Public opinion polls on Jews in France and Austria

Harris surveys a number of overlapping debates relating to 'difference' and the 'public/private' distinction, including: positions that perceive differences only as labels to secure governmentality; that treat difference as something to be consumed; that accept but confine difference to the private domain; that attempt to reconcile collective difference to the demands of a liberal theory of individual rights; that counter this by suggesting a need to rethink the relationship between state and society to allow for the creation of multicultural public forms; that insist that the option of difference should be enlarged to embrace the fundamental differences of economic inequality; that would see the appeal to cultural differences as only an ideology that masks the contradictions of modern liberal capitalism; and those, like Harris's own, that want to focus on the multifaceted, interactive and relational nature of difference. Identity and culture, he argues, are achieved processes deriving from a specific praxis of interpretation and enforcement located within the field of historically constituted social relations shaped by grids of meanings, access to resources and power. Once we give up the idea of cultures as sealed entities and recognize that even within cultural boundaries communication is essentially about difference and requires translation, then the problematic nature of the constituent elements of 'multiculturalism' - multi-, -cultural-, -ism - renders the whole concept questionable. Undoubtedly, most avowed multiculturalists are committed to some sense of the 'good' or 'better' society, but it will simply not do to overburden the notion of multiculturalism, however radically conceived and well intentioned, with the task of achieving social justice.     

The Howard Government: The Extent to which Public Attitudes Influenced Australia's Federal Policy Mix

This article focuses on the interaction between government policy and public attitudes in order to explain why the Howard government was reasonably pragmatic given that it maintained enough popular support to win four successive federal elections from 1996, and why such a relationship is crucial to evaluating policy trends in Australia's liberal democracy in terms of understanding both policy possibilities and limitations no matter how flawed or divisive certain policies may appear to be.     

Liberalism,Multiculturalism and the Problem of Essentialism1

This article focuses on key themes in the liberal philosophical debate over multiculturalism, as well as the responses of Canadian social and political actors to the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington. Since September 11, there has been a renewed popularity of arguments positing a 'clash of civilizations' between Muslim and Christian societies, and a new legitimacy advanced for 'ethnic profiling' in the name of security. The rapidity with which this has happened in Canada is particularly striking because of the country's liberal-democratic and multicultural tradition. The introduction of a national policy of multiculturalism in 1971 provided a new understanding of Canadian citizenship that was more inclusionary of immigrants and ethnic and racial minorities. Multiculturalism has also become a hotly debated ideal among Canadian, American and European political philosophers concerned with addressing the possibilities and limits of liberalism given ethnic diversity, and the limits of ethnic diversity given liberalism. Multiculturalism is typically presented as a 'problem' for liberal politics and ethics. Building on how multiculturalism policy in Canada has provided a more inclusionary discourse around citizenship, a defence of multiculturalism is advanced which rejects the essentialist treatment of 'culture' and 'cultural' groups. It is suggested that the unfolding discussions in Canada since September 11 demonstrate the ongoing tension between cultural essentialism and liberal individual rights. The Canadian experience points to the value of an anti-essentialist multiculturalism in challenging discrimination given that neither liberalism, nor liberal democratic states, are neutral in their allocation of resources and legitimacy among more and less powerful ethnic groups. It is argued that rather than multiculturalism, it is essentialist thinking, imagery and ideas which present the greatest 'problem' to the ethics of liberalism and the politics of liberal democracies like Canada.     

Liberalism,socialism and democracy: variations on a governmental theme

Liberalism is commonly understood as a political doctrine or ideology concerned with the maximization of individual liberty. However, following Foucault's work on governmentality, a different usage has been suggested, based on the idea of a liberal mode of government. I argue that the differences between these accounts of liberalism derive from a fundamental ambiguity in the liberal project, as a result of which the figure of a community of autonomous individuals appears on the one hand as given reality, serving to identify the character and the limits of legitimate government, while on the other it appears as yet to be realized positivity, serving to define the objective for a variety of governmental projects.

This paper examines the implications of that ambiguity for the understanding first of liberalism as doctrine and second of its relationship to other contemporary doctrines - democracy, socialism and the neo-liberalism in particular. Since the figure of the community of autonomous persons considered as given reality tends to dominate standard characterizations of liberalism as doctrine of government, it also plays an important part in the contrasting characterizations of democracy and socialism. We should expect the view of such a community as artefact to produce a rather different picture.     

Gagging orders: asylum seekers and paradoxes of freedom and protest in liberal society

The detention of non-status migrants is now commonplace in developed countries. Detention has been justified on such grounds as security, the welfare of non-status migrant populations, and as a way to speed up processing asylum claims. Drawing from the artist Krzysztof Wodiczko's sustained interest in themes of migration and belonging, this article examines the relationships between technologies of government in detention and accommodation facilities, and the possibilities and constraints of protest that these settings and practices give rise to. The analysis highlights paradoxes of freedom as well as opportunities for protest that imbue these spaces. Using Foucault's discussion of technologies of government, we draw on empirical research to highlight how orientation booklets, classes, and legal self-representation manuals are technologies that compel asylum seekers to become ideal detainees in hopes of being understood as ‘liberal subjects’ worthy of inclusion in a small number of evermore tightly policed Western European states. We conclude with the suggestion that asylum seekers' paradoxical encounters with technologies of liberal government deliver a challenge to the accepted framework of citizenship within liberal societies.     

Uncertain subjects: risks,liberalism and contract

Uncertainty has been largely overlooked in the governmentality literature dealing with risk, especially because of contemporary emphases on models of statistical or actuarial risk calculation. Yet it represents a distinctive way of governing through the future, whose place in the formation of rationalities of neo-liberalism, and of 'enterprising subjects', is vital. Indeed, in domains of enterprising activity, the governmental modality of uncertainty marginalizes or subordinates statistical and expert models of risk management. In part this is because of enterprise's 'inventive' orientation - which sits ill with risk's assumption of a future that reproduces the past. Not only is uncertainty central to techniques of neo-liberal government, it has a genealogy that is distinguishable from the genealogy of more rationally calculative modalities of liberal government - but also reaching back to the beginnings of liberalism. In the development of contract law, blueprints for government through uncertainty provide a foundational element in the constitution of liberal subjects, and for the 'reasonable' techniques of government through the future which are a hallmark of liberalism. It is concluded that the place of uncertainty is central to liberalism and thus unlikely to be marginalized by 'risk society' developments.     

Jokes and their relation to the mode of production

Abstract

The governmentality literature offers a host of insights into liberal modes of government. A key theme in this literature is that the economy came to be seen as an autonomous domain requiring its own form of governmental reason. Yet the emergence of the economy has never been specified, in terms of both what would constitute an economy and how it was constituted. Instead, the appearance of an economy has been conflated with the general rise of liberal understandings of agency. In this paper I seek to provide an alternative and more precise account. This involves showing how the importance of Smith lies not so much in his formulation of a liberal version of agency, but in the disjunction he introduces between reason of state and political oeconomy. Crucially, despite his significance, Smith's arguments do not usher in an economy. For that event we have to wait for Ricardo's problematic of distribution. This alternative account is intended to weaken the association of the rise of liberal government with the emergence of the economy as an object of thought.     

The mutuality of risk and community: the adjudication of community notification statutes

Although it has drawn significant attention in the legal literature, the adjudication of community notification statutes (often referred to as 'Megan's Law' in the United States) demonstrates a centrality of both risk and community that deserves attention from a governance perspective. In this paper, I focus on the ways in which concepts of risk and community are mutually constitutive, and how the adjudication of community notification statutes relies on particular visions of 'community' to engage particular ways of conceiving of 'risk', much of which relies on a rejection of expertise and a focus on 'common sense'. This focus on 'common sense', opens up new problematics of government: courts adjudicating community notification cases are working to define the particular mechanics of a state-civil society partnership, and thereby operationalize the preventive state without rendering the state redundant or obsolete, and without opening the state to new forms of legal and political accountability. While providing a case study in the move to advanced liberal governance in the area of criminal law, this adjudication also reveals the contingent nature of risk, and the ways in which judicial invocation of 'risk' and its management can constitute liberal subjects who continue to rely on the state, while no longer expecting the state to be accountable for crime or its control.     

Deleuze and the liberal tradition: normativity,freedom and judgement

This paper is a critical review article of Paul Patton's book, Deleuze and the Political , and analyzes the relationship between Deleuze and the 'liberal' tradition of political philosophy. It focuses on three concepts drawn from the liberal tradition - normativity, freedom and judgment - and in each case shows how these concepts are capable of being transformed in light of Deleuze's philosophy. For Deleuze, a truly 'normative' principle must be a principle of creation as well as critique: it must not only provide norms for condemning abuses of power, but also a means for transforming norms that have themselves become abuses of power. From a Deleuzian perspective, the normative is thus seen as the condition for the production of the new. The liberal notion of 'negative freedom' in turn finds itself transformed into the stronger notion of 'critical freedom' (Tully), which entails the freedom to critique and create, to transform (and not merely pursue) one's own interest and desires. This entails, finally, an exercise of a kind of judgement outside pre-existing rules or norms that would be truly creative of the new (e.g. the production of new rights). A concluding section of the concept of the 'social imaginary’ shows how Deleuze's work might contribute to a transformation and rejuvenation of the liberal tradition itself.     

Critique of Marx's 1857 Introduction

A group of leading critical writers in the school of govenrmentality studies have recently called for a debate over the methoddological and political direction of studies of complex mode of government beyond confines of the State. This paper traces the divisions within the field to Foucault's ambiguous methodological legacy, in paraticular to an impoverished theorization of sovereignty. Rather, this paper emphasizes its centripetal function, within and between nation states, in maintaining hybrid forms of liberal rule in the effort to manage the centrifugal tendencies endemic in a pluralist liberal order. These modes of rule operate in tension with the role of liberalism as critique. On the basis of this analysis, it is argued that radical critique within this field is limited, erroneuously distances critique from liberlism and would be unduly restrictive for governmentality theorists who with to perform a more central role as public intellectuals. Liberalism could once more be the principal focus for a normatively comitted form governmentality studies, which in turn, could emerge as its principal vehicla for immanent critque and renewal.     

Posner,Bentham and the rule of economy

Law and economics is a prominent but understudied discourse of liberal government. This essay examines the work of Richard Posner, with special attention to his rediscovery of Jeremy Bentham as a founder of law and economics. Posner's new reading of Bentham accurately identifies Bentham as a fellow anti-juridical theorist of government and a fellow believer in the rule of economy. But Bentham's economy makes room for a range of disciplinary appropriations, and Posner's does not. Posner's economy is entirely defined and exhausted by a particular economic doctrine. The essay suggests that civil society has been over-emphasized in the literature contrasting classical and contemporary liberalism. Instead, it turns attention to a common understanding of law as a non-autonomous and flexible tactic of economic government and to the role of the various sciences that can inform it.     

Solomon Islands: blending traditional power and modern structures in the state

By mid‐2001, the Solomon Islands government was on the edge of bankruptcy after two years of unrest on Guadalcanal. Solomon Islanders' hopes that the national government can improve their living standards have been dashed, only 23 years after British colonial rule ended on these South‐West Pacific islands. The reasons for the state's limited capacity to facilitate development extend much further than the financial crisis, as a comparison between power relations typically institutionalized in Western liberal democratic states and those institutionalized in the Solomons state shows. The Solomons state is a syncretism of traditional political practices and modern structures. Many of these traditional practices are impeding development. Recent neo‐liberal reforms championed by the previous government, the Asian Development Bank and other aid agencies did little to address these practices and were terminated in the unrest in 2000. If the state is to improve the living standards of ordinary Solomon Islanders, changes in structure, such as the state governments being established following the Townsville Peace Agreement, are not the sole answer. There also need to be changes in the political practices of both officials and politicians at national and local level. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The evolution of Israeli citizenship: an overview

Israel's citizenship discourse has consisted of three different layers, superimposed on one another: An ethno-nationalist discourse of inclusion and exclusion, a republican discourse of community goals and civic virtue, and a liberal discourse of civil, political, and social rights. The liberal discourse has served as the public face of Israeli citizenship and functioned to separate Israel's Jewish and Palestinians citizens from the non-citizen Palestinians in the occupied territories. The ethno-nationalist discourse has been invoked to discriminate between Jewish and Palestinian citizens within the sovereign State of Israel. Last, the republican discourse has been used to legitimate the different positions occupied by the major Jewish social groups: ashkenazim vs. mizrachim, males vs. females, secular vs. religiously orthodox. Until the mid-1980s the republican discourse, based on a corporatist economy centered on the umbrella labor organization – the Histadrut – mediated between the contradictory dictates of the liberal and the ethno-nationalist discourses. Since then, the liberalization of the Israeli economy has weakened the republican discourse, causing the liberal and ethno-nationalist ones to confront each other directly. Since the failure of the Oslo peace process in 2000, these two discourses have each gained the upper hand in one policy area – the liberal one in economic policy and the ethno-national one in policy towards the Palestinians and the Arabs in general. This division of labor is the reason why on the eve of its 60th anniversary as a state Israel is experiencing its worst crisis of governability ever. While Israel's economy is booming and the country's international standing remains high, due to the global ‘war on terror,’ public trust in state institutions and leaders is at an all-time low, so that the government cannot tend to the country's pressing business.     

Return of the Governors: Citizenship and the New Governance of Neighbourhood Disorder in the UK

Liberal processes of urban governance are based around a concept of the citizen as both governor and governed. This duality suggests a dynamic relationship between the individual citizen, fellow citizens and the state in which responsibility for the governance of public life will oscillate between actors. This paper argues that increasingly the rhetoric and policy of neighbourhood governance in the UK represents a return of the direct role of the state as an 'official' presence in the governance of neighbourhood disorder. Such a return is a consequence of the failure of previous appeals to both 'active citizens' and 'communities' to exert informal social control over their local public spheres. This paper provides a critique of such appeals as a response to the continuing crisis of urban citizenship and 'community' in liberal democracies. The paper analyses the implications for urban citizenship theory of two recent UK policy developments, child safety initiatives (commonly referred to as curfews) and neighbourhood warden schemes and places these initiatives in the context of an increasing role for official housing agencies and private interests in neighbourhood governance. The paper suggests a need for urban policy to reflect the diversity of urban identities and to re-establish the links between civil, political and social rights of citizenship.     

Indigenous governance

The governmentality literature's focus on mentalities of rule, and its aversion to sociological analysis, tends to produce a programmatic vision of governance. From this perspective, politics appears primarily as a mentality of rule, and resistance appears primarily as a negative – as a source of programme failure. This paper explores aspects of Australian policies of self-determination for Aboriginal peoples, in order to examine ways in which resistance (in the form of indigenous governance) plays a constitutive role in the formation of rule. Government and resistance articulate, mingle and hybridize, so that resistance cannot readily be thought of as external to rule. In this way, liberalism's governmental relations with resisstance are characterized by incorporation of resistant, ‘indigenous’, governances. In turn, this is a source of its innovativeness and flexibility, becoming part of its strategy of government at a distance. However, this incorporation creates tensions and contradictions within the liberal project itself, instabilities which cannot be reduced to the status of external sources of programme failure.     

From New Labour to New Conservatism: the changing dynamics of citizenship as self-government

This article examines the shift in discourses of citizenship from Britain from notions of entitlement and obligation to those of self-government, and the reciprocity between the responsibilisation of individual and collective citizen-subjectivities. Against the backdrop of debates about society as the telos of government, this article will interrogate the claim that New Conservatism's ‘Big Society’ represents a unique rationality of government and an alternative formula of advanced liberal rule. By doing so, the article will extend our understanding of ‘post-welfare regimes of the social’ and illustrate precisely how they operate in contemporary Britain.     

Letter from Ankara

This article focuses on the relationship between discourses of economic development and prospects for democracy in Turkey. It does so by tracing the political discourse of high‐ranking government officials and journalists close to them to show how they use arguments for economic development as a tool to politically legitimise interventions into liberal democracy. I first illustrate the dangers caused by the discourse surrounding economic development to democracy by looking at the Gezi protests. I show how demands for pluralism and respect for different lifestyles—which are crucial aspects of liberal democracy—were instead framed by the government as chaos created by agents of the so‐called ‘interest rate lobby’ and provocations caused by those who want to stop Turkey's economic development. I analyse Gezi in comparative perspective with presidentialism debates and the corruption scandal of December 2013. In these cases too, demands for democracy, transparency, checks and balances are pitted against economic development. Citizens are made to choose between a vaguely defined notion of economic development and democratisation.     

Liberal Democracy: One Form or Many?

This article examines whether there are significant differences between liberal democracies which warrant them being classified as different forms of democracy. The article begins by outlining six features of liberal democracy which are crucial in understanding how this type of government works. The subsequent section examines the origins of liberal democracy and considers the relevance of arguments derived from American 'exceptionalism'. Attention is then focused on liberal democratic governments today - by reference to Lijphart's distinction between 'majoritarian' and 'consensus' democracies. Finally, the article looks at whether the form of liberal democracy is changed substantially when it is transplanted into a cultural context different from the one in which it originated. The general conclusion is that there is no case for identifying different forms of liberal democracy.     

Liberalization as a Development Strategy: Network Governance in the Korean Mobile Telecom Market

This study analyzes Korea's often noted yet seldom studied spectacular rise to become one of the important global players in the mobile telecommunications industry. The Korean “leap frog” occurred in the context of liberalization under the worldwide liberal telecommunications regime. This article finds that network governance—the emphasis on the use of partnerships and network transactions with global firms as well as the local private sector—is the reason for Korea's success. It examines the origins of and driving forces acting upon the liberalization policy, and discusses how the state and telecom firms cooperated to develop the mobile market. It also assesses the new governance that is taking place in Korea's telecom market by focusing on the changing roles of the state in three major aspects: provision, regulation, and foreign entry barriers into the mobile market. While the Korean government promoted a market‐conforming telecom market and private ownership, this article argues, it formulated rather different governance principles from the U.S. model of liberal governance.     

The Lost Treasure of Arendt's Council System

Abstract

Hannah Arendt's On Revolution offers a critique of modern representative democracy combined with a manifesto-like treatise on council systems as they have arisen over the course of revolutions and uprisings. However, Arendt's contribution to democratic theory has been obscured by her commentators who argue that her reflections on democracy are either an aberration in her work or easily reconcilable within a liberal democratic framework. This paper seeks to provide a comprehensive outline of Arendt's writing on the council system and a clarification of her work outside the milieu of the post-Cold War return to Arendt. Her analyses bring to light a political system that guarantees civil and political rights while allowing all willing citizens direct participation in government. Framing her discussion within the language of the current renewed interest in constituent power, her council system could be described as a blending together of constituent power and constitutional form. Arendt resists the complete dominance and superiority of either element and argues that the foundation of a free state requires nothing less than the stabilization and persistence of constituent power within an open and fluid institution that would resist either the bureaucratization of politics or its dispersal into a revolutionary flux. Although one may conclude that her institutional suggestions are far from flawless, her political principles allow a conceptualization of democracy in more substantial ways than current liberal political philosophy.