Contemporary Political Theory Research Articles

The Dialectic Education of Philosopher King in the Republic

In Plato's Republic, dialectic is a crucial component of the education of the philosopher king. This essay discusses and analyses the nature of dialectical education and its importance in the development of the philosopher king. The essay is divided into three parts, focusing on defining dialectical education, explaining why it is the final stage of a philosopher's training, and discussing its necessity in preparing the philosopher king to be an effective ruler. Through dialectic, the philosopher king learns to think critically, question assumptions, and arrive at true knowledge. This essay argues that dialectical education is essential to the development of the philosopher king's wisdom and insight, which are necessary qualities for just and effective rulership. This research sheds light on the importance of dialectical education in the development of wise and just rulers and highlights the enduring relevance of Plato's ideas for contemporary society and political theory.

Breaking the Mold: Normative Hybridity as the Key to Contemporary “Non-Western” Political Theorizing

What normative compass can appropriately ground a theory for contemporary “non-Western” societies? This question has become urgent amid the pressure to decolonize political science and academia. The hybridity of numerous contemporary non-Western societies means that political theorists cannot refuse to engage with either Western-originated or premodern Indigenous concepts and ways of thinking that bear on the local public culture. However, these normative strands alone are unsuitable for grounding a contemporary theory. This methodological dilemma can be overcome if theorists adopt normative hybridity as a methodological stance. Normative hybridity suggests that hybridity is not only a feature of the theorist’s context of reference but should also be their modus operandi. Normative hybridity already underpins relevant works in contemporary Confucian political theory. Drawing from these works, I illustrate three methods to apply normative hybridity to theory building. This novel methodological approach uniquely addresses current political theory discussions and influences non-Western policymaking.

Well-Being, Harmony, and Deference: Toward a Confucian Case for Empowered Mini-Publics

Nearly all debates within contemporary Confucian political theory regarding the full or partial adoption of democracy have understood democracy as electoral representative democracy. Almost no attention has then been paid to how Confucian democracy or Confucian meritocracy would relate to randomly selected deliberative bodies increasingly considered by democratic theorists amid an ongoing reconceptualization of democracy. In this article, I explore such a relationship by presenting a Confucian case for empowered mini-publics. My central claim is that the adoption of this institution can be interpreted in Confucian terms and embraced by Confucian democrats as well as Confucian meritocrats, on the basis of several key Confucian values which they have already employed in defending their respective political proposals. By making this claim, I also demonstrate that one of central institutional innovations originally proposed to alleviate ills facing Western liberal democracies has a broader application and appeal than it has been assumed.

Introduction to the Symposium Conspiracism and Democracy: New Perspectives and Challenges

This Introduction outlines the rationale for the symposium by providing an overview of the main information pathologies that are increasingly affecting liberal democratic polities, including misinformation, disinformation, fake news, rumours, and conspiracism. It then zooms in on Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum’s (2019) book A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy, from which this symposium takes inspiration and outlines its key argument. Finally, the Introduction provides a brief summary of the articles in the symposium, explaining their contribution to debates on conspiracism and on other key areas of research in contemporary political theory and political science.

Female rage, the politics of care, and ambivalence of liberal democracy in Bratya Basu's Creusa – The Queen

Bratya Basu's play, ‘Creusa – The Queen’ is an adaptation of Euripides’ Ion that centers Creusa and her experience. Basu's adaptation critiques not only the relationship between humans and gods like in Euripides’ original, but also the entanglement of religious and secular law, and the idea of the rational individual subject. By centering Creusa and her lived experience, Basu articulates an ambivalence towards traditional liberal democracy based on its reliance on the image of a rational individual subject that serves the image of the law rather than using the law to facilitate, develop, and reflect relations, experiences, and communities of care that make up the body politic. Through its use of suspense and focus on Creusa, the play challenges binaries still found in contemporary political theory such as emotional/rational, domestic/public, care/justice, female/male. In this essay we outline the erasure of women as liberal subjects, the affective turn in politics, and the role of Creusa's experience in the play in challenging the rational traditional subject as a model for an effective political subject. Ultimately, it is Creusa's certainty about and acceptance of the divine and secular orders that allow liberal democracy to survive, thus grounding the power of the project in Creusa's affective response.

Political representation, the environment, and Edmund Burke: A re-reading of the Western canon through the lens of multispecies justice

A major puzzle in contemporary political theory is how to extend notions of justice to the environment. With environmental entities unable to communicate in ways that are traditionally recognised within the political sphere, their interests have largely been recognised instrumentally: only important as they contribute to human interests. In response to the multispecies justice project's call to reimagine our concepts of justice to include other-than-human beings and entities, we offer a novel reading of Edmund Burke's account of political representation that, we argue, can be applied to the environment. Burke claimed that interests are ‘unattached’ to any actual class or group, and that it is the duty of the representative to represent these unattached interests. Beyond providing an original application of Burke's work, the paper offers an alternative to the ‘allure’ of authoritarian environmentalism, an alternative which conservative thinkers may use as an entryway into debates on environmental justice.

Empirical Political Theory: A Template for a Research Design and a Qualified Defense

Developments in contemporary analytic political theory have called for political theory to situate itself near political science, to pay attention to political institutions, to follow the research output of the social sciences, and to present sensitivity to method. This empirical and methodological turn has brought about a debate regarding the form and desirability of such empirically grounded political theory. We aim, first, to clarify what the empirical turn in political theory implies for research in political theory. We shall situate such empirically grounded political theory in contemporary analytic political theory, in contemporary analytic political theory’s descriptive and prescriptive steps, and also examine how this turn complements contemporary analytic political theory’s evaluative step. Second, to suggest a defense of this empirical development, as if properly understood, it would assist empirically grounded contemporary analytic political theory to achieve its own stated goals. Third, to provide a template for a research design in empirical contemporary analytic political theory.

“Something Was Going to Change”

The subject of the article is a critical presentation of aspects of the Democratic Transition period (Metapolitefsi) in Greece through interviews and e-mails exchanged by subscribers to the mailing list of the magazine Disability Now, collected from April to July 2000. At the heart of these dialogues lies the discourse about the lifting of accessibility barriers for disabled people in Greece during the 1990s. Through the use of contemporary political theories on populism, the author explains that the discourse on accessibility barriers becomes “a place of political opportunity.” The participants develop a kind of populist discourse inspired by the ideology of the political theory of Modernization, as well as by the possibilities and disadvantages of Greece within the politico- economic framework of the EU. These elements imbue the meaning of the disabled self with a dual content: They connect and unite disabled individuals by producing the expression of an emancipatory discourse which, however and at the same time, is maintained through traces of an ablenationalistic rhetoric, activated by notions of Greekness and Europeanness.

When Sport Fandom Meets Motherhood: A Qualitative Exploration of Women’s Experiences

Existing literature provides nascent insights into structural arrangements that shape mothers’ experiences of being a sport fan, yet we know little about the social meaning sport fandom holds for mothers. This exploratory study draws on qualitative interviews with 41 mothers from Australia and North America to examine their understandings of sport fandom in the context of their everyday lives and contemporary ideologies about mothering. Findings suggest that sport fandom presents an opportunity for mothers to redefine and transform both fan and mothering practices, thereby challenging popular orthodoxies that fandom becomes less important to women after having children. By foregrounding mothers’ efforts to stay engaged with their fandom, we extend research on the experiences of women sport fans and offer alternatives to normative constructs of fandom.

Fazilet Eksenli Bir Siyaset Teorisi Mümkün mü?

This article calls for a possibility of virtue ethical theory of politics in contemporary political theory by locating its key sources in normative virtue ethics. First, it evaluates the growing literature on politics and virtue ethics and evaluates their promises. The following sections briefly account for two versions of virtue ethics and two key concepts, character traits and justice, to draw a framework for developing a theory of virtue politics. The last section discusses the mod- ern nation-state as the most critical setback in articulating a virtue-based political act.

MULTICULTURALISM IN CYBERSPACE

Language is an essential part of identity, and in many ways it is considered to be the fundamental constituent of identity. Language and culture are inextricably linked. Every social group with distinct linguistic and social characteristics seeks to preserve its cultural identity. Contemporary political theorists have labeled this phenomenon of the coexistence of different cultures in the same geographical space as multiculturalism. Based on the descriptive, analytical, comparative and verbal-culturological methods, this article discusses the presence of various cultural and ethnic groups within a society. Multiculturalism in cyberspace mainly denotes the harmony and interaction of diverse cultures within online communities and platforms. The vanishing of cultures naturally has a negative impact on diversity. It is critical to create an environment where different cultural groups can sustain and flourish, thus making the overall gamma of linguistic colors richer and more colorful.

What toleration is not

ABSTRACT Following Andrew Jason Cohen, Lucia Rafanelli construes toleration to consist in not merely limiting one’s interference with others’ behaviour, but doing so because of a principled commitment to respecting others’ independent choices. I argue that this conflates toleration with distinctly liberal ideals such as freedom of conscience or autonomy. This conflation not only impoverishes our conceptual vocabulary by using ‘toleration’ to label concepts or phenomena for which there are already perfectly good words, it also renders non-liberal conceptions or theories of toleration nonsensical by definitional fiat. This in turn risks making the historical emergence of theories and practices of toleration on purely prudential grounds – namely, reasons of state – unintelligible. Even though this does not, I think, compromise Rafanelli’s substantive normative conclusions about interference, it does raise important questions about the proper relation between contemporary political theory and the history of political thought.

Contemporary political theory annual prize for 2023 (volume 21)

Contemporary political theory annual prize for 2023 (volume 21)

The discreet wearing out of bodies and souls at work: Simone Weil on speed, humiliation and slow affliction.

The goals of this paper are twofold. First, the paper seeks to show the relevance of French philosopher Simone Weil’s writings on work for contemporary political and social theory. More specifically, by drawing on Weil’s “factory writings”—i.e. the diary she kept during the many months she spent working in factories, and the essays and letters that followed shortly after—the article shows that Weil’s analysis of speed, humiliation and affliction is highly pertinent for reflecting upon the consequences of the increasingly ubiquitous recourse to digital tracking and monitoring tools by today’s employers. Secondly, the paper proposes to read Weil’s account of degradation and affliction in light of the contemporary scholarship on “slow violence”. Inspired by Rob Nixon’s work, this scholarship is interested in forms of harm that are slow-paced, attritional, ‘out of sight’ and intimately tied to our (distracted) attention regimes. As I argue, Weil very lucidly described the paradox at the heart of many types of modern work: namely, that its fast pace causes the slow death of workers’ souls and bodies. Demonstrating the important resonances of Weil’s account of factory life and contemporary suffering in the era of digital surveillance, the paper underlines the significance of Weil’s account of affliction for understanding the depths of the harms caused by these forms of domination.

Political Theory as Philosophy, as Positive Science, and as Critique

Author develops a critical review of the three dominant perspectives in Political Theory: Behaviorist, Empirical-Analitical, Classic and Contemporary Normative Theories, and Dialectical-Critical perspectives. Under the influence of scientific positivism and its critique of metaphysics, especially in the Anglophone world, the Behaviorist political theory has been developed. Its origin lies in the idea of ‘pure political science’ which, as author argues, becomes gradually, a metaphysical perspective of its own kind. Based on criticism of Behaviorist political theory, especially under the influence of Leo Strauss a new, contemporary political theory has been developed by rehabilitation of the classical perspective. For Strauss, as well as for example, for Aristotle, poltical knowledge is tightly connected to ethical action, and the political discourse is always at the same time the ‘ethical-political’. This theoretical perspective is, author suggests, an attempt to reflect upon the very foundations of political community, so in this way it is at the same time a particular ontology, which is the main point of criticism coming from a positivist block. The dialectical – critical political theories have their source, above all, in Hegel’s philosophy, and, especially after Marx and Engels, the task of political theory is understood in a rather ‘activist’ sense as investigation of political systems, institutions and revealing of relations that establish the rule of the privileged. With Critical School of 1930’s this political-theoretical approach attempts to maintain historical perspectives of understanding the society and state and their complex processes. Second important characteristics of this approach is the conception of totality, also coming from Hegel, for who the truth is always a matter of the whole, and not in some particular part. Another important feature is dialectical attitude, in fact, identification of contradictions and their conflict as mover of social and political processes. In the conclusion part, author refers to the idea of a ‘democratic political philosophy’ developed by John Rawls, as possible synthesis of dominant perspectives in political theory.

Trying too hard or not hard enough: How effort shapes status

AbstractIs trying to earn status effective or self‐defeating? We show that whether effort increases or decreases admiration and respect (i.e., status) depends on how the person is trying to earn status. Groups evaluate people along multiple status dimensions (e.g., wealth, coolness). Each dimension is associated with a different ideology, or set of beliefs, that ascribe status to behaviors that contribute to the group's goals. Whether behaviors, including effort, increase status, thus, depends on the ideologies that people use to interpret if a behavior contributes to the group. Four experiments demonstrate that people earn more status when they try to become wealthy compared to when they are effortlessly wealthy, but earn less status when they try to become cool compared to when they are effortlessly cool. Effort increases status when directed at wealth but not at coolness because contemporary ideologies suggest that people who gain wealth through effort contribute more to society, whereas people who gain coolness through effort contribute less.

How many worlds are there? One, but also many: Decolonial theory, comparison, ‘reality’

Contemporary political theory (CPT) has approached questions of plurality and diversity by drawing rather implicitly on anthropological accounts of difference. This was the case with the ‘cultural turn’, which significantly shaped theories of multiculturalism. Similarly, the current ‘ontological turn’ is gaining influence and leaving a marked impact on CPT. I examine the recent turn and assess both the possibilities it offers and the challenges it poses for decentering CPT and opening radical, decolonial avenues for thinking difference otherwise. I take Paul Nadasdy's critique of the ontological turn as an invitation to reflect on the methodological precepts that inform how the field frames the scope and limits of comparison. In pursuit of this, I examine the Zapatistas’ notion of a ‘world of many worlds’, which provides a way of approaching difference that captures the generative aspects of the ontological turn while avoiding the pitfalls of relativism and political inertia. I argue that the Zapatistas’ insights offer ethical guidance towards social and ecological thriving. Ultimately, my goal is to move CPT towards a more capacious form of making sense of what is out there in the world, and thus make room for better ways of inhabiting the Earth.

Symptomatic Elegies: Ideology and Melancholy in Dennis Lee and Eli Mandel

The CanLit boom of the 1960s and 1970s involved the canonization of a cultural identity preoccupied with a perceived loss of political sovereignty to the United States and, more generally, to the dynamics of capitalist modernity. This article proposes that this emerging identity promoted an ideology that made the loss of sovereignty appear inevitable and concealed the possibility of political resistance. The article takes as case studies Dennis Lee’s Civil Elegies and Eli Mandel’s “On the 25th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz Memorial Services, Toronto, January 25th, 1970 YMHA Bloor and Spadina.” Bringing together diverse fields of Canadian Studies (literature, history, and philosophy) and drawing from contemporary political and historical theory, this article explores how these poems, despite their differences in form and subject matter, partake in the same melancholic fantasy of powerlessness – a fantasy akin to the one that would come to hold sway over the global zeitgeist in the late twentieth century and beyond.

Research and Model Analysis on the Value of Integrating the Spirit of "Two Bombs and One Satellite" into Contemporary Ideological and Political Education Curriculum

The spirit of "Two Bombs and One Satellite" is a great representative spirit of the era in the early days of the founding of New China. It is a microcosm of the spirit of countless scientific researchers and the people during the socialist revolution and construction period, fearless of difficulties, united and dedicated, and has a high value of the times and a profound connotation of cultivating talents. Systematically studying the spirit of "Two Bombs and One Satellite" and introducing it into the "Trinity" ideological and political classrooms of universities, middle and primary schools, enriching the teaching content of ideological and political classrooms, improving the teaching methods of ideological and political classrooms, expanding students' understanding of ideological and political classrooms, increasing students' knowledge reserves, etc., strengthening the value analysis of ideological and political classrooms as a whole, guiding students to set lofty goals, cultivate patriotism, and improve personal ideological and moral literacy Tempering firm ideals and beliefs is of great significance and extraordinary value.

Between Covenant and Contract: Jewish Political Thought and Contemporary Political Theory

Social contract theory has long been at the center of political theory, and one of the inheritors of the social contract tradition, liberalism, reverberates through contemporary political life. And yet, an overlooked element of liberalism are the biblical origins of social contract theory. Specifically, how the early modern political theorists were reading Hebrew Bible, and the kinds of interpretive transformations of Hebrew Bible that take place on the pages of works like Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, John Locke’s Second Treatise, and more. Covenant is the centerpiece of this entanglement. When drawn from Hebrew Bible and read in the context of Jewish political thought, covenant has a very different meaning to that which social contract theories attribute it. This Jewish understanding of covenant concretizes a practice of politics that is constitutively dissenting and agonistic, in contrast to the command–obedience model typical of social contract theory. Furthermore, covenant loses its unique conceptual framework—thus its contribution to political thought—when it is secularized into a social contract. This Jewish conception of covenant offers a new way to understand politics and democratic practice through “covenantal authority” and its constitutively dissenting, agonistic, and circulating qualities. “Covenantal authority” captures the constitutive undecidability of who has authority over the text.