Illiberal Practices Research Articles

Liberal Integrity and Foreign Entanglement

My aim in this article is to show that there is distinctive normative value to thinking about a liberal polity as an agent with integrity that can be threatened, paralleling the integrity of an individual person. I argue that the idea of liberal integrity organizes and clarifies important moral intuitions concerning the policies of liberal democracies, especially with regard to their global conduct. This idea provides a novel organizing framework for liberal values that currently seem disparate. It also captures important moral intuitions as to how the tainted histories of actual liberal societies should bear on their global conduct. Finally, this idea explains, in a way that a simple appeal to familiar liberal values arguably cannot, why liberal polities have identity-based moral reasons not to entangle themselves in manifestly illiberal practices beyond their borders—reasons whose significance becomes apparent in scenarios and real-world cases that global political theory overlooks.

(In)securitization and illiberal practices on the fringe of the EU

ABSTRACTIlliberal practices of liberal regimes have been extensively studied by critical security studies. The literature on risk emphasises the idea of imminent dangers and the logic of worst-case scenarios, which eventually unsettle the balance between security and liberty by always favouring the former in its most coercive and exceptional forms. This paper, by drawing on (in)securitization theory, attempts to explain how particular illiberal practices with respect to the control and management of immigration on the fringe of the EU become normalised. It argues that (in)securitization of immigration and illiberal practices are effects of the very functioning of a transnational field of (in)security professionals that are produced through the structural competition between different actors of this field over the definition of security and the appropriate control and management of immigration. In this respect, it uses Greece as a case study and draws on material gathered through interviews with Greek security professionals in Athens, Lesvos, Orestiada, and Alexandroupoli, and analysis of their discourse in dissertations they prepared during their study in police academies.

(De)Liberalizing Judicial Independence in Post-January 25th Egypt

The January 25th Egyptian revolution was initiated in the public square and defeated in the courts. In the months following the forced resignation of longtime president Hosni Mubarak, a protracted power struggle ensued between a people demanding self-governance and a chronically authoritarian regime. As the various stakeholders within the “deep state” realized their political disadvantage in mass street mobilizations by youth activists and opposition groups, they strategically transferred the conflict to the courts. Cognizant of Mubarak’s success in co-opting significant portions of the judiciary, the military-led interim government trusted the judges to deploy thin notions of rule of law to quash Egyptians’ demands for substantive justice and populist democracy. Thus, an assessment of Egypt’s so-called January 25th Revolution warrants an inquiry into the role that courts played in the retrenchment of a centralized, authoritarian state and what ultimately became a stillborn revolution. In the heady days following Mubarak’s forced resignation, youth activists and the Muslim Brotherhood had few qualms with litigating the revolution. In the 1990s, the judiciary had been the only state institution that dared to check executive powers through rights-protective rulings and public condemnations of fraud in the 2005 parliamentary elections. Indeed, the Egyptian judiciary had a long history of fighting for its independence from executive branch interference such that both secular activists and Muslim Brotherhood supporters viewed it as a liberal institution that would side with their calls for social justice. What transpired since 2011, however, has exposed the fallacy of these assumptions and called into question the liberal underpinnings of Egypt’s judiciary. In the end, the judges’ self-ascribed roles as the guardians of social order and political stability has proven to be more rhetorical than substantive. Accordingly, this article examines how a critical mass of Egyptian judges have strayed from the judiciary’s liberal roots dating back to the 19th century, resulting in the legitimation of the same authoritarian regime but for a new military elite coalition at the helm. Through mass death sentences of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) leaders and alleged supporters, convictions of dissident journalists, and punitive sentences of youth activists for protesting; the judiciary has signaled support for illiberal authoritarian practices that systematically quash personal, political, and legal liberty.

Commodifying security in the Balkans: between liberal norms and illiberal practices

This paper contributes to an understanding of the processes of contestation and localisation of norms in post-conflict societies via a Bourdieu-inspired analysis of the process of security privatisation in two former Yugoslav countries: Bosnia and Serbia. By drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus, capital and strategies, this paper sheds light on the ways in which, in Bosnia as well as in Serbia, a particular habitus and forms of capital inherited from these polities’ violent past have shaped the implementation of the liberal project of security privatisation. The result has been a situation in which legislation and institutions aimed at promoting a liberal model of security provision co-exist with practices that are inconsistent with liberal-democratic principles of accountability and respect for human rights and the rule of law.

‘Defensive Liberal Wars’: The Global War on Terror and the Return of Illiberalism in American Foreign Policy

This paper offers an analysis of the illiberal practices and discourse of the Global War on Terror (GWoT) and demonstrates how the United States of America used the liberal argument as a qualitative metric of its success and failure in the GWoT. I argue that ‘the othering’ of Salafi Jihadists as well the full military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq were both philosophically rooted in the liberal thinking of Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, which have traditionally guided US foreign policy. More significantly, these liberal philosophies of history and international relations hold within them the seeds of illiberalism by depicting non-liberal, undemocratic societies/organisations as ‘barbaric’ – and as such prime candidates for intervention and regime change. Predicated upon this logic, the discourse of the GWoT framed Al Qaeda as a key existential threat to not only the United States but also the ‘civilised world’ in general and one which required a ‘liberal defensive war’ in response. It was the successful securitisation of Al Qaeda that essentially enabled the United States to adopt deeply illiberal policies to counter this so-called existential threat by using any means at its disposal.

RESPECT FOR THE RULE OF LAW IN A TIME OF ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL CRISIS: THE ROLE OF REGIONAL INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS IN THE HUNGARIAN AFFAIRE

This article offers a critical analysis of the role played by regional international organizations (IOs) – in particular the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe, and the European Union (EU) – in coping with the problems that have been affecting the rule of law in the aftermath of the recent economic and financial crises. The intent is to highlight the main shortcomings of the monitoring/enforcement tools designed by these IOs and to assess whether they require further revision. The specific focus will be on the mechanisms put in place in response to the illiberal practices and constitutional reforms adopted in Hungary from 2011 to 2013. This case is instructive in two respects. In the first place, those legal and political developments have been harshly criticized by all the IOs concerned, and so their response makes it possible to see (i) in what way and to what extent they operate in monitoring and protecting the rule of law, (ii) how well they interact in subiecta materia, and (iii) the strengths and weaknesses of their mandate. And, in the second place, the Hungarian question has made it apparent that violations of the rule of law at the national level can easily take on a systemic, structural and multifaceted dimension that rises to the European level – a problem I will be referring to as the “rule-of-law crisis”. This has prompted an overall rethinking of the way the rule of law needs to be enforced, in a debate that has gained momentum within the EU legal order, very recently leading to a proposal (in March 2014) for a new EU framework through which to strengthen the rule of law. Here, the potential impact of this framework will be considered by also taking into account the alternative solutions offered by scholars and stakeholders.

The Fallopian Dilemma: African Bodies, Citizenship and Family Planning.

In the recent context of the European Union governmental activity-in particular in this time of crisis-immigration-related issues became of pivotal importance. Social healthcare programmes targeting deprived immigrant populations equate reducing social problems with guiding their conduct towards more responsible, healthier habits and life projects. Building upon a set of debates on governing the body and health under advanced liberalism, this paper, focusing on the Portuguese context and on family planning, suggests ideas towards a new research agenda on immigration and public health, claiming that social care interventions are inherently racialized. The insecurities, threats and overall concerns in a time of global crisis create a state of exception, which justifies the deployment of illiberal practices in order to secure collective well-being. In particular, I am interested in how the dominant discourses of the health and social care sectors influence [1] the ways in which "the right thing to do" is constructed and debated and the material effects of these decisions on immigrants lives; [2] the ongoing strategies, micronegotiations of power and truth between different actors; [3] the fading borders of the subject of medical knowledge, which becomes no longer to govern the body merely according to a medical logic, but rather to seek social well-being.

Anchoring Democracy from Above? The European Union and Democratic Backsliding in Hungary and Romania after Accession

AbstractThis article analyzes the European Union's reactions to breaches of liberal democratic practices in Hungary and Romania during 2012–13 in order to assess its capacity to lock in democracy in the Member States. The article finds that a combination of partisan politics and weak normative consensus thwarted the EU's ability to use the sanctioning mechanism of Article 7. The effectiveness of alternative instruments that EU institutions used – social pressure, infringement procedures and issue linkage – varied across issues and countries. In Hungary, changes to illiberal practices generally remained limited, but differences in the EU's material leverage explain cross‐issue variation. The EU's relative success in Romania suggests that it is not necessarily powerless against democratic backsliding. It might require a demanding constellation of favourable conditions for both social and material pressure, but there are grounds for a more optimistic interpretation that material leverage might be unnecessary if the conditions for social pressure are favourable.

Law-making and the Securitization of the Jewish Identity in Israel

This article explores the role of law-making in the securitization of ethnic identities in Israel. The article examines the laws passed and bills proposed between 2000 and 2011 by the Israeli Knesset. The evidence suggests that despite consistent attempts to securitize the ethnic identity of the state, they have, for the most part, failed. A brief comparison between Israel and other liberal democracies also reveals that the banality of securitization, i.e. the use of ordinary rather than extraordinary measures in the securitization process, is not unique to Israel. This article demonstrates most clearly how the process of securitization contributes to the ease with which illiberal practices can creep into the democratic system without the need to resort to exceptional action.

Terror carceralism: Surveillance, security governance and de/civilization

Following the first 15 convictions under the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act, Canadian penal authorities developed new surveillance and security practices targeting this small population of prisoners. Primarily, reforms ensure that terror convicts are labelled as highly dangerous offenders, despite any of them having participated in attacks or violence. Focusing on the Canadian context, this article contributes to recent scholarship by discussing how these emergent penal practices are informed by a convergence of domestic anti-terrorism policies and a networked field of counter-terrorism experts; what Bigo calls (in)security management professionals. Detailing recent debates and reforms, I focus on emergent ‘deradicalization’ strategies that are informed by transnational ‘working groups’ and (in)security management actors. I argue that these increasingly illiberal counter-terrorism practices are framed as measures of social defence against the enemies of western civilization. Yet, paradoxically, these emergent security practices are antithetical to the ‘civilizing process’ of penal modernism, further displacing discourses of rehabilitation or reintegration and entrenching a ‘criminology of the other’. I conclude by discussing what I call new practices of terror carceralism, which represent an entrenchment of vengeance and retribution, justifying a host of invasive surveillance and security measures against those caricaturized as captured terrorist others.

Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader , and: Wives, Widows, and Concubines: The Conjugal Family Ideal in Colonial India , and: Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal (review)

Reviewed by: Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader, and: Wives, Widows, and Concubines: The Conjugal Family Ideal in Colonial India, and: Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal Catherine H. Warner (bio) and Priti Ramamurthy (bio) Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader edited by Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008, 560 pp., $75.00 hardcover, $29.95 paper. Wives, Widows, and Concubines: The Conjugal Family Ideal in Colonial India by Mytheli Sreenivas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008, 192 pp., $55.00 hardcover, $21.95 paper. Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal by Rochona Majumdar. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009, 360 pp., $94.95 hardcover, $24.95 paper. The three books under review focus on "social reform": nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial and Indian efforts to rid Indian society of its most illiberal practices, many of which—such as "sati" (widow immolation), child marriage, and strictures against widow remarriage—were directed toward women. Together, the three volumes destabilize some of the foundational definitions upon which the history of reform in India has been written and investigate how the family is idealized and contested at the critical intersection of colonialism and modernity. They provide excellent resources by which to consider the family as an historical institution and an arena of social inquiry in India and beyond. Women and Social Reform in Modern India, edited by the distinguished historians Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar, is a comprehensive collection of key essays and articles on social reform in India. It includes a broad range of recent essays by contemporary scholars and excerpts of original essays by men and women social reformers written in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—primary documents that students will now be able to read. In their introduction, Sarkar and Sarkar argue that social reform needs to be understood in the context of changing "gender norms and practices" informed by regional and material specificities, including the development of print cultures, to which the historical excerpts contributed. They question the utility of terms like the [End Page 211] "middle class," arguing that it should not be treated as a fully formed identity and the presumed target and beneficiary of reform; instead, the process of the constitution of the middle class is worthy of exploration. This cautionary note applies to the contemporary moment when the burgeoning new middle classes in India and China are presumed to be a self-evident category. Similarly, the term "debate," commonly used to refer to the contestations between colonial and Indian authorities over the antecedents, shapes, and forms of specific reforms, should be opened up to study how the public sphere came to be, in which debate was possible. In order to illuminate the social and cultural contexts obscured by such shortcuts, Sarkar and Sarkar suggest using nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century reform to analyze concurrent shifts in gendered systems of social regulation, especially through religious orthodox and revivalist movements, and gendered engagements with the state, especially through law. Women's investments, agency, and political activism are central to the reforms, whether as women writers, itself a newly available identity, or as social activists and critics. The Sarkars' project, however, is much larger than creating a more accurate narrative of social reform in late-colonial India. As they put it: "[W]e revision colonialism and modernity in the light of the broad discussion of social reforms" (5). This ambition is met in the two other books under review as well. In her award-winning monograph Wives, Widows, and Concubines, Mytheli Sreenivas presents an in-depth analysis of social reform in one region—the Tamil region of South India—by focusing on "the tensions and displacements between the family as an ideal, as an embodied institution, and as a site of lived experience" (7).1 Sreenivas demonstrates how a bourgeois, monogamous notion of conjugality that privileged the husband/wife relationship became the ideal among professional groups during the late-colonial period. We are now able to understand how the "conjugal family ideal" came to be, instead of simply assuming that it was available for Indian nationalist projects as the grounds upon which to assert...

Equality in Difference: Hierarchical Multiculturalism and Membership Illusions

In his introduction to the Ashgate Research Companion to Multiculturalism , Ivison makes very clear that while multiculturalism (MC) or the "accommodation of cultural differences" concerns itself with the autonomy and freedom of groups, it especially focuses on individuals if individual 'freedoms' are curtailed by group cultural expectations. This perspective, however, reveals a bias toward only accommodating diversity that is compatible with the liberal ends of individual freedom and autonomy ("as well as thinking of ways of liberalizing currently illiberal practices") (p. 10) as defined by the cultural (usually western) majority. Any societal subculture or "group that violates their members' basic liberties, or prevents them from exercising their autonomy are not entitled to multicultural accommodation or protection" (p. 11). To be entitled to accommodation, groups need to respect individuals' basic rights and offer "informed and effective choices" (p. 15) under the protection of specific political forms that promote diversity while supervising/controlling actions such that no cultural value transgresses the liberal values of individual autonomy and freedom that MC purports to protect. The 'recognition' or the accommodation of cultural diversity (and not necessarily difference) is, for MC liberals, "connected to a rich sense of equality," an 'equality' that prescribes treating "like cases alike" (p. 7). However, this approach ignores structural inequalities (i.e. racism, sexism, classism) as these inequalities supposedly exist outside the cultural realm. This particular approach poses a false dichotomy between the cultural and material world, perpetuating a misunderstanding of culture as an epiphenomenon outside (or parallel to) the material world while also imposing similarity as the key element in equality , with the corollary that anything (values, beliefs, etc.) or anybody different is found wanting and therefore lesser (Scott 1988).

Eat, Swim, Pray

Eat, Swim, Pray

Son libres los votantes en Colombia

A fundamental principle of democracy is citizenship freedom. We suggest that a fair electoral contest is possible if a relationship between free will, electoral preferences and respect to the public institutions (constitutionalism) (section 1) exists. We focus on three illiberal practices that perturb the voter's decision: political clientelism and political markets (sections 2 to 4), media influence (which feeds on the voter's limited rationality and limited information) (section 5), and the suppression of opposition options (section 6). Later (section 8), we provide a brief balance and, additionally, we show how in Colombia the political system has missed opportunities to expand the voters' freedom. Our interpretation of the electoral process in Colombia is an appeal, supported on theoretical arguments and empirical evidence, to doubt about the voters' freedom. Also we make a call for more etudies.

Introduction: Fascism in Interwar East Central and Southeastern Europe: Toward a New Transnational Research Agenda

This introductory essay provides a first, much needed comprehensive overview of the recent scholarship on fascism and the radical right in East Central and Southeastern Europe in local and international historiography. Its aim is to identify a new research agenda for studying fascism comparatively, potentially contributing to the fine-tuning or substantial modification of the existing explanatory paradigms. It is argued that comparative research on fascism and the radical right in these regions should be set on new theoretical and methodological foundations, as part of an effort toward greater interaction and convergence between scholarly research traditions in Eastern and Western Europe. My endeavor is based on the assumption that the study of fascist movements and regimes in East Central and Southeastern Europe is essential to the more general scholarly effort to understand radical politics in interwar Europe; without it, comparative research results remain partial and incomplete. Yet, this analytical effort does not simply mean an extension of the existing theoretical framework of generic fascism to previously uncharted regions. Regional explorations of fascism might function as a laboratory for further methodological innovation and as a field of experimentation and interaction of scholars from various disciplines and national historiographic traditions. They can potentially lead to the rejuvenation of fascist studies by renewing their thematic scope and by redirecting research from the prevailing Weberian ideal-type methodology fixated on the fascist “ideological minimum” to new comparative-historical analyses focusing on the triad ideology-movements-regimes. This novel agenda of research prompts scholars to rethink their units of analysis, and to renounce teleological comparative perspectives still prevalent in Cold War-type scholarship which takes Western Europe as a measuring stick and normatively evaluates other historical case studies only by means of negative comparisons (e.g.: what was missing, or what “went wrong” in non-Western regions). Instead of treating fascist movements and regimes in these regions as carbon copies of their more “genuine” Western counterparts, scholars should rather explore multiple laboratories for the elaboration of fascist ideology in interwar politics and the transfer of illiberal political ideas and practices over spatial or temporal borders, resulting in radical political experiments in East and West alike.

Borders, Risks, Exclusions

In this paper the border is evaluated as a fold of power relations in which sovereign capacity and competence is marshaled in the furtherance of illiberal practices. Drawing from interview data of officials in various agencies engaged in the US-Canada and particularly the Windsor-Detroit corridor, the argument is made that the border is a site for both negative and positive power, for insertion and subtraction, and that surveillance and compliance regimes are ‘run’ not so much in the furtherance of a precautionary or preemptive end-state, but as intermediate values that are sufficiently malleable by an invigorated sovereign, expressed in the residue of discretion in and between the many border agencies.

Integration and Identity in an International Context: Problems and Ambiguities in the New Politics of Multiculturalism

Debates about multiculturalism, minority rights, and identity dominated Anglo-American political theory during the majority of the 1990s, and continue to raise important questions concerning the nature of citizenship, community, and the responsibilities of liberal states. They were popular, too, among policy makers, politicians, and journalists: many academics and practitioners were, for a time, united in their support for multiculturalism. Just as the philosophical literature at that time became more ‘multiculturalist’, so many European states increasingly adopted multiculturalist policies as a way of including historically marginalised groups into mainstream liberal culture or, in some cases, as a way of protecting minority groups from unfair pressures from the majority culture. However, as time has gone on, the multiculturalist turn in liberal political theory, and among many European governments, has waned. In the wake of terrorist atrocities around the world, growing concerns about the erosion of civic and national identity, and fears that cultural recognition can permit illiberal practices, many academics and practitioners have sought to distance themselves from the idea that it is a role of the state to afford special treatment to cultural minorities, and have sought once again to emphasise those common bonds which unite citizens of liberal democratic states, rather than those cultural identities which may serve to divide them. This article evaluates some of the recent philosophical literature on multiculturalism against the changing political landscape in Britain and Europe and suggests that the multiculturalist position remains weakened by a number of crucial ambiguities.

Toward a More Critical Outlook

The value of an educational ideal lies in the potential it has to inspire and guide teachers and educators towards their central aims; the promise, however, all too often remains unrealized. We have known, ever since Socrates awakened us to this insight, that to fail to think seriously about the choices we make as citizens or about the decisions taken by government is to live a life that is not worth living because all-important questions about what is right and just are simply ignored. Socrates' insight comes to mind on reading the discussion in this issue of Journal of Thought of the teaching of social studies in schools today. Robert A. Waterson and A. G. Rud make the case that democratic bankruptcy threatens if the potential the social studies have for fostering educational ideals such as critical thought and civic engagement is squandered. When the emphasis in schooling increasingly falls on standardized curricula, competency tests, and formulaic approaches, we risk losing sight of the need to teach in such a way that students develop the moral and intellectual virtues that will enable them to make informed decisions and exercise good judgment. This article draws attention to three thoughtful and stimulating approaches to teaching social studies that take seriously the importance of discussion, controversial issues, and problem solving, and that require of teachers the very qualities and dispositions these programs seek to develop in students. In a wide-ranging survey of Chinese education from classical times to the present day, James Z. Yang and William C. Frick remind us that the same ideal of reflective thought appears as early as the work of Confucius in his comment that a person who studies but does not think is lost. It is also worth adding, in the same context, Lao Tzu's observation that extensive knowledge is not the same as wisdom. Regrettably, the ideal of critical judgment implicit in these philosophical ideas gave way to increasingly rigid and illiberal practices in teaching and education in China, the worst excesses coming during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s when political ideology, propaganda, and anti-intellectualism dominated education at every level. With respect to the educational reforms that have been underway in China since the 1980s, the authors identify a tension in contemporary Chinese education between fostering creativity and independent thought in technical fields of study while at the same time imposing constraints in other areas of the curriculum where intellectual freedom might lead to political dissent. One is reminded immediately of John Passmore's observation in the 1960s that the Soviet attempt to restrict innovative thinking to technical areas was breaking down. There is nothing mysterious here. Passmore had introduced the idea of the critical spirit, as distinct from the possession of critical ability, to capture the idea of an attitude or an outlook that a person brings to whatever is at issue. Once this spirit is engendered, it is practically impossible to confine it arbitrarily to certain approved areas. The idea of the critical spirit is also relevant when we come to the article by Gary W. Houchens and John L. Keedy who focus in particular on the efforts of school principals as they endeavor to promote student achievement. Their article builds on the pioneering research of Argyris and Schon in the 1970s which characterized attempts to describe and explain the actions and procedures that people follow in addressing problems in their professional context as 'theories of practice.' Houchens and Keedy report on a recent study (by Houchens) examining the action strategies and achievements of four principals as they attempted to exercise instructional leadership in their schools. One interesting result suggests that principals readily alter their strategies to achieve their goals (single-loop learning) but are less inclined to question the underlying assumptions on which the strategies are based (double-loop learning). …

Security, Law, Borders: Spaces of Exclusion

Politics of borders and the distinction between inside/outside have become an important security practice of liberal states. Borders are strategically used to change the balance between security and liberties. This article analyzes the legal constitution of border zones and argues that security is not exceptional in its constitution but results from ordinary law and practices. Illiberal practices at border zones are embedded in ordinary politics of the liberal state.

Post‐socialist transformation, penal reform and justice sector transition in Albania

The place of prisons is largely ignored in the literature on political transitions. Yet, given the historic role that prisons served in the former Communist bloc, as instruments of repression, the management of the penal system is an important indicator of democratic change. This article considers the development of the penal system in Albania from 1990 to the present day. It examines the state of pre‐trial detention facilities, prisons and prison hospitals, and evaluates efforts by the Albanian government to reform the penal system. The empirical basis of this article is informed by 20 interviews conducted in autumn 2006 with Albanian government officials, members of the prison administration, human rights monitors, international organizations, NGOs, penal experts, and donor governments. It also evaluates attempts by the European Union and Council of Europe to promote penal reform in Albania. The main finding is that in spite of its considerable investment in Albania, the European Union and associated partners have not managed to curb occurrences of torture and have had a limited impact over substantive penal reform. This article examines four explanations for the EU’s relative failure in this policy area. The principal reasons for Albania’s non‐convergence with European norms lie with the weakness of Albanian state structures and the persistence of systemic illiberal practices.