Tax revolts,direct democracy and representation: populist politics in the US and Canada

ABSTRACT

This paper examines ideological foundations of the ‘tax revolt’ theme in American and Canadian conservative politics, through an examination of two of its most notable expressions. One was the use of direct democracy in California in the late 1970s and early 1980s to reduce property taxes. The other was the Reform Party of Canada’s blending of appeals for more extensive direct democracy and lower taxes from the late 1980s through 2000. Each of these relied on a critique of ‘representational failure’ in their respective political orders. The popularity of direct democracy across North America has been aided by the right-populist analogy between a market that enables consumer sovereignty and direct democratic instruments that facilitate end runs around legislatures – the sites of representational failure – to allow unmediated registration of the people’s low tax, anti-statist will. Employing analytical methods and theoretical perspectives developed by Michael Freeden and Michael Saward, I identify shared and distinctive conceptual and strategic/rhetorical elements in the two cases, and suggest ways of developing a ‘hybrid’ approach to the study of populisms.     

Understanding varieties of populism in times of crises

Abstract

This introduction presents the conceptual and analytical framework which constitutes the background for the special issue entitled ‘Varieties of Populism in Europe in Times of Crises’. More specifically, this contribution investigates how different populist parties in the European Union have been affected by the recent economic crisis and the more long-lasting political and cultural crises. Analytically, the article disentangles the role of the Great Recession vis-à-vis other factors (such as political and party system factors, but also structural social changes or cultural opportunities) in the growing strength of populist parties in various European countries. It argues that although the economic crisis has without any doubt provided a specific ‘window of opportunity’ for the emergence of new political actors, which have capitalised on citizens’ discontent, long-lasting political factors – such as the increasing distrust toward political institutions and parties – and the more recent cultural crisis connected with migration issues have offered further fertile ground for the consolidation of populist parties in several European countries. Furthermore, as confirmed by the articles presented in the special issue, the various crises have offered differential opportunities for different types of populism – both inclusionary and exclusionary.     

Putting the Cart before the Horse : Statebuilding,Early Warning and the Irrationality of Bureaucratic Rationalization

Abstract

Despite the transition of a government from authoritarian to democratic rule, the root causes of civil war persist and require monitoring in a post-conflict phase. The collapse of the Arusha peace accord in Rwanda is a prime example of both the importance of early warning in statebuilding and the severe consequences of its failure. This article demonstrates that such a crucial interaction between the detection of warning signals and peacebuilding has been obstructed by intervening mechanisms in international organization. These are, principally, those of bureaucratic rationalization – drawing on Max Weber's views of bureaucratic universalism and institutional rationality (Zweckrationalität) – and Western normalization – which moralises intervention scenarios to fit self-images of the pursuit of ‘noble causes’, often detaching policy from the complex realities on the ground.     

Deliberation,Citizen Science and Covid-19

Rather than aiming to produce more ‘rational’ or more ‘other-regarding’ citizen judgements (the outcome of which is uncertain), deliberative democratic exercises should be re-designed to maximise democratic participation. To do this, they must involve citizens and experts, a novel arrangement that will benefit both cohorts. For the former, a more inclusive form of deliberation will offer an opportunity to contribute to political discussion and be listened to by people with political or policy-based authority. For the latter, it will provide a venue through which expertise can be brought to bear on democratic decision making without risk of scapegoating or politicisation. More broadly, deliberation that prioritises dialogue (over, say, opinion change) affirms the principle that political decisions reflect value judgements rather than technically ‘right’ or technically ‘wrong’ answers—judgements that are legitimate if arrived at through discussion involving the people due to be affected by the resultant policy. This article sets out the advantages of this form of deliberation—which bears some similarity to certain types of citizen science—in the context of the UK government’s responses to Covid-19; both the confused decision making evident to date, and the forthcoming re-opening phases that will prioritise or advantage some constituencies over others.     

Democratic Norms and Means of Communication: Public Sphere,Fourth Estate,Freedom of Communication

Abstract

This article assesses some major democratic norms commonly invoked in relation to means of communication or ‘media’, especially in the context of ‘media policy’. The paper argues that freedom of communication provides the most appropriate normative discourse in which to re-articulate the case for the European policy practice of ‘regulated pluralism’ outside Europe. Recent developments in Australia provide a brief case-study of this thesis.     

Autonomy,Reflexivity, Tragedy: Notions of Democracy in Camus and Castoriadis

Abstract

This paper looks at two 20th century theories of tragedy: those of Cornelius Castoriadis and Albert Camus. The theories that each proffer of this ancient cultural form are striking. Against more standard views, both theorists stress that tragedy is a cultural form that has only arisen historically in cultures whose forms of religious thought have been laid open to question. In this way, both argue that tragedy is an important democratic cultural form, which stages the confrontation between a no longer unquestionable divine order, and human autonomy. The intent of the paper, from the start, is a political one. It wants to place Camus alongside Castoriadis as a ‘post-Marxist’ thinker, who belongs meaningfully to what Dick Howard has called ‘the Marxian legacy’. More than this, it aims to do this by staging Camus' theorisation of tragedy, with Castoriadis', as a powerful riposte to the conservative criticism of democracy as a modern political form, that is, that it cannot muster sacral cultural forms forceful enough to meaningfully unite people beneath its banner.     

False stories from the history of Mostar

ABSTRACT

This visual essay presents a set of stories written for a performative walk in public space, complemented with a short reflection and documentary graphic material. The art intervention, titled ‘False stories from the history of Mostar’, was conceived and performed by Abart – an art production platform started in the city of Mostar in 2008 to work on contextual forms of socially engaged art practices. The intervention addressed eight problematic sites in the city, through fictional stories which aimed to expose the underlying processes shaping the transitional management of space in Mostar.     

Global democracy and feasibility

ABSTRACT

While methodological and metatheoretical questions pertaining to feasibility have been intensively discussed in the philosophical literature on justice in recent years, these discussions have not permeated the debate on global democracy. The overall aim of this article is to demonstrate the fruitfulness of importing some of the advancements made in this literature into the debate on global democracy, as well as to develop aspects that are relevant for explaining the role of feasibility in normative political theory. This is done by pursuing two arguments. First, to advance the work on the role of feasibility, we suggest as intuitively plausible two metatheoretical constraints on normative political theorizing – the ‘fitness constraint’ and the ‘functional constraint’ – which elucidate a number of aspects relevant in determining proper feasibility constraints for an account in political theory. Secondly, to illustrate the usefulness of this feasibility framework, we sketch an account of global democracy consisting of normative principles which respond differently to these aspects and thus are tied to different feasibility constraints as well as exemplify how it may be applied in practice.     

Soft and hard law in times of crisis: budget monitoring,migration and cybersecurity

Abstract

European integration is associated with the idea of an ‘ever closer Union’, achieved in part through ‘integration-through-crisis’. However, while crises have led to higher regulatory pressure, responses to these crises have not always taken the form of stronger commitments and legally binding rules. Based on the study of three policy areas recently affected by crises, this article aims at analysing why in one of these policies (migration) more soft rules have been adopted, while the two other policies have evolved towards a greater use of hard law (budget monitoring, cybersecurity). Three potential explanations are analysed: the intensity of crises impacting political systems; the quality of prior norms and their (perceived) implementation; the entrepreneurship and heterogeneity of the coalition. Although all of these factors have explanatory powers, the capacity of policy entrepreneurs to build a large coalition appears to be the central explanation.     

Popperian Peacebuilding,Policing and the Liberal Peace

Abstract

In light of the quarrelling between advocates and critics of the liberal peacebuilding agenda, this article calls for the adoption of a ‘Popperian’ approach. This approach would be one that seeks to identify and address the greatest evils to fundamental liberal principles rather than undertaking swift and sweeping liberalization projects. Tolerance is therefore advocated in all matters that fall outside of this remit in order to temper the current zeal displayed by the liberal peacebuilding agenda. The article then considers how Popperian approaches and the ideal of tolerance were lacking in the case of peacebuilding in the security sector in Timor-Leste. In failing to ensure a clear separation of police and military forces that are apolitical, loyal to the state and professional in serving the liberal democratic polity, for example, international actors inadvertently allowed a ‘great evil’ to emerge. Rather than being distracted and diluted by a sweeping range of goals, international actors should seek to work from these fundamental concepts and be prepared to negotiate on less urgent matters.     

The Civil Society,the Uncivil Society,and the Difficulty Israel Has Making Peace with the Palestinians

Abstract

The difficulty Israel has making peace with the Palestinians, which became evident with the failure of the 1993 Oslo Agreements, can be explained through the internal relationships and historical dynamics within the Israeli public sphere, and the relations between the public sphere and the state. Using the terms ‘civil society’ and ‘uncivil society’ as a theoretical framework, the article examines both the relations between these two binary representations within the public sphere and the ability of each of them to influence state policy through two analytical tools: cultural politics and instrumental politics. The contention is that the Oslo Agreements failed in part because while both the civil and uncivil societies arose as a cultural innovation and alternative collective identities in neo-liberal Israel, the uncivil society succeeded in translating its collective representations into effective instrumental politics that influenced the Israeli state, while the civil society failed to do so.     

Introduction: Issue Congruence and Political Responsiveness

It has long been realised that democratic governance requires a two-way flow of influence. Governments must be able to respond to what people want and people must be able to react to what governments do. These preconditions for democratic governance have been central to two research traditions on political representation. One of these, the responsible party approach, views policy change as a consequence of ‘electoral turnover’, while the other, the dynamic representation approach, focuses on policy change that occurs in ‘rational anticipation’ of electoral repercussions. The aim of this volume is to evaluate the state of political representation in contemporary Europe and to advance our understanding of the topic by presenting fresh insights both on the extent to which there exists issue congruence between voters and parties and the degree to which there is dynamic representation in the policy responses of representatives. This introduction describes in some detail the nature of the two approaches and then briefly summarises the contributions made in the remainder of the volume.     

British fascism,fascist culture,British culture

ABSTRACT

In reading British fascism as a cultural phenomenon, historians have started to chart the cultural products and visions of British fascists during the interwar and post-war periods. Such analysis has tended to focus on fascists’ discourse on culture (particularly the ways that they position liberalism and modernism as degenerate), or on the cultural texts of fascists/fascism in the form of, inter alia, literature, music, dress and art. George Mosse goes as far as to argue that it is only through a cultural interpretation of fascism that we can come to understand the movement ‘from the inside out’. However, the notion of fascist culture is contentious, and not simply because the meanings of both ‘fascism’ and ‘culture’ are highly contested. Eschewing Mosse’s invitation to interpret fascism as culture, Richardson nevertheless argues that ‘the cultural’ can be understood as one approach to fascism. In this article, Richardson discusses six ways into a critical cultural analysis of the continuing presence of fascist political projects, focusing in particular on the British variant.     

The communicative constitution of representation and exclusion

In the light of current debate on representation, specifically engaging with literature showing how representation is communicatively constituted, this paper empirically shows how exclusion also can be seen as communicatively constituted. The interpretive approach toward communication employed in this study presents new insights on how, for citizens, government communicates its responsiveness, and how citizens' interpretations that arise from these communications make sense. Dutch citizens who evaluate government responsiveness as low were interviewed to explore their views. The respondents evaluate government responsiveness on the basis of a set of engagements with government. These engagements are conceptualized in terms of four types of encounter – forms in which government manifests itself to citizens. By ‘thinking with’ these encounters, citizens relegate institutions and processes of representative democracy to the margins of political reality. Situating citizens outside of democratic politics, these interpretations imply the experience of exclusion, despite apparently functioning democratic institutions and processes.     

Leviathans unbound: irrationalist political thought in interwar United States and Germany

ABSTRACT

This comparative ideological history considers why interwar America produced less prominent thought threatening parliamentarism and the rule of law than Germany. Despite different traditions, thinkers in Progressive Era America and Weimar Germany shared two commitments. Both scorned political parties and yearned for national unity. Both were also hostile to the restraints of legal formalism. Both efforts to deploy unbounded states to realize unity failed, but differently. Progressivism’s eclipse by World War I tempered confidence in democratic fulfilment and experts’ moral leadership. By contrast, appeals in post-war Weimar to national unity and the reliance on state authority – both integral to the search for constitutional legitimacy – radicalized amidst crisis thinking. Exemplary thinkers Carl Schmitt and Thurman Arnold agreed that crisis demanded transformative action based on unifying myths and administrations liberated from legal rationalism. Anti-liberal Schmitt aimed to destroy political heterogeneity and unshackle decree from statutory legality. Writing after Progressivism’s disillusionment, the New Dealer Arnold sought to use myth to conceal endemic plurality and employ law’s own irrationality to deliver to ‘technicians’ the discretion necessary for haphazard economic experimentation. Difference in timing helped make similar commitments develop differently in interaction with crisis thinking, and helps explain Arnold’s irrationalist defence of liberal democracy.     

The Public Eye and the Citizen-Voyeur: Photography as a Performance of Power

This paper argues that photography is best grasped not as a medium of visual communication, but as a manifest performance of the power to make visible. As such, photographic practices are central to the experience and demarcation of private/public boundaries in advanced media cultures. In the private domain, photography is both a ritualized domestic activity and provides conventional and definitive representations of the domestic. These functions are ostensibly opposed to photography's role in the public realm: the same visual technology becomes, in the mass media, both the index and agent of publicness itself, with the paparazzi?especially in the aftermath of Princess Diana's death?symbolizing the violation of the private. The paper explores the ways in which photographic performance at the public/private boundary dramatizes power relations through forms of social transparency, voyeurism and memoralization. It also asks whether momentary crises in the dominant scopic regime can provide the basis for alternative ‘uncanny’ visual practices that are tenable and empowering.     

The arts of refusal: tragic unreconciliation,pariah humour,and haunting laughter

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates Hannah Arendt’s writings on tragic unreconciliation and pariah humour as offering creative strategies for confronting the deadening of emotion that enables people to become reconciled to what they should refuse or resist. She offers a distinctive contribution to debates on reconciliation and justice, I suggest, by articulating a tragic approach to unreconciliation. Yet Arendt recognised that tragic accounts of violence can reinforce denial and resignation. In writings on the ‘hidden tradition’ of the ‘Jew as pariah,’ Arendt suggests that humour can be an important response to tragic accounts of political violence and a strategy for awakening an emotional response in those who cannot perceive tragedies to which they have become reconciled. As arts of refusal, tragic unreconciliation and pariah humour invoke and subvert the tragic imagination to reveal possibilities for solidarity, responsibility, and transformation that challenge problematic forms of reconciliation – reconciliation to one’s role as a participant in, or bystander to abuse, reconciliation as self-abnegating assimilation, and reconciliation as compromise, scapegoating, or denial.     

Leeds on trial: soap opera,performativity and the racialization of sports-related violence

ABSTRACT

Several recent court cases involving the ‘off-field’ activities of professional sportsmen have revealed the ways in which the public performance, media representation and regulation of ‘crime’ is played out in the public imagination. Blackshaw and Crabbe explore how notions of ‘race’ are performatively staged and consumed through the spectacles of celebrity, and discuss the significance of the CCTV evidence used in such cases. In doing so they highlight the ways in which ‘race’ operates discursively to undermine the position of the racialized Other.     

The art and politics of imagination: remembering mass violence against women

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the role of artistic memory in processes of redressing political violence and historical injustices. Combining philosophical reflection, insights from memory studies and examples of artistic practices, it focuses on how memory and imagination coalesce in problematising mass violence against women and resisting its ‘official’ oblivion. The argument is that artistic memory work can foster collective memories of the painful past in ways that overcome both individual and national representations. To this end, this paper aims to explore various contemporary art productions as new models of memorialization, which deal with the representation of violence against women in armed conflicts and under political repression. The academic literature on the role of art in processes of dealing with the past tends to examine literature, film, theatre, painting and other more traditional artistic media of commemorating the victims of mass violence. In contrast, this paper explores the political potentialities of new artistic models of memorialization, namely participatory and collaborative artistic practices. Unlike the traditional media, they can commemorate victims performatively and collaboratively, simultaneously catalysing transnational solidarity and new forms of politics ‘from below.’     

Telling the stories of others: claims of authenticity in human rights reporting and comics journalism

ABSTRACT

There are various intermediaries bearing witness to distant conflicts and atrocities. They travel to distant parts of the world to collect different kinds of evidence and stories, motivated by the assumption that knowledge can evoke change. This article asks how authenticity is claimed in this context of humanitarian witnessing. It focuses on two, at first sight quite different, practices of representation: NGO human rights reporting and comics journalism, also known as graphic reporting. It argues that representations of first-hand access to sites and people involved in abuses, or of ‘having been there’, figure centrally in establishing authenticity and thereby truth. The article discusses two techniques through which first-hand truth claims are performed: representations of field research methodologies, and personifications of truth in the figure of the witness. The intermediaries chosen for an in-depth study are the human rights NGO Human Rights Watch and the US comics journalist Joe Sacco.