Forms Of Political Power Research Articles

Can China Lead?

The ‘rise of China’ is proving to be one of the most consequential developments of the early 21 century One of the key questions it raises is about the impact this historically unprecedented process will have on the East Asian region in particular and the world more generally. Will Chinese policy makers will be able to translate the country’s growing material importance into other forms of political power and influence? Equally importantly, will Chinese elites be ‘socialised’ into the practices and norms of extant institutions, or will they attempt to redefine them to further Chinese foreign policy goals? This paper explores these questions by initially looking at the overall historical context in which East Asian regionalisation has occurred, before considering the operation of some of the more important regional institutions. It is suggested that China’s ability to offer regional leadership is constrained both by its own security policies―which are seen as increasingly threatening by many of its neighbours―and by the actions of the USA, which is trying to reassert its own claims to regional leadership. While the outcome of this process is inconclusive, it helps us to understand the more general dynamics reshaping the international system as a result of the emergence of new centres of international power.

Convergent (il)liberalism in the Mediterranean? Some notes on Egyptian (post-)authoritarianism and Italian (post-)democracy

This paper explores the hypothesis of a convergence between ‘backsliding’ European liberal democracies and the ‘pseudo-liberalization’ of Middle Eastern authoritarian systems (Cavatorta, 2010) by considering the similarities, beyond the well-known differences, between Italy and Egypt. We suggest that standard indicators of regime type (e.g. Polity IV Authority Index) fail to capture important trends both in the evolution of both the forms of political power and the forms of resistance. Reflecting on such trends may help re-think the current limitations of Democratization theory (Teti, 2012).

Monarchical Manoeuvres: Gender, Nation and the Boundary Problem in Post-War Swedish Constitutional Development

The Swedish monarchy is often regarded as a purely symbolic institution. Since the constitutional reforms of the mid-1970s, the head of state has lacked formal political power, and rules of succession have been gender-neutral since 1980. This article examines how the monarchy is constitutionally negotiated and the consequences this has for representations of nation and gender. I argue that the constitutional underpinnings of the Swedish monarchy naturalize the idea of a national community. This analysis elucidates the specific dynamics by which political discourse, such as constitutional texts, successfully establishes a supposedly apolitical domain. I also demonstrate the consequences, in terms of norms and ideals regarding gender, sexuality, and family life, of the present constitutional design. The analysis is based on official political documents and debates from the post-war period. Following a section on the evolution of the current regulations surrounding the monarchy, the paper analyses political discourse on the form of government in light of the boundary problem, namely, on what basis can a legitimate people (demos) be affirmed? I demonstrate that the monarchy gives Swedish democracy a national foundation; a legitimate demos is established through the idea of a pre-political national community, personified by the royal family and codified in the hereditary order of succession. In relation to nation and gender, the monarchy connects Swedish nationalism to representations of “blood” and genetic descent. One important conclusion is that the way the Swedish monarchy is constitutionally upheld works against attempts to challenge politically and discuss Swedish nationalism and its relationship to conservative gender norms. Another conclusion is that the monarchy's hereditary principle runs the risk of obstructing free and unfettered discussion of constitutional issues.

The “revival” of civil society in Central Eastern Europe: New environmental and political movements

Abstract The idea of civil society is one of the oldest and most contested in Western political and sociological thought. Among the social sciences, anthropology has been the discipline that has prompted the boldest critiques of the concept. This paper argues that the “revival” of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe in one particular field—that of environmental activism—has been contingent with the outcomes of EU enlargement policies. I introduce the case study of one of the most complex and contested transport development projects in Central Eastern Europe: the Budapest Ring Road. I maintain that within the EU enlargement project alternative forms of political power have been built from below and that they eventually come to compete with the state (and local governments) to influence decision-making processes. These forms, to be individuated in the emergence of environmental activism, take shape at local, state and transnational levels and aim, although often contradictorily, at restituting political agency under the condition of lowering public participation in decision-making processes.

On the metaphors and losers of academic capitalism: a response to Shore and Marcus

First of all, I would like to thank Mark Maguire for initiating this exchange and Cris Shore and George Marcus for their thoughtful comments. This is the sort of academic practice that makes scholarly work inherently valuable and that is in jeopardy of disappearing when pecuniary interests trump academic engagement within our professional vocabularies of motive. In a famous debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, made even more famous on YouTube, Chomsky insists that scholars specify the institutional conditions under which human potential can be maximised. In reply, Foucault suggests that we ought to get a better handle on the scope of the problem before we jump to solutions: ‘I admit to not being able to define . . . an ideal social model for the functioning of our scientific or technological society. . . . If we want right away to define the profile and the formula of our future society, without criticizing all the forms of political power that are exerted . . . there is a risk that they reconstitute themselves.’ It seems to me that when it comes to understanding how science is being refashioned by the constraints of academic capitalism, we have a lot less of Foucault’s documentary orientation than we do Chomsky’s critical utopianism. I am glad that my esteemed critics suggest that ‘The New Tools of the Science Trade’ makes some headway toward balancing this disparity. This is also why I maintained a largely descriptive orientation that sketches the main logics, conceptual vocabularies and capitals of this trend rather than a polemical one that decides, a priori to empirical study, whose social capital will dominate. While I outlined the scope conditions of my findings, I certainly appreciate both Shore’s and Marcus’s insights into the variation across national and institutional contexts. I am, however, concerned that the approach Shore suggests can too easily ossify the varied institutional processes I am trying to keep as alive, in flux and contextualised as the on-the-ground practices I observed in my case studies. Rather than produce a scorecard of winners and losers, then, which reduces institutional life to the oversimplified yet pernicious metaphor of competitive individualism, the combined insights of Shore and Marcus offer an opportunity to sketch out not who loses but what we risk losing when this game gets played.

The populist radical right in government: The structure and agency of success and failure

Since the 1990s populist radical right (PRR) parties have experience considerable electoral success. With political success the PRR has also gained formal political power by participating in coalition governments in Austria, Switzerland and Italy, as well as informal power, by supporting center-right governments in Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. This article examines the conditions that shape the success and failure of PRR in their attempts to transition from opposition to government. The article focuses on four cases: three successes – the Swiss People's Party, the Lega Nord and the Danish People's Party and one failure – the Austrian Freedom Party. In order to explain the success and failure of the PRR in government, this articles combine insights from structure and agency approaches. Structural approaches focus on three aspects of the party environment: the PRR's electoral success relative to other parties; policy convergence between PRR and established parties; and the growing numerical importance of the PRR for coalition formation, especially within the context of close elections and, in some cases, bipolarizing party systems. However, the article argues that the structural approach, on its own, does not explain the electoral success and failure of the PRR parties in government. In order to explain success and failure in government, insights from agency approaches are required. Three criteria are crucial: ‘keeping one foot in government and one foot out’, maintaining control over their policy agenda, and a well-organized party.

Ordinary People in Russian and Soviet History

Ordinary People in Russian and Soviet History Yanni Kotsonis (bio) Sarah Badcock, Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia: A Provincial History. 280 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN-13 978-0521876230, $120.99 (cloth); 978-0521182256, $36.99 (282 pp., 2011, paper). Robert Edelman, Spartak Moscow: A History of the People’s Team in the Worker’s State. 346 pp. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. ISBN-13 978-0801447426. $35.00. Erik C. Landis, Bandits and Partisans: The Antonov Movement in the Russian Civil War. 432 pp. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008. ISBN-13 978-0822943433. $50.00. Aaron B. Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914–1922. 312 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN-13 978-0521896894. $127.00. The topics of these books are unconnected, but their subject is shared. Superficially one is about soccer in Moscow, one about peasant politics in one province, one about political nonelites in two provinces, and one about armed rebellion in still another province. Their chronologies range from eight months to a century. But they address a similar problem: how seemingly unremarkable and purportedly powerless people can be given significance in historical narratives of Russia and the USSR. This is not a neutral or innocent undertaking, and it requires a certain aesthetic leap: the reader may need to accept in advance that it is worthwhile to study people whose only shared [End Page 739] characteristic is their contradistinction to formal political power, sometimes their violent confrontation with the state, and often their victimhood. The books also share the methodological problem of how to make productive use of emotive negatives—people defined by their lack of formal political power, by their location outside of government, or by their hopeless confrontations with the state’s coercive organs. This is partly a matter of personal political preferences—a liking for the victim and the unexalted—but more usefully it is a problem of analytic categories. Indeed, there is little consensus in these books regarding what to name such people. Legal and sociological categories like workers and peasants fall apart under scrutiny and in light of their more encompassing symbolic dimensions; distinctions between elite and nonelite dissolve in the midst of a revolution and the longer-term transformation from superordinate rule to mass politics; and narrower terms like insurgents offer accuracy but less interpretive weight. Our categories and optics matter very much, because they guide us to our sources and inform how we treat them. These books offer some contrasting strategies. It is tempting to call such people and their lives “ordinary,” and two of the books explicitly adopt the term. The literature on “ordinary people” is growing, and many a colleague and graduate student will tell us with solemnity that they want to lend voice to the voiceless, empower the powerless, and speak truth to power.1 The more dispassionate version has it that we wish to highlight experiences that have not been considered because the people in question were “ordinary” and their experiences “everyday” (the close cousin of “ordinary”). The issue becomes ticklish as soon as one thinks about it—and think we should—because “ordinary” is neither historical nor precise; and the questions we pose are potentially oxymoronic: What did the voiceless say? What did the powerless do? Saddled with the concept of ordinary, we risk losing sight of the category’s usefulness: to show that the people we term ordinary are in fact extraordinary when viewed through the right lens and with creative imagination on the part of the historian. Robert Edelman’s Spartak Moscow is a good example of the genre. Beautifully written and focused on the dissonances of the Soviet system (club versus club, fan versus police), one is given a recentered view of Soviet history through the drama of a single soccer team and its fan base in the Presnia neighborhood of Moscow. The approach is productive, because the author’s sense of context stretches from the field to the stadium, from the neighborhood to the Central Committee, and finally to geopolitics and the international setting of soccer. One needs a sense...

Polecats, lions, and foxes: Coasian bargaining theory and attempts to legitimate the Union as a constrained form of political power

It is often supposed that the European Union (EU) can be legitimated as a Pareto-improving bargain between its member states. This paper explores the assumptions of social choice and political philosophy that lie behind that claim. Starting out from a republican view that a polity needs to satisfy standards of non-arbitrariness if it is to be legitimate, the paper begins by explaining why ‘Coasian’ assumptions of Pareto improvement are so important to arguments for the continued indirect legitimacy of the EU by its member states. The paper then identifies four reasons from the social choice literature why attempts to follow a ‘Coasian’ pathway to Pareto improvement may fail to deliver forms of collective choice at the European level that are non-arbitrary from the point of view of all member state governments: non-neutral starting points, preference drift, indivisibilities, and multiple equilibria. These problems are, in turn, used to identify difficulties that mechanisms of indirect legitimation are likely to encounter in meeting two key conditions political philosophers specify for the non-arbitrary exercise of political power, namely, political justice and ‘democratic self-legislation’.

Political leadership in Zapatista Mexico: Marcos, celebrity, and charismatic authority

Can charismatic authority be used to further progressive politics without simultaneously doing damage? Is it possible for a movement with a charismatic leader to achieve an egalitarian society? Tracing the history of Mexico's Zapatista movement and the emergence of its controversial masked spokesman, Subcommandante Marcos, Daniela di Piramo investigates the implications of these questions. Di Piramo's important distinction between charisma as an individual attribute and charismatic authority as a form of political power is reflected throughout her study. Following Marcos's public trajectory, she focuses not only on how the leader has used his personal appeal to draw international attention to the Zapatista's plight, but also on how the constant spotlight on him has sometimes eclipsed the larger political agenda. Her work is both a significant biography and a penetrating exploration of the nature of charismatic political leadership in Latin America.

Moving On Up? Regions, Megaregions, and the Changing Geography of Social Equity Organizing

In recent years, some advocates for social equity have sought to develop new solutions to urban poverty and build new forms of political power at a metropolitan or regional scale. The evolution of American urban areas into sprawling megaregions raises a concern that these “regional equity” advocates today may be facing the same dilemma as urban reformers in the 1960s: They are arriving to a new policy table just as the scale of the economy is shifting up and out. In trying to assess how the potential emergence of megaregions affects opportunities for addressing equity, the authors examine the Northern and Southern California megaregions and argue that “thinking megaregionally” may help to identify some new issues for equity organizing, but there are important challenges: (1) the issues most likely to gain traction at a megaregional scale seem to be primarily related to infrastructure and the environment and may not have the immediacy usually associated with successful mobilization of constituencies and (2) even if the issues are megaregional, the policy levers are likely to be local, state, and federal, rendering the megaregional scale less immediate in a policy sense as well. The authors nonetheless suggest that there may be growing opportunities in the years to come, and analysts concerned with equity and social movement may want to conduct further research in this area.

Coalition

Coalition

Legality, legitimacy and the form of political power: on the construction of a false antinomy

This article argues that debate about the relation between legality and legitimacy is the defining concern of western political philosophy. However, it claims that analysis of this question often utilizes rather unreflected conceptual forms, which are largely derived from the antinomical structure of originally metaphysical accounts of the relation between law and power. This inherited theoretical apparatus obstructs adequate and evidentially sustainable discussion of the legal sources of legitimacy, and, by focusing on power as antinomically related to law, it undermines the ability of normative approaches to political institutions to explain why certain legal forms, especially rights, are objectively necessary, or at least probable, preconditions of power’s legitimate exercise. The article claims that appreciation of the legitimating function of legal norms and rights can only be obtained if the metaphysical pre‐constructions that inhere in normative theory are abandoned. To this end, it proposes an alternative to classical normative analysis by outlining a historical‐functionalist method for examining legality and legitimacy, and it explains how the legal/normative structure of legitimate power can be explained through examination of the internal‐evolutionary formation of power as a positive medium of political exchange in modern society.

Electoral Democracy in a Divided Society

This article analyses the 2008 gubernatorial election in Indonesia's Maluku province and puts its result – a resounding victory for incumbent governor Karel Ralahalu – into the broader context of the discourse on democracy in divided societies. Through a detailed analysis of Ralahalu's electoral strategy, the article illustrates how the incumbent used a combination of populism and comprehensive networking with key organizational stakeholders to secure an easy victory. The author also highlights the peaceful conduct of the election and the overall significance of the fact that key political, religious and ethno-regional actors seem to have accepted that democratic elections are now the only legitimate means to distribute formal political power. In short, it is argued that democracy can indeed work in divided societies, especially if it is based on institutional arrangements that promote cross-communal communication and cooperation.

Russia's Oil Barons and Metal Magnates: Oligarchs and the State in Transition by Stephen Fortescue (review)

774 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 of the economic and political structure,but a weakness in that itdetracts from themajor theme of the book. Reforms under Brezhnev and Khrushchev, for example, were more about centralization and decentralization, departmental ization and administrative hierarchies ? the reader might have been pointed more explicidy to how such topicswere linked to the ownership of assets. The book has appeal to those in political studies: ithas detailed consider ation of recent developments under Putin and his conflicts with Gusinskii, Berezovskii, Abramovich; and there is a in depth discussion of the Yukos controversy. Here the author shifts attention to relations between interests in the state system and challenges by those in the economy, and to industrial organization and reorganization. The book's conclusion does not analyse the role of property ownership in the transformation process, but discusses the multiple actors involved and the implications forpolicy makers. The book can be recommended for specialists in politics concerned with the transformation of property relations inRussia and ithas a good literature review of mainly American sources on economic and political transition. Emmanuel College,Cambridge David Lane Fortescue, Stephen. Russia's Oil Barons and Metal Magnates: Oligarchs and the State inTransition. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2006. xv + 233 pp. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?50.00. Modern Russia appears inmany ways to have turned the clock back to the days when itmight have seemed, inThomas Carlyle's words, that the 'his tory of the world is but the biography of great men'. Gorbachev, El'tsin, Putin, siloviki, oligarchs ? the great engines of economic and social evolution seem just to provide the backdrop to these colossi as they reshape their country. Of course, the reality is that the human agents are empowered, constrained, elevated and becalmed by thewider and deeper forces affecting Russia but, for thepresent, personalities and their interactions do seem toplay a remarkable role in the country's progress. In this context, while there is a solid body of biographical literature on successive leaders and also a growing body of research on the new elite of the siloviki whom Putin has raised from thepolice, securityapparatus and military, it is strikinghow fragmentary the research on themajor business-people has been. There are studies of particular individuals and events, but surprisingly littleon these 'oligarchs' as a whole. What literature there is tends to come from journalists and concentrates on the horror stories of privatization ? of which there are admittedly many ? rather than subsequent economic management and consolidation. This book thus fills an important and relatively underpopulated niche. Stephen Fortescue, associate professor in politics and international relations at the University of New South Wales, has had a career spanning both the academic and business worlds. He has certainly done his homework, as this is a detailed, intricate and thoroughly referenced work. He has also set out to answer a range of interesting and important questions. From the reviews 775 very first,he challenges the accuracy and utility of the term 'oligarchs' as the businesspeople in question have made no efforts to gain formal political power. At the same time, he has to accept that ithas become impossible to avoid, however much itneeds to be treatedwith caution. Beyond this, he explores whether they are canny entrepreneurs or corrupt asset-strippers, how they firstgot theirmoney, what they have done with it, and whether they are as much of a malign force inpolitics and the economy as their detractors suggest. His overall conclusions are that while their origins are varied (and certainly in some cases shadowy) they are 'clever, adaptable people who have at the very least restored to health and atmost transformed the sectors they are involved in' (p. 174). Although he clearly tries to be even-handed, Fortescue ultimately sees the oligarchs in a positive light.To him, the greater danger is that Putin or his successor swings either towards effective renationalization or the Latin American-style populist politics of dispossession. Instead, he argues that the government and people must 'recognize the rightof the oligarchs to exist and evolve' (p. 179) and wait for these personalized business empires to become 'normal' corporations over time and generations. This sounds perhaps a little optimistic, and...

Military and Society in Post-Soviet Russia by Stephen L. Webber , Jennifer G. Mathers (review)

reviews 775 very first,he challenges the accuracy and utility of the term 'oligarchs' as the businesspeople in question have made no efforts to gain formal political power. At the same time, he has to accept that ithas become impossible to avoid, however much itneeds to be treatedwith caution. Beyond this, he explores whether they are canny entrepreneurs or corrupt asset-strippers, how they firstgot theirmoney, what they have done with it, and whether they are as much of a malign force inpolitics and the economy as their detractors suggest. His overall conclusions are that while their origins are varied (and certainly in some cases shadowy) they are 'clever, adaptable people who have at the very least restored to health and atmost transformed the sectors they are involved in' (p. 174). Although he clearly tries to be even-handed, Fortescue ultimately sees the oligarchs in a positive light.To him, the greater danger is that Putin or his successor swings either towards effective renationalization or the Latin American-style populist politics of dispossession. Instead, he argues that the government and people must 'recognize the rightof the oligarchs to exist and evolve' (p. 179) and wait for these personalized business empires to become 'normal' corporations over time and generations. This sounds perhaps a little optimistic, and given theYukos affair ? which Fortescue painstakingly dis sects inwhat is probably themost effective chapter in thisbook ? it seems equally unlikely that the oligarchs who rose under El'tsin's free-for-allwill be granted this license. In the final analysis, though, there is something a littleunsatisfying about this book. It is hard to fault the research, and Fortescue has a sure grip on the big picture as well as the finedetail (although his treatment on the siloviki, who emerge as the bad guys of this account, is a little lacking in nuance, too quickly dismissing them as opportunists and authoritarians to a man). Perhaps it is that this is also a strangely agnostic work ? too often rival theories are detailed in parallel but in the final analysis the author fails clearly to back one or the other. The writing is also often quite opaque, and the minutiae of taxation schemes and shareholder politics can become arcane and hard to follow. This is a shame, because the book tackles important issues and in a way and to a depth that few others have tried. OrganisedRussian & Eurasian CrimeResearchUnit Mark Galeotti Keele University Webber, Stephen L. and Mathers, Jennifer G. (eds).Military and Society in Post-Soviet Russia. Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 2006. xviii + 277 pp. Figures. Tables. Notes. Glossary. Select bibliography. Index. ?60.00. Published in 2006, thisbook was actually written and compiled in 2004. On the whole, it examines a range of issues concerning the interaction of the Russian Armed Forces with Russian society since the demise of theUSSR in 1991.Thus, thebook covers such diverse topics as theportrayal of themilitary inpost-USSR Russian war films to the regional dimension inRussian military 776 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 reform. Unfortunately, of the eleven listed contributors to the volume, only one was based inRussia (Lev Gudkov, analysing the contemporary general image of theRussian Armed Forces in society), so thisbook isverymuch from aWestern perspective. This reviewer certainly is of the opinion that the book would have been more useful had the editors been able to track down a couple of other Russian specialists, either from the academic or political elite, able to supply us with theirviews on how contemporary Russian society views the country's Armed Forces or how the political /social role of the Armed Forces has changed since the collapse of Communism now over a decade ago. The compilation does provide useful material examining the public's attitude towards both Chechen wars (Mikhail Alekseyev); the economic dimension in the civil-military relationship over the past fifteen years (Julian Cooper); and the portrayal of the Russian Armed Forces in contemporary Russian film (David Gillespie). These chapters are both well-written and particularly illuminating, asking, as well as answering, a number of questions which should encourage others to pursue the issues raised in greater detail. Pavel Baev's contribution, analysing the regional dimension in the...

Power and political participation of entrepreneurs: evidence from Liuzhou, Guangxi, China

Using survey data of enterprises and entrepreneurs from Liuzhou, Guangxi, China, the determinants of political participation of private enterprises are studied. We find (1) entrepreneurs who are older or from larger older enterprises have a higher probability of becoming members of the People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, while gender, education and household registration status do not significantly affect their political participation. (2) Entrepreneurs with membership in the Communist Party of China or other parties have a higher probability of entering politics. Compared with Communist Party members, those of other parties have a much higher probability of political participation. (3) Parental leadership identity increases entrepreneur probability of entering politics. Its effect is between that of Communist Party membership and other party membership. This paper provides evidence that Chinese entrepreneurs in private enterprises are translating their economic power, political identity, and household background into formal political power.

Narrative Structure and Political Construction: The Epic at Work

Narrative Structure and Political Construction:The Epic at Work Florence Goyet (bio) The studies presented here1 explore an aspect of the dynamism and efficacy of literature so masterfully illuminated by John Foley, especially in Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic (1991). The construction of meaning through structure is at the very foundation of oral or "oral-derived" texts, which rely on the totality of tradition to create precise meaning. All the stories and narratives heard by listeners contribute to the creation of every character, every action, and every narrative motif. My own analyses, along the same lines as Foley's, have led me to recognize that it is possible for real political thought to emerge in as well as by means of the narrative. I am interested in the construction of meaning through structure, not in literature in general, but within a given text. After a dozen or so years spent studying the genre of the epic, it seems to me that epics are precisely the texts in which literature can develop a profound, vital, and irreplaceable meaning not possible anywhere else: a real way of thinking, although without concepts. Of course, in the first place, an epic presents itself as a narrative, or rather a series of narratives. These narratives are so compelling, and so familiar, that we remain fascinated by them and ready to believe with Hegel or Lukacs that they describe a harmonious and stable world. But if we place these texts very precisely in their original context we recognize that the world they describe is a world that is prey to crisis, disorder, and chaos; we may see then that the function of the epic is precisely to allow society as a whole to see, first dimly and then in more detail, a new political order. War is in fact used as a sort of metaphor for the intense political crisis in which Greece finds itself at the end of the Dark Ages and Japan finds itself at the beginning of feudalism. And so the epic will in effect discuss the epoch's disorder while seemingly "only" telling the stories of the warriors. It will make its public aware of a radically new political form that represents the real solution to the crisis facing them. If we focus our attention not on the psychology of the characters or the unfolding of the narrative surface but rather on the structural relationships among these characters as established by the various episodes, that is, if we read these war-stories as a structure, we discern political oppositions as the major stakes. The entire Iliad is primarily the staging of the confrontation of two possible forms of political power: on the one hand the autos (autocratic) government that Agamemnon seeks to impose by taking Achilles' captive, on the other hand a government in which the king is responsible before the people, and where his power is absolutely limited, a situation that the Greek world will effectively create with the city. In other words, we have here an extremely effective way of thinking even though it is very different from the conceptual discourse to which we are accustomed. Through the narrative the epic builds a vision of the world, or, more exactly, it makes possible a comparison of the world visions that are available at that time, it plays out before the public the possible options by developing them in such a way as to allow the audience to judge them all. This is what I propose to call the "work of the epic." In the major texts I am studying, we can see the development of a radically new concept, never imagined by the listeners, of which the text is the "proof," whose validity it eventually shows, and which is what history will in fact retain: the city in the case of the Iliad, the vassalage pyramid in the Chanson de Roland, and the outline of what will later be codified as the Way of the Warriors in the Japanese Hôgen and Heiji monogatari. To achieve this goal, the epic uses no other means than the narrative. Its essential tool is the parallel, the...

Alan Bullock: historian, social democrat and chairman

This study considers the influence on British education (particularly schools) of Alan Bullock, Vice‐Chancellor of Oxford University from 1969 to 1973 and distinguished contemporary historian. It quotes extensively from Bullock’s own writings, including his developing personal views on education, and reflections on his own experiences. Following a brief biographical section, the paper reviews his work as chair of Government committees and advisory bodies, notably the Schools Council and the eponymous ‘Bullock Committee’ to consider all aspects of the teaching of English. These experiences contributed to his increasing disillusion with formal political power structures as a means of bringing about social change. I examine Bullock’s long period as a dominant figure in the administration of the University, and the consequences for schools of the changes which occurred over that time, especially the move towards admissions policies based almost entirely upon academic merit, and towards becoming a leading scientific university. St Catherine’s College, which he founded, played a significant part in these changes. Bullock’s personal views on the need to offer in schools a broader education, which would be attractive to young people searching for values of their own, were developed in his later writings and are briefly summarised. The paper speculates that he would not have been happy with the competitive and measurement‐oriented system of today.

No Child Left Behind and the Denigration of Race

Race is the social expression of power and privilege, and new racial configurations take shape in conjuction with alterations in the political economy of American society. This article examines the relationship of educational policy to the emergence of a new conception of racism that has appeared in the post-civil rights era: colorblind racism. Colorblind policies are championed as fair and just, congruent with the egalitarian aspirations of the Civil Rights Movement that culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. In rendering invisible the salience of race, the goal of colorblindness is to make advantage appear as a logical consequence of the natural order of things. The non-recognition of race as a form of political power tacitly enables the colorblind ideal to steer education policy toward the reinforcement of the dominant culture as the norm and the maintenance of hegemonic social arrangements. The insinuation of colorblindness into the culture of educational policymaking, and of No Child Left Behind in particular, suggests that substantive educational restructuring may not be part of the nation's racial agenda.

Foucault on Clausewitz: Conceptualizing the Relationship between War and Power

War is only a branch of political activity. Karl von Clausewitz Pathology is no more than a branch, a result, a complement of physiology, or rather, physiology embraces the study of vital actions at all stages of the existence of living things. Jean Begin The art of war is like that of medicine, murderous and conjectural. Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire Michel Foucault is well known as a theorist of Less established is his engagement with the theory of and war. His interest in these concepts became apparent only toward the end of his career. discipline and Punish, for example, partially examines the emergence of the art of military tactics in the eighteenth century, largely within French military-strategic thought. (1) His final work, The History of Sexuality, sees him attempt to develop a theory of the relation between war and power as well as the concept of a strategy of power. Close to death, Foucault declared, If God grants me life, after madness, illness, crime, sexuality, the last thing that I would like to study would be the problem of war and the institution of war in what one could call the military dimension of society. (2) These intentions were apparent also in the breadth of questions raised in Foucault's 1975-1976 course lectures at the College de France. At that point, Foucault posed the question of whether warfare is the general model of all social relations. What is the relationship, he asked, between the discourses of war and and the organization of modern power? This article acts as a response to both of those questions. As Paul Rabinow has argued, pursuing these lines of inquiry allows us to address some important questions in relation to the genesis of modern military-strategic thought. Why, for instance, modern military strategic theory formed along the lines that it did. Why, in particular, Carl von Clausewitz thought about in the seminal terms that he did as a conjunction between war and politics. (3) The naming of Clausewitz in this context is crucial. In his essay Governmentality, Foucault identifies a relationship between the emergence of Clausewitz's theory of and the shift in the organization of power that occurred in the early modern era. (4) For Foucault, the importance of Clausewitz's theory of extended far beyond the domain of the practice of war and statecraft. The conjunctive relation of war to politics, by which Clausewitz defines the art of strategy, was significant for Foucault in its representation of the basic principle upon which the strategic model of power operates within modern societies. That is to say, as far as Foucault was concerned, Clausewitz's theory did not apply primarily to war or practices of states in relation to other states. Its primary significance was its outline of the principle upon which a new form of political power had emerged, that which he sometimes called governmentality. Thus, it applied primarily to the ways in which the relations between states and populations changed with the birth of the modern era. Outlining the importance of that relation is largely the task addressed by this article. Surprisingly, contemporary strategic theorists have largely ignored the interest of Foucault in Clausewitz's work. That is because the concept of still tends to be defined within the domain of strategic studies as a form of instrumental rationality by which the relationship between means and ends is calculated to advance the interests of states and other actors. Obviously, Foucault's work is not amenable to the planning, waging, or winning of wars. He does provide, however, one of the most acute and influential studies of the workings and execution of strategic power of the late modern era. That said, he has tended to attract the attention of scholars concerned with providing a critical analytic of power, rather than with refining its strategic efficacy. …