Political Justice Research Articles

(Re)cognition

In this paper I draw from critical work on the historical, social, political, economic, and cultural functions of race, to trace how Axel Honneth’s recognition as a critical social theory of justice is activated through racial thinking. In my analyses, I outline the need to theorize recognition as a “racial recognition”; complicating current theories, which seem to continuously inscribe the bourgeois white male as the true provider of justice and the bearer of rights; the true subject. Critical questions for social work are raised. How might race/racial thinking underlie our visions of social justice, and who benefits from this? What happens when we re-view the social and political justice intentions of social work through the lens of global white supremacy, say, as we move towards international development work in the global south? This paper presents important theoretical positions on race and the "morality" of recognition as social justice, which contribute highly to critical, socio-political, anti-racist social work theory and practice.

Constitutional Order in Oligarchic Democracies: Neoliberal Rights versus Socio-Economic Rights

What is the relationship between constitutional order and the emergence of oligarchic politics in contemporary democratic societies? How and to what extent does constitutional design contribute to oligarchic politics in contemporary liberal democratic states? Focusing on constitutional discourses, rather than the legal positivist interpretation of the constitution (or constitutions as text), I maintain that state constitutions should be understood as an ideational-discursive realm of competing discourses, paradigms, and interpretations of an ideal state. My main argument states that oligarchic democracies emerge because a coalition of stakeholders that promote neoliberal understanding of the constitution has taken hold of this discursive realm of constitutional interpretation both within the state apparatus and the public sphere. Thus, the crisis of democratic representation and its relationship to constitutional design represents ideational and materialist aspects: oligarchs promote, reinforce, and sustain self-serving constitutional interpretations and discourses that reinforce the political logic of oligarchic wealth accumulation while suppressing the politics of peaceful dissent and distributive justice.

Structural injustice and the legitimacy of the state-centric system

ABSTRACT Catherine Lu’s seminal Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics is right to stress the enduring nature of some colonialist structural indignities. It is less clear, however, if structural injustices justify Lu’s demand for revolutionary changes of the global order. Before transforming the pluralist state-centric system, we need transparent criteria that help us agree on the severity of structural injustices. Considering Lu’s strong focus on the colonialist origins of contemporary injustices, one would also like to know if and how their historical background affects their present moral status. The essay concludes that, in a multicultural global society with diverse moral values, we should focus on tackling the most glaring injustices and on rectifying those where accountabilities are least controversial.

Structural injustice and alienation: a reply to my critics

ABSTRACT This author’s reply addresses critiques by Reinhard Wolf, Alasia Nuti, and Kimberly Hutchings of my 2017 book, Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics. First, I restate the normative and practical significance of focusing on challenges of structural injustice for resolving many serious and pressing problems in world politics, including climate change. Second, I begin to resolve some puzzles about the concept of alienation and its relationship to justice and reconciliation, by outlining two concepts of alienation, and distinguishing them from alienation as a cognitive-affective experience. Third, I clarify the limits and potential of decolonial political theory.

On structural injustice, reconciliation and alienation

ABSTRACT In Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics, Lu argues that justice and reconciliation are analytically distinct but both needed after political catastrophes like colonialism. I argue that Lu’s compelling reconceptualization of reconciliation precisely shows the contrary by making the project of reconciliation indistinguishable from the task of realising structural justice and that we should reject the language of reconciliation in some contexts. Moreover, I contend that, in an important sense, alienation (i.e., the wrong that, according to Lu, reconciliation aims to tackle) must be generated to move towards a structurally just world. Indeed, the project of creating a structurally unjust order does require the alienation of agents from the existing background conditions of their actions.

Direitos culturais e tolerância: um diálogo entre Habermas e Forst como pressuposto para uma teoria da justiça

Por meio de uma análise reconstrutiva da filosofia político-jurídica de Jürgen Habermas e de Rainer Forst, bem como com auxílio de literatura secundária, são analisados os conceitos de direitos culturais e tolerância. O objetivo da presente pesquisa é visualizar como Habermas e Forst desenvolvem os referidos conceitos. Para este fim, o artigo é dividido em duas seções, a partir de uma justificativa introdutória da investigação dos objetivos traçados. A primeira seção trata da questão que envolve os direitos culturais, seu significado, evolução e maneira de efetivar sua garantia. A segunda seção aborda o conceito de tolerância, que Habermas trabalha enquanto necessidade procedimental a partir de direitos subjetivos a iguais liberdades de ação, enquanto Forst o trabalha a partir de uma concepção como respeito ao outro, em que será essencial o princípio de justificação da justiça, amparado no uso público da razão. Ao final, as últimas considerações apontam para o fato de que Habermas mantém seu edifício teórico da década de 1990, trabalhando a possibilidade de tolerância e a garantia de direitos culturais a partir de procedimentos democráticos e de justiça política, nos quais normas e leis devem ser racionalmente aceitas em uma cultura política compartilhada. Já Forst busca um rumo prático-normativo, em que a razão prática requer pessoas razoáveis e autônomas moralmente, trabalhando a necessidade de justificação por via procedimental.

Delegitimizing the Communist Past and Building a New Sense of Community: The Politics of Transitional Justice and Memory in Ukraine

This article studies the way in which the crimes of the communist regime have been dealt with since the late Soviet period, and the way the legacies of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) have been subject to reevaluation. During the Soviet period, policies such as the rehabilitation of victims of mass repression were initiated from above, while the documentation of human rights violations and revelations of mass repressions and death by hunger were undertaken by the dissident movement from below. Since the late perestroika period, the focus on the crimes of the communist regime has been used by the opposition in Ukraine in the struggle for the restitution of group rights. Affirmative action concerning the Ukrainian language, culture and history was seen as the restoration of historical justice. This resulted most recently in the adoption of so-called ‘decommunization’ laws, which has been a controversial and contested issue in Ukraine. The article discusses the factors that shaped the way Ukraine has handled the communist past and constructed new narratives, and reflects on the reason why a ‘politics of regret’ has not resonated yet with political actors involved in the state legitimization struggle.

War crimes trials and the politics of justice: the case of Kinoshita Eiichi, 1945–57

Considerations of justice and of politics were closely interconnected in the post‐1945 Allied pursuit of Japanese war crimes suspects. Recent scholarship deals with the issue in broad terms, but this article shows the potential effect on individual cases, by examining the British pursuit of Lieutenant‐General Kinoshita Eiichi, held responsible for cruel torture of wartime prisoners in Shanghai. Using archival sources from Britain, Hong Kong and the U.S., parliamentary debates and contemporary newspapers, the article demonstrates that Allied authorities performed delicate and sometimes contradictory balancing acts in their pursuit of retributive justice for war crimes between 1945 and the late nineteen‐fifties.

ANALISA YURIDIS TERHADAP SISTEM KAMERAL MAJELIS PERMUSYAWARATAN RAKYATSESUDAH PERUBAHAN UNDANG-UNDANG DASAR 1945

Abstract
 In the life of a state that longs for a political justice, surely in the Basic Law or the Constitution in the country the inventor of his ideas and / or its founders have included a power sharing system that seeks to re ect political justice. If it must be connected with the form of the state, in fact this idea remains rooted in political justice. In the distribution of power, which according to John Locke is divided into legislative power, executive power, and judicial power, there must be authority that is balanced with each other and not overlapping. This was stated by John Locke so that power is not centralized within one institution, thereby reducing the risk of abuse and creating a democratic state.
 
 Keywords: political justice; legislative power; judicial power; democratic state.

Inclusive peace mediation in the city: spatial segregation of violence and urban politics of ‘social’ inclusion in gang truces

ABSTRACTThis article considers the adaptation of international peace mediation to the post-war context of urban gang-related violence. The 2012 OAS-brokered San Salvador gang truce represented a shift from the management of ‘criminal’ actors through liberal security measures and narrow pragmatic criminal pacts towards a new social inclusion strategy based on local political participation, social justice and programmes to address the socio-economic causes of gang-related violence. Mediators failed to engage key interested non-armed actors who reside outside ‘criminal’ gang-held territories, with the result that the truce lacked legitimacy at the city level. Inclusive national-level engagement is particularly important in the post-war democratic Central American city because gangs play a key role in shaping urban space and urban politics. The article depicts the politics of inclusion of gangs in peace mediation as part of a city-wide debate regarding the merits of the dominant liberal/pragmatic inclusion strategy versus ‘social’ inclusion. The spatial and discursive segregation of San Salvador into ‘political’ and ‘criminal’ realms promotes a preference for liberal security discourse and the exclusive local truce process that undermined the ‘social’ truce. City-wide inclusion is required to overcome the politics-crime divide and provide a platform to unite social justice advocates.

The Visual Politics of Environmental Justice

AbstractThis article examines the visual politics at work in website photographs depicting environmental justice issues in the United States. Based on roughly 580 web-published photos collected from environmental justice organizations, the Environmental Protection Agency, the mainstream media, and traditional environmental organizations in the US, this article examines variations in how the subjects of environmental justice are represented and the potential meaning of these representations for viewers. The article identifies three particular photographic genres that serve as landmarks within the environmental justice visual terrain: the fence-line photo, the portrait, and the protest snapshot. Drawing on the literatures of environmental political theory and black visual culture, I position the photos of contemporary environmental justice within the larger discursive, visual, and political contexts that infuse them with meaning. In interpreting these meanings, I argue that a more inclusive socio-ecological politics requires visual strategies that resist racialized ways of seeing while making visible the injustice of disproportionate environmental impacts on low-income communities and people of color.

Indigenous Relationality: Women, Kinship and the Law

Strong female governance has always been central to one of the world’s oldest existing culturally diverse, harmonious, sustainable, and democratic societies. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women’s governance of a country twice the size of Europe is based on complex laws which regulate relationships to country, family, community, culture and spirituality. These laws are passed down through generations and describe kinship systems which encompass sophisticated relations to the more-than-human. This article explores Indigenous kinship as an expression of relationality, culturally specific and complex Indigenous knowledge systems which are founded on a connection to the land. Although Indigenous Australian women’s kinships have been disrupted through dispossession from the lands they belong to, the forced removal of their children across generations, and the destruction of their culture, community and kinship networks, the survival of Indigenous women’s knowledge systems have supported the restoration of Indigenous relationality. The strengthening of Indigenous women’s kinship is explored as a source of social and emotional wellbeing and an emerging politics of environmental reproductive justice.

The Arab Spring: The Hope and Reality of the Uprisings, 2nd ed. (Mark L. Haas and David W. Lesch (eds.))

The Arab Spring was a series of protests which took place in Arab countries against longstanding dictatorial regimes, because of the latter’s inability or refusal to deliver socio-economic and political justice to the common 99 masses. Protests spread like fire and made an impact not only on the governance of the Arab world but also internationally, by involving big players like Russia and the United States of America. Yet these events were intensely complicated, with multiple actors and layers of history involved in each country. The book under review here is one prodigious effort to understand the Arab Spring, considering causes and effects of the uprisings. Structurally, the book is divided into two parts. The first part, consisting of seven chapters, deals with the uprisings in Arab countries; part two, consisting of six chapters, discusses the impact of the Arab Spring on the non-Arab world and their core interests related to the uprisings.

The Arab Spring

The Arab Spring was a series of protests which took place in Arab countries against longstanding dictatorial regimes, because of the latter’s inability or refusal to deliver socio-economic and political justice to the common 99 masses. Protests spread like fire and made an impact not only on the governance of the Arab world but also internationally, by involving big players like Russia and the United States of America. Yet these events were intensely complicated, with multiple actors and layers of history involved in each country. The book under review here is one prodigious effort to understand the Arab Spring, considering causes and effects of the uprisings. Structurally, the book is divided into two parts. The first part, consisting of seven chapters, deals with the uprisings in Arab countries; part two, consisting of six chapters, discusses the impact of the Arab Spring on the non-Arab world and their core interests related to the uprisings.

Political Justice and the Capability for Responsibility

ABSTRACTIris Marion Young’s social connection model of responsibility faces one difficulty when dealing with a non-ideal case where actors, especially victims, lack what I call “capability for responsibility”. Without taking this problem into consideration, Young’s model could be criticized for blaming the victim for not taking their responsibility for political Justice. In this paper, I address this question by examining a case study taken from Japan where society is deeply structured in a mode that oppresses women. The first sections point out that Young’s model overlooks the importance of agents for political justice while trying not to blame anyone. In the second sections I will introduce the idea of the “capability for responsibility” to connect the analytical part and the prescriptive part of her model as a theory of justice, arguing that actors’ engagement in self-examination through collective action is necessary for the enhancement of their capability for responsibility.

Global Gender Justice: Distributive Justice or Participatory Parity?

The paper compares two prominent approaches to global gender justice; Alison Jaggar’s ‘distributive’ approach and Nancy Fraser’s ‘participatory’ approach. It argues that both theories have contributed valuably to develop the feminist criticism of conventional justice theories, and to conceptualise and criticise the entanglement of global injustices and gender vulnerability. However, there are also considerable differences between the two theorists, in that Fraser makes a break with ‘the distributive paradigm’ and puts the relationship between justice and democracy at the centre stage, whereas Jaggar formulates her justice notion in distributive terms, and leaves the more detailed relationship between justice and democracy largely unaddressed. The two theories are furthermore discussed and assessed in light of the GLOBUS framework and its conceptions of global political justice. It is argued that justice as non-domination plays a non-trivial, yet limited, role in both theorists’ approaches. Justice as impartiality also prevails in both contributions, but whereas impartiality ideas are tempered in Fraser by her democratic approach and commitment to the mutual recognition conception, Jaggar’s theory stands out as more limited and with a democratic deficit, from a GLOBUS perspective. However, a fair assessment must consider how GLOBUS is consciously tailored towards questions of political justice. The framework thus sets aside several of the central distributive issues that Jaggar primarily wants to address with her global gender justice theorising. A criticism of a possible democratic deficit in Jaggar’s approach should also distinguish between the promotion of substantive and ‘radical’ ideas of democracy of the kind Fraser pursues, and a commitment to general democratic norms. Finally, the paper draws some lessons from the paper’s discussions for both feminist theory and for GLOBUS.

Privacy Challenges and Approaches to the Consent Dilemma

Privacy decisions and their underlying tradeoffs are genuine fields of study in economics. This master thesis builds on the well recorded findings that people give away more private information than they would like to reveal according to their pre-decisional statements. This so called ‘privacy paradox’ is one political justification for renewing outdated privacy laws towards a more privacy protecting approach. Since May 2018 the ‘General Data Protection Regulation’ (GDPR) is legally enforceable in Europe and intends to give Europeans citizens’ the legislative frame to protect their data. By changing the decision design from opting out of sharing data, to opting in allowing the use of private information, the regulation aims at giving Europeans thought-out control over their data. However, only few reads the privacy regulations of service providers and are able to process the information towards well-balanced decisions. This results in inflationary consent-giving of users and works against the actual political intention of enabling an informed consent giving. This master thesis intends in unfolding this ‘consent dilemma’ and finding solutions towards better informed decision-making.

“Nichts als der Tod und die Satire”

Grimmelshausen’s Simplicius Simplicissimus, the classic novel of the Thirty Years War, is a unique critique in an exuberant narrative form. The double perspective (the hero narrates, as an old man, his own life), the doubt as a principle, irony as the fundamental tone – these are his main strategies to analyse the ambivalence of human behaviour as well as to check critically social models of a more peaceful society. Grimmelshausen refuses any philosophical, political or theological justification of violence. However, his irony, his humour and his narrative power make the lecture of his work a pleasure until today. The comparison with a modern African novel, Ahmadou Kouroumas Allah Is Not Obliged, reveals similarities as well as differences and proves one more time the topicality and constant relevance of this Baroque novel.

Political Dimensions of Weaker Sections Welfare in Local Self Government in India: A Study

Soon after independence, the main thrust of Indian Government centered on meeting the basic needs of India’s population which include food, clothing and shelter. With this perspective, the national policy makers looked at various measures to alleviate the rural poor. The process of self governance and planning by empowering the people through Panchayati Raj system although started nearly five decades earlier, but 73rd and 74th amendments in the Constitution of India brought an historic change in the process of decentralisation towards the grass root level and participation of people both in the formulation as well as implementation of the plans. The paper explores how the Constitution 73rd Amendment Act (1992), provided certainty, continuity and strength to the PRI’s for the welfare of the weaker sections through Decentralization. Uniform three-tier level of the village, block and district levels, direct elections to all seats and at all levels, indirect elections to chairpersons at intermediate and apex levels. Reservation on rotational basis for SC’s ST’s in proportion to their population, both for membership as well as Chairpersonships of the PRI’s. Not less than one third of the seats and offices reserved for women. The present paper intends to discuss the political participation of weaker sections in panchayat raj institutions in Karnataka in general and in Afjalpur taluk of Gulbarga District in particular as a case study. Finally the paper discusses about the political participation of weaker sections and sought their opinion of their involvement in the process of political, economic development and social justice, with the transfer of the list of Eleventh and the Twelfth Schedule of the Constitution to the rural and urban elected local bodies, and the process of welfare activities for weaker sections through the Panchayat Raj Institutions has been discussed.

Political Justice: Levinas Contra Aristotle

In this paper, I argue that two radically different conceptions of political justice can be derived from the work of Aristotle and Emmanuel Levinas—notions of justice that are indeed directly opposed. Aristotle defines justice in terms of considerations of moderation, prudence, and measure, where the virtuous actor is supposed to demonstrate aspects of character and perform acts that are neither deficient nor excessive; yet the ethics of Levinas, as instantiated in justice, is a demand that responding to the needs of others not be limited by moderate considerations, but can precisely be realized as an exorbitant and anarchic assumption of responsibility. It thus becomes of decisive importance for both a thinking of the political, and political praxis, in determining which conception of justice is found to be more compelling. I illustrate the stakes of this difference with reference to the politics of asylum, and in particular, a discussion of the historical case of the Kindertransport.