Political Theory Commons^™

Theistic Illiberal Constitutionalism: A Review Of Adrian Vermeule’S Common Good Constitutionalism, Kyron J. Huigens

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Adrian Vermeule’s Common Good Constitutionalism drew a remarkable amount of attention from constitutional law scholars when it was published in 2020. About eighteen months later, Vermeule published a piece complaining that the critics had missed the point, that they had ignored the natural law jurisprudence that grounds the work. He was correct. This Review addresses Vermeule’s natural law jurisprudence, emphasizing the fact that it is a religious natural law jurisprudence. His arguments are in the tradition of ScholasticismAristotelian logic incorporated into Christian theology by St. Thomas Aquinas. Scholasticism is a remarkably weak foundation for constitutional jurisprudence. It is a vast …

Theorising Political Legitimisation: From Stasis To Processes, Paddy Dolan, Stephen Vertigans, John Connolly

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Legitimacy remains a key concept in political sociology, and perhaps even more so in lay understandings of political processes and structures, as evidenced by conflict over territories and regimes around the world. However, the concept suffers from a rather static representation, and even when addressed in processual form, in terms of specific moments in the process, such as conditions favouring legitimacy or its effects. Building from an Eliasian perspective, we argue for a more processual concept of legitimisation to encompass the dynamic social networks (figurations) that constitute the more unintentional context for deliberate legitimation claims. As networks expand and intensify, …

Sovereignty Before Law, Salmoli Choudhuri, Moiz Tundawala

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Book review: Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age, by Shruti Kapila, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2021, 328 pp., $37.00/£30.00, ISBN 9780691195223

Re-Thinking The Coronavirus Pandemic As A Policy Punctuation: Covid-19 As A Path-Clearing Policy Accelerator, John Hogan, Michael Patrick Howlett, Mary P. Murphy

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This article joins with others in this special issue to examine the evolution of our understanding of how the coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 pandemic impacted policy ideas and routines across a wide variety of sectors of government activity. Did policy ideas and routines transform as a result of the pandemic or were they merely a continuation of the status quo ante? If they did transform, are the transformations temporary in nature or likely to lead to significant, deep and permanent reform to existing policy paths and trajectories? As this article sets out, the literature on policy punctuations has evolved and helps …

Possibilidades De Uma História Pragmática Do Político, William J. Novak, Stephen W. Sawyer

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This essay is an initial attempt to posit a method which has slowly taken shape through our individual and collaborative investigations into the history of democracy in the United States and France. Our overall approach builds on a number of diverse methodological influences, but in this particular essay we highlight just two of the most influential precedents for our work: first, the pragmatic-hermeneutical approach most explicitly outlined by James T. Kloppenberg in his “Thinking Historically : A Manifesto of Pragmatic Hermeneutics” and second, Pierre Rosanvallon's methodological essays on the theme of “Une histoire conceptuelle du politique,” ​​which he launched with …

Using Cognitive Mapping To Longitudinally Examine Political Brand Associations, Ewan Macdonald, Roger Sherlock, John Hogan

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This paper uses cognitive mapping techniques to understand how brand associations, an important aspect of political brand equity are formed, differ, and change, from the perspective of citizens, across the four largest Irish political parties between 2013 and 2016. The paper focuses in particular upon the strength, favourability and uniqueness of these brand associations. The results constitute a first attempt to longitudinally explore changing political brand associations through cognitive mapping techniques, using data generated with the participation of hundreds of citizens. Our findings suggest that this approach can contribute to our understanding of how and why political brand associations change …

The Critical Juncture Concept’S Evolving Capacity To Explain Policy Change, John Hogan

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This article examines the evolution of our understanding of the critical junctures concept. The concept finds its origins in historical intuitionalism, being employed in the context of path dependence to account for sudden and jarring institutional or policy changes. We argue that the concept and the literature surrounding it—now incorporating ideas, discourse, and agency—have gradually become more comprehensive and nuanced as historical institutionalism was followed by ideational historical institutionalism and constructivist and discursive institutionalism. The prime position of contingency has been supplanted by the role of ideas and agency in explaining critical junctures and other instances of less than transformative …

Contesting Early Childhood Professional Identities: A Cross-National Discussion, Sonja Arndt, Mathias Urban, Colette Murray, Kylie Smith, Beth Swadener, Tomas Ellegaard

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In this collective article, the authors explore constructions of early childhood practitioners and how they disconnect and reconnect in a global neo-liberal education policy context. The contributions to the conversation provide windows into shifting professional identities across five national contexts: New Zealand, the USA, Ireland, Australia and Denmark. The authors ask who benefits from the notion of distinct professional identities, linked to early childhood education as locally and culturally embedded practice. They conceptualize teachers’ shifting subjectivities, drawing on Kristeva’s philosophical conception of identity as constantly in construction, open and evolving. Arguments for the urgency to counter the global uniformity machine, …

Regime Shifts And Panarchies In Regional Scale Social-Ecological Water Systems, Barbara Cosens

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In this article we summarize histories of nonlinear, complex interactions among societal, legal, and ecosystem dynamics in six North American water basins, as they respond to changing climate. These case studies were chosen to explore the conditions for emergence of adaptive governance in heavily regulated and developed social-ecological systems nested within a hierarchical governmental system. We summarize resilience assessments conducted in each system to provide a synthesis and reference by the other articles in this special feature. We also present a general framework used to evaluate the interactions between society and ecosystem regimes and the governance regimes chosen to mediate …

Link Levy To Services- Not Urban Middle Class Assets, Tom Dunne

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Paying any tax is an unwelcome burden, but in Ireland many have a particular aversion to taxes on their homes. We are not alone in this. Elsewhere, taxes on homes are also unpopular; witness the People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation which forced the California state government to cut property taxes. Nevertheless, residential property taxes remain an almost universal feature of developed countries because of compelling economic arguments for them. Also, local property taxes are regarded as the best means of funding local government.

Rarely, it seems to me, is there such a distance between what the public wants and …

Macroeconomic Policy Change: Ireland In Comparative Perspective, John Hogan

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This paper sets out to develop an improved framework for examining critical junctures. This a priori framework is a significant improvement over existing critical juncture frameworks that lack any predictive element. It is an advance for historical institutionalism in particular, and political science in general. After the new framework is set out in detail here, it is tested. The framework is used to examine a number of potential critical junctures in macroeconomic policy, drawn from Ireland, Sweden, Britain, and America in the latter half of the twentieth century

The Importance Of Ideas: An A Priori Critical Juncture Framework, John Hogan

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This paper sets out an improved framework for examining critical junctures. This framework, while rigorous and broadly applicable and an advance on the frameworks currently employed, primarily seeks to incorporate an a priori element. Until now the frameworks utilized in examining critical junctures were entirely postdictive. Adding a predictive element to the concept will constitute a significant advance. The new framework, and its predictive element, termed the “differentiating factor,” is tested here in examining macro-economic crises and subsequent changes in macro-economic policy, in America and Sweden.

Remoulding The Critical Junctures Approach, John Hogan

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This paper improves our understanding of critical junctures, a concept employed in historical institutionalism for exploring change. However, the concept lacks rigour, weakening our ability to define critical junctures. Of late, academics have utilized other mechanisms to identify change in historical institutionalism. Thus, it is within this context that the critical junctures approach is remoulded through the specification of standards, hence reducing uncertainty as to what constitutes a critical juncture. The remoulded approach is employed here in examining change in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions’ ~ICTU! influence over public policy in 1987.

Land Value Taxation: Persuasive Theory But Practically Difficult, Tom Dunne

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While the theoretical case for Land Value Taxation is regarded as being very persuasive, most people looking closely at the idea form the view that the practical difficulties of introducing it into an established modern economy are compelling. Nevertheless, in Europe and America the ideas put forward by George continue to influence many people discussing issues around land use planning, urban development and methods of funding infrastructure and local government.

The Fair City Production Line: An Examination Of Soap Opera’S Potential Contribution To The Public Sphere, Edward Brennan

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Between December 2000 and February 2001 the Irish soap opera Fair City ran an unprecedented, risky and controversial abortion storyline. This came before a looming referendum on the legality of abortion. Here, Fair City was not just offering entertainment, but provoking debate and discussion on a divisive issue in Irish society. In this case, and many others, it appears that soap opera, by promoting such discussion, may contribute to the formation of public opinion in contemporary civil society. Heretofore, most academic studies have overlooked the possible consequences of soap opera for civil society, public opinion and the democratic process. This …

The People: The Least Accountable Branch, Marci A. Hamilton

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No abstract provided.

A New Model Of Radical Democracy, Ellen Hazelkorn

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No abstract provided.

Some Questions For Republicans, Don Herzog

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Even a sleepy historiographer of political theory of some future day will notice the most dramatic revision of the last 25 years or so. I refer of course to the discovery-and celebration-of civic humanism. The devilish Machiavelli of Elizabethan times has been gently set aside for "the divine Machiavel," the one who writes, "I love my native city more than my soul." And historians of political thought have lovingly traced the transmission of civic humanism from Florence to England and America, giving us a brand new past. America, we now know, was not the unthinkingly Lockean land served up by …

Some Problems With Marx's Theory Of Capitalist Penetration Into Agriculture: The Case Of Ireland, Ellen Hazelkorn

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Marx and Engels's writings on Ireland are usually associated with their positive support for Irish nationalism. This article seeks to examine the extent and depth of their knowledge of Ireland, politically and economically, by focusing attention on Marx's analysis of post-famine agricultural readjustment. Comparing the latter's comments in Capitaland elsewhere with actual developments, it is suggested that Marx and Engels's understanding was less than accurate. The source of their misinterpretation lies principally with their inadequate analysis of tenants, agrarian capitalism, and land fever