Extraordinary Politics Research Articles

A Survey of Judicial Effectiveness: The Last Quarter Century of Empirical Evidence

Abstract Courts around the world are often perceived to be ineffective in the delivery of justice. The resolution of cases takes too long, costs too much, and is biased in favor of the rich and politically connected. These stylized facts motivate judicial reform. With the benefit of a quarter century of empirical research, this paper finds that judicial reform is successful in improving court effectiveness when it coincides with or is motivated by periods of extraordinary politics. We study the four most discussed ingredients of judicial effectiveness—independence, access, efficiency, and quality—and find that transformative judicial reform is most likely to succeed in countries emerging from conflict and violence or those that are pursuing accession to regional or international groups. Absent such conditions, reformers are better off focusing on the adoption of procedural rules that increase the effectiveness of the existing judicial system. The survey highlights procedural reforms that deliver better outcomes.

Climate emergency and securitization politics: towards a climate politics of the extraordinary

ABSTRACT There is an ongoing debate among climate activists and scholars on the merits of ‘climate emergency’ frames, which mirrors debates in critical security studies on the benefits and risks of ‘securitization’. Climate emergency advocates demonstrate that rapid transformative action beyond ‘normal’ politics is needed to meet the Paris agreement targets. Critics, on the other hand, highlight the risks of deploying emergency frames to galvanize climate action, which may simply result in failed securitizations or even in emergency suspensions of democratic norms that advance climate action at the expense of climate justice. This paper will engage this debate by exploring the question: could climate emergency mobilizations be compatible with climate justice? I will argue, following Andreas Kalyvas, that the climate emergency can be framed as an opportunity for an ‘extraordinary politics’ of democratic constituent power, though this would involve risks and trade-offs that must be negotiated in practice.

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on poverty among Syrian refugees in Turkey

It is a global phenomenon that poverty is an everyday experience which can, however, be found universally amongst minorities, refugees and lower class migrants. All of these groups have in common the lack of access to a ‘normal life’ – an experience which can be even worse in countries where local hostilities are high due to economic scarcity and systemic racism. In this article, the author ranges widely over the poverty confronting refugees in Turkey who have fled the Syrian civil war, not least against the background of the country’s own opaque and inadequate legislation on refugees, which offers only temporary protection and greater precariousness as a result of the lack of formal employment opportunities; the continuing inequalities stemming from neoliberalism; the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic; and amidst the country’s own extraordinary politics. Focusing in particular on the decline experienced in the pandemic in terms of access to education and the decline in access to healthcare, the article concludes that providing real support for the poor is not realistic under existing political and economic approaches.

Winstanley's “Righteous Actors”: Performance, Affect, and Extraordinary Politics in the Seventeenth Century

On the first day of April 1649, on the predominantly rural manor of Walton, Surrey, the sight of people preparing land for the plow was unremarkable. To see men up at dawn, dressed for the field in broad-brimmed hats, homespun waistcoats, and short breeches, loosening or breaking up clods with their spades, stooping to toss aside root and rock, was typical. What did raise eyebrows, however, was the sight of such busyness on a Sunday, the Sabbath, and on no less remarkable ground than George Hill, with its “very barren,” sandy soil. When questioned, Gerrard Winstanley reframed this performative break with religious, social, and agricultural norms as he did in his soon to be published manifesto, The True Levellers’ Standard Advanced. To work this land was to “declare . . . by action,” as well as by word, that Winstanley, the self-described “prophet” William Everard, and a small number of others had been sent by the Creator to begin their mission of transforming “the Earth [into] a common Treasury for all, both Rich and Poor.” Rural, religious, and resource poor, the Digger collective has not received substantial attention from performance studies scholars. Even some historians of the seventeenth century have questioned the significance of this small, nonviolent agrarian group in the intensely “charged political atmosphere of the 1640s,” but as a collective whose theatrical social performances raised them from obscurity to national visibility, Diggers are in some ways the epitome of this era.

Pandemics and Human Rights: Three Perspectives on Human Rights Assessment of Strategies Against Covid-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a challenge to human rights and human rights law globally. The epidemic itself as well as the measures enacted to contain it continuously affect the enjoyment of internationally protected human rights. Furthermore, populism traditionally thrives on crises which can provide legitimacy to extraordinary politics that consistently have proved to be the anti-thesis to human rights compliance and to checks on the power of the executive. In the case of COVID-19 however, democratic states have been dealing with a genuine crisis and extraordinary policies have been warranted. Despite claims to the contrary, human rights do not present a barrier to decisive action to contain the virus. In fact, this working paper argues the opposite. The paper presents three perspectives on how human rights can act as a guide in the fight against the pandemic. Chapter 1 contrasts human rights-based approaches to fighting the spread with populist or authoritarian approaches. It explains what human rights-based approaches to genuine crises look like, as opposed to approaches with little regard for fundamental rights, providing a reliable way to spot the difference. Chapter 2 engages in a methodological discussion on how reliably to measure human rights compliance and promotion in connection with a global pandemic and conducts a survey of existing guides and trackers. Finally, Chapter 3 presents a method for real-life application of the results of the analysis in Chapter 1 and the discussion in Chapter 2 in the form of an assessment model for human rights protection and promotion during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

From Earl Grey to Boris Johnson: Brexit and the Anglo-American Constitutional Model

Trump and Brexit are at the forefront of political discussions around the world. Many treat them as symptoms of the same phenomenon: the rise of populism, nationalism, and xenophobia towards immigrants and refugees. Both seem to repeatedly challenge constitutional limits on a variety of fronts. Brexit was approved in a referendum by a slim majority, with wavering public support and in spite of a reluctant Parliament. Yet, all British political players feel bound by its results and have taken steps to withdraw from the EU, absorbing the costs of trillions of dollars to their economy. Exclusionary policies may not be enough to explain the extraordinary politics involved. This Article argues that the forces affecting Brexit are rooted in nineteenth century Britain. It deconstructs the familiar narrative that casts the US as the archetype of a constitutional model, with a formal supreme Constitution, judicial review, and popular sovereignty. In that narrative, the UK is cast as the antithesis, because Parliament reigns supreme, it has no formal Constitution, and it lacks a doctrine of judicial review. This Article reveals that, even as this narrative was becoming orthodoxy during the nineteenth century, the UK was already operating under a model similar to the US, demonstrating a continued commitment to popular, rather than parliamentary, sovereignty. The fact that Parliament refers major decisions to the People and carries out those decisions, as exemplified in the British determination to go ahead with Brexit, signals that the People is the sovereign, not Parliament. The challenges encountering popular sovereignty have remained the same over the past two centuries though gaining new dimensions: enfranchisement, protectionism, territorial divisions, and allocation of legislative power. This Article demonstrates how Britain has been operating under a common Anglo-American constitutional model for the past 200 years and highlights its implications for comparative constitutional law. The common Anglo-American model sheds new light on the meaning of the government’s mandate at elections, the rise of party power, and the conditions that would legitimize packing the courts.

What may we hope for? Education in times of climate change

What may we hope for? Education in times of climate change

Extraordinary Racial Politics: Four Events in the Informal Constitution of the United States

Extraordinary Racial Politics: Four Events in the Informal Constitution of the United States

Constitutionalization of European Law by European Courts: Legitimate Constitutional Moments?

The present chapter explores the legitimate role of the two European courts in the constitutionalization of European law, in light of prominent discussions about ‘constitutional moments.’ In particular, this contribution considers possible lessons from Ackerman’s claims that the US constitution has undergone drastic changes at several ‘extra-constitutional’ ‘constitutional moments’. Ackerman argues that several features serve to legitimate the changes. Several of these issues also merit attention as concerning the constitutionalization of European – and possibly International – Law. What would count as such a phenomenon of constitutional change? How might we identify any decisive events that brought such changes – the ‘constitutional moments’ of ‘extraordinary politics’ that concern Ackerman? And what features of such ‘extra-constitutional’ events bestow legitimacy on the changed constitution? These issues are particularly important for any such ‘constitutional moments’ in the constitutionalization of international law, due to two features of the main agents of such changes: Treaty may develop beyond what states are constitutionally authorized to consent to; and international courts are often challenged as to their own legitimacy.

Extraordinary politics and durable reform: lessons from trade liberalisation in Estonia and Poland

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the significance of the period of extraordinary politics after the fall of communism for policy reform. It examines under what circumstances policy reforms enacted during such periods are durable by comparing trade liberalisation in Poland and Estonia in the early 1990s. The article relates this question to the historical institutionalist debate surrounding critical junctures, gradual change and the politics of stability and change. It argues that trade policy reform enacted during periods of extraordinary politics is most likely to be durable if it is associated with deeper changes in structural conditions, such as dominant ideas, interests and institutions.

Political toleration, exclusionary reasoning and the extraordinary politics

Western societies today are marked by a broad liberal consensus in favor of toleration. Yet, some philosophers have charged that political toleration as a liberal ideal is incoherent. Some have argued that toleration is incompatible with liberal political orders due to egalitarian considerations. Others have suggested that in a truly liberal society, where the state’s justice-based duties of non-interference are the most appropriate response to diversity, political toleration is practically redundant. This article defends political toleration against the above allegations. My goal is twofold: first of all, to formulate a coherent conception of toleration that is fully consistent with the egalitarian spirit of our times and then to demonstrate that, contrary to critics’ claims, political toleration is not an obsolete ideal that belongs to a bygone era. And all this because, I believe, in a liberal constitutional order, political toleration’s specific role is not identical with, and cannot be reduced to, the state’s justice-based duties of non-interference. Accordingly, I argue that political toleration belongs to a specific mode of politics: the extraordinary politics. When the rules of justice are not available, or their application is not feasible, the extraordinary politics, in which toleration plays a role, emerges as the persistent residue of the ordinary politics. Therefore, political toleration and justice-based duties of non-interference should be seen as accompanying practices that represent two modes of politics.

Populism and the politics of the extraordinary in Latin America

Building on past and current experiences of populism in Latin America, this article makes four arguments. First, whereas populist movements seeking power promise to democratize society by challenging the legitimacy of exclusionary institutions, populist governments often include the excluded at the cost of disfiguring democracy. Second, during populist events the meanings of the ambiguous term ‘the people’ are disputed. When social movements are weak, and when the institutions of liberal democracy are discredited, a populist leader could attempt to become the embodiment of the will of the people. Third, even though the concept of the people is central to populism, it could be constructed differently. It could be imagined as heterogeneous and plural, or as the people-as-one, as an entity that shares one identity and interest that could be embodied in a leader. Fourth, populism shares with fascism an imaginary construction of the people-as-one. Yet differently from fascism, which staged extraordinary politics as war against internal and external enemies, populists staged their extraordinariness as winning popular elections and did not establish dictatorships.

Extraordinary politics of ordinary people: Explaining the microdynamics of popular committees in revolutionary Cairo

On 28 January 2011 – as police abandoned the streets and reports of theft spread – Egyptians went down to the streets to protect their families and property, closing down intersections and setting up checkpoints. These neighborhood groups – known as popular committees (PCs) – filled the security vacuum and were one of the deciding factors of Mubarak’s downfall. This article explores how ordinary Egyptians collectively acted in order to restore stability during the regime’s moment of crisis. The author briefly introduces Egyptian PCs by discussing other instances of community organizing that occurred under extraordinary circumstances. Next, the author focuses on the microdynamics of PCs during the 2011 revolution by describing their mobilization, social networks, practices, communication methods, and dissolution. The PC narrative reminds us that, even during a revolution, the actions of ordinary individuals are often ignored by scholars and observers. Only after moving our attention away from the main squares do we begin to understand the full complexity of such exceptional moments.

Spells of the sacred in a global age

This article argues that quests for sacrality are creative forces in the formation of collective identities in the global age. Shifting the vantage point towards extraordinary politics of liminal globality, the first part captures borderline experiences where political reality is broken and markers of certainty dissolve. Taking the lead from mimetic theory, the second part looks at the ambivalent sources of the sacred. Symbols of peace, reconciliation and order originate in violence. The third part illustrates varieties of the global sacred by looking at the democratic imagination and the politics of humanitarian reason. Finally, the constitutive role of the sacred is examined for the background of cultural frames and with a view to the unconscious and non-agentive drivers of global processes. Rather than a fundamentalist remainder in a secular world or a foundational principle, the sacred is a transitional and processual reality that performs a hinge function that balances the fragility of political reality.

Reading Arendt in Tehran: on extraordinary democratic politics and the failure of revolutions

This article seeks to understand the 2009 Iranian anti-government uprising through an Arendtian lens, and re-read Arendt's conceptions of power, civil disobedience and revolution in the light of this event. Generating non-institutionalized, non-regularized public spaces both within and beyond the limits of the established order, diverse communities reconstituted an Iranian multitude that temporarily shifted the power from the regime to the street. Arendt helps us understand both how this self-authorized and self-empowered multitude was able to recover democratic subjectivity and power under non-democratic conditions, and how the democratic uprising failed and the regime could crush it and consolidate its rule.

The Extraordinary Politics of the Tunisian Revolution: The Process of Constitution Making

To understand the current stalemate in the drafting process of the Tunisian constitution, it is important to fathom the path Tunisia has chosen to walk since President Ben Ali fled the country. This article apprehends the post-Ben Ali era as a period of extraordinary politics, i.e. a moment of explicit self-institution of society in which popular participation, following Kalyvas' analysis, aims to transform the institutions of state as well as social imaginaries, cultural orientations and economic structures. It analyses the period following Ben Ali's departure as one in which the organization of free elections and the writing of a new constitution by an elected Constituent Assembly not as a technical process of institution-building aimed at creating a new political system, but as a re-constitutive phase of the political. This phase aims at the radical transformation of power relations within state and society and strives for the re-invention of society itself.

The Legality of Liberal Revolution

Since the fall of communism, liberals have sought to reclaim the mantle of revolution. This new age of liberal revolution, they argue, culminates in a transformative ‘moment’ when the people unite to throw off their shackles and establish a democratic constitution. These founding moments are therefore extraordinary periods of unconstrained politics, where the sovereign people transcend the formal borders of institutionalized politics and legality to draft the constitutional boundaries of their new liberal order. Russian President Boris El’tsin placed his violent and illegal dissolution of the Russian Parliament and period of authoritarian dictatorship within this tradition of liberal revolution. Throughout 1993, El’tsin justified his decision to disband Parliament as the necessary action of an agent of the people in a period of extraordinary (and extralegal) politics. Western commentators have generally placed Russia’s constitutional foundation within this revolutionary paradigm of extraordinary politics. In Russia, however, both El’tsin’s methods and this revolutionary tradition are increasingly viewed with suspicion. This viewpoint is best expressed in the writing of the Chairman of the Russian Constitutional Court, Valerii Zor’kin. Steeped in the anti-revolutionary ideology of the late tsarist Russian constitutionalists, Chairman Zor’kin argues that El’tsin’s actions at the Russian founding helped spawn a culture of lawlessness that has undermined Russian democracy. Although Zor’kin’s approach is flawed, it is an important reminder for liberal constitutional thinkers to reexamine the concrete effects of a desire for a democratically pure founding moment.

PARLIAMENTARISM VERSUS SEMI-PRESIDENTIALISM IN THE BALTIC STATES: THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF DIFFERENCES IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS

Restoring their statehood in the early 1990s, Estonia and Latvia established parliamentary republics, while Lithuania opted for semi-presidentialism. The paper is a case-oriented comparative study explaining this difference with the Lithuanian “exceptionality” in focus. Part of the answer is differences of interwar constitutional history: while Lithuania and Estonia had to cope with the legacy of three constitutions each, Latvia inherited only the parliamentary Constitution of 1922, because its dictator Karlis Ulmanis did not bother to constitutionalize his rule. Another part is differences in the balance of power during the time of extraordinary politics when constitutions were made. The alternation between the presidential and parliamentary phases of semi-presidentialism and the “perils of presidentialism” did manifest repeatedly in the Lithuanian post-communist politics, while Estonia and Latvia did know next to nothing about them, except for the “Zatlers episode” in Latvia in 2009–2011.The infamous Rolandas Paksas’ impeachment in 2003–2004 and controversial features in the performance style of the Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė are important illustrations of the shortcomings of semi-presidentialism, which could be cured by Lithuania’s switch to the Baltic pattern of parliamentary presidency. However, as time goes on, the probability of a constitutional reform decreases in all Baltic States, mainly due to increasing acquis constitutionnel and habituation.

Is securitization a ‘negative’ concept? Revisiting the normative debate over normal versus extraordinary politics

The purpose of this article is to revisit the normatively defined debate over securitization as a negative conception. Claudia Aradau’s work has largely served to define this debate, with Aradau arguing that securitization/security is an inherently negative conception inasmuch as its mode of extraordinary politics necessarily both institutionalizes fast-track decisionmaking (‘process’) and produces categories of enemy others (‘outcome’). In making evident the main assumptions therein, my argument is that this debate has taken place not only in terms of a specific – and indeed contestable – rendering of the securitization concept, but also in terms of a more general acceptance of an essentialized (Schmittian) logic of security. The article thus seeks ultimately to demonstrate the value of de-essentializing the practices evoked by speaking security and to show how this enables meaningful engagement with other emerging conceptions of ‘positive’ security.

Civil Society, Constitution, and Legitimacy. By Andrew Arato. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. 352p. $72.00 cloth, $26.95 paper.

Recent years have witnessed momentous political transformations across the globe. From Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union to South Africa, these changes are often described as transitions from state bureaucracies, party dictatorships, and authoritarian rule to liberal constitutional democracies and market economies. Andrew Arato, moving gracefully among the fields of political theory, sociology, history, constitutionalism, and comparative politics, redirects our attention to the originary moment of constitutional creation, when ordinary lawmaking recedes in favor of extraordinary politics and higher lawmaking. It is also a moment when fundamental constitutional norms emerge as the main point of contest within political debate and action. Combining empirical and descriptive analysis with normative considerations, Arato persuasively demonstrates how the mode of creation of new constitutions affects the democratic and institutional content of these transformations as well as the prospects for future consolidation of the newly developed constitutional norms.