Parliamentarianism and anti-parliamentarianism in Portugal. The voices of the republicans, 1910–26

In Portugal the republican regime broke ties with the monarchy, advocating the need to reassume the national principle, as well as the secularization of its foundations and of the state itself. With the establishment of the new parliamentary republic in 1910 and the debate between republic and monarchy, the supporters of parliamentarianism saw a rupture in the composition and relationship between the powers foreseen in the constitutional charter of 1826, which gave more power to the king during the period of the constitutional monarchy. This made republicans grow closer to the constitution of the French Third Republic, the Brazilian constitution of 1891, the 1812 constitution of Cadiz and the 1822 Portuguese constitution, owing to the fact that these were radical liberal constitutions that conferred national sovereignty. The republicans put forward various arguments both to defame and to defend parliamentarianism. Nevertheless, as in the constitution of 1822, the republican constitution of 1911 stipulated that the congress (the Portuguese Parliament) would be, in theory, the only body that could regulate the political guidelines of the republic.     

Using grid-group theory to explain distinctive Japanese political institutions

Particularly for Americans, Japanese political institutions present a paradox. On one hand, in comparison to other advanced industrial societies the size of Japan's public sector (as a proportion of GDP) is extremely small. On the other hand, Japan's small but expert state is highly interventionary, leaving far less to the vagaries of markets than the United States or even the more statist societies of Europe (Johnson 1982). This contrast leaves many American analysts, particularly economists but others (Esping-Andersen 1997) as well, in a quandary as to whether Japan is a liberal individualistic society. I draw on Douglas-Wildavsky “grid-group” theory to explain these seemingly contradictory institutional characteristics as the result, not of liberal individualistic influence, but of conflict between and the alternation in dominance of two factions of Japanese hierarchy. My primary focus of attention rests on showing how these two hierarchical factions produce a public policy orientation with a predisposition toward state social intervention but periodic restraint with respect to public social programs that accounts for the modest fiscal size of the active Japanese state. I also examine Japanese public policy responses to recent difficulties in overcoming recession and confronting increasing immigration to clinch the case that Japan is a society in which various factions of hierarchy, rather than liberal individualism, dominate.     

How important is participatory constitution-making? Lessons from Timor-Leste and Bougainville

How can fragmented or divided post-conflict societies best be accommodated and adjust to state structures in order to achieve sustainable peace? Reflecting on the contrary experiences of Timor-Leste and Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea, this article argues the answer to this question rests partly on the role that participatory constitution-making can play in state-building, nation-building and peace-building. Constitution-making can play a central role in state-building, because constitutions provide the operating system that establishes state institutions and regulates state power. It can also play a nation-building role by defining the political bond between the people, and a peace-building role by encouraging reconciliation and embedding state institutions in society. This article draws on liberal political theory to argue that public participation in constitution-making can enhance the likelihood that the constitution produces legitimate and effective state institutions, generates a unifying sense of national identity and establishes sustainable peace. It finds that extensive public participation in Bougainville played a positive role by creating a sense of common identity, reconciling many of the most severe societal divisions and creating institutions that are relatively legitimate and effective. In contrast, minimal public participation in Timor-Leste meant that the constitution-making process did not play a positive role; it did not create a unifying national identity, left certain societal divisions unreconciled and exacerbated others, and created institutions that were largely illegitimate and ineffective.     

The Colonial Strut: Australian Leaders on the World Stage

In his influential account of modern nationalism, Benedict Anderson emphasises the role of the press in creating a sense of "imagined community". But the nation's identity is also constituted through the performances of representative nationals for an international audience. The visits of Australia's political leaders to London and Washington are carefully stage-crafted events, designed to elicit, or at least create an impression of, a favourable reception by its "great and powerful friends". This essay examines the international debuts of several Australian political leaders from Alfred Deakin (1887) and Robert Menzies (1935) to Bob Hawke and John Howard. It focuses especially on the interplay between the leaders' private and public selves; how they have crafted their public appearances and utterances to capture the attention of the desired international audience, and how their performances have been seen by the audience that, in the last resort, mattered most to them, the Australian one.     

La représentation politique dans les doctrines et dans les institutions au XVIIIème et au XIXème siècles en Europe et aux Etats‐Unis: Une recherche en cours

SUMMARY

In this article Cristiana Senigaglia seeks to elucidate Hegel's conception of the coup d'état. This is necessary because Hegel did not systematically expound his view in this writings, notably it is not treated in his central work, Die Philosophie des Rechts. But a consistent view can be found in his historical and philosophical writings. The article suggests that Hegel did consider there were circumstances in which a use of force to change an existing political order, or lack of it, were justified. He cited the political chaos in early modern Italy, or the constitutional instabilities in France in his own time as examples where the forces of history justified illegal and forceful interventions, be they from above or below, or the intervention of the decisive historical individual, a Caesar or a Bonaparte. To be justified, in Hegel's view, such irregular actions must be consistent with the contemporary underlying forces driving the historical process: they must have the effect of creating a new, acceptable legal order to replace that which is overthrown; and in consequence must result in a new normalization. In order to be justified, and thus to succeed in the long term, the exceptional situation created by the coup must be temporary and limited. Hegel saw Robespierre and Bonaparte as examples where a justified coup was initiated, but then the will of the initiators became an obstacle to a new normalization.     

Frederic Eggleston on International Relations and Australia's Role in the World

Frederic Eggleston was a prominent public intellectual whose reflections on international relations constitute one of the most important records by an Australian liberal thinker during the first half of twentieth century. Eggleston wrote extensively, and hopefully, about the capacity of international organisations to discipline the behaviour of nation-states; but his hopes were tempered in his writing also about the descent to wars, including the early Cold War period in which his support for American foreign policy grew stronger. His liberal outlook was also informed by his sense of Australia's Britishness, Australia's location in the Pacific, and Australia's future relations with Asian countries.     

Uhlin,Anders. Post-Soviet Civil Society: Democratization in Russia and the Baltic States. London and New York,Routledge, 2006, ISBN: 0-415-36804-9.

The Baltic German politician and political thinker Paul Schiemann (1876–1944) is widely recognized as the most prominent defender of liberalism in the Baltic states during the interwar period. However, his liberal ideas have rarely been interpreted in their own right. This article explores the main presuppositions of Schiemann's liberalism: his conceptions of individual freedom, democracy, and cultural development. Although Schiemann's main intentions are liberal, his theory of the anational state includes significant Marxist elements, which call into question the potential of the democratic state. In my conclusions, I will argue that Schiemann's ideas still have theoretical relevance, which must be further explored in the context of contemporary liberal theory.     

The making of the ‘Basque’ political institutions: the federal association of the representative assemblies during the Liberal Revolution (1793–1833), part II

SUMMARY

In this article Joseba Agirreazkuenaga continues his previous contributions on the development of Basque political institutions. Having followed developments to the end of the Ancien Regime, he analyzes here the process of political and bureaucratic consolidation during a time of political, ideological and military confrontations between supporters of the liberal revolution and those of the counter-revolution, in defence of the old order. This article concludes at the beginning of the long civil war, known as the first Carlist War, in which the Basque Country became one of the focal points of political debate and articulation of the new Spanish liberal state.     

King Wenceslas’ relations with the Teutonic Order in light of the dispute over the Archbishopric of Riga (1392–1397)

King Wenceslas of the Romans (1378–1400) and of Bohemia (1378–1419) supported the Teutonic Knights, but his involvement in the Eastern Baltic region during the 1390s turned him into an enemy of the Knights. This paper argues that the change in Wenceslas’ policy was solely in the interests of his courtier Duke Swantibor of Pomerania-Stettin, who sought to establish his son as Archbishop of Riga. Wenceslas’ support for Swantibor owed to the traditions of courtly favor and instability in Bohemia, not out of any personal grudge against the Knights, as was claimed in earlier historiography.     

Celebrity Politicians: Popular Culture and Political Representation

Considerable political and media attention has focused on the phenomenon of the 'celebrity politician'. As this article illustrates, there are two main variants of the phenomenon. The first is the elected politician or candidate who uses elements of 'celebrityhood' to establish their claim to represent a group or cause. The second is the celebrity—the star of popular culture—who uses their popularity to speak for popular opinion. Both examples have been seen by critics to debase liberal democratic political representation. This article challenges this critique and argues that the celebrity politician is consistent with a coherent account of political representation. This does not mean that all examples of the celebrity politician are to be seen as legitimate, but that the representative claim has to be analysed more carefully and discriminatingly than the critics typically suppose.     

Letters to the President: participation beyond the public sphere in Argentina, 1989–1999

President Carlos Menem received thousands of letters from citizens during his two consecutive administrations (1989–1999). Most often Peronist and working class, they wrote to him to seek financial or material aid, praise, criticize, advise, communicate political opinions and invite correspondence. They injected their letters with intimate details of everyday life, their understandings of democracy, and their sense of the successes and failures of the state at meeting those criteria and forging a democratic identity for the Republic. This article provides contextualized readings of a sample of those letters in an effort to elucidate why their writers looked beyond the public sphere to express themselves, and chose the letter to the president as method. It argues that discursive participation in the public sphere remained elite-dominated, and mass mobilization did not provide the individualized results or political bonds that the letter writers sought. Furthermore, as an activity that Juan Perón had actively encouraged, writing to the president appeared an object lesson in good Peronist citizenship. The “mythical basis of the legitimacy” of Perón and his version of Justicialism had been his “direct contact with the people” (Plotkin). The letters reveal how citizens in the 1990s sought to reconstitute this imagined proximity with a Peronist president in a newly democratic context.     

The State in World History: Perspectives and Problems

This paper investigates the role of the state in world history and analyses some of the major issues confronting such an investigation with a particular focus on the relationship between the modern European state and the other historical forms of the state. Firstly it considers the problems raised by the fact that the terminology of state analysis is derived from a discourse that arose to explain the particularity of European state development. Secondly it considers the problem of the origins of the state. It examines two major issues: van Creveld's argument that only modern European states are real states and the chiefdom/state distinction. It argues that new political forms occurred both with the emergence of civilisation and the "state" in the ancient world and with the development of the modern European state after 1300. Thirdly it considers the issue of a typology of states through an examination of the model developed by Finer in his The History of Government . It argues that this model is only really effective in dealing with pre–modern political forms and that the modern European state needs to be understood as a deviant from the Eurasian norm of the agrarian empire.     

The Rise and Fall of the Liberal Hezbe Watan or Homeland Party in Afghanistan, 1949–52

Afghanistan is largely known as a tribal peasant society, where the dominant organised socio-political forces are the tribes and the religious establishment, and where democratic and secular movements have been generally absent from the political scene. It is the tribal chiefs and the religious establishment that represent and mobilise people. However, liberal and constitutionalist movements in the country have had a relatively rich background since the early twentieth century. While the first constitutionalist political party emerged in the early 1900s, the first liberal party, Watan (or Homeland), emerged in the late 1940s in the aftermath of World War II, when the government allowed some changes in the method of ruling. The party became the most vocal and influential in political circles at the time. This article examines how a liberal-nationalist political party emerged and operated even though the ruling class had little desire for fundamental changes such as the separation of powers, freedom of expression or rule of law. It explores the features of the party, including its platform, goals, social and ethno-religious make-up and the method of struggle chosen to achieve its objectives, which also enabled it to take a leading role in the political process in the early 1950s.     

The Response to Terrorism as a Threat to Liberal Democracy

When dealing with terrorism as a threat to liberal democracy, it is a common assumption that it is the terrorists — who by definition refuse the rules of the liberal democratic "game"— who pose the greatest threat to the underlying principles and freedoms that are enshrined in this form of political life. However, in instances where the state fails to ensure that its response to terrorism is limited, well-defined and controlled, it is likely that institutionalised counter-terrorist policies will pose an even greater threat to the political and civil traditions that are central to the liberal democratic way of life. This paper demonstrates the potential danger by examining three cases when counter-terrorist policies initiated by (supposedly) liberal democratic entities came dangerously close to transplanting subversive terror from "below" with institutionalised, bureaucratised terror from "above": the "strategy of tension" initiated in Italy between 1969 and 1974; the Spanish "dirty war" against ETA between 1983 and 1987; and the abandonment of democratic rule in Peru between 1992 and 1996. The paper concludes that ultimately the effectiveness of the liberal democratic state's response to terrorism depends on its acceptability. It is therefore paramount that any solution which is initiated is made with due regard to the long term impact that it will have on the wider process of liberal democratic life.     

The Concept of “the State” in Modern Political Thought

Quentin Skinner's magisterial The Foundations of Modern Political Thought was first published in 1978. A commemorative volume appeared almost thirty years later. My aim in this paper is less to revisit this last discussion by questioning either the importance or the impact of Skinner's book, both of which seem to me undeniable, than it is to unsettle a few of the assumptions that not only inform The Foundations and much of the work that it inspired, but which are all too often taken for granted. In particular, I note some limitations both of Skinner's use of the term “modern” and of his understanding of political thought before concluding that it may be time to reconsider the category of modern political thought.     

Members of Parliament representing Barcelona during the rise of the Spanish parliamentary system (1834–54)

SUMMARY

The province of Barcelona became one of the major industrial regions at the outset of the first industrial revolution in Spain. The province of Barcelona had a distinctive place in the Spanish monarchy and it was an area where agriculture was the most important economic activity. This situation coincided with the beginning of liberal parliamentarism in Spain and it determined the profile of the Catalan MPs. For this reason, this article explores the profiles of the 85 deputies elected by the province of Barcelona during the period of liberal parliamentarianism (1834–54). The date and place of birth, profession, parliamentary experience and political militancy are examined, as is the development of cursus honorum, the ladder of political career advancement, based on the ‘course of honours/offices’ that operated in ancient Rome for men of senatorial rank and comprised a mixture of administrative and political posts. A quantitative analysis indicates a characteristic profile that is also aligned to a general European pattern. For instance, liberal professionals and public officials were significant in the professional status of the MPs. Besides, this study also considers the issues and questions which attracted the attention of the Catalan MPs and which were also willingly used by the MPs to mobilize public opinion. Furthermore, the MPs chosen by the province of Barcelona during the rise of the parliamentary system acted in an autonomous manner. Important examples of this autonomous political behaviour include the defence of a unitary position concerning industrial issues, military intervention in the province of Barcelona, and with tax policies.     

Moralizing metaphors: Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff on parliamentary oratory

SUMMARY

It is commonly assumed that real political eloquence can only exist under a free and popular government. But in monarchies, public oratory has had little effect on decision-making processes and therefore seems to have degenerated into an ideological affirmation of princely rule and is judged a negligible phenomenon. But recent research has shown that political power is much more than the taking of collectively binding decisions. It also has a symbolic dimension that is related to the performative representation of the commonwealth's socio-political order. To assess political eloquence in monarchies, the article focuses on the parliamentary oratory of Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff, the only German-speaking practitioner of political oratory in the seventeenth century to have published some of his orations in book form. Analysing the speeches shows Seckendorff as an erudite and experienced political thinker. A deep understanding of both the reality and theory of the Ständestaat found expression in the most prominent feature of his oratorical practice: his ingenuity to find or create new metaphors depicting the relationship between ruler and subjects. Seckendorff crafted political metaphors to expose the moral foundations of a good commonwealth and to exert moral pressure on his audience. His oratory was about ‘moral education’. Seckendorff himself, however, overlooked the fact that the very ceremoniousness of his speeches carried a performative force that shaped and reshaped the socio-political order of the commonwealth.     

Saving Private Hegel — Australian Liberalism and the 1914–1918 War

In this essay I explore the pamphlet literature and related sources, in order to assess the effects of the 1914–1918 War on liberal political ideas in Australia. The main focus of the study is the WEA intellectuals in Sydney and Brisbane, and the core group of Deakinite liberals in Melbourne as represented by the overlapping membership of the Boobooks Club and the Round Table. Themes of compulsion, Progressivism, industrial relations, citizenship, and internationalism are examined. In particular the tension which wartime experiences produced within the high idealism of Kantian and Hegelian new liberal political philosophy is investigated. The bitterness caused by the war and the doubts raised about German philosophy help us to understand the decline of statist and idealist elements within liberal thought in Australia. It seems impossible, during the present war, to write any book or to deliver a sermon or an address which does not in some way refer to the war. H.B. Higgins, Socrates, the State and War, p.7     

Leadership: Arthur Calwell and the Post‐War Immigration Program*

Arthur Calwell was the major architect of Australia's successful post‐war migration program that laid the demographic, economic and cultural foundations of contemporary society. In public memory, however, Calwell is now mostly associated with the White Australia policy, which aimed to preserve Australia as a white, British‐Australian society by severely restricting Asian immigration. This article assesses Calwell's leadership of the immigration program, his impact and his legacy. It identifies three distinct, often irreconcilable leadership characteristics, defined in terms of him as “innovative policy‐maker’, “political broker” and “agitator”. This focus on leadership challenges the one‐dimensional view of Calwell that exists in Australian political historiography. It is also intended to extend our engagement with leadership studies and illuminate the role leadership plays in political decision‐making, especially sensitive portfolios like immigration.     

Patrolling the Boundaries of Politics: Collingwood, Political Analysis and Political Action

Debates over whether a certain thing is (or ought to be) construed as 'political' are frequent and frequently interminable. This article argues that approaches to the proper understanding, scope and application of political concepts should recognise that they are both normative and contestable and also that, because they are employed by both theorist and theorised, they can never be sharply defined. It is argued that many debates achieve no theoretical closure because the terms of discussion are confined by a certain understanding of concepts as empirical and classificatory. This article examines these issues by using the work of R.G. Collingwood to suggest that conceptual overlap is inevitable and also that the theoretical analysis of politics should distinguish between the empirical and the theoretical phase of the concept. Philosophically, politics is not a separate sphere of activity but a dimension of all activity, and the correct way to understand politics is to understand it as activity, not as substance. For certain empirical purposes we categorise some things as political and others as non-political, but in doing so we should be careful whether we are doing so philosophically, historically or through stipulative definition. This article does not seek to cover all ramifications of the debate or its later literature, but to suggest that Collingwood's approach has something to contribute to the analysis of political concepts.