Political Theory Commons^™

The Principle Of Fairness And States’ Duty To Obey International Law, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Philosophers and political theorists have developed a number of different justifications for the duty to obey domestic law. The possibility of using one (or more) of these justifications to demonstrate that states have a duty to obey international law seems a natural starting point for an analysis of international political obligation. Amongst the accounts of the duty to obey domestic law, one that appears to have a great deal of intuitive appeal, and that has attracted a significant number of philosophical defenders, is the principle of fairness (or fair play). In this paper, I examine the possibility of using the …

Locating Rousseau's Legislator In The Social Contract, Courtney C. Nussbaumer

The Macalester Review

It is challenging to define precisely what role the legislator plays in Rousseau’s Social Contract; however, when viewed in light of the ancient guardians, the role of the legislator becomes less obscure. This paper pursues the similarities between Rousseau’s concept of the legislator and Plato’s concept of the guardian while also exploring the poignant differences between the two. One cannot help but notice their fundamental similarities such as the superior character and intelligence of the legislator and how each communicates with the people. Their ultimate purpose and legitimacy differs, however, in that the legislator plays a more esoteric role in …

Marcuse On The Two Dimensions Of Advanced Industrial Society And The Significance Of His Thought Today, Michael C. Hartley Mr.

Senior Honors Projects

Herbert Marcuse was a philosopher and social theorist who wrote extensively about the dynamics of social change in the technologically advanced societies of the Western world. Motivated by the desire to see humanity develop societies that would allow for individuals to live a free and happy existence, Marcuse critiqued the existing societies of his time. Although Marcuse’s main work, One-Dimensional Man, is over forty years old, it can continue to offer us new insights today. I believe that Marcuse’s thought offers a powerful framework for analyzing our contemporary society. In this project I distill this framework, what could be …

Development For The Past, Present, And Future: Defining And Measuring Sustainable Development, Max Cantor

Senior Honors Projects

In 1987, the United Nations released the Brundtland Report, which defined sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” While this definition provides a relatively stable theoretical base from which development economists and political scientists can begin to tackle issues surrounding sustainable development, the inherently amorphous nature of this definition has also created a fair amount of ambiguity in both the economic literature surrounding sustainable development and the subsequent attempts by economists to measure it.

Historically, those interested in the science of development have typically …

Micropolitical Opportunity Structure In Burma, Nicole Loring

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This paper looks to answer the question: Why do citizens in Burma continue challenging the military regime through peaceful social movements despite of the threat of violent oppression? I set out to examine Burma as an anomaly in political opportunity structure theory. Political opportunity structure influences the type of political action most likely to take place within a regime by affecting which political claims are possible. At first, Burma appears to be a low-democracy, low-capacity regime, which should host civil wars. However, in Burma’s cities, peaceful social movements continue to take place. My capstone seeks to explain this problem.

In …

The Right To Privacy In Light Of The Patriot Act And Social Contract Theory, Betsey Sue Casman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

There is a continual debate between individuals who attempt to measure the individual’s right to privacy against the government’s right to know in order to provide for the security of all citizens.

The questions that beg to be answered are whether the individual’s right to privacy outweighs the government’s duty to provide security; and if security is deemed more important, can there even be a right to privacy. It is critical to our nation’s anti-terrorism effort that our intelligence agencies possess the legal capacity to intercept all forms of communications utilized by terrorists and hostile intelligence agents. Inevitably this will …

The Challenge Of Successful Integration For Francophone Immigrants Within Minority Communities, Suzanne N. Huot, Belinda Dodson, Debbie Rudman

Western Migration Conference Series

A critical ethnography was undertaken to explore the integration experiences of French-speaking newcomers from visible minority groups residing with the London, Ontario Francophone minority community. Findings highlight a complex negotiation process involving learning the tacit social norms characterizing the host society.

Network Legitimacy And Accountability In A Developmental Perspective, Richard K. Ghere

Political Science Faculty Publications

Public networks typically function beyond the lines of the hierarchical authorities that hold bureaucracies accountable, as is shown here in the case of a business-dominant network that exhibited ethically questionable behaviors at the expense of its community credibility. Public networks can build external legitimacy by engaging in critical organization learning processes, much the way some nongovernmental organizations respond to a diversity of stakeholders.

Let's Talk About It: Political Relationships In Nepal, Benjamin Wolf Lehr Mueser

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study examines the relationship between citizens, political parties, and local government in Nepal. Specifically, the research focuses on the relationship as it pertains to the decision-making processes in the VDC and DDC in Salleri, Solukhumbu. Through interviews with individuals at the policy level in Kathmandu, officials in Salleri, and residents of Salleri, the research studies this interaction and how it relates to citizen’s individual agency, political parties’ role as a middleman, and local government’s ability to communicate with local residents. The research concludes that parties are the only way for citizens to take their demands to local bodies. This …

The Politic 2011 Spring, The Politic, Inc.

The Politic

No abstract provided.

The West's Feet Of Clay: Transmuting The Pillars Of Liberty From Gold Into Dross, Jin Seock Shin

Senior Honors Theses

This study seeks to support the centrality of the Judeo-Christian heritage to the growth and sustenance of liberty, a form of individualism limited by moral values. The pillars of liberty—self-government, private property, representative government, and limited government—reflect the structural contributions made by the Judeo-Christian heritage. Unfortunately, much of Western civilization suffers from a spiritual crisis, which has introduced and exacerbated fractures in the pillars. Pitirim Sorokin’s social and cultural analysis of Western civilization provides a framework to better understand the fractures evident in the history of liberty in Europe and America, and developed in each pillar of liberty—fractures that reaffirm …

Courts, Social Change, And Political Backlash, Michael Klarman

Philip A. Hart Memorial Lecture

On March 31, 2011, Professor of Law, Michael Klarman of Harvard Law School delivered the Georgetown Law Center’s thirty-first annual Philip A. Hart Lecture: “Courts, Social Change, and Political Backlash.” Included here are the speaker's notes from this lecture.

Michael Klarman is the Kirkland & Ellis Professor at Harvard Law School. Formerly, he was the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law, Professor of History, and the Elizabeth D. and Richard A. Merrill Research Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. Klarman specializes in the constitutional history of race.

Klarman holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School, a D.Phil. …

Federal Earmarks In The State Of Georgia, Jeffrey Lazarus

Georgia Journal of Public Policy

Earmarks have been controversial ever since becoming a prominent part of the congressional spending process. Critics charge that earmarks fund projects with little or no economic value (for instance Ted Stevens’ “Bridge to Nowhere,”) but instead allow Congress members to direct government spending to campaign contributors (the charge leading to a federal investigation of the now-defunct lobbying firm PMA Group). On the other side of the controversy, congressional earmarks do fund a number of community improvements which are very valuable, at least locally. In Georgia, the fiscal 2010 appropriations bills included earmarks which allocated $450,000 to update College Park’s emergency …

Human Rights Revisionism And The Canadian Parliamentary Coalition To Combat Antisemitism, Susan Ferguson, James Cairns

Journalism

This article focuses on the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism (CPCCA): a self-appointed group of parliamentarians dedicated to extinguishing what it calls “the new antisemitism.” Working from a Gramscian perspective, we identify key discursive strategies in coalition publications and testimony and argue that despite the CPCCA’s pretence to being a forum for liberal-pluralist debate, in fact it is engaged in an ideological reframing of human rights designed to restrict political debate. It does so, paradoxically, by drawing on the language of left-liberalism, which contrasts with recent ideological interventions aiming to secure the priorities of the neo-liberal state.

The Ister: Between The Documentary And Heidegger’S Lecture Course Politics, Geographies, And Rivers, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

The Ister, the 2004 documentary by the Australian scholars and videographers, David Barison, a political theorist, and Daniel Ross, a philosopher, appeals to Martin Heidegger’s 1942 lecture course, Hölderlins Hymne «Der Ister»and the video takes us «backward» as the river flows: beginning from the Danube’s delta where it ends in the sea and «journeying» with it to its source in the Alps.

the value of the Barison/Ross documentary for both political theory and philosophy is its illustration of the technological incursions or assaults on the river itself, that is to say: its representation of the ‘uses’ and hence …

The Beauty And The Beast: Civil Society And Nationalisms In Bosnia And Herzegovina, Joan Davison

Faculty Publications

Both ethnic nationalism and liberal civic nationalism exist with historical precedents in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Many elected elites privilege extremist ethnic nationalism. The power-sharing structure of the Dayton Peace Accords institutionalizes their influence and permits the current political stalemate. Further, a legacy of authoritarianism vitiates a political culture supportive of elite accountability and mass responsibility. Yet a nascent civil society witnesses to the past and potential future of liberal cosmopolitanism. This research includes interviews with leaders and members of civil society organizations to assess the impediments to and strength of civil society as a vehicle to promote civic nationalism. While interviewees acknowledge …

Putting Experts In Their Place: The Challenge Of Expanding Participation While Solving Problems, Thad Williamson

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

This essay critically examines possibilities for expanding democratic participatory governance in light of Mark Bevir's treatment of the subject in his book Democratic Governance. The essay argues that a theory of participatory governance should retain an explicit role for expert analysis, and that the appropriate scope given to such analysis will vary by policy area. The essay also argues that the present organization of capitalist economies mandates a heavy reliance on experts, and that a full-blown account of expanding participatory governance thus must be paired with an account of how to achieve a more democratic political economy. Such an account …

A Philosophical Framework For Conditional Cash Transfers, Jaron Abelsohn

CMC Senior Theses

Despite some recent economic progress, there is still widespread poverty and severe inequality in developing countries. According to the World Bank there are over 925 million hungry or undernourished people worldwide. More than 80 percent of people in the world live in countries whose income inequality is rising. Over 2.1 billion people globally live on less than two dollars a day, with over 880 million people facing absolute poverty and living on less than one dollar a day. Three out of four people living on less than $1 a day live in rural areas. These impacts have been magnified by …

Machiavelli At Wits End: Virtue, Fortune And The Purpose Of Comedy, Katherine Paton

Undergraduate Review

The scholarly ambiguity over the proper understanding of Machiavelli’s political thought characterizes the scholarship in his literary works as well. The tragic interpretation of Machiavelli’s literary works posits that Machiavelli’s understanding of virtue fails to provide humanity the means by which fortune can be overcome. In contrast, the comic interpretation argues that man is virtuous and prudent enough to conquer fortune. To accomplish this, one must only follow Machiavelli’s political teaching. I address this tension through analysis of conspiracy in Machiavelli’s Clizia. Sofronia’s successful conspiracy attests to the utility of Machiavelli’s account of virtue in overcoming fortune and speaks to …

Filipino Social Democracy: Origins And Characteristics, Lessons And Challenges, Benjamin T. Tolosa Jr

Political Science Department Faculty Publications

THE YEAR 2011 marks the 25th anniversary of the EDSA revolution that led to the downfall of the Marcos dictatorship and the restoration of democratic institutions under President Corazon C. Aquino. The celebration of “people power” is not just about those four extraordinary and triumphant days of non-violent uprising in February 1986. From a broader perspective, it is about a larger project and movement for democratization that goes further back than 1986 or even 1983, and in many ways remains an unfinished and continuing struggle at present. In fact, the democratic victory at EDSA was soon after threatened with reversal …