Popular Consent Research Articles

Petitioning for empire in Napoleonic Europe

Petitions, loyal addresses, plebiscites, and other displays of popular consent accompanied most episodes of the revolutionary and Napoleonic expansion of France between 1789 and 1814. Petitioning had been adapted and transformed in France during the revolution, through which it became associated to popular sovereignty. Historians have often studied popular mobilisation through the prism of the conquest of rights, thereby pitting subordinate groups against entrenched ruling classes. This article surveys a different development, as French revolutionary administrators and generals, and Napoleon himself, adapted and reconfigured petitioning as a top-down tool for territorial expansion and empire-building, using it to invoke the supposed popular acquiescence to their reconfiguration of the political map of Europe. French propaganda portrayed these initiatives within the same interpretative framework that discussed the value of other, more autonomous, petitions. This work will thus analyse the paradox of top-down-controlled mobilisations that, at the same time, reinforced the symbolic pre-eminence of popular consent and participation.

When all seemed lost. A social network analysis of the waste-related environmental movement in Campania, Italy

The Italian region of Campania and its capital Naples have epitomized waste management failure in Europe since 2008 when international media covered extensively the waste crisis occurring there. In response to the crisis, the Italian national government took an authoritarian turn in waste policies and criminalized citizens' grievances and mobilizations against waste-facility siting in Campania. The state authorities' intervention gained popular consent and obscured the multifaceted and unjust geographies of waste management in the region. It was a serious blow for the waste-related justice movement in Campania. However, just when waste management seemed under control the movement re-emerged stronger and more effective than it had been prior to the 2008 crisis. Activists created a new counter narrative and liberated themselves from the constraints imposed by the repressive measures of the national government. They built a new frame around the unhealthy space, whose expansion, they maintained, was caused by the waste-related contamination. Yet the strength of the movement and its transformation following 2008 can only be fully understood when the structural property and the components of the EJ activists’ networks are also considered. We apply a Social Network Analysis to show how an effective environmental justice movement requires a cohesive and robust network as well as a comprehensive narrative. The waste-related movement in Campania went from being an archipelago of isolated clusters of organizations with a plural but fragmented claims (before 2008), to a tightly interconnected network supporting a unified political platform (after 2008). We link together the reframing of the movement around health issues with the reconfiguration of activist networks. We use the Campania case to show how environmental justice movements might overcome repression and criminalization and progress toward social justice and ecologically sound transformations.

Fostering Justice and Stability: Rights Protection and National Sovereignty in the Honduran Zones for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDE)

Honduras's National Congress overwhelmingly approved a bold solution to confront the institutional instability, corruption, and violence that have undermined the protection of basic human rights. The solution, originally inspired by Nobel-Prize-winning economist Paul Romer's charter cities concept, was to form new, independent governing institutions for designated zones of the country, established by popular consent and international best practices for governance. Thus were born the Zonas de Empleo y Desarrollo Economico (Zones of Employment and Economic Development or ZEDEs). Established by constitutional amendment and organic law, the ZEDEs are intended to adopt new public management models operating with a high degree of autonomy, yet without renouncing Honduran sovereignty. Given their novelty and their troubled emergence against a backdrop of institutional failure, the ZEDEs have encountered understandable skepticism, confusion, and criticism. The main concerns have been that the ZEDEs do not protect individual rights and instead expose the Honduran people to abuse and exploitation by foreign companies. Many authors also assert that the ZEDEs undermine Honduran sovereignty. As strong supporters of human rights and institutional accountability, the authors take these concerns seriously. Both are engaged in a multi-year effort to analyze and strengthen the ZEDE legal regime, including its human rights protections. This paper is a product of those efforts. This paper addresses the question of whether the ZEDEs are consistent with Honduran sovereignty and human rights by way of constructing a general rule for ZEDE autonomy that defines the scope of what a ZEDE can legally do. This construction is made by applying principles of statutory construction accepted both internationally and in Honduras to the laws establishing the ZEDEs. This general rule establishes respect for sovereignty and human rights as limitations or outer bounds on ZEDE autonomy, thereby forcing ZEDEs to not transgress these core principles. Thus, while the general rule for ZEDE autonomy allows the ZEDEs wide latitude to develop new laws and administrations, it also ensures consistency with human rights norms and Honduran sovereignty. Moreover, it helps position the ZEDEs to greatly improve the status of human rights and institutional strength in Honduras. This paper begins by highlighting the major challenges facing Honduras today. It then analyses the laws creating the ZEDEs to formulate the general rule of ZEDE autonomy. It then details the human rights safeguards that ZEDEs must comply with and, finally, the relationship between ZEDE autonomy and Honduran sovereignty. As a result, the paper clarifies the ZEDE’s legal obligations regarding human rights and national sovereignty, thus helping define the scope of ZEDE autonomy.

Ideological Origins of William Penn's 'Holy Experiment'

The story of the founding of Pennsylvania is well-known to historians and the public alike. Penn, having inherited the debt owed to his father by Charles II, leveraged this debt to acquire a proprietary charter to over 45,000 square miles of what would become Penn's religiously tolerant Quaker colony. Less well-known are the origins of the ideas that buttressed Penn's colonial government. One historian wrote that William Penn remains a man apart, a figure whom many know a little, but few know well. Regarding the Quakers, another historian concluded that [t]he Society of Friends...have enormous significance for the history of humanitarian and religious reforms, but in a discussion of eighteenth-century arguments about the constitution they can be safely neglected. As a result of this neglect, there is a gap in the scholarly work regarding the philosophical origins of Penn's ideas for governing the Pennsylvania colony. This paper seeks to fill that gap by examining Penn's writings and ideas about governance and searching for their roots in the people and the events that shaped his early life in England. Ultimately, the ideological origins that underpinned Penn's Holy Experiment were primarily derived from the ancient English constitution, as exemplified by the radical English Leveller movement of the mid-17th century, and included religious freedom, trial by jury, and popular consent by expanded suffrage. The radical libertarian ideas of the Levellers, as applied to Pennsylvania's colonial government, were remarkably liberal for their time. The legacy of Penn's ideas flourished into the 18th century and provided a lasting influence through the Founding generation and beyond.

Islam as The State Ideology: Exploring from Gramsci’s Notion of Power, Culture and Ideology

The paper aims at establishing relationships between culture, power, and the state ideology. The reading of Malaysian politics through Gramsci’s conceptual framework provides a tentative interpretation on the state’s exercise of power with popular consent, the structure of power, relation between the state and subaltern groups. Reading through the concept of hegemony, the paper explores the construction and enactment of Islam by the power of the state. It highlights how Islam came to be constructed as the state ideology and how the state establishes and maintains the hegemonic position. On this basis, Islam has been used to produce a specific set of structures in Malaysia to gain national-popular support. The state-society relations will be explored through Gramsci’s notion of civil society to illustrate the possible resistance to the state power. The paper suggests that civil society as a field of contestation in Malaysia. The 14th General Election result has demonstrated that ideology could be contested, hence challenging the state’s domination or coercive power. In conclusion, this paper has demonstrated the previous state’s struggle with civil actors in dominating and maintaining its popular ideology. It could be seen how actors of nonconformist voices in civil society have mobilised themselves into organised groups and institutions to undermine the state hegemony thus assisting the change of the ruling power in the GE14. After 61 years of Independence, Malaysia is finally celebrated the new ruling party. Keywords: Civil society, culture, ideology, power, state hegemony.

Evil lords, benign historians: strongman politics in medieval India and Renaissance Florence

ABSTRACTRecent developments in Europe and the United States (US) attest to an increasing fascination with and nostalgia for the strong leaders of the past – especially those that emerged in the aftermath of the creation of nation states and during the period between the First World War and the end of the Cold War era. Considerations of the “strongman syndrome” have a long lineage in premodern European and Islamic political thought. The famous Italian humanist Leonardo Bruni (ca. 1370–1444), for example, provides in his History of the Florentine People a narrative of the events that led to the ascension, ten-month rule and downfall of Walter VI of Brienne in 1342 in Florence. Writing one hundred years earlier, the historian and political writer Żiyā' al-Dīn Baranī (ca. 1285–1357) in his History of Fīrūz Shāh analyzes the failed leadership of the sultan of Delhi, Muḥammad b. Tughluq (r. 1324–1351). This article presents an exploration of specific variants of autocratic leadership in Renaissance Florence and the Delhi Sultanate – as recorded in Bruni’s and Baranī’s writings, respectively – which demonstrates that both authors seek to offer reflections on the emergence and gradual degeneration of strongman rule that are embedded in a broader discussion of the didactic value of the study of history and its relevance to good government. Both Bruni and Baranī highlight the transience of political authority and the dangers that can arise when a leader is out of touch with the overall social climate, alienates his constituency and operates without popular consent. A detailed examination of premodern modes of envisioning strongman rule can yield fresh insights into the circumstances that incubate the strongman syndrome and the ascent of strong leaders that are still timely today.

Thomas Jefferson and the Living Constitution

The persistence of the debate between living constitutionalists and originalists in the United States is often attributed to motives of political expediency on one or both sides. Without denying the influence of such motives, this article maintains that the debate persists also because of an inevitable fraying of the connection between the written Constitution and the popular consent that is meant to underpin it. In order to clarify the problem, I turn to Thomas Jefferson’s “earth belongs to the living” letter, which is less idiosyncratic and perhaps also less idealistic than generally believed, and which shows how written constitutionalism might have been better combined with the consent of the people over the long term. In sum, this article offers a revised view of a controversial aspect of Jefferson’s thought and, with it, a revised view of a central debate in contemporary American politics.

Catholic, Anglican, and Puritan Representations of Royal Martyrs

Abstract This journal article is derived from my doctoral thesis undertaken at UEA Norwich, which provided the first in–depth comparison of printed representations of Catholic and Protestant martyrdom in Tudor England since the work of McGrath and Dickens during the 1960s. In this piece of research, a martyr is defined as one who bore witness to persecution during the Tudor Reformation (c.1530-1600), and who ultimately died for his or her beliefs rather than abjure. The main themes discussed were issues of continuity and change: to what extent did Protestant depictions of martyrs draw upon pre–Reformation ideas? Were they a radical break from the past; or did they represent gradual evolution and transition in which some older beliefs were perpetuated, some were reinterpreted allegorically, and others were abandoned and replaced with new representations? Novel contributions to the historiography include the representation of non–martyrs (individuals executed for their religion but who failed to gain full recognition in Catholic or Protestant martyrologies); Puritan efforts to reform the Church of England internally by supplanting lingering pre–Reformation rituals, relics and images with abstract, Old Testament inspired sermons; and the depiction of persecutors’ untimely deaths as evidence not only of divine providence, but also of the illegitimacy of rival churches. Additionally, I have examined depictions of the state’s dominance over the criminal’s body and the extent order was maintained through terror or, conversely, willing popular consent. Although firmly grounded in history, my methodology also incorporated elements from other disciplines, especially gender studies, death studies, religion, philosophy, and some aspects of art history. In particular, I have reassessed gender roles in the sixteenth century, and discussed the language of inversion, where exceptionally courageous female martyrs were portrayed with the masculine virtues of courage, analytical rationality or self–control; and allegedly negative feminine traits such as cowardice, deceit, treachery, or sexual misconduct were used to shame and discredit clergymen from rival religious groups or sects.

Migration and justice: a reply to my critics

In this response to six critics, I begin by clarifying the sense in which my approach to the issue of immigration is ‘realistic’. I also explain why a realistic approach must place immigration in a nation-state context, although without treating it as primarily reparative for historic injustice. I suggest that it is implausible to regard global equality of opportunity, as opposed to global sufficiency, as setting limits to national self-determination. I then defend my use of the distinction between refugees and economic migrants to frame the discussion of immigration against the charge that all migrants are potentially vulnerable to the decisions of admitting states, since these may determine the fate of their life-projects. And I also defend the claim that, in the case of refugees, justice requires only that each state should discharge its fair share of the burden of admitting them; doing more than this would require popular consent. Finally, I consider the case of irregular migrants, and explain in what sense they have taken unfair advantage of other potential migrants; I defend offering a conditional amnesty to people in this category.

Comparative analysis of political systems and ethnic mobilization: Assimilation versus exclusion

The success of minority nationalisms and their claim to autonomy is primarily dependent on the popular support they receive from their constituencies. Aspirations of minority groups demanding self-rule are also accepted as democratic because of this popular consent. The unsuccessful autonomy referendums in both Puerto Rico and Corsica, however, deviated from this trend leaving questions behind about where and when autonomy is likely to be a democratic and realistic solution. The article elaborates on five variables explaining popular support for ethnonationalism and questions their reliability across the cases of Quebec, Flanders and Western Thrace. Experimenting with the most different systems design (the Mill’s method of agreement), this article concludes that minority nationalism is stronger in political systems of ethnic differentiation than assimilation. The article also verifies this in the contrasting cases of Corsica and Puerto Rico where the nationalist factions failed to mobilize their ethnic constituency because of their political culture being divided by the political systems of integration and assimilation.

Singapore's Constitutionalism: A Model, But of What Sort?

A response to Prof. Mark Tushnet's article, "Authoritarian Constitutionalism" in 100 Cornell L. Rev. 391 (2015) agreeing that we need to think about constitutionalism as a spectrum and not a simple binary proposition, but asserting that there are three crucial dimensions to consider in constructing a typology of the varieties of constitutionalism. One would measure the degree to which power is limited and contained; a second would measure the degree and extent of popular consent and legitimacy behind the government, and a third would evaluate the procedures and process by which law is made and enforced - a measure of the rule of law divorced from deeper commitments to the ideals of liberal constitutionalism. The article asserts that we need to pay close attention to the difference between the requirements for a constitution-al state, and those for one that subscribes to constitutional-ism. The Republic of Singapore provides a compelling case study to illustrate these differences.

The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome by Anthony Kaldellis (review)

Reviewed by: The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome by Anthony Kaldellis Warren Treadgold The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome Anthony Kaldellis Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Pp. xvi + 290. ISBN 8978–0-674–36540–7 Even if Anthony Kaldellis is unlikely to persuade other scholars to call the Byzantine Empire a “republic,” most of what he means by that term is neither unreasonable nor unprecedented. Originally res publica (“public thing”) just meant the Roman state; after converting what remained of the old representative government into a monarchy, Augustus still called it the res publica, though it was later called an empire (Latin [End Page 447] imperium, Greek basileia) by the Byzantines and others. The Byzantines had no exact Greek equivalent for the Latin res publica, but Kaldellis argues plausibly that their words koinon (“common thing”) and politeia (“polity”) expressed pretty much the same idea. By calling Byzantium a republic, Kaldellis wants to emphasize several of its characteristics that modern historians have often underrated or denied: that what we give the modern name “Byzantium” was just the later phase of the Roman state, that it was administered according to a system of laws, that it was not just a political construct but a community with a sense of identity and common interests (elsewhere Kaldellis has called it “the nation state of the Romans,” another term unlikely to win wide acceptance), and (most controversially) that its emperor’s powers were not absolute and depended on popular consent. These points should be taken seriously even by those who think calling Byzantium a “republic” invites misleading ancient and modern comparisons. That Byzantium was continuous with Rome is of course a fact, to which Kaldellis alludes by calling Byzantium “New Rome” in his title. His argument includes Roman history before his nominal starting date in the fifth century, though he avoids simply calling the Byzantine Empire the Roman Empire, as the Byzantines did. (He also rejects Latin forms of Byzantine names in favor of an inconsistent mixture of Greek and Anglicized forms, so that we find “Constantine I” but “Konstantinos V,” and “Justinian II” but “Tiberios III.”) His arguments for Byzantium’s legal and national characteristics are largely justified but somewhat exaggerated, since Byzantine emperors (and judges) paid little attention to written laws and most Byzantines were thoroughly apolitical. Yet Kaldellis is surely right that the Byzantines had a sort of “public opinion,” which our sources repeatedly mention, though some modern scholars have denied that such a thing existed in pre-modern times. He is also right that the emperor had a theoretical responsibility to rule in the interest of his subjects, and that a definite risk of being overthrown significantly limited his powers; but Kaldellis goes beyond this, maintaining that the “imperial idea” of the ruler’s being chosen by God was merely “a rhetorical superstructure” (172), since the emperor’s power actually depended on his popularity. Kaldellis addresses a real problem: that the Byzantines often rebelled against and not infrequently dethroned the emperors whom they claimed to consider divinely chosen. He argues that from the time of Augustus the emperor derived his power from the consent of the Roman people (including the Roman army), who accordingly overthrew several unpopular emperors. In the third century, when the emperors ceased to reside mainly at Rome and faced frequent military revolts, they tried to defend themselves by developing the idea that they were divinely chosen, which in the fourth century came to mean chosen by the Christian God. By the fifth century, when the emperors resided in Constantinople, its citizens took over the role of the people of Rome, including their right to depose unpopular emperors. “To be blunt, civil wars and other challenges were a form of election. . . . This interpretation of Byzantine civil war explains the following striking fact: no state in history ever had more civil wars that changed nothing about the structure and ideology of the [End Page 448] polity. . . . [C]ivil wars were essentially political contests over public opinion and hinged on perceptions of popularity and unpopularity. . . . Despite the damage that they did, they also ensured that Byzantium was ruled by generally capable...

Customary Trade and the Complications of Consent

AbstractGlobal justice theorists have given much attention to corporations' purchases of state‐owned natural resources controlled by dictators. These resources, the common argument goes, belong to the people rather than to those who exercise effective political power. Dictators who rely on violence to secure their political power and who sell state‐owned natural resources without authorisation from their people, or from their people's elected delegates, are therefore violating their peoples' property rights. But many dictatorships also distribute natural resource revenue to the population, and stopping to purchase natural resources from them is therefore likely to produce relative deprivation for the people, even while increasing the chances of the people gaining control over their property. Given these circumstances, can corporations buying the people's natural resources from a distributive dictatorship appeal to the people's consent as justification for such purchases? I consider this question by inspecting three types of consent to which resource corporations might appeal. I show that, under the circumstances of natural resource trade with distributive dictatorships, none of these types of consent can obtain. Hence, resource corporations cannot appeal to popular consent to defend their transactions with distributive dictatorships.

Telenovelas: Television Stories for Our Global Times

A complete international political economy connects transnational media structures with programming content demonstrating themes and ideologies that promote transnational capitalist social relations, including consumerism, individualism, deference to authority, and a dampening of citizenship. Series melodramas, known internationally as telenovelas, does not appear as a cultural or media response by Latin American cultures resisting American imperialism, but as a hybrid genre articulating popular consent for transnational capitalist hegemony.

The oil and gas industry: the challenge for proper dissemination of knowledge

Abstract After the 2012 Emilia–Romagna (Italy) seismic sequence, oil and gas activities have been accused, mainly through the Internet, of being responsible for triggering/inducing local earthquakes; many people consider this information to be true for three reasons: (1) industry and professionals are unable to explain the matter; (2) authorities are too often driven by research of popular consent; and (3) scientists are usually not trained to deal with people. The consequence has been a silence filled with opposition, protest and experts of everything; spin-doctors have easily become ‘geologists’ thanks to the Internet and once the ‘net’ has promoted them, now it is hard to remove this false label. Words like seismicity, fracking, drilling and subsidence have become common, and used without their correct meaning always being known, in the name of supposed environmental protection and sustainability, and with a precautionary approach to the question to always be applied. A smart use of a few keywords gave a number of spin-doctors the opportunity for fame. Any attempt to give correct information was ‘proclaimed by experts to be in conflict of interest’. The industry needs to improve its communication of awareness and sustainability. Petroleum geologists need to answer questions coming from the community, and they have to accept this challenge by disseminating knowledge in a proper and ethical way.

Overcoming Environmental Challenges by Antagonizing Environmental Protesters: The Turkish Government Discourse against Anti-hydroelectric Power Plants Movements

Due to the growing public importance of environmental concerns in the contemporary world, governments that prioritize economic interests over environmental concerns may try to counter environmental challenges not by openly declaring that they do not want to consider environmental demands, but by attempting to antagonize the protesters who voice such demands. This essay explores such a governmental response by analyzing the discourse articulated by the Turkish Government against movements that oppose the construction of hydroelectric power plants (HEPPs) on environmental grounds. In particular, the analysis focuses on how HEPPs, environmental claims and demands of movements, and environmental protesters are represented within the pro-HEPP discourse, and in what ways these representations appeal to popular perceptions. It is demonstrated that the discourse of the government attempts to counter the challenges of protesters by establishing an antagonist relation between the protesters and society by representing HEPPs as crucial for the economic development and, therefore, as compatible with the interests of society as a whole. Moreover, it also attempts to achieve this through portraying the protesters as criminals and terrorists who block the economic development of the country and pose significant threats to the commonwealth, not for legitimate environmental concerns but for some dubious motives and incentives. It is concluded that, with this approach, the government has managed to gain popular consent not only for the construction of HEPPs, but also for the repression of such movements.

Free Speech Without Democracy

In the United States, First Amendment protections for free speech are deeply associated with democracy. The dominant view in the Supreme Court and among commentators is that the primary (albeit not necessarily the only) reason we protect free speech is because of its essential role in advancing democratic self-governance. What are the implications of the democratic self-governance theory for free-speech protections outside the United States, in particular in nondemocratic countries? If we assume that the role of free speech is to advance democratic politics, then presumably non-democratic countries would have no reason to protect or tolerate speech. After all, if one rejects western-style liberal democracy, presumably one also rejects the subsidiary rules that undergird that system of government. The truth, however, is more complex. First of all, the vast majority of constitutions in the world grant at least some level of written protection for free speech, even though many of these constitutions are in countries which do not even purport to be free, multiparty democracies. Of course, many of these constitutional protections are shams; but it is simply not the case that no autocratic regimes permit free speech. The purpose of this paper is to explore how and why that might be so, and to consider whether the answers to these questions might have implications for domestic law.I begin by surveying the scope of global protections for free speech in written constitutions, and then examining in some detail three case studies of autocratic countries which have provided a degree of room for free speech: modern Communist China, the Soviet Union during the Glasnost era under Mikhail Gorbachev, and modern Qatar. In each case, I demonstrate that the regime provides meaningful protections for free speech, albeit with clear limits. I also argue that in each of these cases, the leadership has absolutely no interest in advancing democracy or surrendering their monopoly on power. Yet even without democracy, they perceive that permitting some degree of free speech advances their interests and the interests of their citizens and nations.Based on my case studies, I identify three distinct reasons why autocratic leaders might have an interest in permitting some freedom of speech by citizens. The first, and most significant, is internal control. In any large, bureaucratic system, central leadership often faces great difficulty in getting local officials to advance central policies and follow central leadership. Citizens can play an important role in identifying, and publicizing, corruption and lawlessness, as well as violations of central policy, at the local level. Second, free speech can act as a safety valve. Permitting some degree of free speech can, therefore, alleviate pressures for political change. Third, free speech as a form of citizen participation in government can lend legitimacy to a government, even without the legitimacy conferred by popular consent through elections. I also explore the countervailing factors – notably the desire for rulers to maintain their power – which result in clear limits on what sorts of speech will be tolerated in autocracies.I close by considering whether these alternative justifications for protecting free speech have any implications for speech within the United States. I argue they do, for this reason: even though our system of government is at its base democratic, actual citizen interactions with the government often are not experienced this way. This means that in addition to protecting democratic government, free speech also plays some of the same roles in the U.S. as in autocracies: permitting oversight over the bureaucracy, providing a safety valve, and granting legitimacy to high officials. I close by considering some doctrinal implications of this insight.

After ‘Security First’: An Analysis of Security Transition and ‘Statebuilding’ in the West Bank 2007-11

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) imposition of order after the end of the al-Aqsa Intifada has been generally interpreted as a success. Not only did the PA consolidate its power in the West Bank and restore good relations with Israel and the West, it also appeared to obtain popular legitimacy by cracking down on its political opponents. This paper discusses the impact of the PA’s imposition of order in Nablus, a town which had endured lawlessness and disorder under an Israeli siege (2001-7) and had been the focus of the PA’s security agenda. It argues that, though the PA’s security agenda initially enjoyed popular consent, this does not demonstrate public endorsement of the PA’s legitimacy. Rather the consent that such measures produced was superficial and, in the long term, the acceleration of the PA’s shift towards authoritarianism is likely to be profoundly debilitating for Palestinian society in general.

Who owns “the spring” in Palestine? Rethinking popular consent and resistance in the context of the “Palestinian State” and the “Arab Spring”

The Palestinian Authority's (PA) claim to embody the spirit of the “Arab Spring”, through its recent “state-building” agenda – including its elevation to “non-member observer status” at the United Nations – is disingenuous. This conclusion rests on three key arguments outlined in this article. First, this article identifies a continuation of broader patterns of authoritarianism represented by the PA's lack of adherence to democratic practices, the deprivation of access for the Palestinian population to basic resources and the wider issue of the continued absence of Palestinian sovereignty. Second, it identifies the intensification of some authoritarian practices within Palestine, particularly in the areas of security and policing, for example by the use of force against protestors. Finally, this article identifies that civil-society groups and opposition supporters throughout 2011–2012 have more genuinely embodied evidence of resistance to authoritarianism in popular demonstrations against the PA.

Empire's Law: A Genealogy of Territorial Sovereignty and Secession Before National Self-Determination

In the contemporary world, the problem of secession presents itself as a conflict between self-determination and territorial integrity in international law, and between principles of consent of the governed and indivisibility of the state in constitutional law. It has not always been so in the history of the modern state since 1648. Before the modern revolutions gave rise to modern nationalism, the elements of self-determination and popular consent were absent in both domestic and international law and politics. Territory was largely treated as the property as the sovereign king of the composite kingly states. With various legal means including conquest, dynastic inheritance, discovery, and occupation, the sovereign kings aggregated land and augmented his state territories in Europe and America. Secessions were rare during that time: only the Dutch Revolt and the Independence of Portugal. And they were just a flip side of the logic of the composite kingly states.