A Priori Voting Power: What Is It All About?

We explain the meaning of a priori voting power and outline how it is measured. We distinguish two intuitive notions as to what voting power means, leading to two approaches to measuring it. One conception, I-power, focuses on a voter's potential influence over the outcome of decisions by a voting body. The second conception, P-power, focuses on voters' payoff, their expected share of a fixed winning 'prize'. We discuss and rebut some philosophical and pragmatic objections, according to which a priori (as distinct from actual) voting power is worthless or inapplicable.     

The civilian's visual security paradox: how open source intelligence practices create insecurity for civilians in warzones

ABSTRACT

Images taken by civilians and shared online have become an important source of conflict intelligence. This article explores issues around how states and non-state actors appropriate civilians’ images to produce intelligence about conflict, critically scrutinizing a practice often called open source or social media intelligence. It argues that image appropriation for open-source intelligence production creates a new kind of visual security paradox in which civilians can be endangered by their everyday visual practices because their digital images can be appropriated by outside actors as conflict intelligence. The transformation of everyday images into conflict evidence relies on what Barthes termed the photographic paradox, the paradox that while a photograph is clearly not the reality it depicts, the photograph is casually interpreted as a copy of that reality. When images are appropriated as conflict intelligence this photographic paradox translates into a security paradox. A visual security argument can be made without the intention or knowledge of the image producer, who then comes to perform the role on an intelligence agent. Yet civilians in warzones can hardly refrain from producing any images when they need to call attention to their plight, and to stay in contact with friends and relatives. The paradox, then, is that such vital visual signs of life can rapidly become sources of danger for the civilian. This civilian visual security paradox, it is argued, demands that intelligence actors respect the protected status of civilians in their online collection practices. So far, however, there is little sign of such respect.     

One Concept of Liberty

In this paper I argue in favour of a single conception of liberty, that picked out by Berlin as negative liberty. However, Berlin's defence of liberty so understood seems to rest on a view not open to the moral realist.
The first half of the paper explains this and suggests an alternative defence compatible with such a moral position. The defence rests on an account of why we value freedom. In the second half of the paper this negative conception is defended against recent criticism from Charles Taylor. His appeal to qualitative distinctions within freedom is queried, as is the conception of the self that seems required for his outlook.     

The Morality of Sex: Contra Kant

Abstract

While much that is admirable in romanticism stems from Kant's philosophy, a better account of how sexuality can be an ethical possibility exceeds the cramped parameters that he imposes. His conception of marriage and its dependence upon a contractual exchange of rights may well be irremediable because of its formal emptinesses. His idea of human love as good will and an interest in the welfare of the beloved is defensible as far as it goes. But it does not go far enough to explain the morality of love, either in sexuality or in marriage.     

Toleration and modus vivendi

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to explore some connections between the ideas of toleration and modus vivendi, principally through a critical engagement with the work of John Gray. In particular, it argues that while Gray is right to see a connection between modus vivendi and a particular conception of toleration (here referred to as the ‘traditional conception’) it is both problematic and potentially confusing to tie either of these ideas, as he does, to a theory of value-pluralism. Instead, they should be viewed as distinct but partially overlapping and often mutually supportive ideas, the relevance of which are best explained in terms of the need or desire of people to live together under conditions of conflict about the worth of different ways of life, and motivated by a variety of pragmatic and principled concerns. The paper also offers a modest defence of the traditional conception of toleration against some of its critics, arguing that such a practice of toleration, if supported by a modus vivendi, can provide a peaceable means of accommodating differences in a way that is broadly accepted, although neither ideal nor necessarily uncontested, by both tolerators and the tolerated.     

Legitimacy in Conflict: Concepts,Practices, Challenges

ABSTRACT

The study of legitimacy in situations of conflict and peacebuilding has increased in recent years. However, current work on the topic adopts many assumptions, definitions, and understandings from classical legitimacy theory, which centers on the relationship between the nation-state and its citizens. In this introduction, we provide a detailed critical overview of current theories of legitimacy and legitimation and demonstrate why they have only limited applicability in conflict and post-conflict contexts, focusing on the three main areas that the articles included in this special issue examine: audiences for legitimacy, sources of legitimacy, and legitimation. In particular, we show how conflict and post-conflict contexts are marked by the fragmentation and personalization of power; the proliferation and fragmentation of legitimacy audiences; and ambiguity surrounding legitimation strategies.     

Deliberative citizenship: a critical reappraisal

ABSTRACT

The study of citizenship as a political or moral ideal involves identifying core commitments and capabilities, the cultivation and exercise of which is often presented as a condition of being a ‘good’ citizen. Deliberative democracy was, at least until recently, associated with a conception of citizenship that endorses those qualities that equip us for a certain kind of respectful and reflective dialogue. This article reappraises this conception in light of the so-called ‘systemic turn’ within deliberative theory. It shows how systems thinking has displaced the traditional conception of deliberative citizenship, but that theorists have so far not elaborated a satisfactory replacement. A pluralist model is thus proposed, which casts light on the diverse qualities that a range of actors in a deliberative system might require. The resulting argument is not merely of interest to deliberative theorists, but to all who are concerned with the ethics of citizenship. The main reason is that it displaces the entrenched notion of a ‘good citizen’, in favour of the more heterogenous ideal of a ‘good citizenry’.     

Contested narratives of encounter from a bridge-building project in northern England

ABSTRACT

Recent years of community engagement under the war on terror in the UK have seen the co-option of bridge-building initiatives into wider narratives of securing communities. Through ethnographic insights into a peace building inter-faith initiative that made it onto the news as a ‘deradicalization’ workshop, I show how encounters in such projects are susceptible to being reframed into the very narrative in which encounters are sought after in the first place as a political settlement to growing inter-ethnic tension and conflict. This paper contributes to the growing geographies of encounter literature by making more explicit the narratives that shape how encounters function.     

The development of capitalism in South African agriculture: clas struggle in the countryside

The existence of contradictions within the Ricardian system is by now well established. It remains, however, to consider the necessity of those contradictions. In this essay certain of the central paradoxes of Ricardian economics are treated not in terms of the deficiencies of Ricardo's analytical ability, the lack of proper ‘tools’, or the presence of ideological blinders, but in terms of their intrinsic necessity within the Ricardian conception of the capitalist economic system as a whole. We indicate how Ricardo's own insight into the functioning of the capitalist economy drives him to adopt principles of value which he himself considers to be in conflict. In light of this discussion it is possible to approach more closely to a determination of the essential character of Ricardian economics and of classical political economy as a whole.     

Intervention Theatre: performance,authenticity and expert knowledge in politicians’ travel to post-/conflict spaces

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of official travel activities by politicians to post-/conflict spaces in German foreign policymaking. Starting from the observation that official travel justifications stress the value of authentic insights and unfiltered information, while journeys in practice are meticulously planned and staged, it asks what kind of knowing is possible, how actors make sense of the staged nature of field trips, and how multiple performances create and/or undermine notions of authenticity and first-hand expertise. The article shows that official on-site visits are composed of multiple conscious performances by all actors involved, but that these performances do not undermine the notions of authenticity and expertise. On the contrary, knowledge authenticity—or truth claims on the basis of authentic insights—and related expert authority are produced through travel-as-performance. The emphasis policymakers put on on-site presence and (the performance of) localized knowledge contradicts intervention literature’s generalized finding of a prioritization of technocratic over localized knowledge. The article draws on politics and performance scholarship and authenticity theories in tourism studies to make sense of a wealth of empirical material on the claims, practice and functions of German MPs’ journeys to post-/conflict spaces as part of broader political struggles over policy knowledge.     

A House Divided? Roll Calls,Polarization, and Policy Differences in the U.S. House, 1877–2011

The study of political conflict in legislatures is fundamental to understanding the nature of governance, but also difficult because of changes in membership and the issues addressed over time. Focusing on the enduring issue of civil rights in the United States since Reconstruction, we show that using current methods and measures to characterize elite ideological disagreements makes it hard to interpret or reconcile the conflicts with historical understandings because of their failure to adequately account for the policies being voted upon and the consequences of the iterative lawmaking process. Incorporating information about the policies being voted upon provides a starkly different portrait of elite conflict—not only are contemporary parties relatively less divided than is commonly thought, but the conflict occurs in a smaller, and more liberal, portion of the policy space. These findings have important implications for a broad range of work that uses elite actions to compare political conflict/polarization across time.     

The Subjects of Socialism: Politicizing Honneth’s Idea of Socialism

ABSTRACT

This paper criticizes Axel Honneth’s Idea of Socialism from a post-Marxist but nevertheless Marxian perspective. It focuses on the importance of particular political subjectivities for bringing about emancipatory transformations. Honneth’s decoupling of his revived conception of socialism from any kind of partisan subjectivity is not only overhasty. It also loses sight of the emergence of socialism as an idea in a proper Hegelian sense. Whilst Honneth contradictorily assumes that contemporary ethical life is already infused with a comprehensive normativity of social freedom that points towards its further realization, such a tendency of normative and social universality has been largely eliminated by the regressions of neoliberal hegemony. In this historical situation, the becoming-hegemonic of social freedom depends on the polemical initiative of those kinds of political subjectivities which are theoretically excluded from Honneth’s conception of socialism.     

John Locke and the Limits of Religious Liberty: Marriage License Refusal,Religious Freedom Laws,Vaccine Refusal,Contraception Mandate Exemptions,and Ultrasound Requirements

Nearly two hundred fifty years into its existence, the American polity faces a conundrum over a core founding principle: religious liberty. Multiple debates have emerged over the extent and limits of religious liberty, including arguments over how far any one person’s religious liberty extends into the public sphere as well as into the private lives of other citizens. Highly influential on James Madison’s crafting of the First Amendment, John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration outlines a strong conception of both religious toleration and of religious liberty. In the “Letter,” Locke’s reasoning is sympathetic to the concerns and convictions of believers while remaining cognizant of the calamities to which religious differences can give rise. Further, he provides a robust explication of the mutually exclusive domains of ecclesiastical and civil authorities, now known more colloquially as the division of church and state. In the following article, I illustrate how the principles put forth by Locke offer guidance in adjudicating religious liberty claims in the cases of Kim Davis, religious freedom laws, vaccine refusal, contraception mandate exemptions, and ultrasound requirements.     

Truth and Politics: Thinking About Evidence‐Based Policy in the Age Of Spin

Evidence‐based policy and the contemporary politics of spin are said to characterise contemporary politics and policy. The paper asks firstly what sense is to be made of this coincidence, and then documents this coincidence. It then asks how credible is the conception of ‘evidence’ espoused by advocates of evidence‐based policy when it is conventionally represented as an ‘objective’ counter to ideology, spin or opinion? It points to major problems with the conventional understandings of ‘evidence’. It is suggested that while the evidence‐based policy literature relies on the associations ‘evidence’ is presumed to have with ‘sensory data’, this is neither the case nor all that defensible. The paper reprises arguments advanced by Henry Mayer and Hannah Arendt that the relationship of politics to the empirical was and is a far more complex relationship than is conventionally understood to be the case.     

A New American Way of War? C4ISR,Intelligence and Information Operations in Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’: A Provisional Assessment

This work examines publicly material available released as of 2 September 2003 on the role of intelligence for the Coalition side during the 2003 Gulf War. It assesses how far the Coalition side practised deception, psychological warfare, and information operations during that conflict, and how far intelligence served the needs of military forces. It focuses on failures as well as successes. It compares the real performance of intelligence during the conflict with the role forecast for C4ISR and Information Operations by theorists of the RMA, and modern strategy. It concludes that the Coalition forces practised Information Operations very well, but that at the operational level, there had been no revolution in military intelligence.     

UNSC Resolution 1325 national action plans in Liberia and Sierra Leone: An analysis of gendered power relations in hybrid peacebuilding

This paper considers how the use of ‘hybridity’ in the peacebuilding literature overlooks the gendered dimensions of hybrid interactions. It does so by examining the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1325 national action plans (NAPs) for Liberia and Sierra Leone. By asking the gendered questions of ‘who participates?’ and ‘how do they participate?’ it draws from Mac Ginty’s conception of hybridity and traces the compliance and incentivizing power in hybridized peace, as well as the ability of local actors to resist and provide alternatives. However, Mac Ginty’s model is found to be inadequate because of its inattention to the gendered nature of power. It is found that with a gendered approach to hybridity, it is easier to trace the processes of hybridization of NAPs in post-conflict states where their implementation is limited. In asking the questions of ‘who’ and ‘how’, three conclusions about the gendered nature of hybrid peacebuilding are drawn: international intervention relies upon the ‘feminization’ of local actors; issues framed within the realm of the ‘masculine’ are more likely to get attention; and the Resolution 1325 agenda in post-conflict states can be subverted by framing it as a ‘soft’ issue.     

An African Conception of Human Rights? Comments on the Challenges of Relativism

The belief that human rights are culturally relative has been reinforced by recent attempts to develop more plausible conceptions of human rights whose philosophical foundations are closely aligned with culture-specific ideas about human nature and/or dignity. This paper contests specifically the position that a conception of human rights is culturally relative by way of contesting the claim that there is an African case in point. That is, it contests the claim that there is a unique theory of rights. It analyses three examples of what often passes as African conception of human rights arguing that they have little or nothing to do with human rights, are simply inadequate or are not African in the sense at issue in a cultural relativism. Along the way, it distinguishes between two meanings of the term African contending that to the extent that the practice of prizing the ‘community’ higher than any other value is definitive of African, the idea of African human rights remains suspect.     

Policy conflicts in shale development in China and the United States

Policy conflicts are ubiquitous in many countries. Yet research on policy conflict is typically based on cases in western, democratic countries. As a result, little is known about the characteristics of policy conflicts in non-western countries, such as China, or how these characteristics compare to western contexts. The Policy Conflict Framework (PCF) was recently developed to help scholars identify, diagnose, and compare policy conflict characteristics. This research uses the PCF to guide a comparative analysis of the nature of policy conflicts in China and the United States. With interview data on policy actors from Chongqing, China and Colorado, USA, we present the findings by comparing the differences and similarities of policy conflicts in the two countries around shale oil and gas development. We conclude with the strengths and limitations of this comparative study of policy conflicts in China and other national contexts, along with recommendations for conducting PCF research in China.     

Dynamic Policymaking with Decay

It is often said that the only constant is change itself. As time passes, the population grows, new technologies are invented, and the skills, demographics, and norms of the populace evolve. These changes, whether in isolation or in aggregate, influence the effectiveness of policy. In particular, policies designed for today's world are unlikely to provide a perfect fit tomorrow. We develop a notion of policy decay that captures this impact formally. We introduce policy decay into a paradigmatic model of legislative policymaking and show that it leads to a starkly different perspective on legislative politics. Our results upend the classic notion of gridlock and bear implications more broadly for the practice of politics. We show how a changing world impacts the power of agenda control, how it drives the dynamic path of legislation, how it reveals a novel conception of policy expertise, and how it, ultimately, provides a foundational logic to the design of bureaucracy.