Conviction Politics Research Articles

A politics of conviction: The refusal of colonial carcerality in Palestinian graffiti

In this visual essay, I curate and annotate nine photos of Palestinian prisoner graffiti, foregrounding a Palestinian politics of conviction. Prisoner graffiti is a prominent genre of Palestinian street art, countering Israel's system of colonial carcerality that attempts to dispossess and displace Palestinians. Israeli colonial carcerality functions not only through the “small prison” of Israeli detention, but through the “large prison” of Israeli colonial occupation and apartheid. The distinct forms that this incarceration takes across the fragments of Palestine—from the lands occupied in 1948, 1967, and the diaspora—all aim to crush a Palestinian will to resist. Israel works to construct its carceral systems as inescapable, suggesting to Palestinians that they have no choice but to submit to their colonisation. Against this colonial carcerality, we find in Palestinian prisoner graffiti what I term a politics of conviction. Persisting through their conviction and imprisonment under Israeli colonial law, Palestinians cultivate a conviction in liberation. Directly countering the apparent inevitability of incarceration and the reification of carceral systems, this politics of conviction asserts the inevitability of al-ḥurriya (freedom) from both the small prison and the large prison. This conviction in liberation is constituted by a range of feelings, including love for the prisoner and the dignity that they embody. I suggest that this politics of conviction might form the affective basis of a distinctly Palestinian abolitionism—working to abolish the colonial structures that uphold both the small and large prisons.

Confucian Democrats, Not Confucian Democracy

The notion that if democracy is to flourish in East Asia it must be realized in ways that are compatible with East Asian’s Confucian norms or values is a staple conviction of Confucian scholarship. I suggest two reasons why it is unlikely and even undesirable for such a Confucianized democracy to emerge. First, 19th- and 20th-century modernization swept away or weakened the institutions which had transmitted Confucian practices in the past, undermining claims that there is an enduring Confucian communitarian or cultural heritage today that democratic institutions have to adapt themselves to—or that a Confucian cultural spirit can be revived. Second, 20th-century East Asian statist regimes rationalized Confucianism for national ideologies meant to bind their citizens’ loyalties to developmentalist goals. Memories of this now delegitimized, statist Confucianism have contributed to the further marginalization of Confucian norms, and to their dissociation from democratic values, in today’s pluralistic democracies in East Asia. This essay argues that a Confucian conviction politics developed within the frame of East Asia’s actually existing liberal democracies provides a better course for advocates of Confucianism in democratic politics.

From a Politics of Conviction to a Politics of Interest? The Changing Ontologics of Youth Politics in India and Nicaragua

There exists a longstanding association between youth and revolution, partly due to the assumption that the politics of the former are inherently “prefigurative” in nature. Youth politics can often actually be quite conservative, however, as can be observed in contemporary Nicaragua, where rather than attempting to “change the world” in the way that previous militant youth generations were famously associated with, current Sandinista youth activists engage primarily in forms of neo-patrimonial clientelism. At the same time, the evolving experience of everyday political action by university educated youth in Uttar Pradesh, India highlights how economic endeavours can, under certain circumstances, become a form of politics, often of a more transformative variety than classic forms of collective mobilization. The comparison of Nicaragua and India thus highlights the critical importance of considering the wider environment within which youth mobilize and take action in order to understand how and why particular political “ontologics” emerge.

Daniel, Esther, and the Minority Politics of the Hebrew Bible

Hebraic political theory is in the midst of a renaissance. Contemporary scholarship, however, overlooks prominent discussions in Biblical texts about the ways in which the Jews, as an exiled minority, ought to interact with majority political power. Through an analysis of the books of Daniel and Esther, this article argues that the Hebrew Bible advances different positions on this question. Daniel enjoins a politics of conviction focused on the preservation of the Jews as adherents of God’s law, while Esther recommends a savvy politics of responsibility that will preserve the Jews as a people. I explore the implications of my reading of Daniel and Esther for prominent contemporary engagements with the Hebraic political tradition and discuss the debate’s implications for the Hebraic renaissance.

Margaret Thatcher and Thatcherism: Dead but not buried

The article divides the history of Thatcherism into seven main stages from its pre-history before 1979 through to the revival of the neoliberal project by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition of 2010–2015. This periodization is based on the changing strategic line of Thatcherism and is related not only to Mrs Thatcher’s practice of conviction politics as a political leader but also to the defining features of neoliberalism considered as an economic and political project. The analysis then reviews the features of the neoliberal regime shift instituted under Mrs Thatcher once it had been consolidated, including the strengthening of the City of London and a finance-dominated accumulation trajectory at the expense of uneven development elsewhere in the United Kingdom and, eventually, the financial crisis that undermined the New Labour Government in 2007–10. This crisis was the pretext for the previously noted revival of the Thatcherite project. The article then considers the dialectic of authoritarian populism and statism and ends with brief remarks on how the recent and continuing fisco-financial crisis has provided an opportunity for the revival of a ‘two nations’ neoliberal austerity politics.

Ronald Reagan: Conviction politics and the transatlantic relationship

‘Personal relations matter more in international politics than the historians would have us believe’1 Ronald Reagan, writing about Margaret Thatcher in 1989 This article argues that any ‘nomination’ of a president for Transatlantica, interpreted here as being a ‘territory’ primarily occupied by the United States and the United Kingdom, should have three elements. The first is an acceptance by the ‘governed’ of the said ‘president’, with the former in this case being the leadership of the UK. The second is a unity of purpose founded on a common world view and evidenced at all levels, from the identification of enemies abroad to the proffered solutions to practical issues at home. The third is a consistency of action and a resiliency of trust in the face of differences in opinion or policy. Margaret Thatcher, while prime minister, accepted Ronald Reagan's leadership, despite the fact she was arguably the more experienced international politician. The two shared a form of ‘conviction politics’ that drove not...

Introduction

On 20 September 2001, the former US President, George W. Bush, declared what is now widely, and arguably infamously, known as a ‘war on terror’. In response to the fatal 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, DC, President Bush identified the US military response as having far-reaching and long-lasting consequences. It was, he argued, ‘our war on terror’ that began ‘with al Qaeda, but … it will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated’ (CNN 2001). This was to be a war that would, in the words of former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, seek to eliminate a threat that was ‘aimed at the whole democratic world’ (Blair 2001). Blair claimed that this threat is of such magnitude that unprecedented measures would need to be taken to uphold freedom and security. Blair would later admit that it was a war that ‘divided the country’ and was based on evidence ‘about Saddam having actual biological and chemical weapons, as opposed to the capability to develop them, has turned out to be wrong’ (Blair 2004). The failures of intelligence ushered in new political rhetoric in the form of ‘trust me’ because ‘instinct is no science’ (Blair 2004). The war on terror has been one of the most significant international events in the past three decades, alongside the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the unification of Europe and the marketization of the People's Republic of China. Yet, unlike the other events, it will not be remembered for advancing democracy or sovereignty, but for the conviction politics of particular politicians who chose to dispense with international law and custom in pursuit of personal instincts that proved fatal. Since the invasions of Afghanistan in October 2001 and …

The Politics of Conviction: Faith on the Neo-liberal Frontier

What, if anything, is distinctive about the Pentecostal revival that is currently palpable in many parts of the world? How might such revitalization be related to larger transformations in economy and society, and to enduring Weberian questions about the spirit of capitalism? Drawing largely on material from the US and Africa, this article explores three dimensions of contemporary theologico-politics—the sociological, the ontological, and the cultural—to examine the ways in which current religious emphasis on realism and rapture in many quarters might differ from apocalypse past, and how theocratic tendencies might be linked to shifts in the nature of the state, the shape of the secular, and the axioms of liberal humanism. How have the mass media played into this, and why are they such uncannily apt vehicles for a late-modern culture of the miraculous?

Perspectives on contemporary ethnic conflict: primal violence or the politics of conviction?

Chapter 1 Introduction: Toward Contexts More Intricate and Subtle Part 2 Part I: Explaining Ethnic Violence Chapter 3 Chapter 1: Third-Party Intervention in Ethno-Religious Conflict: Role Theory and the Major Powers of South Asia Chapter 4 Chapter 2: Ethnic Violence and the Loss of State Legitimacy: Burma and Indonesia in a Context of Post-colonial Developmentalism Chapter 5 Chapter 3: Not Ethnicity, but Race: Unity and Conflict in Rwanda since the Genocide Chapter 6 Chapter 4: The Hutu-Tutsi Conflict in Rwanda Chapter 7 Chapter 5: Politico-Psychological Dimensions of Ethnic and Poltical Conflicts in India: Conflicting Paradigms at Work Part 8 Part II: Contemporary Regional Ethnic Conflict Chapter 9 Chapter 6: Multifaceted Ethnic Conflicts and Conflict Resolution in Nigeria Chapter 10 Chapter 7: George Town Shuffle: Ethnic Politics of Afro-Guyanese, Amerindians, and Indo-Guyanese in Postcolonial Guyana Chapter 11 Chapter 8: Sudan's Identity Wars and Democratic Route to Peace Chapter 12 Chapter 9: Ethnic Conflict in Mexico: The Zapatistas Chapter 13 Chapter 10: Kurdish Ethnonationalism: A Critical Analysis Chapter 14 Chapter 11: The Roots of Contemporary Ethnic Conflict and Violence in Burundi

MODERNISING THE POLICY PROCESS

In an increasingly complex world of interrelated problems many governments have tried to modernise their institutional structures and the ways in which they go about making policy. In the UK and elsewhere this has been most apparent in the growing emphasis given to evidence-based policy making in contrast to faith-based approaches and the conviction politics of earlier periods. Much of the debate about the impact and indeed value of this apparently new approach has focussed on the supply side of the equation: on the utilisation of research evidence and how researchers might make their work more relevant and useful to policy makers. Less attention has been paid in these debates to the different ways in which the nature of policy and policy making is conceptualised and how this might affect the relationship between research and policy. This article takes forward this debate by critically reviewing the theorisation of the policy/research relationship under three different conceptions of policy making: the stages model, the advocacy coalition framework and the argumentative turn. It considers the future of policy research via two questions: who should carry out policy research in which settings; and what skills do they need to do so more effectively?

Ethnic attachments in Sri Lanka: social change and cultural continuity

Introduction Medieval Constructions The Decline of Serendipity: Social Change Under European Flags The British Transformation Part I: Two Routes of Institutional Collaboration The British Transformation Part II: Politicized Ethnicity: The Disease of the Body Politic Conviction Politics and Ethnic Confrontation The Tamil Reaction 1974-1990 Conclusion

Presidents and Prime Ministers: Conviction Politics in the Anglo-American Tradition

Presidents and Prime Ministers: Conviction Politics in the Anglo-American Tradition

Presidents and Prime Ministers: Conviction Politics in the Anglo-American Tradition by Patricia Lee Sykes (Lawrence: U. of Kansas P., 2000; pp. 399. $45)

Presidents and Prime Ministers: Conviction Politics in the Anglo-American Tradition by Patricia Lee Sykes (Lawrence: U. of Kansas P., 2000; pp. 399. $45)

Presidents and Prime Ministers: Conviction Politics in the Anglo-American Tradition. By Patricia Lee Sykes. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2000. 399p. $45.00.

In the Stephen Skowronek tradition of leadership studies (The Politics Presidents Make, 1993), Patricia Lee Sykes makes an important substantive and methodological contri- bution with her cross-national comparison of conviction politicians in the United States and the United Kingdom. She begins with a topology that dichotomizes two basic leadership styles: conviction and consensus. She carefully defines these on the basis of their goals and strategies and the external conditions that facilitate them.

Christian Thinking and Social Order: Conviction Politics From the 1930s to the Present Day Edited by Marjorie Reeves (1999)

Christian Thinking and Social Order: Conviction Politics From the 1930s to the Present Day Edited by Marjorie Reeves (1999)

Presidents and prime ministers: conviction politics in the Anglo-American tradition

I am a conviction politician declared Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and her stand against consensus politics won immediate endorsement from Ronald Reagan. Both promised to provide strong leadership, establish new priorities and restore fundamental principles to national politics. To many they appeared to form a transatlantic partnership, but they were not the first. Looking back over 200 years of political history, Patricia Lee Sykes examines presidents and prime ministers to show how idealistic leaders have challenged liberal ideas and institutions within the Anglo-American tradition, and in the process have altered the political landscape. She reveals how conviction-style politicians have appeared in the US and UK at the same time: individuals who articulated similar ideas that adapted liberal ideology to shifting circumstances and who achieved fundamental change at critical moments in their nation's history. The comparative study of chief executives examines not only Reagan and Thatcher, but also three other pairs of leaders who used moral rhetoric to challenge the status quo: Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George; Grover Cleveland and William Gladstone; and Andrew Jackson and Robert Peel. Sykes discusses each pair, describing their leadership styles and their roles in the liberal tradition. She then analyzes the mercurial context of conviction politics over time to show when party politics, the media, the state, or global affairs can prevent even the most visionary of leaders from enacting their programmes. Sykes also charts an increasing convergence of political practice and philosophy in the two countries - particularly with the presidentialization of the prime minister - and tracks the tensions created between executive authority, individual freedom and the public good when leaders purposefully avoid consensus to pursue their own lofty visions.

Christian Thinking and Social Order: Conviction Politics from the 1930s to the Present Day. Edited by Marjorie Reeves. New York: Cassell, 1999. 238 pp. $27.95

Christian Thinking and Social Order: Conviction Politics from the 1930s to the Present Day. Edited by Marjorie Reeves. New York: Cassell, 1999. 238 pp. $27.95

Conviction Politics and Dynamic Conservatism: Mrs. Thatcher's Managerial Revolution

The main change in British government in the 1980s was that there was no change of government or, more importantly, of prime minis ter. Improving public management was an integral part of Margaret Thatcher's brand of conviction politics. Political continuity provided the conditions for overcoming the dynamic conservatism of public administra tion and implementing irreversible changes. This managerial revolution has redefined the boundaries and relationships between the public and private sectors as well as transforming the public sector itself through the introduction of business models and methods of management. This paper examines these developments and assesses future prospects by distinguishing four overlapping phases of reform. (1) The Rayner scruti nies of departmental operations. (2) "Lasting Reforms" of departmental systems and structures. (3) The Next Steps programme for the creation of agencies. (4) Structural reorganizations of major public services such as health, education and local government finance. The main thesis is that the reform process is being compromised by its own early successes. The convictions which underpin the reform process have led to the repeated use of management models and methods of managing change which are inappropriate to achieve increasingly ambitious reform objectives.

The Probation Service in a Flawed Justice System

Much of the pressure experienced by the Probation Service in England and Wales and criticism made of its performance results from structural flaws in the criminal justice system. This has led to a penal policy characterised by inconsistency and lack of direction, subject to the vagaries of conviction politics, pragmatic expedients and desperate damage limitation exercises. It is difficult to detect a thread of consistent, planned penal strategy in which the Service can make a rational contribution, argues Roger Shaw of the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge.

Debate: Conviction politics and the public service; Urban deprivation

Debate: Conviction politics and the public service; Urban deprivation