Political Manifestations Research Articles

The Politics of Economic Crisis in East Asia: Some Longer Term Implications

The currency and market turmoils in since summer of 1997 are every bit as much political crises as they are economic ones. Indeed, the political manifestations of these events may linger long after the necessary economic reforms have been introduced to return at least a semblance of economic normalcy to the region. This paper assess some of the longer term political implications. It does so through tinted lenses rather than Anglo American ones and offers an alternative reading of the economic crisis to that which exists in the mainstream of western policy analysis. While accepting that particularist explanations apply on a country by country basis, the paper outlines: (i) those aspects of the crisis that appear common to those countries affected to-date; (ii) the importance of the silent but fundamental role of Japan as a factor in the crisis; and (iii) notwithstanding the real/material explanations of the crisis, it argues that the crisis is in large part an ideological one reflecting a western conceptual inability to deal with the model of development's reluctance to converge to an Anglo-American form of capitalism. While the policy remedies proffered by the IMF are accepted in in the short run, they may well not be appreciated in the long run, and a major implication of this interaction may well be an enhancement of the prospect of the continued development of an East Asian as opposed to Asia Pacific understanding of region. Some evidence of regional social learning from the crisis that may well consolidate the trend towards enhanced economic policy coordination that already exists. This could exacerbate tensions between global and regional interests and severely test the APEC consensus on a commitment to neo-liberalism in the early stages of the twenty-first century.

Minority protection in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia: Will it preserve the state?

Macedonia, the only former Yugoslav republic to avoid violent conflict following the break‐up of Yugoslavia, is a patchwork of ethnic groups. Its largest ethnic minority, the Albanians, constitute 23%. Although relations between the Slav‐Macedonian and Albanian communities have been tense in recent years, Albanian parties have participated in government. At the same time, they have called for recognition as a constituent nation within the republic. However, events in Kosovo have radicalised the minority and also increased concerns among Macedonian Slavs about the future security of their state as the political manifestation of their national group. This article explores the republic's relative stability explaining how it may escape future dismantling, although the Kosovo powder keg spells danger for it.

Respecting the Importance of Science and Practice: A Pragmatic View

Kavale and Forness set out to explain why the LD field lacks integrity. They say Hinshelwood's study of congenital word-blindness (p. 258) and Strauss and Werner's research on brain injury (p. 251) represented an important start on building a foundation for a credible profession. But these scientific efforts came to a standstill when parents and practitioners took over, leaving the field in an arrested state of development. Without a fully developed, legitimate construct of learning disabilities, say Kavale and Forness, the field became a partial vacuum into which rushed the illogical and irrational forces of politics-specifically, narrow-minded advocacy, Marxist ideology, and anti-Newtonian philosophy that often conflicted with and undermined the LD field's auspicious beginnings. The most prominent manifestation of politics in the LD field, we're told, is advocacy, which is described by Kavale and Forness as quintessentially liberal in motive. It is captured for the authors in the notion of entitlements, which may be illustrated by the simple formula: more students produce more dollars for more programs and teachers. Ironically, this point is also made by Wang and Walberg (1988), outspoken critics of special education in general and the LD field in particular. Such thinking, according to Kavale and Forness, inadvertently subverted the field's in two ways: (a) by failing to support continued funding of the scientific study of LD and (b) by arguing for more service, rather than greater understanding. Advocacy, write Kavale and Forness, has changed the parameters of LD to include a new class of student with low intelligence. In doing so, [it] contorted [LD's] basic character and undermined its scientific integrity (p. 251). Kavale and Fomess's solution: More money for the scientific understanding of the biophysical mechanisms responsible for LD. Below we take issue with Kavale and Forness's

“Palestine” and Other Territorial Concepts in the 17th Century

It is a well-known anachronism of historians to treat areas within the Ottoman Empire (Egypt, Syria) as if they had a meaningful existence of their own in the prenationalist period. There is no question that before the appearance of nationalism in the later part of the 19th century the major political community was Islam, whose actual political manifestation was the Ottoman state. It is assumed that as a consequence, no other form of collective identity could exist at the time. The received wisdom on this issue may be expressed by one study of Arab nationalism which claimed:“None of the [Arab] new states was commensurate with a political community. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan, Palestine—these names derived from geography or classical history.” Yet it is possible that the debate over these issues is not yet over. One is entitled, for example, to doubt whether we know enough in social psychology to determine that the human mind is so simple that it cannot accommodate multi-faceted phenomena such as double identity, both in terms of regional Egyptian nationalism, for example, and all-inclusive Arab identity. Dichotomization makes for sharper and more impressive arguments, but sometimes it can be pushed too far and thus rendered misleading. In line with this last consideration, the argument of this paper is that though the all-inclusive identity of Middle Eastern Muslims under the Ottomans was Islamic and Ottoman first, territorial identities existed beneath them and that these territorial communities are commensurate with the modern Middle Eastern states.

Tatarstan: At the crossroads of Islam and orthodoxy

Arguments for Russia's special place in the world take a variety of lines. Of these, one of the most fundamental and widespread is that Russia is a specially 'Eurasian' civilisation, the result of a combination of sources: European Christian and Asian Muslim (sometimes people say 'Muslim' openly, sometimes it is understood implicitly, as historically Russia has had, to say the least, little interaction with Buddhism and Hinduism). Not only the ideologues of Russian nationalism but also western political scientists venture from time to time into the risky intellectual waters of Eurasianism. Notwithstanding the tenacity of Eurasian theories for about a century, all the argument has been constructed entirely on poetical images and foggy, albeit enticing, metaphysical speculations. If 'Eurasianism' does indeed exist, then it should have fully concrete and visible social, cultural and political manifestations. In order to discover these we should naturally examine in the first instance the religious, social and political situation in the Republic of Tatarstan. Tataria was annexed to Russia in the sixteenth century, earlier than the other Muslim countries. Immediately after the annexation of the Kazan' Khanate in 1552 the Moscow government started to implement a singleminded policy of settling Russians in the conquered territories, and thus continual everyday and social contacts between Russians and Tatars here have had a history of 450 years. Theoretically then it is in Tataria that 'Eurasianism' should have arisen in the first place. Here, as nowhere else in Russia, the results of the interaction between 'Europe' and 'Asia' should be most clearly manifest. The very formulation of the question about Eurasianism presupposes both sides moving together: Europe towards Asia, Asia towards Europe. In our concrete example this means the reciprocal influence of Russians and Tatars. However, it is hard to talk of any reciprocal influence, from the days of the SUbjugation of Kazan' by the forces of Ivan the Terrible right up to 1991. It was more the imposition on the Tatars of the Russian way of life, Russian culture and Russian religion Russian Orthodoxy. The Kazan' Khanate was annexed in 1552, and by 1555 the solemn installation of the appointed archbishop of Kazan', Saint Guri, the first in history, was taking place in Moscow, with a religious procession and all the church bells ringing. This should not surprise us: not only had Kazan' until recently been the capital of Muscovy's greatest centuries-long enemy, but after the annexation it became the second most important town in the state. In the course of the next 200 years 'spiritual interaction' occurred in one direction only through a policy of total christianisation and russification of the peoples who had inhabited the defeated Kazan' Khanate. The Russians

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

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

The Manifestation of Politics in Architectural Practice

There is an underlying theoretical structure between the spheres of politics and architectural practice. The contingent relationships between them are ideology, function, process, and design. In ea...

The Manifestation of Politics in Architectural Practice

The Manifestation of Politics in Architectural Practice

STATE, MASCULINITIES AND LAW: Some Comments on Gender and English State-Formation

This paper examines connections between masculinity, social order, and the state in history, through a focus on English state-formation. Drawing on recent work in anthropology, social history, and the sociology of masculinity, it is suggested that state-formation involves both a fundamental shift in the social structure of gender, and a more specific politicization of masculinity. In the English case this politicization was both dynamic and multi-faceted, but one of its key outcomes was the gradual erosion of aristocratic masculinities which enjoyed dominance prior to the late medieval period, and the development of bourgeois masculinities which became hegemonic during the nineteenth century. Like state-building' itself (both in England and across Europe) this broad contest between aristocratic and bourgeois masculinities took a variety of forms, and also waxed and waned in intensity during the period from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, although it was sharpened considerably both by the onset of industrialization, and by the expansion and consolidation of the British Empire. It is suggested that such contests throughout the period were also played out within the law itself, and within the state and its legal and administrative apparatus. The case of duelling in England is used to illustrate some of the political, legal, and ideological manifestations of these interactions between competing constructs of masculinity.

Statistics and the Conversion of the Roman Aristocracy

In a justly famous paper published in 1961, Peter Brown set out a model for understanding the historical process whereby the formerly pagan aristocracy of imperial Rome became overwhelmingly Christian during the course of the fourth and fifth centuries. Brown's paper has deeply influenced all who have subsequently studied this historical phenomenon, at least in the English-speaking world. Since this article argues that the Roman aristocracy became Christian significantly earlier than Brown and most recent writers have assumed, it must begin by drawing an important distinction. Brown's paper marked a major advance in modern understanding because it redirected the focus of scholarly research away from conflict and confrontation, away from the political manifestations of paganism culminating in the ‘last great pagan revival in the West’ between 392 and 394, away from episodes which pitted pagan aristocrats of Rome against Christian emperors, away from ‘the public crises in relations between Roman paganism and a Christian court’, towards the less sensational but more fundamental processes of cultural and religious change which gradually transformed the landowning aristocracy of Italy after the conversion of Constantine. This change of emphasis was extremely salutary in 1961, it has permanently changed our perception of the period, and it entails a method of approaching the subject which remains completely valid. Unfortunately, however, Brown also adopted prevailing assumptions about the chronology of these changes which are mistaken, on the basis of which he asserted that the ‘drift into a respectable Christianity’ began no earlier than the reign of Constantius. The evidence and arguments set out here indicate that the process began much earlier and proceeded more rapidly than Brown assumed, but they in no way challenge the validity of his approach to understanding the nature of the process.

Statistics and the Conversion of the Roman Aristocracy

In a justly famous paper published in 1961, Peter Brown set out a model for understanding the historical process whereby the formerly pagan aristocracy of imperial Rome became overwhelmingly Christian during the course of the fourth and fifth centuries. Brown's paper has deeply influenced all who have subsequently studied this historical phenomenon, at least in the English-speaking world. Since this article argues that the Roman aristocracy became Christian significantly earlier than Brown and most recent writers have assumed, it must begin by drawing an important distinction. Brown's paper marked a major advance in modern understanding because it redirected the focus of scholarly research away from conflict and confrontation, away from the political manifestations of paganism culminating in the ‘last great pagan revival in the West’ between 392 and 394, away from episodes which pitted pagan aristocrats of Rome against Christian emperors, away from ‘the public crises in relations between Roman paganism and a Christian court’, towards the less sensational but more fundamental processes of cultural and religious change which gradually transformed the landowning aristocracy of Italy after the conversion of Constantine. This change of emphasis was extremely salutary in 1961, it has permanently changed our perception of the period, and it entails a method of approaching the subject which remains completely valid. Unfortunately, however, Brown also adopted prevailing assumptions about the chronology of these changes which are mistaken, on the basis of which he asserted that the ‘drift into a respectable Christianity’ began no earlier than the reign of Constantius. The evidence and arguments set out here indicate that the process began much earlier and proceeded more rapidly than Brown assumed, but they in no way challenge the validity of his approach to understanding the nature of the process.

‘Things fall apart; the center cannot hold’: Cores, peripheries and peripheral nationalism at the core and periphery of the world economy

In the past several years social scientists have elaborated ‘core- periphery models’ of political change. Such models sought to overcome the nation-state and ‘whole-nation’ bias in comparative research. In these models cores and peripheries are distinguished by three characteristics: a set of attributes for each, characteristics of exchange relations and characteristics of interaction patterns. Central to these models is a territorial structuring of political behavior in which cores and peripheries form geographical contexts for politics. Thus, spatial relations between cores and peripheries achieve significant explanatory power with diffusion processes from the core to the periphery and the peripheral reaction to these playing a key role in accounting for political behavior in each. One such political manifestation is peripheral nationalism, defined as an emotive reaction of cultural defense against the diffusion of economic, political and cultural dominance from the core. This paper examines three explanations for the rise of peripheral nationalism in late nineteenth-century Britain and early twentieth-century Argentina, marking two sites in the core and periphery of the world system. The results demonstrate similarities in social origins of peripheral nationalism at both sites as the product of the economically and culturally marginal middle strata threatened by the expanding influence of the core. However, the research also supports the hypothesis that at the periphery of the world economy during times of economic contraction the economically and culturally marginal lower strata may be mobilized into mass movements. The research concludes that both within-nation-state and global core-periphery dynamics provide concepts for understanding political behavior.

The Politics of Gender, Language and Hierarchy in Mamet's “Oleanna”

Ever since it was first staged in May 1992, Mamet's Oleanna seems, on both sides of the Atlantic, to have been perceived, publicised and reviewed almost exclusively as a manifestation of backlash sexual politics — that is, as a work characterised by outrage and hostility towards the agenda of contemporary feminism. Although the play entered the public arena too late to be addressed in Susan Faludi's 1992 study Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women, its attitudes have typically been read as symptomatic of the same aggrieved and aggressive masculinity which Faludi diagnoses in such exemplary texts as Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987) and Roger Kimball's Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education (1990). The play also lends itself with deceptive ease to a comparison with one of Faludi's most alarming paradigms of backlash popular culture, the Hollywood blockbuster Fatal Attraction. Both narratives depict a fundamentally decent man, loyal to wife and family, who becomes the target of and is almost destroyed by the machinations of a vengeful single woman. In both cases the action culminates in an explosive physical assault on the offending female character. And, in performance, the violence of both denouements releases and apparently sanctions a similar surge of vicarious male aggression. Howls of “Kick her ass!” and “Kill the bitch!” were a regular occurrence at screenings of Fatal Attraction, and audience reaction to Oleanna has often followed the same pattern: Elaine Showalter reports a male acquaintance saying “I nearly climbed up on the stage to kick the shit out of the little bitch myself.”

Verbos de obediencia en Sófocles. Estudio semántico

The concept of obedience in this paper is understood as a valorative manifestation of politics. I try to define the moral quality of Man in the context of the polis . On the one hand, there are the verbs that indicate types of political behaviour of Man before the nomos ; on the other hand, there are those that refer to a political behaviour developed within the boundaries of the genos . In the former, the idea of obedience corresponds to something completely political or of state level; in the latter, to political concepts such as morality or religion (family level). Linguistically, the examination of the Sophoclean corpus is based on a detailed study of the context (linguistics and extralinguistics), where the main and most important factor correspond to the distribution of the classes and subclasses of words at sentence level.

The new politics and the new social movements

Abstract. Central to the ‘new politics’is the increased salience of non‐material issues and a heightened concern with participation. ‘New social movements’and ‘new politics’parties are contingent manifestations of this new politics, which is also manifest in changed orientations toward established political parties. In most respects, the British appear no less well‐disposed toward the ‘new politics’than their European neighbours. Yet Britain is distinguished by the absence of either a radical ecology movement or a successful ‘new polities’party. British exceptionalism is explained by institutional arrangements which constrain the environmental movement toward integration rather than opposition, and an electoral system which polarises political competition and inhibits the development of new parties. One consequence is the preservation of the Labour Party as a beneficiary of, and vehicle for, the expression of much political dissent. As a result, in Britain the ‘new polities’is to an unusual degree combined with ‘old polities’.

Islamic economics: novel Perspectives

and progression of history to the ruthless arbitration of present realities. The political manifestation of the trend towards 'Islamization' has created serious doubts concerning the validity of assumptions regarding the 'greater secularization of societies under change', 'privatization of faith in post-traditional settings', and the 'convergence of patterns of societal change in late-industrializing countries with one experienced by Europe since Renaissance'.2 The havoc which events such as the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79, the Islamization of Pakistan, the assassination of Egyptian President Sadat, or the ascendency of the Shi'is in Lebanon have wreaked in policy-making and academic circles clearly accentuates the doubts expressed above. The impact of Islamic revivalism on Muslim societies, and ultimately on Western social sciences is, however, not entirely political in nature. The less vociferous and yet equally important changes in Muslim attitudes towards the economic and social livelihood of man are likely to have lasting effects on Muslim societies, and pose serious challenge to Western notions of social organization and economic interactions. This essay is a critical survey of the fundamental premises of the corpus of ideas which are commonly and collectively referred to as 'Islamic economics'. The philosophical bases, intellectual foundations and doctrinal outlook of Islamic economics have been amply discussed, time and again, by exponents of Islamic economics,3 as well as by scholars and students of economic thought,4 Islamic studies or the Middle East.5 The objective here is not to reiterate or once again outline the doctrines of Islamic economics, but rather, to determine the promises and perils of the process through which Islamic economic thought has been cultivated at the intellectual level and subsequently implemented into active social institutions. Most expositions of Islamic economic begin with the elaboration and conglomorization of disparate Islamic teachings pertaining to economics, drawn from the injunctions of the Quran, hadith or shariah. These studies then compare and contrast this corpus of religious norms and economic

The politics of individualism: parties and the American character in the Jacksonian era

In the fifty years following the Revolution, America's population nearly quadrupled, its boundaries expanded, industrialization took root in the Northeast, new modes of transportation flourished, state banks proliferated and offered easy credit to eager entrepreneurs, and Americans found themselves in the midst of an accelerating age of individualism, equality, and self-reliance. To the Jacksonian generation, it seemed as if their world had changed practically overnight. The Politics of Individualism looks at the political manifestations of these staggering social transformations. During the 1830s and 1840s, Americans were consumed by politics and party loyalties were fierce. Here, Kohl draws on the political rhetoric found in speeches, newspapers, periodicals, and pamphlets to place the Democrats and the Whigs in a solid social and psychological context. He contends that the political division between these two parties reflected the division between Americans unsettled by the new individualistic social order and those whose character allowed them to strive more confidently within it. Democrats, says Kohl, were more tradition-directed, bound to others in more personal ways; Whigs, on the other hand, were more inner-directed and embraced the impersonal, self-interested relationships of a market society. By examining this fascinating dialogue of parties, Kohl brings us bright new insight into the politics and people of Jacksonian America.

Planning for a fresh social and economic dynamic: Latin American and Caribbean Institute for Economic and Social Planning.

In its simplest expression, this document is based on three premises. The first of these is that planning is capable of playing a major role in consolidating the State, considered as the political manifestation of each Nation. The second is that this role may be shared out within the organizational or administrative structure of each State, and that it is desirable for it to be organized by a highranking institutional body, which, for the purposes of this document, will be generically termed the NPB or National Planning Body. The third premise is that the role played by ILPES in the near future — as at one and the same time a multilateral agency of the United Nations system and an intergovernmental agency— will have as its overall framework the priorities identified in the region in respect of the issues covered by the first two premises.

A Response to

The major point of this article is captured by Gadmaner, in one of his frequent exchanges with Habermas: “… all social and political manifestations of will are dependent on building up common convictions through rhetoric. This implies—and I think that this belongs to the concept of reason—that one must always reckon with the possibility that opposing convictions, whether in the individual or the social sphere, could be right” (p. 206, translated by McCarthy, 1978).

How Technology Is Reframing the Abortion Debate

Since the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, medical and scientific developments have focused greater public and professional attention on the status of the fetus. Their cumulative effect may influence legal, social, and moral thought and set the stage for a change in public opinion and a challenge to legalized abortion. There is as yet no inexorable convergence of medical data and legal opinion that would undermine the rational of Roe v. Wade. But the prochoice movement must find room for an open airing of the moral questions if abortion is to remain what it should be--a legally acceptable act.