Political Theory Commons^™

The Recurring Great Lakes Crisis: Identity, Violence And Power - Jean-Pierre Chretién And Richard Banégas (Eds), Catherine Bolten

International Dialogue

The Recurring Great Lakes Crisis is an edited volume comprising individual case studies that examine aspects of historical and on-going violence in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and Congo-Kinshasa. The purpose of the volume is to “lead to a better understanding of the changes in the perceptions of violence which constitute one of the most serious obstacles to lasting peace” (1). The case studies encompass a diverse array of aspects of each of the conflicts, from the role of the Catholic Church in Rwanda since 1957, to the political and social problems created by the label “disaster victims” in Burundi after the …

The Unfinished Global Revolution: The Pursuit Of A New International Politics - Mark Malloch-Brown, Robert Weiner

International Dialogue

Several themes run throughout this book, in which Mark Malloch-Brown melds his personal experience as a British civil servant with his career as an international civil servant, working at various times at the World Bank, as the head of the United Nations Development Program, and UN Secretary-General’s Kofi Annan’s assistant. The central theme of the book revolves around the need for an effective system of global governance to cope with the major challenges which the international community faces in the age of globalization in the 21st century. Some of the problems involve the darker side of globalization, such as terrorism …

Determinants Of Democratization: Explaining Regime Change In The World, 1972-2006 - Jan Teorell, Joseph Derdzinski

International Dialogue

Just as the Color Revolutions of the last decade did, the Arab Spring once again brings the concept of democratization to the forefront of public discourse. They remind us yet once again how few countries have made at least the initial transition from authoritarianism, and how many more there are to democratize. Yet, having said this, the pool of countries that have liberalized politically and socially has grown tremendously in the past 40 years, yielding a fertile universe of cases for study and analysis. Jan Teorell at Sweden’s Lund University, in his compact but rich Determinants of Democratization: Explaining Regime …

Archaeologists As Activists - M. Jay Stottman, Curtis Hutt

International Dialogue

Archaeologists as Activists: Can Archaeologists Change the World? is comprised of papers edited by M. Jay Stottman—many of which were initially prepared for a session at the 2004 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology in St. Louis. The focus of this volume is “activist archaeology” as theorized and performed by archaeologists working in the last few decades in the United States. While the specific topics addressed are quite local, the questions raised and practices deployed are highly significant for archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians engaged in international settings. First, I must make a few disclaimers. This reviewer is neither …

The Impact Of Prolonged Nomination Contests On Presidential Candidate Evaluations And General Election Vote Choice: The Case Of 2008, Jeff Dewitt, Richard N. Engstrom

Faculty Articles

The fact that political parties hold competitive nomination contests that require voters to choose among multiple candidates leaves open the possibility that the contest itself could damage the prospects of an eventual nominee. In this study, we employ the American National Election Study panel survey data from the 2008 U.S. presidential election to assess the impact of the Democratic Party nomination process on candidate evaluations and general election vote preference. We find evidence that Barack Obama had greater difficulty uniting his party than his Republican counterpart due to the fact that Clinton voters were slow to coalesce around Obama. These …

Tele-Visioning Terror, Caroline Zekri

Re-visioning Terrorism

This paper is devoted to the relationship between terrorism and media, with a special focus on the theoretical notions of “icon”, “mass” and “distance”. It aims to show how the phenomenon of modern terrorism calls into question the essence of modern democracies and their systems of information, based on the distance between vision and event.

Symbolic Violence As Subtle Virulence: The Philosophy Of Terrorism, Jonathan Beever

Re-visioning Terrorism

Jean Baudrillard’s semiotic analysis of violence leads us to understand the form of violence as three-fold: aggressive, historical, and semiotically virulent. Violence of the third form is the violence endemic to terrorism. If violence has been typically understood as of the first two types, terrorism should be understood as the virulence of simulacra. The conflation of these types of violence explains the failure of militaristic responses to terrorism. This paper will explore Baudrillard’s conception of symbolic violence as the virulence of signs and help us come to terms with the semiotic foundation of terrorism.

The Cultural Politics Of Wmd Terrorism In Post-Cold War America, Harold Williford

Re-visioning Terrorism

Terrorism’s definition is hotly debated and notoriously problematic. The resulting instability of counterterrorism and counterterrorist identity, however, is less often explored. This paper analyzes the prehistory of the War on Terror to explore how the meaning and associations attributed to terrorism by counterterrorists in the 1990s reflect the latter’s priorities, agenda, and anxieties. Prevalent ahistorical post-Cold War representations of terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as a “new” threat indicate that WMD-wielding terrorists functioned to justify the continued existence of the American national security state after the Soviet Union collapsed. Close readings of Rainbow Six, a Tom Clancy …

The Invention Of Modern State Terrorism During The French Revolution, Guillaume Ansart

Re-visioning Terrorism

This essay discusses three aspects of the Terror (September 1793–July 1794): (1) The Institutions of the Terror: The Committee of General Security, the Committee of Public Safety, and the Revolutionary Tribunal; (2) the Theory of Terror: The unity and indivisibility of the people, the category of enemy of the people, and the concept of Revolution as a state of war against aristocratic/foreign conspiracies; (3) the Language of Terror: The Terror is also a performative language, a language which embodies terror by aiming to silence all debate. In this sense, the language of Terror is Terror itself.

The Moral International Sphere As A New "Civic Virtue", Claudia Heiss

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Liberal political theory, the predominant paradigm at least since the 1970s, rules out as oppressive the imposition of any substantive notion of a "good way of life" and proposes instead a neutral conception where each individual should have the right to pursue his or her own preferred project of life. This opposition of an ancient "virtue" and a modern "freedom" seems challenged by current debates about morality and the responsibility to protect innocent civilians from massive crimes. The moral outrage of the international community may be interpreted as a signal of a perhaps minimal notion of civic virtue, which translates …

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 …

民粹主義與政治主體的生成 : 社民連的個案, Chak Sang Pang

Lingnan Theses

拉克勞提出民粹主義是集體身份建構過程的理論：人們透過空洞能指扣連社會上的不同訴求，建立人民與權力的對立陣線，生成集體的身分認同。這與把社會上的群體（如階級）簡 單地視為分析單位的經典馬克思主義分析方法及理性選擇論等不同。本研究以香港政團「社民連」為個案，分析民粹主義的操作。前設是把人們於社會中的位置及利益與其身分認同脫鈎，視身分認同為話語操作的結果。

本研究將使用這一框架，分析於大眾媒體與網上這兩個不同的公共的討論中，社民連被如何表述，令人們可把不同的訴求扣連到「社民連」這概念之上。本研究將指出，社民連雖然號 稱基層黨，但「基層」一詞矛盾重重，社民連只有透過定位為與傳統政治秩序割裂而具多重 意義的「激進派」，吸納傳統「泛民」未能吸納的政治能量，進而產生一些與傳統香港政治 中泛民對建制的對立不同的新主體。於主流傳媒排斥這一新主體的背景下，人們不但透過互 聯網互通消息，甚至以「網民」作為身分認同，與主流傳媒及政治秩序對抗。

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 …

The Chains Of Hidden And Invisible Power: An Understanding Imperative For Societal Transformation, Leanne Baker Hotek

Honors Program Theses

This thesis addresses the hidden and invisible aspects of power in an effort to understand the effects these types of power have on the individuals who are unaware of their presence. It then questions if this power is hidden and invisible, how is effective resistance possible? I focus on the research and conceptions of a few political theorists including Steven Lukes, John Gaventa, and Michel Foucault that form the basis for much of the work on power. I then analyze and critique these previous works in order to form a new argument and suggestions for the recognition and possible resistance …

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.