Political Responsibility Research Articles

Business and Human Rights in a Changing World Order: Beyond the Ethics of Disembedded Liberalism

AbstractThe UN Guiding Principles (UNGPs) and their concept of human rights due diligence (HRDD) cannot succeed in their current form, because they reify neoliberalism’s public/private divide. This article establishes this argument across historical, theoretical, and normative dimensions, and charts a new way forward. The UNGPs’ separation of the ‘state duty to protect’ from the ‘corporate responsibility to respect’ reflects a contestable conception of companies as private actors: free to act/transact in any way that is not harmful. This is a problem because harm is often invisible, even when taking an active due-diligence approach. To resolve this, HRDD practices must also be based on the positive value of equality. However, businesses are more than mere agents; they also coordinate production and enable social connections. These structural features reveal a ‘missing fourth pillar’ of the UNGPs: a collective political responsibility to challenge and change our current world order.

Corporate social responsibility in China's airline industry: A longitudinal content analysis of related reports

As China has become the world's largest consumer market and leading exporter, researchers and practitioners urgently need to understand how corporate social responsibility (CSR) is socially constructed in the Chinese context, especially for international industries such as the airline sector. Building upon the triple bottom line model, this study offers a contextualized and dynamic understanding of Chinese airline CSR. Content analysis was performed to analyze 74 aggregate CSR reports (2007–2020) issued by different types of Chinese airlines. The findings reveal that in addition to the economic, social, and environmental responsibilities that are commonly seen in the West, Chinese airlines assume unique political responsibilities. This political dimension of CSR in China has become increasingly obvious in recent years. Driven by factors such as international pressure, industry competition, and more importantly, national policies, the focus of Chinese airline companies' CSR reporting has been changing over time. However, it has maintained a high level of content completeness over the years, and the social dimension of CSR has always been the aspect of greatest concern. This study contributes to the airline CSR literature by considering the particularity of airline companies and Chinese contextual factors and augmenting political CSR as a critical component of CSR in the Chinese context. Managerial implications are provided for international enterprises to cater more appropriately to the Chinese market and achieve cooperation with Chinese enterprises by implementing CSR strategies.

Teasing out History: Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children towards Mock Heroism

This paper claims that Rushdie develops his protagonist Saleem as an unreliable anti-hero. In doing so, the novel borrows tools and techniques of Mock Heroism. The Restoration and Augustan authors John Dryden and Alexander Pope are chiefly responsible for the mock-heroic genre. A mock-heroic book parodies the heroic style in literature in a sarcastic fashion, mimicking the actions or manner of a hero, often comically in nonheroic circumstances. Saleem claims to be the new India’s voice, taking on significant political responsibility and “evoking” these heroic deeds. He is, however, powerless, nd his magical ability to spy on people is dependent on a disproportionately large nose. His reliance on his cucumber nose to sense the true history is really hilarious. In this sense, Saleem is undoubtedly an absurd hero because his attempt to recapture what has been already lost is an absurdist attempt. Saleem is well aware that his historical account of India will be incomplete anyway. Despite this, he does not hesitate to boast that he is the truest of the historians and his version of India is much better.

Environmental security and international responsibility in international politics

Environmental security has become one of the main pillars of international security, and environment and climate issues have become at the forefront of issues that are addressed and focused on in various international discussions, due to the importance of these issues and their vitality for man. During the past three decades, environmental problems have become defining many global trends in In light of the environmental problems that have exacerbated as a result of the self-interests of states and the desire to expand the economy as well as contemporary consumer behavior, environmental security has strengthened ways to confront environmental challenges and problems exacerbated by these problems, as countries have come to see that environmental threats and climate change can lead to catastrophic results. On the security of states, therefore, it has become keen to address environmental problems collectively and activate collective diplomatic action, because states are no longer able to unilaterally confront environmental changes, and this is due to the increase in environmental problems and their significant development. Environmental security has become obligatory for states to modify their behaviour in a manner consistent with the necessary and required treatments in order to confront environmental risks. At the same time, many countries and countries have sought international organizations to focus on issues that are at the core of important positions such as environmental securitization and environmental terrorism resulting from abnormal behaviours of environmental defenders who have created wrong practices in defending the environment, which constitutes an opposite proposition in environmental security.

Political CSR and Populism: Toward an Information-Based Theory of Political CSR

Extant research on political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) has not yet addressed how the populist turn impacts PCSR theory and practice. This conceptual article analyzes how populism influences PCSR across a range of political environments. We draw on signaling and screening theories to develop a conceptual model that advances PCSR literature by proposing an information-centric approach. We highlight the necessity of high-quality information as an enabling condition for effective PCSR-related decision-making, and our model explains how the depreciation of information transparency under populism impacts PCSR strategy. We thus contribute to PCSR literature with a new information-based theorization by showing how PCSR depends on the political environment and by enhancing our understanding of the role of the state in the development of PCSR strategies.

What Does It Mean to Colonise and Decolonise Philosophy?

AbstractWhat does it mean for philosophy to be ‘colonised’ and what are some of the challenges involved in ‘decolonising’ it in philosophical and political terms? After distinguishing between philosophy and its practice as a professional enterprise, I explore six ways in which philosophy, at least as understood in its Euromodern form, could be interpreted as colonised: (1) Eurocentrism and its asserted racial and ethnic origins/misrepresentations of philosophy's history, (2) coloniality of its norms, (3) market commodification of the discipline, (4) disciplinary decadence, (5) solipsism, and (6) appeals to redemptive narratives of colonial practice. The remainder of the article examines conditions for decolonising philosophy, which include unlocking its potential as a liberatory practice, identifying its humanistic dimensions, rethinking metaphysical assumptions, and embracing political responsibility wrought from the production of knowledge.

정직한 중개인(honest broker)으로서 과학 자문

Politics or policy-making(administration) system tends to transfer decision-making functions to science in modern societies with increasing uncertain complexity. This tendency confines scientific discussion in extreme polarisation, which is tightly coupled to political win-lose. As science is more tightly coupled to politics and policy, the degree of freedom for each system is lowered, narrowing the room where policy alternatives are discussed and compromised. Under this analysis, the research proposes the honest broker model as an appropriate role model for scientific advisors in a modern society where uncertainty and value conflicts are growing. Scientific advisors do not prepare a single policy answer but rather present a variety of feasible scenarios and multiple policy alternatives within the scope of uncertainty. For scientific advisory to function as an honest intermediary, certain normative principles such as accountability separation between policy-making and scientific advisory system, transparency, diversity and openness should be established first. Finally, this paper attempts to apply the theoretical discussions to an institutional reformation of the current National Clinical Committee for Infectious Diseases. In this regard, the most urgent issue in the future is to institutionalize the science advice process. Such institutional settings enhance the influence of scientific advisory on policy while preventing the situation in which scientists are accused of political or legal responsibility for policy failure.

The political effects of rural school closures – Evidence from Sweden

In times of economic hardship, local governments often resort to school closures. These are often directed towards struggling rural communities, already experiencing substantial depopulation. The affected communities often react with fierce protests against responsible politicians. However, the political effects of school closures have mostly been overlooked in previous research. By using a novel geocoded dataset on all rural school closures in Sweden between 2013 and 2020, this study explores their political ramifications. The results show that school closures decrease the trust in municipal politicians and have negative effects on the support for the incumbent, an effect that is most pronounced for left-leaning parties. This study contributes to the literature on rural school closures and welfare retrenchments and expands previous research on social decommissioning in rural areas to include educational policies.

Beyond evidence: experimental policy-making in uncertain times

ABSTRACT Evidence-based policy-making (EBP) is widely seen as a key instrument for good policy-making. Yet in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the debate on the relation of science and policy-making gained new momentum. The premises of EBP, its narrow understanding of what kind of knowledge counts and how to make decisions, appeared inapt to provide a sound foundation for policy-making under conditions of high complexity and uncertainty. This paper addresses the major shortcomings of EBP and argues for revising its evidentialist framework. First, the idea of evidence itself has to be extended and pluralized by including alternative forms of knowledge. Second, uncertainty has to be taken seriously as a fundamental epistemic condition. To arrive at a more apt model of policy-making, this paper suggests to adopt a pragmatist perspective on the relation of politics, science and the public. This leads to an experimentalist account in the meliorist spirit. Such an account highlights the role of experience, participatory processes and collective learning. Furthermore, and in contrast to scientistic models, it underlines political responsibility and demands to cultivate sensitivity for possible failures and tragic constellations. Finally, a non-evidentialist model of policy advice is outlined.

Surveillance infrastructure in China: Key concepts and mechanisms enhancing the Party-state’s governance ambitions

Surveillance infrastructure in China monitors and enables authorities to react to potential risky, miscreant or criminal behaviour. What type of behaviours are perceived to be so, is determined in large part by ideology. Therefore, surveillance infrastructure relies on the machinery of ideology to define the boundaries of its use. In this paper, we outline six key ideological concepts relating to governance in Xi Jinping’s China that have helped to expand the boundaries of surveillance. We identify terms embedded in promotional material of Hikvision and other surveillance technology firms as a springboard for conceptual discussion. The aim is to survey the ideological lexicon of concepts that position surveillance within the Party-state’s broad capacity-building ambitions for governance in Xi’s China. This positioning amplifies the political responsibility of state, social and market actors to work together to broaden surveillance activities for ‘society-building’ purposes, and ultimately for the realisation of Xi Jinping’s goal of National Rejuvenation.

The Motion of No Confidence as a Mean of Parliamentary Control in Relation to the Government and the Dissolution of the Parliament: A Comparative View Between Kosovo, France, Germany, Italy and Croatia

From the treatment that has been given to the role of the motion of confidence-no-confidence as a means of controlling the parliament in relation to the government and its effects that are produced in the inauguration of the government or in the dissolution of the assembly and the announcement of early elections, efforts have been made to underline the characteristics of this means of control, especially in countries with a parliamentary system, and the consequences it produces in the continuation or shortening of the governing mandate. When it comes to obtaining the confidence of the government through a motion of no confidence by the parliament, one naturally thinks of a rather harsh political and constitutional mean that exposes the political responsibility of the prime minister and his government cabinet or ministerial council. In the most adequate treatment of this issue, the comparative method between different states has been used, drawing parallels between the Republic of Kosovo and these states, in terms of the motion of no confidence as an extraordinary means of parliamentary control. The role of the President of the State in such a political momentum is extremely important, in creating the conditions for a government that enjoys parliamentary support.

Conceptualizing responsibility in world politics

AbstractMoral responsibility is a prominent concept used in political discourses and theoretical debates. Yet disagreement remains on how it could work in practice. When attempting to address global challenges such as global poverty, combating atrocities, or artificial intelligence, approaches often revert to retrospective accounts of responsibility that focus on non-compliance with regulatory frameworks. As a result, cases where prospective responsibility would be required often go unaddressed. In this article, we introduce an analytical conceptualization of responsibility that should help to guide the application of moral responsibility in such situations. In the first step, we develop a typology that distinguishes between four types of responsibility: ‘obligatory’, ‘structural’, ‘prescribed’, and ‘discursive’. Second, we identify responsibility gaps for each responsibility type. Third, we introduce different ethical principles from political theory that help to identify potential responsibility relations. We illustrate the utility of this framework with the example of climate change, where ethical principles beyond the contribution principle have already been applied. The paper facilitates new perspectives in political debates about how to allocate responsibility in light of global challenges and enhances theoretical debates in International Relations scholarship.

Acting in solidarity with the poor? Some conceptual and practical challenges

ABSTRACT Monique Deveaux’s Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements makes a timely, compelling, and important intervention in the philosophical literature on poverty and global justice, and improves our understanding of the nature and extent of responsibilities of variously situated agents towards the poor. Deveaux’s focus on poor-led social movements emphasizes that effective poverty reduction requires building up the collective capacities of the poor to engage in joint collective action to oppose and dismantle unjust structures. This approach politicizes poverty and provides a powerful refutation of some previous approaches that primarily formulated responses to global poverty to consist in mere charity to lighten the poor’s deprivations, or top-down solutions imposed by technocrats and other development experts. Deveaux then extends the concept of solidarity to characterize the political responsibility of the nonpoor, which consists of acting in political solidarity with poor-led organizations and movements. It is this latter move to extend the concept of solidarity to characterize poor-nonpoor cooperative activities that I question in this commentary. When the concept of solidarity, understood as identification-based joint action, is stretched to encompass cooperation between all those who may act together to resist, oppose, and dismantle the structures of domination and oppression that constitute poverty, there is the danger of obscuring the alienation and oppositional social positions that attend conditions of structural injustice. To acknowledge the limits and dilemmas of solidarity practices between the poor and nonpoor is perhaps a sober reminder of one of the major costs of living in conditions of structural injustice.

The Time of the Migrant

The Time of the Migrant

Harold B. Lee: Life and Thought

Harold B. Lee: Life and Thought

Panentheism, History and the Problem of Evil

Abstract In this paper I consider the thought of two Jewish existentialists from the first half of the 20th century, showing how their critique of pantheistic and panentheistic thinking grounded novel ideas about politics, history and human thought. In place of a concept of history directed towards a teleological redemption of suffering in the future, Lev Shestov (1866–1938) and Benjamin Fondane (1898–1944) abandoned notions of philosophical rationality in order to avow a ‘reversal’ of history according to which historical suffering could be expiated through the unforeseeable powers of the divine. From here, I look at the work of a contemporaneous philosopher – Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) – for the way in which his own conception of history as ‘rescuing’ the past provides an alternative panentheism, one according to which political responsibility derives from a need to redeem God whose existence has been exiled throughout the mundane world.

Corporate Governance and Corporate Political Responsibility

This study investigates the pivotal policy question of whether a firm’s corporate governance influences its political spending disclosures. Using a sample of S&P 500 firms from 2011 to 2019, we find empirical evidence that a board of directors’ monitoring and resource provision roles affect a firm’s political spending disclosure. Extending agency theory-driven expectations, we provide evidence that measures of a board’s monitoring role such as female monitoring directors, shorter board tenure, audit committee size, audit committee meetings, and audit committee education enhance a firm’s political spending disclosures. Second, drawing from resource dependence theory and examining a board’s resource provisions, we find evidence that female advisory directors, CEO duality, additional directorships, and audit committee characteristics (i.e., size, number of meetings, age, and education) promote political spending disclosures. The study contributes to corporate governance and corporate political activity literatures by outlining different types of governance that may drive a firm’s political spending disclosures, a key component of a firm’s political responsibility.

Exploring spiritual eco-humanism

This paper is a philosophical discussion about the link between utopianism and responsibility. It argues that our time demands a strong practice of political responsibility in both organizations and society based on what has been called ‘real utopianism’. It takes as a starting point Hans Jonas’ critique of utopianism. Keeping in mind the horrors of the Second World War this Jewish thinker disconnected the principle of responsibility from the idea of utopianism, and connected it to a ‘heuristics of fear’ – we should be careful with ‘wild’ new technologies, but also with new utopian perspectives. In a second step Jonas’ predecessors and utopian thinkers Martin Buber, Ernst Bloch and Ernest Callenbach are revisited. They show that a fully conceptualized idea of utopianism includes at least three dimensions of responsibility: subsistence, justice and spirituality. I then argue that if one digs deeper into the work of Jonas, it seems that the concept of responsibility in fact implies the courage to overcome a heuristics of fear. This paper therefore argues that there is no need to radically disjunct responsibility from utopianism and that the concept of responsibility actually opens a path to ‘real utopianism’. Such a concept of responsibility can best be supported by a confessionally neutral but nonetheless spiritual eco-humanist worldview that develops a new attitude towards nature, in which (eco)asceticism, morality and spirituality become intertwined.

POLITICS IN PUBLIC SERVICES OF TANGERANG CITY GOVERNMENT DOMESTIC WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT

Tangerang City is the most populous city in Banten Province, it has the potential to cause environmental problems. One of the problems in Tangerang City is the management of domestic wastewater. This study aims to analyze the politics in public services of Tangerang City Government for Domestic Wastewater Management. This study used a qualitative method with descriptive analysis, where the data sources consisted of primary and secondary data. Primary data were obtained from interviews and observations and secondary data was obtained from documents issued by the Tangerang City Government. The results of this study indicate that the Tangerang City Government has assigned several agencies, such as the Regional Planning Agency, the Health Office, and the Department of Housing, Settlement, and Land, to respond to political demands from the community in managing domestic wastewater. In public service politics, the Tangerang City Government not only provides facilities and formulates service management, but also makes democratic local regulations and opens up space for the community to provide input and evaluation. In addition, this study finds that local regulations do not regulate substantive issues as institutions that bind domestic wastewater management in Tangerang City. The Tangerang City Government realizes that meeting the needs of the community is a political responsibility that must be fulfilled.

The Law School Degree Show: law, materiality, decolonization and authentic assessment

ABSTRACT For the final year Degree Show at Westminster Law School, all final year students are required to produce a material artefact that reflects their understanding of law, justice, and their political and social responsibility as law students. In order to illustrate the process and use of this interdisciplinary assessment approach, we describe how we came about this way of thinking about assessment, what the practical challenges are, and how it all fits into a broader effort to bring about authentic real-life assessments. We offer some indication of the marking criteria and learning outcomes, and conclude by arguing that this material, interdisciplinary, decolonial and creative way of expressing the law is of pivotal importance to how we should be thinking of teaching the law, in the context of authentic assessments.