Protection Of Civil Liberties Research Articles

My Country: What's To Love? How To Show It?

My Country:What's To Love? How To Show It? Drew Maciag (bio) John Bodnar, Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. 305 pp. Illustrations, acknowledgements, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95. Ben Railton, Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. xx + 194 pp. Acknowledgements, a note on sources, index. $36.00. John Bodnar, Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. 305 pp. Illustrations, acknowledgements, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95. Ben Railton, Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. xx + 194 pp. Acknowledgements, a note on sources, index. $36.00. 2021 turned out to be a dangerously opportune year for new books on American patriotism. The year began with President Donald Trump praising insurgents who invaded the U.S. Capitol as "great patriots." Some weeks later, after the (by then former) president was impeached by Congress for a second time, an opinion poll found that three-quarters of Republicans still agreed that Trump was a "true patriot."1 So, if ever there was a time for coming to terms with our symbolic national language, surely it had arrived. Of course, many of our standard political buzzwords refer to lofty concepts that are subject to diverse interpretations. Linguistic icons like "freedom," "equality," and "progress" appeal to Americans precisely because they evoke optimistic, open-ended ideals. "Patriotism," on the other hand, is not so much an ideal as it is an investment in identity. Unlike ideals, patriotism can never be universal. Patriotism is always grounded in a particular place and can only be loyal to some specific sense of belonging. Although "patriotism" is generally defined as "love of one's country," the idea of patriotism cannot meaningfully exist in the abstract. In contrast to (say) "liberty" or "justice," patriotism has no recognizable moral complexion until it acquires a real-world host. Patriots can be equally devoted to a nation that embraces multiracial democracy, or to an autocratic nation that perpetrates a genocidal Holocaust. Hence, when we witness the expression of patriotic feeling or the assertion of patriotic will, we can be sure that beneath the trappings lies a distinctive set of social and political beliefs. Patriotism is often most vibrant—or most virulent—when it serves as a tool for constructing, reinforcing, or proclaiming some canonic core of national values and traits. Controversies over patriotism are seldom about the wisdom [End Page 590] of behaving patriotically. Instead, battles are fought over what kind of nation myriad "patriots" want to call home. John Bodnar's Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11 demonstrates the instrumentalist use of patriotism by dividing contemporary actors into two camps that adhere to competing visions of what acting patriotically means. Bodnar calls the opposing factions "war-based patriots" and "empathic patriots," and his classifications align with our already-ingrained understanding of the ideological polarization that has plagued society in recent decades. War-based patriotism tends to be conservative, absolutist, exclusive, and harsh, while empathic patriotism is liberal, tolerant, inclusive, and humanitarian. Warbased patriotism relies on pleasant myths, while empathic patriotism deals in difficult realities. War-based patriots believe that the United States is morally righteous and beyond reproach; empathic, critical patriots aim at correcting national flaws. War-based patriots seek to enforce obedience to authority and to defend the status quo; empathic patriots seek to protect civil liberties and the right to dissent, and to alleviate human suffering. As important, war-based patriotism tends toward a white, Christian identity, and empathic patriotism tends toward a pluralistic, multicultural outlook. Bodnar offers a pre-9/11 introduction that roots modern American patriotism in the memorialization of soldiers killed during the Civil War. That version of war-based patriotism—steeped in the glorification of dying for one's country—was enhanced during the hyper-patriotism of World War I, and it became more systemic and persistent during World War II and the Cold War. Although earlier versions of empathic patriotism often challenged war-based patriotism, it was not until the unpopular Vietnam War that the more critical...

Democracy, Autocracy, and Everything in Between: How Domestic Institutions Affect Environmental Protection

AbstractAs major global challenges intensify in the twenty-first century, which domestic institutions will best enable countries to take decisive and positive action? This article explores this question in the realm of environmental policy. Scholars and practitioners have long argued that ‘democracy’ yields the best environmental outcomes, but others now maintain that ‘eco-authoritarianism’ may be the best way forward. The author unpacks the theoretical mechanisms behind these debates, and adds important nuance in making three arguments. First, the link between elections and eco-policy depends on what citizens want. Secondly, the relationship between civil liberties protections and environmentalism depends on which actors within society hold power. Finally, political constraints make environmental policy change – be it environmentally friendly or damaging – more difficult. The study empirically tests these arguments and finds strong support for the expectations regarding elections and civil liberties. There is only limited evidence that constraints stymie eco-policy change.

Criminal Futures: Predictive Policing and Everyday Police Work

This book explores how predictive policing transforms police work. Police departments around the world have started to use data-driven applications to produce crime forecasts and intervene into the future through targeted prevention measures. Based on three years of field research in Germany and Switzerland, this book provides a theoretically sophisticated and empirically detailed account of how the police produce and act upon criminal futures as part of their everyday work practices. The authors argue that predictive policing must not be analyzed as an isolated technological artifact, but as part of a larger sociotechnical system that is embedded in organizational structures and occupational cultures. The book highlights how, for crime prediction software to come to matter and play a role in more efficient and targeted police work, several translation processes are needed to align human and nonhuman actors across different divisions of police work. Police work is a key function for the production and maintenance of public order, but it can also discriminate, exclude, and violate civil liberties and human rights. When criminal futures come into being in the form of algorithmically produced risk estimates, this can have wide-ranging consequences. Building on empirical findings, the book presents a number of practical recommendations for the prudent use of algorithmic analysis tools in police work that will speak to the protection of civil liberties and human rights as much as they will speak to the professional needs of police organizations. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, and cultural studies as well as to police practitioners and civil liberties advocates, in addition to all those who are interested in how to implement reasonable forms of data-driven policing.

The Future of European Values

The EU’s values of transnational peace, cooperation, secularism, rationality, and protection of civil liberties and human rights are amongst the most valuable legacies of the Enlightenment. The European project has weathered several crises in the first third of the 21st century, including a change of political direction in the United Kingdom. Brexit is viewed as a consequence of the UK’s flawed electoral system, exposed as susceptible to hijacking by militant and disruptive minorities. The future of European values must be protected from politically unreliable systems such as the UK’s FPTP.

The Political Costs of Abusing Human Rights: International Cooperation in Extraordinary Rendition

From 2001 to 2005, over a quarter of all countries in the world cooperated in a secret rendition network that enabled the transfer of CIA terrorist suspects to secret detention sites. While governments in some states have not been punished for participating, others have incurred political costs, including electoral defeats. What explains variation in the political costs of participation in the post-9/11 extraordinary rendition program? I argue that left of center governments, particularly those in democracies, suffered greater political costs from being caught because of the perception that they are better at protecting civil liberties in the name of national security. I test the effect of party orientation on electoral defeat at the election following the revelation of participation in extraordinary rendition using a matched sample where the party in office at the time of participation remained the same. The analysis provides empirical support for my theoretical argument.

SOCIETY AND THE STATE: INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES TO OVERCOME THE «CRISIS OF TRUST» IN THE CONTEXT OF THE PANDEMIC

The article analyzes the process of interaction between the state and society in the context of the development of digital technologies against the background of an emergency situation related to the spread of coronavirus. The article reveals the causes of the crisis of trust in the interaction of social and political institutions that is characteristic of modern society. The most important role of information and communication technologies in the conditions associated with the need for operational management of information flows to prevent political destabilization is shown. The author substantiates the idea that in the face of the threat of a pandemic, society is ready to review some of the guidelines related to the protection of civil liberties and accept new restrictions in exchange for a more effective state policy to ensure the safety of life and health.

THE TUNISIAN CONSTITUTIONAL TRANSITION AND DEBATES: ISLAM, WOMEN AND OTHER ACTORS IN THE WAKE OF THE POST JASMINE REVOLUTION

The Arab uprising in Tunisia, dubbed the Jasmine Revolution began in 2010, protesting against unemployment, corruption, injustice and the absence of basic freedoms. The Jasmine Revolution ousted Ben Ali, the then president who was in power for more than three decades in 2011. Post Jasmine Revolution saw Tunisia making commendable strides in its transition towards a new all-inclusive democratic political order. However, the transition process has not been without obstacles which could have had the effect of derailing the transition process, such as the assassination of activists Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brami, the role and place of Islam, the inclusion of women in the political transition and the most popular Islamic party Ennahda with its rumours of transforming Tunisia into an Islamic state were cause for great concern for all. However, despite these concerns, Tunisia’s new constitutional text is considered to be a radical departure from its previous constitutional texts. After the drafting of various drafts, the 2014 constitutional text has attained the status in the Middle Eastern And North African Region MENA Region as being the most liberal compared to other countries in the Mena Region. The 2014 constitutional provisions protect civil liberties, separates legislative, executive and judicial powers, guaranteeing women parity in political institutions, and declares that Islam is the country’s official religion while at the same time protecting religious freedom for all. An important facet is the homogeneity of Tunisian society – which although has some divisions, did not suffer fragmentation along religious, political, cultural or ethnic lines, as is the case in other Muslim states. This was accomplished by including all actors not only political parties, women’s groups and activists, religious activists, but also the various unions which represented the working class in Tunisia. The outcome was nothing short of being miraculous, bearing in mind the chaos that engulfed Tunisia during this period. One could argue that Tunisian listened to its people and advice of all, thereby minimising a terrible outcome.

THE TUNISIAN CONSTITUTIONAL TRANSITION AND DEBATES: ISLAM, WOMEN AND OTHER ACTORS IN THE WAKE OF THE POST JASMINE REVOLUTION

The Arab uprising in Tunisia, dubbed the Jasmine Revolution began in 2010, protesting against unemployment, corruption, injustice and the absence of basic freedoms. The Jasmine Revolution ousted Ben Ali, the then president who was in power for more than three decades in 2011. Post Jasmine Revolution saw Tunisia making commendable strides in its transition towards a new all-inclusive democratic political order. However, the transition process has not been without obstacles which could have had the effect of derailing the transition process, such as the assassination of activists Chokri Belaïd and Mohamed Brami, the role and place of Islam, the inclusion of women in the political transition and the most popular Islamic party Ennahda with its rumours of transforming Tunisia into an Islamic state were cause for great concern for all. However, despite these concerns, Tunisia’s new constitutional text is considered to be a radical departure from its previous constitutional texts. After the drafting of various drafts, the 2014 constitutional text has attained the status in the Middle Eastern And North African Region MENA Region as being the most liberal compared to other countries in the Mena Region. The 2014 constitutional provisions protect civil liberties, separates legislative, executive and judicial powers, guaranteeing women parity in political institutions, and declares that Islam is the country’s official religion while at the same time protecting religious freedom for all. An important facet is the homogeneity of Tunisian society – which although has some divisions, did not suffer fragmentation along religious, political, cultural or ethnic lines, as is the case in other Muslim states. This was accomplished by including all actors not only political parties, women’s groups and activists, religious activists, but also the various unions which represented the working class in Tunisia. The outcome was nothing short of being miraculous, bearing in mind the chaos that engulfed Tunisia during this period. One could argue that Tunisian listened to its people and advice of all, thereby minimising a terrible outcome.

Do Political Factors affect Government Health Spending? Empirical Evidence from Sub-Sahara African Countries

In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), access to essential health care services remains problematic. The financing of health care is mainly provided by private sources, mainly out-of-pocket payments which represent respectively 53.12% and 36.73% of total health expenditure in 2016. As for public health expenditure, essential for ensuring universal health coverage, it represents only about 35% of health expenditure. Thus, the increase in public spending on health from domestically sources proves to be a major challenge for the countries of the region in the prospect of reaching the SDG relating to health by 2030. This paper aims to analyse the determinants of domestic government health spending in SSA by focusing on political factors. We use data from 39 SSA countries covering the period 2010-2016 and panel-corrected standard errors method for empirical investigation. The results show that democracy favours an increase in government health spending. Furthermore, a political competitive environment, the guarantee and the protection of civil liberties and political right, accountability, government effectiveness and political stability are decisive for increasing government health spending. The results also showed that political participation does not affect public health spending. These results indicate that improving political factors is essential to increase public spending in SSA.

Surging Solidarity: Reorienting Ethics for Pandemics

Public discourse about ethics in the COVID-19 pandemic has tended to focus on scarcity of resources and the protection of civil liberties. We show how these preoccupations reflect an established disaster imaginary that orients the ethics of response. In this paper, we argue that pandemic ethics should instead be oriented through a relational account of persons as vulnerable vectors embedded in existing networks of care. We argue for the creation of a new disaster imaginary to shape our own understandings of the interrelated social, political, and economic hardships under conditions of social distancing. We develop a pandemic ethics framework rooted in uBuntu and care ethics that makes visible the underlying multidimensional structural inequities of the pandemic, attending to the problems of resource scarcity and inequities in mortality while insisting on a response that surges existing and emergent forms of solidarity.

Civil Liberties and Social Structure

Governments rely on a variety of forms of coercion to aggregate distributed information relevant to governmental objectives from the prosecution of regime stability threats to terrorism or epidemics. To do so, they exploit the existing social structure, as reliable information will often come from friends and acquaintances. Civil liberties, in turn, restrict the government’s ability to exercise such coercion. We present an equilibrium theory of the joint determination of social structure and civil liberties. The depth of civil liberties shapes citizens’ decisions on how intensely and with whom to socialize. Features of the social structure such as its cohesiveness and the extent of segregation, in turn, shape the government’s willingness to enforce civil liberties protections such as search and seizure restrictions, standards of proof, and equal treatment under the law. We show that the relationship between civil liberties and social structure is mediated by a commitment problem by the government, and that this commitment problem is in turn mediated by the strength of civil society. We also show that segregation and unequal treatment sustain each other, characterize when unequal treatment against a minority or a majority can be sustained, and how equilibrium social cohesiveness and civil liberties respond to the arrival of widespread surveillance technologies, shocks to collective perceptions about the likelihood of threats or the importance of privacy, or to community norms such as codes of silence.

Velvet or Roses – Towards a Democratic Armenia?

This essay takes a first look at Armenia’s 2018 ‘velvet revolution’ by analysing its political system since independence and comparing it to the circumstances of the 2003 Georgian Rose Revolution. By considering parameters such as protection of civil liberties and freedom of elections, it characterises the regimes in Armenia since 1991 as competitive authoritarian according to Levitsky and Way’s definition. Low levels of influence from the West and prevailing informal structures made caused this state of affairs to persist. A first look at the events of 2018 reveals that Nikol Pashinyan, the new prime minister, acts more democratically than his predecessors. However, having established that the Rose Revolution happened under similar circumstances with similar goals, its failure to directly advance democratisation shows that systemic reasons for authoritarian structures are prone to persist even if the political leadership has democratising ambitions.

A Competição Institucional como Processo de Aprendizado Social e de Limitação do Poder Político

Esse trabalho analisa os efeitos da competição institucional como processo de aprendizado social incentivador de desenvolvimento socioeconômico e limitador do poder político. Para tanto, o estudo faz uma crítica dos conceitos de eficiência alocativa e competição perfeita e sugere como alternativa a conceituação de competição como um processo social inerentemente dinâmico e baseado na descoberta, rivalidade e transmissão de informações O trabalho faz uso de argumentos teóricos e evidências empíricas que sustentam a hipótese de que a competição institucional é um processo capaz de significativamente incentivar mudanças sociais no sentido de limitar o poder político e a alinhar a oferta de produtos políticos, como legislações, regulações e de serviços estatais com as demandas da sociedade civil. Trata-se, portanto, de um processo capaz de estimular a proteção de liberdades civis e de induzir desenvolvimento social.

Between the Atlantic West and the Newest Chinese East: Preliminary Remarks About Central-Eastern European Legal Orders and Their Protection of Civil Liberties and Religious Freedom

Between the Atlantic West and the Newest Chinese East: Preliminary Remarks About Central-Eastern European Legal Orders and Their Protection of Civil Liberties and Religious Freedom

Democracy and Financial Crisis

AbstractExisting scholarship attributes various political and economic advantages to democratic governance. These advantages may make more democratic countries prone to financial crises. Democracy is characterized by constraints on executive authority, accountability through free and fair elections, protections for civil liberties, and large winning coalitions. These characteristics bring important benefits, but they can also have unintended consequences that increase the likelihood of financial instability and crises. Using data covering the past two centuries, I demonstrate a strong relationship between democracy and financial crisis onset: on average, democracies are about twice as likely to experience a crisis as autocracies. This is an empirical regularity that is robust across a wide range of model specifications and time periods.

Security Reform during Democratic Transitions: Experimental Evidence from Tunisia

The “Arab Spring” of 2010-2011 demonstrated that authoritarian collapse does not guarantee a transition to democracy. After revolutions, newly elected governments face a dilemma: they must rely on existing security institutions to restore order and stability, but they also must reform these potentially counterrevolutionary forces. In addition, these governments are now responsible to newly enfranchised populations. This paper offers a tradeoff hypothesis to explain the success or failure of transitional reforms, and points to elites’ framing of public debates as a primary factor leading public opinion, which either demands or neglects difficult reforms during moments of transition. The theory is tested with an original survey of Tunisian adults conducted in January 2017. An embedded vignette experiment asks respondents to adjudicate between investments in security sector reform versus economic or political reform, the exact types of tradeoffs countries face during the transition from authoritarian rule. An additional treatment tests whether citizens perceive a tradeoff between providing national security – i.e. against terrorist threats – and reforming the military to protect civil liberties, a question that has been debated since Tunisia’s 2011 uprising. I find that public opinion can be swayed by the framing of tradeoffs. Economic development is strongly preferred over other reforms. This finding has important implications for the success of both security sector reform and democratic consolidation.

The end of privacy for the populace, the person of interest and the persecuted

Erosion of US and foreign citizens’ privacy has resulted from the escalating use of electronic devices; creation of gargantuan commercial and government/intelligence databases; government access to business data; and the motivation and ever more sophisticated ability to mine and unaccountably use such information. After suffering the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the US government led the way in globally collecting and exploiting personal data. This ultimately required revisions to existing US law, as well as altered legal interpretations of constitutional protections for civil liberties. The overwhelming focus of US communications and electronic storage policy has been on offensive intelligence operations; collection has been enhanced partly by undermining cyber defense for companies and citizens. As with other business sectors, US medical information now is vulnerable to both criminal cyber-attack and government access. This article is authored by a former US intelligence community and national security professional with highly specialized proficiencies and experience at some of the top levels of intelligence oversight – where technical, operational, analytic, inter-agency, legislative, regulatory, legal and budget activities converge. Using unclassified and public sources, the author summarizes the types and breadth of US domestic collection and its distribution, the degree to which individuals’ privacy may be impinged, abuse of these powers, and effects on governance. Resulting US ability to spot and forestall pending domestic terror attacks - the rationale used to justify surveillance without end - is evaluated.

An Examination of the Former Centrally Planned Economies 25 Years after the Fall of Communism

This report analyzes the changes in economic freedom, political institutions, and performance of 25 former centrally planned (FCP) economies following the collapse of communism. The degree of economic freedom among these countries varied considerably. The FCP countries with higher levels of economic freedom in 2015 as measured by the Economic Freedom of the World summary ratings tended to grow more rapidly, achieve larger increases in international trade, and attract more foreign direct investment than their counterparts with less economic freedom. Differences among the FCP countries in the protection of civil liberties, democratic political institutions, and administration of government with less corruption are also identified and analyzed. A regression model of economic growth during 1995-2015 for 122 countries was developed and used to examine the determinants of growth and the performance of the FCP economies relative to high-income and other developing countries throughout the world. Regression analysis was also used to analyze the life satisfaction measure of the World Values Survey. The regression analysis indicates that economic freedom exerts a strong positive impact on both the growth of per capita GDP and the life satisfaction of individuals. Finally, the economic freedom area ratings were used to identify strengths and weaknesses of the FCP economies. Most of the FCP countries registered substantial increases in economic freedom in the areas of size of government, access to sound money, international trade, and regulation. But they have failed to improve their legal systems, and several FCP countries have even experienced recent deteriorations in this area. While the FCP countries achieved impressive growth and closed the income gap relative to high-income countries during 1995-2015, without improvements in the legal area, it is unlikely that this progress will continue. The addendum provides additional details for ten countries that have made the transition from communism to markets most successfully.

David Cole, Engines of Liberty: The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law

David Cole, Engines of Liberty: The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law (New York: Basic Books, 2016). Pp. viii+307. $27.99 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-465-06090-0. David Cole, a professor at the Georgetown Law Center and, as well, a prominent civil liberties litigator, has written an excellent book about the role that “civil society groups” play in “shaping constitutional law” (p. 6). His aim is to develop a “richer understanding of how constitutionalism works in practice” as well as, for at least some readers, helping to “inform future movements” as to productive tactics in achieving “constitutional change” (p. 7). He does this through an intensive examination of the role that such groups played in the legal struggles over same-sex marriage, gun rights, and the protection of civil liberties, especially for non-US nationals, in the aftermath of September 11. The book fits within … SLevinson{at}law.utexas.edu

The Social Causes and Political Consequences of Group Empathy

Recent scholarship has discovered significant racial/ethnic group variation in response to political threats such as immigration and terrorism. Surprisingly, minority groups often simultaneously perceive themselves to be at greater risk from such threats and yet still prefer more open immigration policies and civil liberties protections. We suggest a group‐level empathy process may explain this puzzle: Due to their higher levels of empathy for other disadvantaged groups, many minority group members support protections for others even when their own interests are threatened. Little is known, however, about the unique properties of group empathy or its role in policy opinion formation. In this study, we examine the reliability and validity of our new measure of group empathy, the Group Empathy Index (GEI), demonstrating that it is distinct from other social and political predispositions such as ethnocentrism, social dominance orientation, authoritarianism, ideology, and partisanship. We then propose a theory about the development of group empathy in reaction to life experiences based on one's race/ethnicity, gender, age, and education. Finally, we examine the power of group empathy to predict policy attitudes and political behavior.