Political Assemblies Research Articles

<em>Objetos desobedientes</em>: escraches y la lucha por la vivienda en la PAH

Este artículo describe la cultura material de la campaña de escraches, un tipo específico de activismo performativo implementado por la Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) con el fin de presionar a la clase política para cambiar la ley hipotecaria española. A partir del análisis de los círculos gigantes de cartón utilizados por la PAH en los escraches, se estudia cómo estos objetos tienen la capacidad de replantear el espacio y el tiempo de la política. A partir del material etnográfico que se presenta, el artículo indica cómo se elaboran y cómo se usan estos círculos para teorizar sobre la noción de objeto desobediente. De este modo, el trabajo se centra en tres aspectos: cómo los círculos convocan diferentes actores y audiencias, su papel en tanto herramientas políticas que subvierten la narrativa oficial de la crisis financiera, y su rol como elementos clave para cuestionar la moralidad de la deuda hipotecaria y del endeudamiento.

Spectacle Terror Lynching, Public Sovereignty, and Antiblack Genocide

ABSTRACT The history of spectacle terror lynching remains one of the darkest and least explored political events in American history. In this article, I explore the aesthetic relation of this history to the formation of notions of public action and political assembly. I argue that the history of spectacle terror lynching establishes both a past and present form of public sovereignty. As such, I attempt to examine questions of what public action means with regard to a political context of antiblack violence. I conclude that lynching festivals constitute not only a form of politics but a form of public sovereignty that is still in play in our notion of the public. At heart this notion informs not only antiblack forms of racism but antiblack forms of genocide.

Zum 2. Korintherbrief: Drei wichtige Parallelen zur Qumrangemeinde (Gemeinde Gottes, neuer Bund und Neuschöpfung)

Abstract In the Second Epistle to the Corinthians Paul uses three concepts, which have very close parallels in contemporary non-Christian texts only in the writings of the Qumran community (“the community of God”, “new covenant” and the idea of new creation already in the present). Since the concept of new creation in the so-called Community Songs of 1QHa is under discussion, a thorough interpretation is of great importance, esp. of 1QHa XI 22. The “new covenant” in Paul’s letters is more than the “renewed covenant” of the Qumran community. The background of ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ is Jewish even though Hellenistic-Roman associations and political assemblies have to be discussed concerning ἐκκλησία. There is no direct acquaintance of Paul with texts of the Qumran community. The relevance of these texts for understanding Paul is found in several respects.

A matrilineal and matrilocal Muslim society in flux: negotiating gender and family relations in the Comoros

AbstractNgazidja Island in the Comoros archipelago (in the south-western region of the Indian Ocean) is an example of a matrilineal and matrilocal Muslim society. This article addresses the various ways in which the Ngazidja people negotiate gender and family relations by referring to matrilineal or Islamic norms and values, and the influence of Islamic reforms and Western norms. Matriliny is linked to a local political organization based on an age system and a male political assembly. This link explains the specific way in which matrilineal and Islamic ideologies are linked. Marriage is ruled by Islamic law, but alliances between matrilineal descent groups follow other rationales. The existence of two matrimonial regimes illustrates this distinction. The conceptions of fatherhood produced in Ngazidja shed light on the key issue of male authority in matrilineal and Muslim contexts.

Melodrama,Purimspiel, and Jewish Emancipation

Long forgotten, Elizabeth Polack (fl. 1835–43) is the earliest known Jewish woman playwright in England. This essay argues that her first play,Esther, the Royal Jewess,or the Death of Haman!(1835), performed at a public playhouse in the Jewish working-class neighborhood of London's East End, radically realigns diverse genres and populations in advocating both Jewish emancipation and a voice for women. By way of a very brief introduction, I first point out the applicability here of Judith Butler'sNotes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Butler explores how group protest, such as Tahir Square or Occupy Wall Street, serves as a kind of communal bodily signification. Of course, her point is not to address how people come together in a public theater, where the cast arrives daily for salaried jobs and the audience plunks down cold cash for a fun night out. Yet something else meaningful can occur in assembly within the theater. Theatrical performances can take on the discursive power of political assembly that Butler defines, signifying “in excess of what is said,” bringing actors and audience together with potentially political valence. Butler helps us understand the stakes of theatrical performance and public assembly and why it is important to examineEsther, the Royal Jewessbeyond recovering a neglected author, though that too is part of my object.

Sympathy with the Allies? Abusive Magistrates and Political Discourse in Republican Rome

Over the course of the 2nd century b.c.e., relations between Rome and her Italian allies increasingly deteriorated. Amongst the principal causes of allied dissatisfaction, historians regularly cite Roman magistrates’ abusive behaviour towards Italian communities. The key ancient source of information on this subject is the fragment of a single speech by C. Gracchus (ap. Gell. NA 10.3.2–5), delivered to a Roman political assembly in support of allied enfranchisement, in addition to two passages in Livy’s History for the year 173 b.c.e. (42.1.6–12; 42.3). I offer a novel, closely contextualised reading of this evidence. My discussion culminates in the argument that, whilst sometimes representing genuinely pro-allied sentiments, episodes of abuse by Roman magistrates were primarily important as effective rhetorical topoi in the polital discourse of the 2nd century b.c.e. Here, they enjoyed paradigmatic currency in an increasingly competitive and adversarial political climate. From a methodological point of view, this article assigns a significant role to contextual analysis in the use of literary and oratorical fragments in the study of ancient history.

The Ecclesiastical Roots of Representation and Consent

Recent attempts to explain the development of medieval representative institutions have neglected a long-standing insight of medieval and legal historians: Political representation and rule by consent were first developed within the Catholic Church following the eleventh-century Gregorian Reforms and the subsequent “crisis of church and state”. These practices then migrated to secular polities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This was facilitated by the towering position of the Church in medieval society in general and the ubiquitous “areas of interaction” between religious and lay spheres in particular. I document these processes by analyzing the initial adoption of proctorial representation and consent at political assemblies, first, within the Church, then in lay polities. These findings corroborate recent insights about the importance of religious institutions and diffusion in processes of regime change, and they shed light on the puzzling fact that representation and consent—the core principles of modern democracy—only arose and spread in the Latin west.

Partidos políticos y procesos congresuales en España. Una aproximación desde la observación participante y la comunicación política a los Congresos de PSOE y Podemos

El funcionamiento de los partidos políticos, sus asambleas y elecciones internas se han ido adaptando a las nuevas formas de comunicación política y al establecimiento de la campaña permanente. Los procesos congresuales, si bien se conciben como una fórmula para reflexionar sobre el funcionamiento de las organizaciones, también se diseñan como eventos con los que fidelizar lealtades y posibilitar el encuentro entre militantes. Así, y en términos de estrategia, movilización de afiliados y comunicación interna guardan similitudes con los periodos electorales en cuanto a visibilidad mediática e importancia organizativa en parte por su capacidad para condicionar el funcionamiento de las organizaciones en periodos entre elecciones. En el siguiente artículo se presentan los resultados de realizar observación participante en los congresos nacionales para la elección de líderes y programas en dos de los principales partidos políticos en España: PSOE y Podemos. El objetivo reside en comprender e identificar las motivaciones de los participantes compartiendo su medio natural así como el desarrollo de estos eventos desde la perspectiva de la comunicación política. Como conclusión, el artículo expone las dificultades halladas para la aplicación de este tipo de metodología, así como la identificación de estos congresos como eventos culturales, de “ocio político” y mediáticos.

THE HUNCHAKIAN REVOLUTIONARY PARTY AND THE ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS AGAINST PATRIARCH KHOREN ASHEKIAN AND MAKSUDZADE SIMON BEY IN 1894

AbstractThe spring of 1894 was an important period for Constantinople's Armenian community. Two assassination attempts targeted the Armenian patriarch Khoren Ashekian, and the chairperson of the Armenian Political Assembly Maksudzade Simon Bey, respectively. In both cases, the assailants were partisans of the Hunchakian Party, an Armenian revolutionary organization established in 1887. Analyzing the reasons behind these two attacks, and the imperial context in which they took place, this article challenges aspects of mainstream Armenian and Turkish historiography on the Hamidian period. It argues that a critical look at these two attacks through a socio-economic paradigm rather than an ethno-political one provides a viable analytical framework for deconstructing the notion of the “Armenian millet” as an undifferentiated community. More generally, the article explores the role of violence in shaping intracommunal relationships in the early 1890s.

Black Lives Matter Toronto: Urgency as Choreographic Necessity

Drawing on his experience as co-founder and core organizer of Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLMTO), dancer and choreographer Rodney Diverlus dissects the choreographic elements of a new era of Black resistance. Here, he focuses on the racial politics of assembly as it relates to Black liberation struggles both historically and in a post-Trayvon Martin present. Black-centric direct action is deliberate about its use of space and intentional about the physical interventions made by Black bodies in that space. This article examines BLMTO’s protest tactics—including gestures like ‘Hands up, Don’t shoot’ and the Black power fist, physicalized and embodied chants, and the deliberate disruption of public spaces—as models for effective and informed activism. It examines these movements as a continued lineage of successful choreographies of Black political assembly. Diverlus explores André Lepecki’s concept of choreopolicing (whereby the police assert control of protestors) and positions it in stark contrast to Black-centric politichoreography, which uses distinct Black protest movement vocabularies to resist the state apparatus and police violence. Diverlus looks at BLMTO’s use of these gestures and choreographed direct actions as both narrative symbols and embodied rallying points to bring together a raging community. Through these tactics, BLMTO poses and simultaneously answers the question: whose streets? BLMTO uses Black bodies—the very bodies marginalized and discarded by the state—as sites of power that unapologetically challenge not only the ownership of public space, but also the control of Black bodies in that space.

Russia’s centralized authoritarianism in the disguise of democratic federalism: Evidence from the September 2017 sub-national elections

While formally a federation that vests significant powers in the sub-national bodies of government and leaves it for its federal units and municipalities to decide who will govern them by conducting elections, the Russian Federation is effectively a centralized authoritarian state. This paper uses evidence from the September 2017 sub-national elections in Russia to examine the role of formal political institutions in sustaining the country’s political regime. The analysis shows that the political domination of the pro-government party over the regional political assemblies is sustained by a complex combination of party regulations and electoral rules. In particular, gubernatorial elections are organized and conducted in a way that ensures the victories of the incumbent governors who are effectively appointed by the president of Russia.

La puissance des institutions ecclésiastiques dans les critères de hiérarchisation des villes: le cas du haut clergé séculier en Catalogne (XVe siècle)

Les cathédrales sont étroitement associées aux cités où elles sont localisées. Sommets de la hiérarchie ecclésiastique du diocèse, évêques et chanoines sont aussi, en Catalogne, susceptibles de participer à la vie politique du Principat, en siégeant aux assemblées de la Diputació del General et aux Corts. De ce fait, les chapitres cathédraux disposent d’une forme de rayonnement politique à travers la carrière de leurs membres. Ils entretiennent entre eux des relations de coopération qui dessinent un véritable réseau de sièges épiscopaux catalans. La puissance des institutions religieuses séculières s’érige alors en critère de hiérarchisation des villes: un critère souvent négligé par l’historiographie, qui s’ajoute aux critères économiques, politiques ou démographiques.

A comparison between three ideal types of parliamentary politics: representation, legislation and deliberation

ABSTRACTRepresentative, legislative and deliberative assemblies are commonly called parliaments. The three types of assemblies share many procedures and practices, and the Inter-Parliamentary Union includes all three types among its members. Nonetheless, as ideal types in the Weberian sense, the three kinds of political assemblies do differ in their modes of acting and thinking politically. This article is a thought experiment to sketch the three ideal types by working out a number of key aspects of their distinctive political features. The political action that characterizes representative assemblies is pre-parliamentary elections, legislative assemblies are judged by their post-parliamentary results, while deliberative assemblies are characterized by their parliamentary debates pro et contra. Whereas the parliamentary studies of recent decades have largely concentrated on the representative and legislative aspects, this article focuses on parliamentary procedure and rhetoric, revaluating from this perspective the intra-parliamentary aspect of parliamentary deliberation.

Genesis and transformation of Polish-Lithuanian sovereigns’ protectorship right over the Livonian confederation lands

As known, from the end of the XV century Livonia became the object of close attention of the sovereigns As known, since the end of the XV century Livonia became the object of close attention of the sovereigns of Denmark, Sweden, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Crown of Poland and the Moscow State, who were attracted by its favorable strategic position, an important role in the international Baltic trade and rich land resources. However, the possibility of direct expansion by the Catholic states was limited by the status of Livonia as a crusading state, under the auspices of the two most influential political assemblies of Catholic Europe the Pope and the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. An interesting way to bypass this obstacle was used by the rulers of the Polish-Lithuanian state, who applied a special form of political expansion that did not violate or at least created an appearance of preserving the papal and imperial prerogatives, and at the same time allowed them to postulate themselves as their legitimate implementers. That was promoted by the ancient political and legal concept according to which they acted as protectors and conservators of the states of the Livonian Confederation. It emerged in the XIV century, but, however, it was fully in demand by the rulers of the Polish-Lithuanian state only in the XVI century, when Livonia became the main object of the battle for the Baltic and a very interesting problem is the historical roots and the modification of this political concept from the time of its appearance to its finalization.

The Oxford Union Debate on War in 1933: Rhetoric, Representation, Political Action

This paper shows how a debate conducted in the Oxford Union, the leading student debating society in Britain, was used to make a point about representation and politics in the national press, and what it means in terms of political action and who can be entitled to make political claims. In 1933 the Union debated a motion “That this House will under no circumstances fight for its King and Country”. It was carried by a clear majority, and the scandal it caused called the role of the Union and what it represented into question. It is argued here that there were two rhetorical levels in operation, the rhetoric of representation and the rhetoric of debate. Regarding the former, the Union was blamed in the national press for lacking the representative qualities attributed to it, and regarding the latter, its rules and traditions were defended as part of the functions of a political assembly.

Project Fukushima! Performativity and the Politics of Festival in Post-3/11 Japan

This article describes the political performances of the annual Project Fukushima! festival that—only a few months after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster on 3/11/11, and each summer since—has brought thousands to sing, dance, and make music in Fukushima City. Why celebrate Fukushima in the midst of a meltdown? I argue that performance has taken on a vital critical dimension in the ambivalent pluralism that drives contemporary public protest movements. Music and dance—particularly in the festivals that have become deeply integrated into social activism in post-3/11 Japan—have become particularly expedient ways to enable broad critiques of technocultural capitalism and its silencing of marginal populations. The performativity of festival connotes but does not necessarily constitute public dialogue. Rather, it makes audible the dissonance of diverse political assemblies, who respond with ambivalence to demands to speak with a singular voice. I examine the ways in which the anthropology of social movements can attend to new performative assemblies that reframe narratives of disaster and displacement to describe emergent scenes of embodied interdependence in a global politics of survival. By blurring the lines between social expression and the disruptive noise of collective spectacle, Project Fukushima! builds the ambivalence of regional culture into a platform for amplifying the noise of political community in the disaster zone.

Development of the Russian Model of Federalism: Relationships of Center and Regions in 2007-2016

This article was written by Yuriy Pochta for the Council of Europe and was published in the spring of 2016 in the collection: Regionalisation trends in European countries 2007-2015. A study by members of the Group of Independent Experts of the European Charter of Local Self-Government / Editor: Prof. Francesco Merloni. Strasburg, 2016. Yuriy Pochta is a member of a group of independent experts of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, which is the pan-European political assembly representing local and regional authorities from the forty-seven member states of the Council of Europe. The Congress entrusted the Group of Independent Experts on the European Charter of Local Self-Government with the task of producing a comparative academic study. This study is based on information from Council of Europe member States affected by the regionalisation process and on recent regionalisation developments in Europe. The intention is to review the situation regarding regionalisation since the 2007 report of the European Committee on Local and Regional Democracy (CDLR). Following on from this, the idea is to achieve a broader understanding of the phenomenon from both the legal and institutional angles. The main aim of this study is to evaluate regionalisation trends, towards both more and less regionalisation, in individual countries and consequently in Europe as a whole. At the same time it seeks to determine whether the various countries considered actually have regional institutions as defined by the 2009 Council of Europe Reference Framework for Regional Democracy. In preparing his section on Russia, Yuriy Pochta proceeded from the fact that the modern Russian state emerged relatively recently - at the turn of 1980-90-s. of the 20th century and its formation, including its federal structure continues. It is shown that since 2007 the process of regionalization of the Russian Federation is developing successfully. Having opted for the creation of a democratic society, post-Soviet Russian Federation borrowed Western model, adapting it to its own circumstances. The impact of these conditions leads to the fact that it is quite difficult to relate the existing Russian federal system to the classic Western model. On this occasion Russian and Western scholars participate in a lively debate about the nature of Russian federalism - whether it is real or a simulation, whether it is in the crisis. But in 2014, in connection with the entry of the Crimea and Sevastopol to the Russian Federation, Russian federalism issues become even more urgent, raising a number of questions about the evolution of Russian federalism, the possibility of the organic integration of the two new subjects in the federation in a situation of sharp complication of Russia's relations with the West, led by the United States, caused by the political and socio-economic crisis in the Republic of Ukraine.

Opinions of Voters towards the Issue of Political Participation during the General Election of 2014: The Case of Kalasin, Thailand

<p class="Body">This research aims to study voters’ opinions within the province of Kalasin, Thailand with respect to the topic of political participation during the general election of 2014 and to conduct a comparative study on the collected opinions, which will be determined by individual factor and employ a quantitative analysis research method in the form of questionaries as a research tool. This study’s database is compiled from information collected from selected number of 397 voters domiciled within Kalasin. Statistics tools include, namely, Arithmetic Mean, T-Test, and One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). From the data analysis, the findings reveal that, with regard to the average means of voters’ opinions within the province of Kalasin with respect to the topic of political participation during the general election of 2014, the overall result is average ( = 3.40). Voters turnout ( = 3.88) is found to contain the highest level of opinions whilst a political related public assembly ( = 2.71) is found at the lowest ranking. Nevertheless, upon comparing between the average means of voters’ opinions within the province of Kalasin with respect to the topic of political participation during the general election of 2014 using individual factor assessment, it is discovered that Kalasin voters, as vary in sex, age, education background, occupation, and earned income, bare significant statistic differences when examining their opinions towards political participation during the general election of 2014. In contrast, Kalasin voters varying in marital status hold trivial statistic differences towards the concerned issue.</p>

Gender Quota Spill-Over in Sweden: From Politics to Business?

Ever since the 1990s, legislated gender quotas have been adopted across the world as a means to increase the number of women in elected bodies. In recent years, legislated gender quotas have also been adopted to rectify the under-representation of women on company boards. Sweden diverges from this trend. Despite the fact that Sweden has been recognized as a model of gender equality, being ranked among the most gender equal countries in the world and having achieved gender balanced political assemblies, legal gender quotas have not been enacted, neither in the political sphere nor in the economic sphere. This paper analyses women’s path to power in Sweden. It studies the adoption of special measures and provides an assessment of the factors that facilitate or hinder increases in the proportion of women decision-makers in the political and economic sectors. By applying feminist institutional theory, the dynamics of institutional configurations facilitating or hindering change is investigated. It is argued that the interplay of institutions in the political sector operated in a mutually reinforcing way, thereby constituting a good fit, while the interaction of institutions in the economic sector functioned in a conflicting way. It is also claimed that women’s movement organisations (working both within and outside of the political parties) represented critical actors in implementing party quotas in Sweden. Such coordinated efforts did not exist in the corporate sector. There, the forces of resistance were much stronger than the forces for change, thereby hindering the introduction of a legal corporate gender quota.

Financing the Huguenot War Effort during the Early Wars of Religion, 1562–1570

During the first Wars of Religion, military needs obliged Huguenot leaders to obtain by all possible means the resources needed to finance their troops. At first, they turned to expedients and improvisations. We can thus distinguish seven revenue sources used during the first War of Religion: voluntary contributions from Reformed churches; seizure of wealth from the Catholic Church; loans; levying taxes on Huguenot-occupied cities; the confiscation of municipal, royal, and ecclesiastical revenues; ransoming prisoners; and requests for support from foreign Protestants. During the second and third wars, however, improvisation gave way to a more organized system, notably due to fund-raising organized by political assemblies meeting in the south of the kingdom, which marked the beginning of a process of rationalizing Huguenot war finance.