Liberal governmentality in Spain: bodies,minds, and the medical construction of the “outsider,” 1870–1910

Abstract

This paper traces the fragility of the subject in the period extending from the aftermath of the Sexenio through to the early twentieth century. In particular, two case studies are focused upon: the question of gender “deviance” and the figure of the genius, in order to understand how medicine participated in the construction of “outsider” identities within the context of the emerging liberal order. How did liberal rationales exclude or curtail certain wayward expressions of identity and subjectivity? What consequences did the marking of “excessive” figures or outsiders have for notions of inclusiveness and citizenship within the late-nineteenth-century liberal order? By concentrating primarily on medical texts and journals published during the period, this study builds on existing research to tease out answers to these questions.     

History

Abstract

I was obliged to do battle with history and at knife-point formed a family alliance with idols….     

Historia patria and the construction of the mestizo nation in Porfirian Mexico: the Fiestas del Centenario, 1910

Abstract

My contribution to the Special Edition seeks to examine two key aspects of the ideological underpinnings and cultural presumptions of the liberal project of state- and nation-building as interpreted by the elective dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz in Mexico (1876–80, 1884–1911), and its specific manifestation in the commemorative Fiestas del Centenario – the official celebration of the first centenary of Mexican independence from Spain – in September 1910. The article focuses, first, on the manifestation of a triumphalist liberal version of historia patria, and, second, on the projection of a distinct mestizo identity for Mexico’s ethnically diverse citizenship as key components in the construction of Mexican national identity.     

The rise and fall of “respectable” Spanish liberalism, 1808–1923: an explanatory framework

Abstract

The article focuses on the reasons behind both the consolidation of what I have termed “respectable” liberalism between the 1830s and the 1840s and its subsequent decline and fall between 1900 and 1923. In understanding both processes I study the links established between “respectable” liberals and propertied elites, the monarchy, and the Church. In the first phase these links served to consolidate the liberal polity. However, they also meant that many tenets of liberal ideology were compromised. Free elections were undermined by the operation of caciquismo, monarchs established a powerful position, and despite the Church hierarchy working with liberalism, the doctrine espoused by much of the Church was still shaped by the Counter-Reformation. Hence, “respectable” liberalism failed to achieve a popular social base. And the liberal order was increasingly denigrated as part of the corrupt “oligarchy” that ruled Spain. Worse still, between 1916 and 1923 the Church, monarch, and the propertied elite increasingly abandoned the liberal Monarchist Restoration. Hence when General Primo de Rivera launched his coup the rug was pulled from under the liberals’ feet and there was no one to cushion the fall.     

Towards understanding Botswana and South Africa’s ambivalence to liberal democracy

ABSTRACT

Despite their recognised democratic successes, Botswana and South Africa have had ambivalent experiences with liberal democracy. It is contended that they fall somewhere in-between what scholars refer to as electoral and liberal democracies; dominant party systems within Carothers’ ‘gray zone’. Two explanations are offered. The first relates to the underlying political culture of the ruling elite: the liberal democratic values of the founders and early elites of both the African National Congress (ANC) and the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) were never fully embedded; instead, their political cultures were influenced by traditions and ideologies with illiberal values. The second explanation focuses on a key feature of a liberal democracy – restraining of power, namely through encouraging an autonomous civil society and limiting executive access to the state. It is argued that for fear of losing their dominant positions, the ANC and the BDP resist restraints on their access to state power.     

Peuple,patrie et nation: les mots et les idées dans le Discours parlementaire portugais du dix-neuvième siècle

SUMMARY

In this article Maria Manuela Tavares Ribciro analyses how the Portuguese Republicans of the later nineteenth century drew inspiration from the ideas and the symbols of the Revolution of 1820 in Portugal. The subsequent liberal regimes located sovereignty in the Nation, which they distinguished from the People, who only shared in the exercise of sovereignty through voting. The will of the Nation was expressed through the elected deputies and was distinct from the will of the People and superior to it. Against this the Republicans set the revolutionary concept of the ‘Patrie’, distinct from the Nation and the direct embodiment of the collective will of the People. It was by drawing on the revolutionary concepts and symbolism of the 1820s that the late nineteenth-century Republicans articulated their claim that by setting up a republic, the People would re-invigorate the moribund liberal Nation by their direct, collective action and fashion a new and better Nation in its place.     

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.     

Corporations,subjects, and citizens: the peculiar modernity of early Hispanic liberalism

Abstract

The varying degrees of political novelty and continuity brought about by the arrival of Hispanic constitutionalism are assessed in this article. It sheds light on the adaptations and the role played by pre-existing discourses and rituals in the articulation of the self-proclaimed “liberal” institutions, both in the Iberian Peninsula and in the new independent Latin American territories. The tensions between individualistic and collectivistic representations of political power are at the centre of the analysis. The text thus seeks to make an original contribution to current debates in historiography regarding the emergence of a liberal subjectivity in the early nineteenth century and its limits.     

Notes on contributors

SUMMARY

In this paper Joseba Agirreazkuenaga gives an account of the workings of the representative institutions—Juntas Generales—of the province of Bizkaia during the later eighteenth and first part of the nineteenth century. In this period Spain as a whole was being transformed into a modern liberal society, Bizkaia followed the national trend slowly and reluctantly. The paper outlines the social, economic and political situation in Bizkaia over the period and then describes the stages by which the traditional, corporative system of representation was modernised. This was a prolonged process in face of a powerful and entrenched traditionalist resistance, so that a major reform implemented in 1854 maintained much of the old structure, which continued in place until liberal reforms, dictated from Madrid, converted the Juntas Generales into a modern parliament after 1872.     

Eurosceptic yet pro-enlargement: the paradoxes of Hungary’s EU policy

Abstract

The present article seeks to explore the main aspects of Hungary’s EU enlargement policy. It reveals a tension between the government’s committed support for EU enlargement and its critical stance towards the EU on several other fronts. However, on the basis of liberal intergovernmentalist theory, this article argues that this is not a real contradiction since enlargement to the Western Balkans serves Hungary’s national interests in spite of its government’s Euroscepticism. At the same time, Hungary’s questioning of the basic values of the EU as a community of liberal democracies has weakened the legitimacy of Hungarian interventions in favour of speeding up EU enlargement. While Hungary has become ever more isolated from the ‘old’ EU member states, more recently, its government managed to increase its leverage in the Western Balkans and central Europe in the context of the migration crisis.     

Risk,Social Protection and the World Market

Abstract

This paper sees market building in Asia as part of the larger project of constructing a global market economy – a project which can be traced back to Adam Smith and, more recently, to the founding of a set of global liberal institutions in the post-World War II period. In the last two decades the global liberal impulse behind the creation of these institutions has gained momentum, in step with the emergence of a “world market” of genuinely global scale. The issue of risk is central to the project of building a world market. Following an introduction to the global liberal project, the first section of this paper addresses the question of risk through a critical analysis of the difference between negative risks (both external and internal) that pose a threat to the global liberal project, and the positive risks that the project seeks to embed and incentivise. The second section outlines the treatment of risk in the literature on the “political economy of reform,” and the third provides a detailed analysis of Social Risk Management at the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank over the last decade. The final section reflects on the implications for “building markets in Asia.”     

The making of the Basque political and representative institution (1853–1874), Part IV

SUMMARY

During the liberal revolution in Spain the national parliament was formed. In the Basque provinces some aspects of the Historical Foral law remained in force, like the provincial representative assemblies, and in the same period the New Foral Law emerges. This paper analyses the dialectical and problematic relation between the Spanish and Basque public political powers before the dissolution of the representative assemblies in 1877.     

Teaching China in college: Nine texts

Abstract

When I began teaching in the fall of 1971 at a small liberal arts college, I was greeted by a team-taught, one-semester introductory history course, two-thirds of which outlined the past few centuries of European history. As the one and only “Asia expert” around, I was asked to come up with a book which would present “the Chinese case” in one week's time. I've been searching for a suitable introductory text ever since.     

From Nativism to the Quota Laws: Restrictionist Pressure Groups and the US Congress 1879–1924

SUMMARY

In this article Professor Frank has investigated the history of attempts to pass restrictive immigration legislation through the United States Congress. The character and activities of the different lobbying groups is analyzed and the article shows how it was the resistance of the Executive Branch, largely through the use of the veto power, that held back legislation until 1917. Thereafter liberal opposition to the extension of immigration laws was increasingly ineffectual and marginalized. The study ends with the passage of the Quota Act of 1924.     

Myths of Commonwealth Betrayal: UK–Africa Trade Before and After Brexit

Abstract

This article critically interrogates claims that a British exit from the European Union (EU) (Brexit) will create opportunities for the UK to escape the EU’s apparent protectionism and cumbersome internal politics in order to pursue a more liberal and globalist trade agenda based on the Commonwealth. Taking a historical view of UK and EU trade relations with the Commonwealth in Africa, the author highlights the way in which the incorporation of the majority of Commonwealth states into the EU’s preferential trading relationships has reconfigured ties between the UK and its former colonies over time. Further, the author suggests that the EU’s recent attempts to realise a vision for an ambitious set of free trade agreements in Africa—the Economic Partnership Agreements—was disrupted not by EU protectionism or internal politics but rather by African resistance to the EU’s liberal agenda for reciprocal tariff liberalisation and regulatory harmonisation. The UK therefore faces a complex challenge if it is to disentangle its trade relations with Africa from those of the EU and to forge its own set of ambitious free trade agreements with African Commonwealth partners.     

Au Retour a Gramsci: Reflections on Civil Society,Political Society and the State in South Asia

Abstract

This article critically analyses Partha Chatterjee’s recent concepts of civil society and political society, showing that their binary character is derived from a culturalist conflation of capitalism with modernity. In turn, modernity becomes equated with a naturalised liberal democratic state, precluding any appreciation of how resistance can and does shape the character of the state. Second, it compares Chatterjee’s categories of civil and political society to those of Gramsci, arguing that a return to classical Gramscian categories, along with an appreciation of the impact of colonialism on state forms, can provide studies of resistance with a richer and more elegant understanding of social change from below in contemporary India.     

A Geo-Economic Object or an Object of Geo-Political Absorption? Competing Visions of North Korea in South Korean Politics

Abstract

The so-called Sunshine Policy launched by the liberal regime of South Korea brought about a significant transformation in its visions of North Korea. Through it, North Korea became an “object of development.” This was something different from the previous idea of North Korea as a politico-military target. However, to conservatives, North Korea remains within the politico-military realm as an object of territorial and ideological absorption. As a result, political conflicts in South Korea in the conception of North Korea – between a geo-economic object and an object of geo-political absorption – entail competitive appropriation of the discourse of “China’s colonisation of North Korea” and affect the way North Korean territory is produced.     

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.     

Great powers,civil society and authoritarian diffusion in Central Asia

ABSTRACT

This article draws on the authoritarian promotion literature to assess contending pressures for democratization and authoritarianism in Central Asia. Domestic actors ultimately determine receptivity to democracy promotion, but external pressures for democratic transformation or authoritarian persistence exist in Central Asia. A brief overview of authoritarian trends in Central Asia is followed by the theoretical arguments for authoritarian persistence, with special attention to the civil society dimension in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Western programmes supporting liberal democracy and civil society have encountered resistance from authoritarian leaders in Central Asia, though the evidence for direct influence from authoritarian external actors is limited. A process of indirect authoritarian diffusion, in combination with the region’s illiberal societies and Western democracy promotion fatigue, undermines the development of civil society and makes authoritarian persistence in Central Asia likely.