Political Theory Research Articles

“Something Was Going to Change”

The subject of the article is a critical presentation of aspects of the Democratic Transition period (Metapolitefsi) in Greece through interviews and e-mails exchanged by subscribers to the mailing list of the magazine Disability Now, collected from April to July 2000. At the heart of these dialogues lies the discourse about the lifting of accessibility barriers for disabled people in Greece during the 1990s. Through the use of contemporary political theories on populism, the author explains that the discourse on accessibility barriers becomes “a place of political opportunity.” The participants develop a kind of populist discourse inspired by the ideology of the political theory of Modernization, as well as by the possibilities and disadvantages of Greece within the politico- economic framework of the EU. These elements imbue the meaning of the disabled self with a dual content: They connect and unite disabled individuals by producing the expression of an emancipatory discourse which, however and at the same time, is maintained through traces of an ablenationalistic rhetoric, activated by notions of Greekness and Europeanness.

Agentic misrecognition in world politics

The phenomenon of misrecognition has been analysed under various angles by philosophy, political theory, sociology and lately also by international relations (IR). In IR, (mis)recognition is mainly understood as either status denial (i.e. denial of legal state recognition), inflated honor pretentions (including positive self-images, mythical narratives of the past, Great Power projections and so on), or as a denial of vital conditions necessary for identity, individuality, and freedom. There has been much theoretical work on the problem of inclusion/exclusion or the insider/outsider problem in IR and various empirical studies have shown that misrecognition can contribute to international conflict, international inequalities, (neo)colonialism, masculine domination, and limit the overall rationality of decision-making. However, what has been generally overlooked is the question of agency, the ‘who’ that is seeking and/or entitled to be an object and subject of recognition and how such exclusions and related pathologies result from forms of misrecognition. This introduction to Agentic Misrecognition in World Politics engages with some of the problems related to the question of (mis)recognition and agency in IR, the patterns of excluded recognition, and the normative conditions that pertain to these processes of (mis)recognition. It closes with a summation of the research articles and forum contributions to this volume.

Abiy Ahmed's Domestic Policy in Ethiopia: Securitization and conflict resolution

The subject of this study is a set of political reforms carried out by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed from 2018 to the present. The object of the study is the internal political contradictions accumulated in Ethiopia from 1974 to 2018. The purpose of the work is to test the hypothesis that the policy of A. Ahmed is subject to the provisions of the theory of securitization of B. Buzan and O. Weaver and is aimed at transforming the conflict education of Ethiopia into a security regime. The topic of the study is relevant, since Ethiopia is considered by a number of scientists as a potential regional heavyweight capable of stabilizing the Horn of Africa region and ultimately influencing the security of the whole of Africa. Therefore, it is important to study the dynamics of political processes in modern Ethiopia. The research is based on the theory of regional security complexes by B. Buzan and O. Weaver. The methods of work are qualitative content analysis of official documents and expert opinions, as well as event analysis, logical and philosophical assumptions are allowed. A realistic approach is used to analyze the internal political situation in Ethiopia. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that the policy of Abiy Ahmed is analyzed not from the standpoint of historical approaches, but from the point of view of political science theory, which is applied to the political process taking place in our time. The author concludes that the political course of A. Ahmed is determined by the difficult situation in which Ethiopia found itself by 2018. The Prime Minister is trying to stabilize the situation in the country, using his rich experience and professional knowledge, trying to change Ethiopia's position as a conflict entity to a security regime, his internal policy traces approaches based on strengthening the central government, which, from the point of view of the theory of B. Buzan and O. Weaver, makes Ethiopia a functional entity capable of respond to existential threats and develop successfully.

Domestic service and prostitution: Empirical and theoretical connections

Various activities are systematically imposed on women in both paid and unpaid forms, generally involving care for others, sexual activity, or a combination of both. These activities have typically been studied separately, but these analytical divisions are increasingly being questioned. This article contributes to this debate by exploring empirical and theoretical connections two of the most prominent of these activities, prostitution and domestic service. Through a survey of the empirical literature on migration for domestic service, the article identifies four themes that suggest why some migrant women move between domestic service and prostitution: pre-existing structural constraints, migration conditions, working conditions, and migration policies. Subsequently, drawing on the work of French materialist feminists Colette Guillaumin and Paola Tabet and political theorist Carole Pateman, it sketches the outline of a theoretical account of the relationship between these two activities.

Суверен и его чрезвычайное положение: макиавеллистская трактовка образа

The article examines the politically significant interpretation of the sovereign’s image as it developed in the Machiavellian tradition of Europe in the XVI–XVII centuries, as well as such categories as ‘the state interest’ and ‘the state of emergency’, which specify the sovereign’s image that retains its importance both in the modern political theory and practice.

Overcoming misrecognition: the subtle ways of benevolence in international relations

Some realists refer to benevolence in diplomacy as an artificial mask for achieving political aims. In another perspective, liberal theories of hegemonic stability aim at describing the different conditions that shape an international order based on benevolent leadership. From duplicity or Samaritan conduct that could be transformed into a paternalism reflex, benevolence does not entail a thick recognition of others. However, not only the Scottish tradition of moral sense but also other references in political theory propose an alternative conception that opens alternative paths for handling international relations. By coming back to the concepts and tools developed by these perspectives, this article proposes to explore some interactions in the international relations realm that shed light on ways to go beyond the misrecognition of alterity. This benevolent conduct is a source of social agency by taking into account the affective component of respect towards others.

Capitalism and the Organization of Displacement: Selma James’s Internationalism of the Unwaged

As political theorists explore work beyond traditional workplaces, how should we understand the vast class of insecure, informal, and unsalaried workers whose existence defies traditional categories of employment? In asking this question, I revisit the political theory of the Marxist feminist and cofounder of the International Wages for Housework movement, Selma James, to explore her “internationalism of the unwaged” and her writings on wagelessness. An example of political theory in service of struggle, James’s internationalism was widely circulated in anticolonial, Black radical, and autonomous Marxist circles in the 1970s. In this article, I argue that it was grounded in three intertwined and mutually reinforcing arguments: an account of how capitalist life is spatially divided into distinct workplaces; an anticapitalist theory of identity that explains social difference as maintained by the international division of labor and labor market hierarchies; and a diagnosis of work organization viewed from the perspective of the wageless worker. I trace how James developed these arguments about the spatial division of labor, hierarchies of identity, and internationalist political struggle and how her view of the common exploitation and division of workers formed the basis of a class-struggle identity politics. Her political theory was an important contribution to women’s international thought and transnational feminist critiques of global forms of domination and exploitation. It also offers a critique of capitalism’s organization of the displacement of work and workers and an account of wagelessness as a work situation, both of which illuminate capitalist organization of work and wageless life today.

Utopia Turns into Dystopia: Orwell’s Critic of Stalinist Marxist Innovativeness in Animal Farm

This paper aims to examine modernity in Marxism as an allegory of the animals' revolution in George Orwell's Animal Farm. The major concern of this paper is to explore the modernity and its impact of utopian Marxist conception of state considering essential characteristics of political movements and the possible relationship existed between them. One is immediately puzzled by the fact that modernist literature, art, and political theory seem to have little or nothing to do with Marxism, and are, in fact, reactionary to Marxism. Modernity in Marxism is change in the life of the people belonging to lower class or proletariats. The research tool used for research is Marxism and modernity, with reference to Robert Bocock, Abram L. Harris, and Henri Lefebvre. The research methodology used for analysis is textual analysis. The major finding is the concept of Utopia where there is everybody happy and prosperous; that is the main idea of this concept from Marxism. This notion of modernism comes into existence from different political movements in global context. The historically changing process is the base for the modernity in the society that shows the abuse of power practised by Stalin in Russia in the name of Marxism.

Discussion on the Construction of Network Leading Power of Ideological and Political Theory Teachers in Colleges and Universities

New media technology is changing the education ecology of ideological and political theory courses in colleges and universities, bringing historical opportunities for innovation, development, quality and efficiency improvement of ideological and political theory courses in colleges and universities, but also facing many challenges. Teachers of ideological and political theory courses in colleges and universities should establish innovative thinking, enhance innovation ability, improve media literacy, and perfect discourse expression, so as to promote the propaganda and education content in line with socialist core values to occupy the network plateau, and lead the majority of young students to form scientific and correct ideals and beliefs.

Analysis of the Government of Thailand's Policy Against Malay Islamic Minorities in Southern Thailand: A Review of Liliweri's Discrimination Theory

<em>This study discusses the situation of Muslim minorities in southern Thailand and the various policies of the Thai government. Historically, Thai royal relations with Muslims in the south have had a rather complex dynamic. The study highlights the various policies of the Government of Thailand in regulating the enforcement of Islamic law and the education of prayerful Muslims in southern Thailand. This research uses the library research approach in the form of a literature review, i.e., gathering various pieces of literature related to the topics discussed from various sources such as books, journal articles, time media, etc., then the researchers will read one by one the work of the writer, which is then reviewed or analyzed descriptively using the basis of Liliweri's political theory of discrimination as a knife analysis. The results found that, as a state duty, the policy of the Government of Thailand in regulating the application of Islamic law and post-education runs in accordance with the state constitution and the purposes of national education. However, such a policy gives Muslims a loss of value on the part of the custody of religious originality, according to the analysis of the theory of indirect discrimination. This policy is designed with complex procedures that seem to benefit the material side but save the invisible disadvantage.</em>

Disciplining the disobedient Black maternal subject: the assimilatory pedagogies of public suffering and punishment

Drawing feminist analyses of the affective work of shame, compassion and pain into dialogue with Black political theory's critique of the ‘ordinary’ spectacle of Black suffering and death, this article theoretically examines the disciplining of Black maternal subjects who behave badly in Nordic public space. Considering media coverage of two separate instances from 2019 where Black mothers are either threatened by the risk of death or succumb to death, this article analyses how the racial logics of national assimilation locate these women as deviantly unassimilable subjects who are swiftly made culpable for the conditions of their own suffering.

THE SWORD IS A PLOUGHSHARE? INTERPRETING THE ‘ARMED WOMAN’ IN LATE BRONZE AGE AEGEAN ART

Despite Late Bronze Age Aegean art containing a number of depictions of armed women, unacknowledged preconceptions about gender continue to divert thoughts away from past women exercising violent or coercive power, and thus affecting significantly our understanding of Late Bronze Age Aegean societies in general. This paper examines the depiction of armed women in the art of the Late Bronze Age Aegean and considers how previous generations of researchers have chosen to interpret it. The author then uses recent developments in gender theory and political theory to suggest that the connection of women to power needs to be reassessed.

“Tomb of the Philosophers” in Pella, Macedonia Revisited: New Findings on Its Iconography


 
 
 This article discusses the new findings on the iconography of the two figural friezes painted in the interior of the “Tomb of the Philosophers”, an early Hellenistic, monumental, built cist grave, situated in the east cemetery of Pella, Macedonia. A new technical investigation of the tomb’s wall paintings has allowed the revision of older readings of the two friezes. In the lower, main figural frieze new observations pertain to figure characterization, through features, dress and attributes, as well as to the scene’s setting. The figures of the frieze offer the earliest preserved gathering of intellectuals whose professional insignia cannot be missed, while the celestial globe shown on the west wall appears to be one of the earliest extant representations of the device and the earliest preserved in a funerary environment. The new identification proposed for the monuments shown in the upper, secondary frieze, which represents a horse race, aligns the frieze’s composition with established iconographic schemes of agonistic events, adds multiple levels of symbolism, and ties the Pella wall-paintings more tightly than previously believed with the “Torre Annunziata philosopher mosaic”, Pompeii, and its twin from Sarsina, Umbria. The bonds of astronomy/cosmology with political theory and with aspects of Macedonian royal ideology, in particular, are set in relief. Finally, it is argued that the physical vicinity of the “Tomb of the Philosophers” with the palace of Pella and the royal court informed the mode of burial of a man of thought with favourable relations to his times’ monarchy, as well as his mode of portrayal as “the astronomer” on the west wall, a figure that presents us with a Macedonian iconographic hybrid of a philosopher, resonating the Platonic concept of the “philosopher king”.
 
 

Democratic republicanism and political competence in treatments of radical Enlightenment

ABSTRACT This article argues that what was understood as democracy in the eighteenth century differs fundamentally from modern democracy. While modern democratic states take locally born or naturalized personhood as the criterion of citizenship, eighteenth-century advocates of democracy demanded proof of political competence to allow participation in politics. While the requirement of competence to engage in any activity is not unreasonable, if defined, as it was by most Enlightenment thinkers, as a combination of independence, cultural standing and wealth, it is clearly elitist. Enlightenment criticisms of birth and status as criteria of political standing should not be mistaken for demands for broadly inclusive, modern conceptions of equality and democracy. Rather, most Enlightenment thinkers and publicists, fully aware of the implications of widespread and debilitating poverty, expressed reservations about granting the ‘people’ an effective role in politics. Far from being ‘radical’, Enlightenment political theory called for the replacement of an elitism based on status and privilege with an elitism of ability and wealth.

The state and the legalisation of illicit financial flows: trading gold in Bolivia

ABSTRACT Most research on illicit financial flows (IFFs) has focused on illicit outflows from low-income countries and the role of non-state actors in generating IFFs. Less attention has been paid to processes through which IFFs enter formal value chains – in effect being legalised before leaving the country – or the crucial role of state institutions as gatekeepers. We develop a novel explanatory approach to account for the enabling role of state institutions in the legalisation of IFFs. Building on political settlement theory, we explain the performance of institutions in regulating IFFs as a function to maintain political power. Taking the case of Bolivia, we examine how legalising illicit value flows works in practice and analyse the motives and underlying conditions that lead state institutions to permit the formal export of gold shipments that have been illicitly sourced or transferred. We find that the legalisation of IFFs accommodates the interests of powerful cooperatives dominating the gold-mining sector, which are critical to maintaining the political settlement on which the incumbent government’s power is based. By maintaining a status quo of non-enforcement, legal ambiguity, and informality, gold-mining cooperatives reap higher benefits from resource extraction at the expense of domestic revenue mobilisation.

Towards a decolonial political theory: Thinking from the zone of nonbeing

This article offers to outline a direction for a decolonial political theory based on Aimé Césaire’s and Frantz Fanon’s thoughts. In doing so, I will first discuss some work of comparative political theory that could be associated with an attempt to decolonize political theory. Rather than a systematic critique of these works, this article aims to outline some of their limits from a decolonial perspective, such as their embedment in a continental ontology/logic, and their over-emphasis on methodology that can lead to an instrumental account of politics. In contrast, I will argue for a decolonial existential political theory that grounds its investigation in what Frantz Fanon called ‘the zone of nonbeing’ and that takes politics as first philosophy. To make my point, I will discuss Aimé Césaire’s Letter to Maurice Thorez and Frantz Fanon’s Political Theory of the Damnés.

Divide et Impera in the Banten Sultanate: The Political Succession of Sultan Haji and VOC's Pepper Monopoly in the 17th and 18th Centuries

Nusantara's spice commodities became one of the determining factors of the global spice trade in the 17th and 18th centuries. There were three types of superior spices produced by the Nusantara such as cloves, nutmeg, and pepper. In the 17th century AD, Banten Sultanate was known as a pepper producer, and its pepper trade significantly influenced the economic and political development of the region. Apart from improving the economy, this commodity was also used to establish diplomatic relations between foreign nations. However, the pepper trade also became one of the factors that caused conflict in the Banten Sultanate. The implementation of the divide et impera strategy by the VOC caused an internal conflict between Sultan Haji and Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa. The conflict occurred when Sultan Haji allied with the VOC to succeed his father, Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa. Sultan Haji made an agreement with the VOC in 1684, allowing the company to monopolize the pepper trade. This research examines this issue by looking at the overall condition of the pepper trade before and after the VOC's presence in the Banten Sultanate and the succession of Sultan Haji through the 1684 pepper trade agreement. This qualitative research uses historical research methods with a political approach. The theory used in this research is political economy theory, which includes understanding power, economic system, and public policy. The historical research method comprises heuristics, verification, interpretation, and historiography stages. The analysis using a political approach reveals the extent to which the Banten Sultanate's pepper trade policy influenced the succession of Sultan Haji and the monopolization of the pepper trade by the VOC.

Research on the Problems and Countermeasures of the Ideological and Political Theory Courses and Values Throughout the Curriculum Collaborative Construction in Higher Vocational Colleges

Higher vocational universities are important bases for the training of technical and skilled personnel, as well as important places for values education. How to combine ideological and political education and specialized education well is a difficult problem faced by the current higher vocational education. This paper discusses the existing problems in the collaborative construction of ideological and political courses in higher vocational universities and the values throughout the curriculum from the perspectives of teaching content, teaching methods, and teaching objectives, and proposes corresponding countermeasures, hoping to provide some reference for promoting the quality improvement of ideological and political education in higher vocational colleges.

A critical review of the significance of elitism and pluralism to disaster risk management

AbstractDisasters and disaster risks are social phenomena that take place in a political space shaped by different political ideologies. Despite this connection, the field of disaster risk management has been developed without a deliberate incorporation of political theories. Using a narrative literature review methodology, this paper sought to elucidate the significance of political theory in shaping both the policy and practice of disaster risk management. The review reveals notable intersections between political theories, such as elitism and pluralism, and established disaster risk management paradigms, specifically objectivism and constructivism. Notably, elitism and objectivism tend to promote expertise, marginalize citizen participation, and emphasize centralized disaster management, whereas pluralism and constructivism advocate for diversity, tolerance, and competition, aligning with the concept of disaster risk management. The paper argues that ignoring political theories in disaster risk management can conceal a deeper understanding of the power relations between different stakeholders, as well as the historical, economic, social, and political characteristics of a society. It advocates for future studies to examine the contributions of political theories explicitly and critically to disaster risk policies and practices. This call highlights the need for a deeper understanding of how political theories impact the effectiveness and equity of disaster risk management.

Human Security of Inuit and Sámi in the 21st Century: The Canadian and Finnish Cases

In a changing territorial and geopolitical moment of the Arctic region, are the Indigenous Peoples Organizations heard at the regional level and are the Arctic states working to keep them safe and secure? To safeguard the human security of Arctic Indigenous peoples, Arctic states (and their governments) have to understand the needs and changes that are affecting their way of life as well as to be able to cooperate between them. In a comparative study of Canada’s and Finland’s Arctic policies—<em>Canada’s Arctic and Northern Policy Framework</em> (2019) and <em>Finland’s Strategy for Arctic Policy</em> (2021)—it is possible to identify the applicability of the human security approach, which is influenced by the truth and reconciliation process between Canada and Inuit and Finland and Sámi. This process is a main factor in having their human rights respected and their human security safeguarded, considering that the relation between the countries of the North and the South of the Arctic countries is a discovery of their diversity (linguistical and cultural) in the 21st century. In my perspective, and for a participative democracy to be applied as mentioned by the green political theory (following the views of scholars like Barry, Eckersley, and Goodin), states and governments need to be open and recognise the gaps identified by those communities and transnational organisations.