commonly believe that despite the fact that China has been working hard to achieve successful soft power expansion, one of the biggest factors that leads to Chinese soft power deficit or failure of the Chinese government to effectively trump “China threat” is its inability to use its cultural industries as a tool to fulfill its soft power expansion goals. This is a major obstacle to China in achieving its goal of successful Chinese soft power expansion, as it is said that culture is the most traditional and powerful source of soft power expansion. This …

Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Table of Contents for Volume 8

Notes From The Editor, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Notes from International Dialogue's Editor-in-Chief, Rory J. Conces for Volume 8.

The Nature Of Legal Interpretation: What Jurists Can Learn About Legal Interpretation From Linguistics And Philosophy, Triantafyllos Gkouvas

International Dialogue

Brian G. Slocum’s The Nature of Legal Interpretation: What Jurists Can Learn about Legal Interpretation from Linguistics and Philosophy is a formidable addition to an evolving trend in analytical jurisprudence that invites insights from jurisprudentially “extraneous” domains such as linguistics, philosophy of language and mind, metaethics and philosophy of action. A praiseworthy feature of this trend is the importance it attaches to keeping these insights as free as possible of prior translation in the occasionally cryptic or unnecessarily insular language of analytical jurisprudence and legal doctrine. It is precisely thanks to this feature that recent discussions on the relevance of …

The Life Of The Law In Palestine: The Abc Of The Opt: A Legal Lexicon Of The Israeli Control Over The Occupied Palestinian Territory Orna Ben-Naftali,, John Reynolds

International Dialogue

Through an accumulation of laws rather than by military means, a particular misery is intensified and entrenched. This slow violence, this cold violence, no less than the other kind, ought to be looked at and understood. (Cole 2015: 19) In September 2018, Israel’s Supreme Court confirmed that the planned eviction and demolition of the small West Bank village of Khan al-Ahmar, originally authorized by the Court earlier in the year, should go ahead. The residents of that village are Palestinian Bedouin who had been expelled by the Israeli state in 1952 from their original lands in the

Naqab desert. Six …

Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (And Why We Don’T Talk About It), Uğur Aytaç

International Dialogue

The demise of organized labor, the internationalization of capital movements, and technological changes are often believed to contribute to the decline in the bargaining power of employees vis-à-vis their bosses in the age of globalization. According to many, these radical socio-economic transformations are one of the explanatory factors behind the expanding income and wealth inequalities across societies. The emergence of these vast economic inequalities led social scientists to study the nature of these trends and search for possible institutional solutions. Similarly, the normative-philosophical discussions on the contemporary labor-capital relations have predominantly focused on the inequalities of economic resources such as …

Hate Speech Law: A Philosophical Examination, Eric A. Heinze

International Dialogue

Alexander Brown writes as an inter-disciplinary scholar at the intersections of law, ethics, philosophy, and politics. With Hate Speech Law: A Philosophical Examination he justly claims to have explored “numerous principled arguments for and against hate speech law by articulating a collection of key normative principles” (316). This ambitious book identifies and organizes conflicting values within the hate speech controversies. It aims to synthesize deeper questions about core concepts of liberalism, democracy, personhood, dignity, and tolerance with policy concerns about pragmatics and effectiveness. The most seasoned free speech scholars will find points and angles they had not previously considered.

The Roots Of Ethnic Cleansing In Europe, Andy Aydin-Aitchison

International Dialogue

H. Zeynep Bulutgil’s monograph, available now in paperback, has already received high praise and recognition, winning the American Political Science Association European Politics and Society Section book award in 2017. In this review, I set out what the book offers in terms of argument and evidence, and so outline its contribution to understanding ethnic conflict and ethnic cleansing. In the spirit of cross-disciplinary dialogue, I consider how Bulutgil’s approach and insights can contribute to developments in the criminology of atrocity. Taken together the political science approach exemplified by Bulutgil, and criminological approaches characterized by disciplinary openness, complement each other in …

The Iranian Metaphysicals, Elise K. Burton

International Dialogue

Anthropologist Alireza Doostdar’s first book, The Iranian Metaphysicals, is a well-written and theoretically sophisticated contribution to scholarship on modern Iranian history and society. Combining vividly portrayed ethnography with archival research and textual analysis, he offers an unprecedented account of Iranians’ experiences with and beliefs about the supernatural. The term ‘metaphysical’ emerges directly from his Iranian interlocutors, who use the Persian equivalents metafiziki or mavara’i to describe paranormal practices and phenomena ranging from sorcery and traditional occult sciences, to spirit possession and séances, to clairvoyance and teleportation. Although many elite Iranians, secularist and orthodox Shi‘i alike, have condemned interest in the …

Heat, Greed And Human Need: Climate Change, Capitalism And Sustainable Wellbeing, Gillian Brock

International Dialogue

In this wonderful book, Ian Gough shows how we can deal with climate change sensibly, by developing eco-social policy that promotes human wellbeing. The result is a tour de force. Demonstrating sophisticated knowledge of several relevant fields, Gough combines important multidisciplinary insights with his previous groundbreaking research on human needs. The result is a coherent, usable framework that has considerable value in guiding policy discussions. This impressive work is bound to become essential reading for anyone working on policy, climate change and sustainable human well-being.

Famine, Affluence And Morality, Owen G. Mordaunt

International Dialogue

The foreword of this text is significant because Bill and Melinda Gates, co-chairs of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, make reference to the fact that in more than forty years the world has seen much improvement in curbing poverty. Less than half the world’s population lives in poverty and the proportion of children who die before the age of five has dropped even more. By 1990, it was around 10%, and now it is closer to 5%, even though 5% is still too many when you consider 6.3 million child deaths per year. Most of the deaths, however, are …

The Color Of Modernity: São Paulo And The Making Of Race And Nation In Brazil, Maria S. Arbeláez

International Dialogue

This The Color of Modernity is an outstanding examination of the role of race, regional, and nationalistic ideologies in the creation of modern-day Brazil. Barbara Weinstein focuses on the rise of the mainly white elite of the State of São Paulo as the prominent economic, political, and intellectual leader of the region and the country. The analysis articulates methodical theoretical approaches of cultural studies, discourse analysis, and politics of identity. It investigates the intricacies of how the coffee barons and intellectual Paulistanos managed to construct an image of modernity, entrepreneurship, and success as the paradigm of a new Brazil.What appears …

Heidegger And Jewish Thought: Difficult Others, David A. White

International Dialogue

This work is an anthology of fourteen articles on various aspects of Heidegger’s relation to the Jews and, more abstractly, what it means to be Jewish. The essays are arranged under three headings—Heidegger Thinks the Jews, Heidegger and Jewish Thinkers, Heidegger and Jewish Thought. The work also includes an introduction by Elad Lapidot and, as an appendix, Thomas Sheehan’s bibliography of Heidegger’s works (including English translations as of 2017). Lapidot’s introduction highlights the stimulus for the anthology, the publication of Heidegger’s “so-called Black Notebooks,” notes for the years 1931 to 1948. For Lapidot, “about a dozen passages” contain “strong anti-Jewish …

Not Enough: Human Rights In An Unequal World, Andrew Fagan

International Dialogue

These are troubling times, in which we appear to be facing an ever-expanding litany of harms and injustices entirely of our own making. Our awareness of these pathological conditions is expressed through various critical perspectives and platforms, which together reinforce a pervasive sense of crisis. We all contribute to the making of our world in a variety of ways. Few of us can claim to possess entirely clean hands when it comes to accounting for how the world could have become so disenchanted and so unpleasant for so many. However, some may wish to claim that the very purity of …

Evidence For Hope: Making Human Rights Work In The 21st Century, Brett J. Kyle

International Dialogue

In Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century, Kathryn Sikkink delivers a timely defense of the promise and progress of human rights movements, ideas, and institutions. Amid a seemingly ever-growing body of scholarship on the shortcomings of human rights, Sikkink contends that the human rights movement has helped to improve the human condition over the long term. As the title promises, there is much we should regard as progress in human rights and reason to be hopeful for the future. Sikkink was motivated to write this book for human rights activists “who say they have lost …

Is There A Crisis Of Sustainable Development?, Edward Sandowski, Betty J. Harris

International Dialogue

This article argues that there is a crisis of sustainable development. Sustainable development may mean a value system, but also may mean a set of societal development processes, manifested in political economy and culture. One crisis of sustainable development in either meaning arises from a combination of elements under neoliberalism. We stress three. (1) Sustainable development includes complex demands about justice. These involve conflicts among neoliberal justice and rival more philosophically plausible concepts of justice. (2) Care for the environment (basic to sustainable development) is complex, and generates multiple sometimes, conflicting demands on decision-making. (3)

Citizenship, Insurrection, And Recognition: European Critical Theory Before The Biopolitical Threshold: Citizenship; Violence And Civility: On The Limits Of Political Philosophy; Recognition Or Disagreement: A Critical Encounter On The Politics Of Freedom, Equality, And Identify, Miguel Vatter

International Dialogue

Étienne Balibar, Jacques Rancière and Axel Honneth are representative figures of a generation of political theorists who stand under the shooting star of May 1968, the high season of insurrectionary politics in the last half century. The books under review offer a welcome opportunity to consider the lessons they draw from this event and its aftermath at the twilight of their careers. However, taken as a whole these books also reveal the limits of this style of radical democratic theory that only in a very approximate way has registered the passing of the baton, which occurred roughly during the same …

Humanity Without Dignity: Moral Equality, Respect, And Human Rights, David Jason Karp

International Dialogue

This book aims to reject theoretical approaches that ground human rights in a notion of dignity, understood in terms of an equal rank, transcendental/spiritual quality and/or human capacity for rational agency. It argues instead that the idea of human rights should be grounded in a fundamental moral right of each person not to be treated as inferior. It defends this argument with reference to a substantive account of what it means to be treated as inferior in the relevant sense—dehumanization, instrumentalization, infantilization, objectification and stigmatization—combined with an account of when and why these are wrong. The book says that they …

"I Have A Seat In The Abandoned Theater": Post-Foundational Subjects, Inoperative Teleologies, And The Aesthetics Of Dispossession, Averil L. Novak

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What is the nature of political ‘reality,’ and in what ways are we capable of affecting it? Who (or what? and where?) is the subject of democratic politics? Of revolutionary politics? Are they opposed to one another? The grand narratives that ‘ground’ this project and the resistances that unground them form the basis for a post-foundational analytic of the subject of politics, of identity, and of community, which constitutes a mobilization of democratic resistance as a commitment to persistent (and in some cases, relentless) contestation, interruption, and disruption. These questions are explored through the argument that modern politics is …

Challenging Calls For Civility, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

In conjunction with her article "When Free Speech Disrupts Diversity Initiatives: What We Value and What We Do Not," Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt writes about civility codes and free speech for Academe Blog.

Rebuilding Tunisia, One Artist At A Time, Caitlin Kelley

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper argues that Tunisia’s engaged artists are playing a key role in the development of Tunisian civil society and democracy. The bulk of the research is in the form of interviews with five Tunisian artists. Each artist is actively engaged in the project of building a stronger, more democratic society. Through their art, they exercise and protect the political rights won in the 2011 revolution. These artists resist censorship, powerfully and loudly exercise their right to free speech, and help Tunisian society envision a better future for itself. The five artists interviewed for this research represent the type of …

Populisme Islam Di Indonesia: Studi Kasus Aksi Bela Islam Oleh Gnpf-Mui Tahun 2016-2017, Rangga Kusumo, Hurriyah Hurriyah

Jurnal Politik

Populisme bukanlah fenomena baru di Indonesia. Gerakan perlawanan populisme dalam sejarah Indonesia muncul dalam berbagai bentuk, sejak masa Orde Lama hingga pasca-Orde Baru. Pada masa Orde Lama, muncul gagasan Nasakom (nasionalisme, agama, komunisme) yang digagas oleh Soekarno sebagai upaya melawan kolonialisme. Di akhir masa Orde Baru, muncul gerakan perlawanan mahasiswa yang menentang kekuasaan rezim otoritarianisme, dan bahkan berhasil menjatuhkan pemerintahan Soeharto. Pasca-Orde Baru, populisme hadir dalam bentuk munculnya figur-figur yang dianggap populis dan juga kebijakan-kebijakan populernya. Pada tahun 2016-2017, fenomena yang terkait dengan populisme juga terjadi, namun kali ini dalam bentuk aksi massa yang terkait isu keagamaan, yaitu Aksi Bela …

In Defense Of Openness, Bas Van Der Vossen, Jason Brennan

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"The topic of global justice has long been a central concern within political philosophy and political theory, and there is no doubt that it will remain significant given the persistence of poverty on a massive scale and soaring global inequality. Yet, virtually every analysis in the vast literature of the subject seems ignorant of what developmental economists, both left and right, have to say about the issue. In Defense of Openness illuminates the problem by stressing that that there is overwhelming evidence that economic rights and freedom are necessary for development, and that global redistribution tends to hurt more than …

Feeling As Knowing: Trans Phenomenology And Epistemic Justice, B. Lee Aultman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a critical intervention into the literatures on epistemic and phenomenological claims about trans experiences, and embodied knowledge more generally. It also addresses the conception of ordinary affects, or feelings of self-adjustment in everyday life, and their political implications for trans people. Traditional literatures on the political tend to avoid questions of embodiment and the experiences of everyday life in favor of institutional interpretations of courts, elections, and protest movements. This has become particularly true of scholarship on trans politics and theories of ordinary life. These literatures often reduce political movements to their presumed universal intentions for constitutional …

Review Of Buddhism & Political Theory By Matthew J. Moore, Charles W. Wright

The Journal of Social Encounters

Buddhism & Political Theory, by Matthew J. Moore, proposes to extract a political theory from the Pali language texts of the Buddhist religious tradition that is palatable to Western academic sensibilities so that it might be ushered into the company of contemporary political and ethical philosophy. "Let me introduce you," the book in essence says to the world of Western philosophy, "to a long overlooked, unusual, and interesting perspective on political and ethical theory that you really ought to include in your conversations."