Democracy Without Parties? Italy After Berlusconi

This article looks at the legacy of ‘Berlusconism’ for Italian politics. On the right, we identify a process of fragmentation. As a result of the personalised leadership of Silvio Berlusconi, where loyalties and ties were to il cavaliere as an individual rather than to a party or a political tradition, there is little by way of legacy on the right. Surprisingly, we find that Berlusconi's greatest legacy lies on the left of Italian politics, in the figure of Matteo Renzi. In his savvy manipulation of the media and in the careful construction of his own image, accompanied by a non‐ideological set of political slogans, Renzi has gone even further than Berlusconi. As a result, he may be the one to final bury Italian ‘party government’ and all its associated traditions and ideals.     

Campaign Persuasion and Nascent Partisanship in Mexico's New Democracy

Despite ample evidence of preelection volatility in vote intentions in new democracies, scholars of comparative politics remain skeptical that campaigns affect election outcomes. Research on the United States provides a theoretical rationale for campaign effects, but shows little of it in practice in presidential elections because candidates’ media investments are about equal and voters’ accumulated political knowledge and partisan attachments make them resistant to persuasive messages. I vary these parameters by examining a new democracy where voters’ weaker partisan attachments and lower levels of political information magnify the effects of candidates’ asymmetric media investments to create large persuasion effects. The findings have implications for the generalizability of campaign effects theory to new democracies, the development of mass partisanship, candidate advertising strategies, and the specific outcome of Mexico's hotly contested 2006 presidential election. Data come primarily from the Mexico 2006 Panel Study.     

In Defence of British Politics Against the British Political Tradition

This article explores some of the current themes round the perceived crisis in British politics in supposed an age of ‘anti‐politics’. Drawing on Bernard Crick's In Defence of Politics, it offers a critique of what is referred to as a dominant British political tradition and in so doing seeks to challenge ‘demand‐side’ accounts that ostensibly defend the traditional arena politics of the Westminster system. Instead, it argues that developments around issues such as big data, social media and freedom of information have led to a more open society in recent years. It concludes by suggesting that if traditional political institutions wish to restore a greater degree of legitimacy, they need to ‘do’ or, more particularly, ‘supply’ politics differently, adapting to these changes by seeking out new modes of openness, engagement and accountability.     

The Politics of Postcapitalism: Labour and our Digital Futures

This article introduces the special issue on the politics of postcapitalism. Considering the theoretical foundations, empirical perspectives and political ramifications of claims made about a coming ‘post-work’ or ‘postcapitalist’ society, it maps existing debates through a discussion of two key recent texts, Paul Mason’s Clear Bright Future and Aaron Bastani’s Fully Automated Luxury Communism. It first surveys how the relationship between labour market trends, technological change and wider political-economic shifts is articulated in the postcapitalist literature. It then explores how concepts from Marx are deployed to depict social relations as a constraint on technological development and its utopian potentialities, leading to political demands for new class actors and electoral blocs centring on the new forms of economic and political activity associated with digital networks. It also considers the role of the state and how this theoretical and political approach envisions historical change, situating utopian visions of an incipient postcapitalist alternative to capitalism within the contemporary political context of authoritarian populism and challenges to liberal democracy. Finally, it explores the continuing relevance of humanism as a critical counterpoint to the social and philosophical agenda of present day ‘posthumanism’. It concludes that, in unfavourable political conditions, it would be strategically unwise to stake too much on an over-optimistic approach to the unfolding future. This outlook, it is suggested, carries considerable risks and consequences for a contemporary left in search of a viable electoral coalition and route back to power.     

Understanding the Implications of Government Ties for Nonprofit Operations and Functions

This research explores the implications of nonprofit leaders’ government ties for nonprofit operations and functions. Based on 81 survey questionnaires completed by civic environmental NGOs (eNGOs) in China and interviews with executives from 33 eNGOs, the authors examine the personal backgrounds of eNGO leaders and find that most Chinese civic eNGOs are connected with the government in one or more of three ways: political ties, service organization ties, or personal ties. Personal ties, or good guanxi with government officials, are positively associated with a higher level of funding stability and a more developed management system. Environmental NGOs with leaders who are current government officials or legislative body members are more likely to be engaged in policy advocacy. Service organization ties facilitate eNGOs’ efforts to be engaged in legal services and to scale up to work on environmental issues at the national level. Moreover, an eNGO’s policy advocacy engagement is associated with its ties with the nonprofit community.     

Mystical Anarchism

Abstract

This essay explores the philosophical significance of the history of mystical anarchism for contemporary ethics and politics. It examines the complex relationship between religion and politics, and elaborates the thesis that many of our contemporary political concepts are secularized theological concepts. After a critical discussion of Carl Schmitt's theory of sovereignty and John Gray's critique of liberal humanism, it examines the anarchist practices of medieval mystics such as Marguerite Porete and the heresy of the Movement of the Free Spirit, and contrasts this mystical anarchist tradition with more recent forms of anarchism, such as Raoul Vaneigem's Situationism.

Retrieving the mystical anarchist tradition might help us rethink the relationship between religion and politics and suggest ethically grounded forms of anarchism that avoid violence or abstraction.     

Gary Becker’s economics of population: reproduction and neoliberal biopolitics

This paper argues that Chicago School economist Gary Becker’s theory of fertility underpins contemporary rationalities of global population governance. Drawing on feminist critiques of biopolitics, the paper proposes reproduction as a missing link that ties Becker’s homo economicus to the aggregate question of population. It argues that Becker’s work challenged macroeconomic theories of fertility by figuring reproduction, and hence population patterns, as governed by the personal utility-maximizing decisions of individuals. It further examines how his approach to fertility inaugurated reproductive decision-making as a regulatory node of population quality, one also tied to a particular sex, race and class politics. Finally, the paper briefly analyses the relationship between Becker’s contribution and today’s focus on women’s reproductive and productive decision-making in population governance in the context of development.     

‘It takes a Russian to beat a Russian’: the National Union of Labor Solidarists,nationalism, and human intelligence operations in the Cold War

This article reconstructs the CIA’s exploitation of the Natsional’no Trudovoi Soyuz, a right-wing Russian nationalist organization, as a part of ‘rollback’ and ‘stay-behind’ covert operations against the Soviet Union during the 1950s. Operations such as these relied on the notion that far-right nationalism presented a potent counter to international communism. The article explores postwar ties between American intelligence and the NTS in a shared effort to ‘roll back’ the borders of communism. It likewise discusses the ability of Soviet counterintelligence to intercept, penetrate, and sabotage nationalist networks and their operations backed by Western governments.     

Knowledge Sharing in a Third‐Party‐Governed Health and Human Services Network

The rapid growth of knowledge in disease diagnosis and treatment requires health service provider organizations to continuously learn and update their practices. However, little is known about knowledge sharing in service implementation networks governed by a network administrative organization (NAO). The author suggests that strong ties enhance knowledge sharing and that there is a contingent effect of third‐party ties. Two provider agencies’ common ties with the NAO may undermine knowledge sharing because of resource competition. In contrast, a dyad's common ties with a peer agency may boost knowledge sharing as a result of social cohesion. Finally, the author posits that third‐party ties moderate the relationship between strong ties and knowledge sharing. These hypotheses are examined in a mental health network. Quantitative network analysis confirms the strong tie and third‐party tie hypotheses and provides partial support for the moderating effect of third‐party ties. The implications for public management, including the implementation of HealthCare.gov , are discussed.     

The micropolitics of border struggles: migrants’ squats and inhabitance as alternatives to citizenship

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the struggles of the We Are Here movement in Amsterdam as resistance to both securitarian and humanitarian border regimes. It explores the tensions between everyday forms of commoning emerging in migrants’ squats and technologies of enclosure and capture. In the first place, the paper contends that the creation of housing squats marked an important shift in migrants’ struggles that went from acts of protest to the performance of resistance at the level of the micropolitics of borders. By squatting buildings and creating common living spaces, current struggles mobilize material, affective and political solidarities and constitute a politics of inhabitance beyond and against dependency on the state and humanitarian practices. The second part of the paper discusses the government’s attempts to repress, govern and enclose the We Are Here movement within confined fields of action. With negotiations and humanitarian concessions through the provision of emergency shelters, local authorities attempted to re-direct the movement into politics of rights and recognitions. However, these tactics did not succeed to contain the struggle in its entirety: many migrants rejected humanitarian solutions, continued to create radical home spaces through squatting, enacting a politics of inhabitance beyond citizenship.     

The Place of Sovereignty

Abstract

This article addresses the relationship between sovereignty, biopolitics and governmentality in the work of Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault. By unpacking Foucault’s genealogy of modern governmentality, it responds to a criticism leveled against Foucauldian accounts of power for their alleged abandonment of the traditional model of power in juridico-institutional terms in favor of an understanding of power as purely productive. This claim has most significantly been developed by Agamben in “Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life”. I argue that Judith Butler’s analysis of power, in particular in her essay “Indefinite Detention”, presents a more differentiated account of power that registers the significance of practices of sovereignty and resonates with Foucault’s lectures on “Security, Territory, Population”.     

Love,activism, and the possibility of radical social change in Mostar

ABSTRACT

This article reflects on the meanings and possibilities of social change in Mostar, a city more often associated with the seeming impossibility of eradicating ethno-national divisions and corruption that paralyses it. It focuses on the under-researched politics of grassroots activism by drawing on Hardt’s and Negri’s work on the political potential of ‘love’ to shape and propel radical politics. Overall, the article reveals the lack of a cohesive agenda of grassroots politics in Mostar, and asks whether love (that creates and sustains political movement) can educate, patiently, to the revolution.     

Introduction: Meritocracy in Perspective. The Rise of the Meritocracy 60 Years On

Sixty years after its publication, Michael Young’s The Rise of the Meritocracy remains one of the most important texts for understanding the changing intellectual politics of postwar Britain. Young’s fictional vision of a meritocratic society explores the consequences of a society where each citizen is judged according to the formula ‘I.Q. + Effort = Merit’. The successful meritocrats hoard ever-greater rewards for themselves, crystallising into a rigid and repressive elite who rule over an increasingly powerless and depressed underclass. While the concept has evolved and adapted, the language of meritocracy is one of the great survivors of postwar British politics. In an age characterised by the rise of populist leaders and movements, as well as a backlash against educated ‘liberal elites’, revisiting, reinterpreting and re-evaluating Young’s influential satire and the central place the concept of meritocracy occupies in the history of postwar Britain has never been more important.     

Technics over life: risk,ethics and the existential condition in high-tech antenatal care

The subject of this paper is the problem of selective abortion brought about by advanced techniques of foetal diagnosis. The issue of abortion today is analysed as an outcome and illustration of the emerging ‘vital politics’. The paper explores the technicality of this new form of bio-power, and the ethical practice and forms of subjectivity it imposes. Two main points are raised. First, it is argued that the implementation of state-of-the-art foetal diagnosis in clinical practice and maternity care is underlain by the rationales of control and experimentation. The ideas of risk and the dividual are introduced as the epistemic cornerstones of this practice of high-tech reproductive medicine according to the above rationales. Second, the paper argues that foetal diagnosis in antenatal care is characterised by an ethical split. This emerges when the machinery of reproductive health care withdraws into a position of technical responsibility and leaves the choice, and the ethical responsibility, concerning medical operations (selective abortion, in particular) to the pregnant woman. This suggests that high-tech biomedicine tends to individualise risks and to impose a form of ethical individuality characterised by the demand for reflexivity through personal risk assessment, producing the anxiety generated by existential responsibility.     

Intimate encounters: the ambiguities of belonging in the transnational migration of Indonesian domestic workers to Malaysia

In this article I explore ‘belonging’ both in terms of personal relatedness and national belonging in the context of Indonesian domestic worker migration to Malaysia. Riddled with metaphors of kinship both on the level of diplomatic ties between the two ‘kin states’ of Indonesia and Malaysia as well as on the level of intimate relations between employers and employees, the migration of Indonesian domestic workers to Malaysia allows for a critical analysis of the ways in which boundaries are drawn and redrawn on the political as well as on the intimate level of daily coexistence. The article argues that kinship provides a fruitful avenue from which to consider belonging in context of the specific relations between Indonesia and Malaysia and explores how belonging to the family and the nation is negotiated by Indonesian domestic workers, Malaysian employers and so-called ‘maid agents’.     

Herbert’s Herbivore: One-Dimensional Society and the Possibility of Radical Vegetarianism

Abstract

Careful reading of Herbert Marcuse’s texts, including Counterrevolution and Revolt, One-Dimensional Man, An Essay on Liberation, and Eros and Civilization, reveals his subtle attention to the human–animal dialectic and its role in human liberation. More specifically, animals mark the irrationality of advanced industrialized society for Marcuse, and his subtle but keen treatment of the animal question in politics provides an opening to radically rethink politics for animals and humans. Working from Marcuse’s critical theory, I explore the contemporary one-dimensional animal, which I argue imbricates both animals and humans in the violence and destruction that characterizes advanced industrial society. Using Marcuse’s concept of one-dimensional society and his discussion of animals as my theoretical framework, I specifically consider vegetarianism in its capacity to militate against the contemporary political economy of meat. I conclude that Marcuse’s insights point to a radical vegetarianism aligned with anti-capitalist politics that offers the development of sensuous, pleasurable, life-affirming sensibilities that support true liberation for both animals and humans.     

Identity,rights and surveillance in an era of transforming citizenship

This review essay focuses on the problem of citizenship in three different areas, namely human rights, identity politics and surveillance. Heli Askola’s work focuses on the magnitude of demographic challenges that contemporary migrant-receiving states in the Global North face, and specifically focuses on the broader demographic picture of low birth rates, and increasing diversity and populations ageing; thus, focusing the problem of identity politics in the context of citizenship acquisition in Global North states. Richard Sobel’s book explores the empowerment of American citizenship, specifically through a unique reading of constitutional and political apparatus in the United States. Finally, Pramod Nayar’s work addresses state-based surveillance mechanisms like biometrics, biobanks and the internet within the context of citizenship and how new forms of subjectivity are forged within a culture of surveillance. These three works approach citizenship through a legal category of political membership, but also a process of political subjectivization.     

Changing the Subject: The Case for ‘Social Politics’

Running through Bernard Crick's In Defence of Politics is an implicit faith in the ability of liberal democracy to deliver progress. From the perspective of 1962 such optimism seems well founded. After the years of post war austerity there had been more than a decade of steady growth, the middle class was expanding fast providing unprecedented levels of absolute social mobility (more benign and less complicated than the relative social mobility which today's politicians disingenuously claim to pursue). Matthew Taylor explores the case for ‘social politics’.     

Totalitarianism and justice: Hannah Arendt’s and Judith N. Shklar’s political reflections in historical and theoretical perspective

We locate Arendt’s and Shklar’s writings within what Katznelson has identified as an attempt to create a new language for politics after the cataclysm of the twentieth century, and Greif has called the new ‘maieutic’ discourse of ‘re-enlightenment’ in the ‘age of the crisis of man’. More specifically, we compare and contrast two related, but in many ways also differing, ways of thinking about totalitarianism and its legal repercussions. To this end, we examine two sets of studies: Arendt’s The origins of totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil and Shklar’s After utopia: The decline of political faith and Legalism: An essay on law, morals, and politics. While The origins of totalitarianism and After utopia discussed totalitarian ideology and its consequences for modern political thought, the Eichmann report and Legalism dealt with the question of whether and how justice is possible after the extreme experience of totalitarianism. We argue that the maieutic impulse led Arendt and Shklar to find distinct routes to address a common concern. Our paper ends with a discussion of some of the surplus meaning that was generated by the different maieutic performances of the two thinkers.     

What's the big deal? Naturalisation and the politics of desire

This article takes the naturalisation process as a vantage point to consider how citizenship constitutes a site of emotional investment not only on the part of applicants and ‘new’ citizens but also on the part of the state. The premise of this article is that naturalisation is more than solely the admission of foreigners to the position and rights of citizenship, and it approaches naturalisation as a state practice that needs to be understood within a politics of desire. The article asks three questions: what makes naturalisation a thinkable and desirable means of acquiring citizenship? Second, what do practices of naturalisation tell us about ‘the state's attachment to particular embodiments of desirable citizens’ (S. Somerville, 2005 Somerville, S., 2005. Notes toward a queer history of naturalization. American quarterly, 7 (3), 659–675.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], Notes toward a queer history of naturalization. American quarterly, 7 (3), 661)? Third, ‘who may desire the state's desire’ (J. Butler, 2002. Is kinship always already heterosexual? Differences, 13 (1), 22)? Using policy documents and auto-ethnographic material, the article examines practices through which the state selects its own objects of desire and produces them as citizens, while it also produces itself as desirable. The article concludes that naturalisation distinguishes desirable from less desirable citizens through fantasies of English proficiency and birthright citizenship. In addition, the staged performance of the citizenship ceremony assures the state of its desirability by subsuming ‘as if’ enactments of citizenship.