Dichotomy Of Politics Research Articles

Global health diplomacy and North Korea in the COVID-19 era

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed increasing global inequality in responding to the issues of health. How do we resolve the tension between normative concerns for global responsibility and strategic concerns for national interest in facilitating health aid to vulnerable populations in low-income countries in the COVID-19 era? This article presents global health diplomacy as a conceptual framework that could overcome the dichotomy of humanitarianism and international politics, using health aid to North Korea during COVID-19 as a case-study. Health is a critical component of human dignity and can be a normative motivation for cooperation beyond sovereign borders. However, health is also an important element of national interest and can be a strategic motivation for transnational cooperation. The overlap between the moral and rational spaces in global health diplomacy demonstrates how COVID-19 assistance to North Korea's vulnerable population is in the enlightened self-interest of donors to prevent resurgences of new COVID-19 variants. Moreover, this framework imbues all parties, including aid recipients such as North Korea, with the global cooperative responsibility to address health. In this sense, global health diplomacy can reframe the tensions between humanitarianism and politics, morality and rationality, and cosmopolitanism and nationalism, from antithetical to complementary.

Dichotomy of Politics and Administration：Goodnow’s Comprehension and Enlightenment

Dichotomy of Politics and Administration：Goodnow’s Comprehension and Enlightenment

Born Like Krishna in the Prison-House: Revolutionary Asceticism in the Political Ashram of Aurobindo Ghose

ABSTRACTThe revolutionary thinker and later yogi of Pondicherry, Aurobindo Ghose (1872–1950), played a critical role during the Swadeshi movement in Bengal, articulating a radical vision that determined the limits and possibilities of the Indian political. Reading his polemical journalism in Bande Mataram alongside his prison memoir, Karakahini, reveals the importance of the jail for his staging of politics. This paper refutes the usual dichotomy of politics and spirituality in readings of Aurobindo and instead explores their underlying interconnectedness in relation to his scripting of an insurrectionary and universalist Hindu metaphysics in which divinity intervened in human history on the side of the oppressed. Aurobindo's central symbol—of Krishna being born in a prison cell—inscribed enduring theo-political significance into the colonial jail, which was successfully re-imagined as a revolutionary ashram, a transformative and sovereign space where political prisoners could be reborn.

Spatial Politics and a Native American Reservation: Reading Red Power: A Graphic Novel with Author Brian Wright-McLeod

This paper discusses Dakota-Anishinabe Brian Wright-McLeod’s graphic novel Red Power (2011), which tells a story of land conflict surrounding a Native American reservation and of a group of Native activists involved in it. Based on an interview with Wright-McLeod and with several references to Jason Aaron and R.M Guéra’s reservation-based graphic novel Scalped (2007-2012), it focuses on the politics of space and identity. Drawing on propositions from cultural geography about the interdependency of social and spatial structures and their mutually constitutive relationship, the paper analyzes how Red Power makes use of the visual aspect of the graphic novel to rearticulate the colonizer-colonized dichotomy of identity politics and expose the mechanisms through which power structures continue to restrict, disrupt, and exploit indigenous spaces. The paper then proceeds to examine how the novel seeks out possibilities of unsettling the spatial order imposed upon indigenous people by focusing on resistance organized by Native activists. It also explores how the novel suggests ways of experiencing and being in space that escape both colonial ways of knowing and conceiving it and, more importantly, colonial control over it.

Paradigmatic pragmatism and the politics of diversity

How migration and mobilizations of difference are accommodated at the local level is a burning question. Concepts adopted by local governments and the capacities of cities to formulate and implement these have received increasing attention, but often without examining the ideas and norms that underlie local concepts and practices. This article assesses the hypothesis of local-level pragmatism, which it rejects, and develops the notion of ‘paradigmatic pragmatism’ to characterize how local-level politics address mobilizations of difference. Based on empirical findings from Amsterdam, Antwerp and Leeds, and comparing the content and the implementation of ‘diversity policies’, I argue against a dichotomy of pragmatic vs ideational politics. Instead, these cities draw on a variety of ideas and pragmatically combine them under the header of diversity. This paradigmatic pragmatism invites further research on the effects of potential incompatibilities of immigrant policy ideas.

Political theology in a Nordic post-secular setting

The current return of religion into the public sphere in Europe calls for a rethinking of traditional standpoints in political theology. The present article discusses the Lutheran idea of “two kingdoms,” which has been important in a Nordic setting. The author shows how the theological idea of two kingdoms has changed in the time after Luther. Originally, in pre-modernity, church and state were both seen from a religious point of view. God the creator was presupposed by all citizens. In modernity a secular view-point became the one taken for granted, defining also the way the spiritual realm was comprehended. In a post-secular context neither of these positions can be taken for granted. Current political theology must search for a post-secular solution that goes beyond the dichotomy of politics belonging to a secular sphere and Christian life belonging to a religious one. The article analyses some examples of how the idea of the post-secular has been discussed. Taking its starting-point in ideas by thinkers informed by Ludwig Wittgenstein, the article stresses the importance of taking concrete contexts into account in every discussion of political ethics. The position presented points in the direction of “radical democracy” newly discussed by several theologians.

Elements of ancient power in the Cahokian world

Power in ancient eastern North America cannot be segregated a priori into political, social, and religious dimensions. Rather, it was a commonly dispersed attribute of human/non-human social fields that might be transferred, gathered, embodied, or emplaced. Thus, political power was realized, at least in part, through socio-religious practices involving ancestors, elements, and otherworldly forces. Deconstructing the dichotomy of religion and politics, we focus on practices of material manipulation, burning, and burial at and around the eleventh- and twelfth-century complex of Cahokia along the Mississippi River. Specifically, we detail a number of contexts where temple buildings, human remains, and objects were transubstantiated, especially through burning, and hence their power transformed. Persons were constructed, places of power were built, political agents were defined, and enemies were eliminated through fire and earth.

FromNomostoLex: Hannah Arendt on Law, Politics, and Order

Abstract‘What is politics?’ is an omnipresent question in Hannah Arendt's work and one which is broadly explored in countless publications. ‘What is law?’, in contrast, is a question which has not been of much interest to Arendt scholarship to date. There is a good reason for this: Arendt's engagement with law seems not to be systematic but, rather, episodic and sporadic. However, on the basis of three different discourses – historical, political-theoretical, and legal-philosophical – I shall point out that Arendt's dealing with legal questions takes place on a continuous basis and should be regarded as crucial for a proper understanding of her thoughts. I shall argue that with her shift from the Greek conception of law asnomosto the Romanlex, Arendt seeks to de-substantiate the concept of law and to highlight the relationship-establishing dimension of law. Both attempts are important for overcoming the dichotomy of law and politics within constitutionalism and for paving the way to a different understanding of legal rationality which seeks not to isolate law from the political sphere but rather to interact with it.

The Myth of the Dichotomy: Complementarity of Politics and Administration in the Past and Future of Public Administration

At the heart of the practice of public administration is the relationship between administrators, on one hand, and political leaders and the public on the other hand. The nature of that relationship and the proper role of administrators in the political process have been the subject of considerable debate. Anxiety about administrative legitimacy has been particularly intense in the United States, where the rise of the administrative state was out of synch with a democratic society (Stillman 1997), but similar issues have arisen in other countries as well (Rutgers 1997). As the field emerged, was important to differentiate a practice based on professional knowledge and values from political particularism, but the extent and scope of the differentiation were unclear. It was also necessary to reconcile the tensions among complying with the directions of elected officials, maintaining professional integrity, and serving the public. Observers differ as to whether American thinking about the relationship of public administration to society has experienced major shifts over time or has gradually evolved. Along the lines developed by Lynn, the case can be made that there has generally been continuity in the development of public administration in the United States rather than an abandonment of the traditions of the field. Whereas Lynn organizes his reexamination around the bureaucratic paradigm, my emphasis is the core relationship between politicians and administrators.(1) Not only did traditional thought, as Lynn observes, seek to maintain balance between administrative capacity and popular control on behalf of public purposes defined by electoral and judicial institutions, also sought to justify the contributions of public administrators to shaping the definition of public purposes. Put simply, early contributors to the development of public administration acknowledged a role for administrators that has often been ignored. Even the politics-administration dichotomy that is a part of the traditional paradigm usually incorporates the ideas of accountability and responsibility--although the paradigm can be expressed in ways that seem to preclude these qualities by portraying administration as mechanically instrumental--but the emphasis on a strict dichotomy of politics and administration will not accommodate the role of administrators that has come to be widely recognized. In the past--and, I would argue, in the present as well--there was simultaneous emphasis on separation and insulation of administrators from political interference, on one hand, and interaction and incorporation of administrative contributions in the design and the implementation of public policy, on the other hand. Wilson and Goodnow favored such contributions, as did Leonard White, who acknowledged but dismissed concerns about the growth of administration controlling in the first instance the application of law to the individual case, cooperating also in the formulation of policy (1926, 33). Although legislative control of administration is critical, he argued, it is nevertheless important to remember that the administration cooperates indispensably with the legislature, and that without its assistance, the task of legislation would become much less informed and much less effective. These founding fathers of the field never advocated the dichotomy attributed to them--a conclusion demonstrated repeatedly (Golembiewski 1977; Rabin and Bowman 1984, 4; Rohr 1986, 31; Van Riper 1984, 209-10).(2) Still, the myth that public administration began as a narrow, confined, and insulated activity is regularly repeated partly because, as Lynn implies, is self-satisfying to view ourselves as enlightened and to view earlier, particularly prewar scholars and practitioners, as benighted. There are a number of reasons why the dichotomy idea has persisted. It is convenient to explain the division of roles in terms of total separation because is easier to explain than a model based on sharing roles, particularly since the separation model does not limit the actual contributions of administrators in practice. …

The Dichotomy of Politics and Corruption in a Neopatrimonial State: Evidence from Sierra Leone, 1968-1993

The scholarly studies on political corruption in Africa are not conclusive, given the lack of knowledge of how neopatrimonialism contributes to state corruption. This is an important omission. There are obvious relationships between regime types and the likelihood, nature, and extent of political corruption. The analysis of political corruption in Sierra Leone has important implications for our understanding of the relationship between neopatrimonialism and state corruption.

The Dichotomy of Politics and Corruption in a Neopatrimonial State: Evidence from Sierra Leone, 1968-1993

The scholarly studies on political corruption in Africa are not conclusive, given the lack of knowledge of how neopatrimonialism contributes to state corruption. This is an important omission. There are obvious relationships between regime types and the likelihood, nature, and extent of political corruption. The analysis of political corruption in Sierra Leone has important implications for our understanding of the relationship between neopatrimonialism and state corruption.

The Dichotomy of Politics and Corruption in a Neopatrimonial State: Evidence from Sierra Leone, 1968-1993

The scholarly studies on political corruption in Africa are not conclusive, given the lack of knowledge of how neopatrimonialism contributes to state corruption. This is an important omission. There are obvious relationships between regime types and the likelihood, nature, and extent of political corruption.' The analysis of political corruption in Sierra Leone has important implications for our understanding of the relationship between neopatrimonialism and state corruption. Kpundeh indicates that administrative corruption in Sierra Leone was a common phenomenon during the All People's Congress (henceforth APC) tenure.2 Several corruption cases with national political ramifications were common during APC's tenure. Kpundeh provides evidence regarding several major corruption scandals that were unearthed during APC's tenure.3 He indicates that in 1982 the first major corruption scandal referred to as "Vouchergate" was unearthed; "Squandergate" in 1984 and "Milliongate" in 1987 were to follow. The proliferation of national corruption scandals was a distinguishable feature of the Siaka Stevens era. Riley concurs by indicating that Stevens's tenure as Head of State was characterized by continued corruption scandals of the late 1970s and early 1980s.4 The pervasiveness of corruption was directed mainly by the desires of politicians to enhance their personal wealth. Caiden maintains that anytime high level party officials are extremely corrupt, the personalization of the public treasury was inevitable.5 The personalization of state wealth occurred alongside the expansion of the state, particularly as the state progressively expanded its economic transactions. Luke and Riley point out that the majority of African states showed high rates of growth of public consumption during the 1960s and 1970s.6This expansion in public consumption provided ample resources for a corrupt political elite. This group was able to divert and transform public resources to become private wealth. The illegal creation of wealth by political elites is a manifestation of politics in a neopatrimonial state. In Sierra Leone, the expansion of the state sector, particularly the parastatal sector, provided rich fodder for corrupt party and government officials.7 One notices that the state was both a provider and a customer for a wealthy APC clique at the top of Sierra Leonean society. The APC, under Siaka Stevens and Joseph Saidu Momoh radically transformed state corruption. It was transformed from a simple chaotic activity to a well organized systemic activity: an activity where contracts were being rigged, decisions bought and sold, elections corrupted, and political rivals threatened and physically coerced. In some sense, during APC's tenure, state corruption became coherent and orderly. The longevity of APC rule (24 years) provided ample oppor u ity for the establishment of an institutional appara us condoning acts of state corruption. Individuals and groups that were organized made private and profiteering demands on the government. National leadership controlled state access; they had the ability to provide opportunities in o the world of state-owned wealth, and also the power to erect obstacles to those who sought private wealth.8 As a result, the entire political class relied on dubious business transactions to keep a hold on power for more than two decades. Personal gain from politics and public office was a centerpiece ideology of the APC. The concept of real public service, nationalist politicians, and not-for-profit politics were missing ingredients in the politics of post-independence Sierra Leone. During this period, it became the mle for party officials and political appointees to dedicatedly involve themselves in illegal personal enrichment. Top level officials of parastatals left offices under strong suspicion as evidence surfaced indicating that they enriched themselves considerably in office.9 The military government's investigations reveal that the APC tenure transformed the state into a neopatrimonial state: a state were the general rule was organized corruption. State corruption created an environment inimical to economic development. Efficient management had its price and it was not worth much, corruption had its gains and it was profitable; these dynamics added to the subtle, but strong, barriers to political and economic development. These barriers could not be negotiated by the citizenry or officials of international financial institutions. Despite increased realities, the political class was never short of local currency, foreign exchange and luxury goods. During APC's tenure, access to state wealth was a common way to seal loyalty and shore up alliances. Patrimonial relations were clearly a necessary item for state access and the subsequent personalization of state wealth.

Policy Issue Networks and the Public Policy Cycle: A Structural-Functional Framework for Public Administration

Public administration has been influenced substantially in recent years by the public policy cycle literature--a fact which is illustrated by the rich contributions of the growing number of policy implementation studies. This research strain can be said to assume a functionalist approach to the discipline. By contrast, another recent strain in the literature, the growing body of policy issue network studies, is nudging the discipline in the direction of a structuralist approach. Using definitions from structural/functional analysis (Harmon and Mayer, 1986; 168-174; Katz and Kahn, 1978; 73-93, 174-198; Parsons, 1951; Benson, 1975; Marin and Mayntz, 1991b; Kenis and Schneider, 1991), structures are defined as patterns of routinized interactions among participants in a common enterprise while are seen as outcomes of these interactions necessary for survival of the enterprise. Although many social scientists see structure and function as related phenomena in a unified body of theory, public administration theorists have not developed a research orientation which facilitates a nexus of these two promising research strains (Burstein, 1991; Benson, 1975). Contributing to this shortcoming in the current literature is the lingering influence of the politics/administration dichotomy on public administration. As a result, empirical studies have accumulated without a common theoretical base that might facilitate weaving the threads of research findings into a more meaningful tapestry. In the following four sections, I (1) explain the nature of structural/functional analysis as it relates to public administration, (2) argue that Wilson's one-sided functional dichotomy of politics and administration distorts our understanding and inhibits the accumulation of knowledge, (3) review two major bodies of literature from the field to illustrate the loss of opportunities that results because researchers are not working from a unifying theoretical base, and (4) propose a structural/functional matrix as a better framework for understanding the role of public administration in contemporary public policy. A Structural-Functional Model for Public Administration It is truly unfortunate that the policy cycle literature and the policy issue network literature have developed largely independently when they are related so clearly in the context of broader social science theory (Kingdon, 1984; 1-22; Benson, 1975; Burstein, 1991; Kenis and Schneider, 1991). The policy cycle literature suggests that the public policy process consists generally of a set of four major functional stages--agenda setting, policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation (Jones, 1970; 10-14; Anderson 1990; 18-22; Palumbo, 1988; 17-22; Dye, 1992; Rosenbaum, 1991; 66-70; Burstein, 1991). In structural/functional terms, these functions are outcomes of policy subsystems that must be accomplished for policy to be produced. As Jones (1970; 13) states, Within each [policy cycle stage], processes can be identified which function to achieve the goals of the system. Viewed together, the four functions can be said to comprise a functional framework within which the activities of the policy subsystem can be located and categorized. Various writers have used this approach to develop concepts explaining the behavior of actors throughout the policy process. The strength of this literature is its deconstruction of the policy process--an analytical separation into functional stages and identification of roles performed in various stages. One of its major weaknesses is the absence of common definitions of the various roles and knowledge of which participants perform which roles. For public administration, it is important to know the extent to which professional, merit-selected employees are free to perform the various roles and to participate across all the functional stages. Obviously in our system of governance they are not completely free to do so. …

A Case for Reinterpreted Dichotomy of Politics and Administration as a Professional Standard in Council-Manager Government

ffectively carried out the policies of the council. Over the years, a number of scholars have suggested that such a strict interpretation might not be what early proponents of a dichotomy had intended (Golembiewski, 1977; 9-11; Cooper, 1984; 80-84; Waldo, 1984; 222-225). Nevertheless, the idea of an institutional separation has persisted and has been the foil for numerous studies. In a recent review of the literature, James Svara found consistent evidence that, almost throughout the history of the council-manager plan, managers have played an active role in the policy process. Yet instead of being settled, the issue has been periodically rediscovered (Svara, 1989; 77). Svara attributed the dichotomy's persistence to its partial descriptive accuracy and to its normative appeal as a guide for administrative behavior consistent with democratic theory. His own reconceptualization of council-manager relationships as a mission-management continuum appears to improve on the descriptive accuracy of the dichotomy without abandoning the idea of role separation (Svara, 1985, 1989). John Nalbandian (1991) takes a stronger position. He argues that politics has transformed the role of the city manager from that of neutral expert to community leader and problem solver. The dichotomy persists not as a guide to behavior but as an intellectual device connecting practice to theory. He seeks to replace this function of the dichotomy with an expanded base of professional values for city managers. We agree with Svara and Nalbandian that the dichotomy of policy and administration, as traditionally interpreted, prescribes roles that are neither practical nor desirable in council-manager government. On the other hand, we think that few would wish to abandon the dichotomy of politics and administration as a bulwark against certain forms of particularism, such as special favors in hiring or contracting decisions. Must we throw out the baby with the bath water? The answer depends upon what we mean by the dichotomy and how we intend to use the concept. We focus on the politics-administration dichotomy as a professional standard in council-manager government, not as a description of actual behavior. In this we follow Herbert Simon's normative interpretation of the dichotomy (1967; 88). The debate over its utility should rest, we think, on both normative issues (the values served) and empirical issues (whether such a standard can actually affect behavior in desired ways). Under this perspective, evidence that some behavior falls short of the standard is not, in itself, grounds for abandoning the standard. On the other hand, if a standard proscribes behavior, such as participation in the policy process, which is necessary to the job, then the standard may be of no value or even of negative value because it robs practitioners of legitimacy. So, it is crucial to examine exactly what the standard is and what behavior it advocates. This article is divided into two principal parts. In the first, we reinterpret the dichotomy. In the second, we explore the implications for council-manager government. Reinterpreting the Dichotomies We make the case that it is reasonable to base an interpretation of the dichotomies on the writings of Woodrow Wilson (1887) and Frank Goodnow (1900) because of their historical connection with the council-manager plan. The dichotomy of policy and administration was a conceptual distinction underlying a theory of democratic accountability. It was not intended as a guide to behavior. The dichotomy of politics and administration was intended as a behavioral prescription directed against contemporary practices of machine politics. The reformers' arguments apply as well to the broader issue of particularism in government, which is as relevant today as it was a century ago. The institutional ban on particularistic politics in administration was not a ban on discretion, as long as administrators were accountable. …

A Case for Reinterpreted Dichotomy of Politics and Administration as a Professional Standard in Council-Manager Government

A Case for Reinterpreted Dichotomy of Politics and Administration as a Professional Standard in Council-Manager Government