A test of Sprinzak’s split delegitimization’s theory of the life course of far-right organizational behavior

This article applies Sprinzak’s theory of split delegitimization to the American far-right. We examine a sample of 30 violent and 30 nonviolent far-right groups for each year of their existence, drawn from the Extremist Crime Database, and explore the violent and legal behavioral patterns over their lifecycle. Sprinzak hypothesized that far-right groups undergo a radicalization process through three stages, conflict of legitimacy, crisis of confidence, and crisis of legitimacy. He predicted that terrorism would occur at the peak of group radicalization or during the third stage. Results supported Sprinzak’s conceptualization of conflict of legitimacy and crisis of confidence stages. Groups initially selected nongovernment targets, but after experiencing disillusionment with the ruling regime, they equally attacked government and nongovernment targets. Importantly, prolonged and increasingly violent acts against government targets were not observed.     

Bennett’s Expressive Justification of Punishment

In this paper, I will critically assess the expressive justification of punishment recently offered by Christopher Bennett in The Apology Ritual and a number of papers. I will first draw a distinction between three conceptions of expression: communicative, motivational, and symbolic. After briefly demonstrating the difficulties of using the first two conceptions of expression to ground punishment and showing that Bennett does not ultimately rely on those two conceptions, I argue that Bennett’s account does not succeed because he fails to establish the following claims: (1) punishment is the only symbolically adequate response to a wrongdoing; and (2) punishment is permissible if it is the only symbolically adequate response to a wrongdoing.     

In Defense of Kant’s League of States

This article presents a defense of Kant’s idea of a league of states. Kant’s proposal that rightful or just international relations can be achieved within the framework of such a league is often criticized for being at odds with his overall theory. In view of the analogy he draws between an interpersonal and an international state of nature, it is often argued that he should have opted for the idea of a state of states. Agreeing with this standard criticism that a league of states cannot establish the institutional framework for international justice, others also suggest an alternative stage model interpretation. According to this interpretation, Kant’s true ideal is in fact a state of states, whereas the league is merely introduced as a temporary and second best solution. In contrast to both the standard criticism and the stage model interpretation, I argue that fundamental normative concerns count in favour of a league rather than a state of states. I also argue that Kant’s defense of such a league is consistent with his position on the institutional preconditions for just interaction in the domestic case because of crucial relevant differences between the state of nature among individuals and the external relations between states.     

Derrida’s Other Ends of Man

In ‘Force of law’ Derrida appears to suggest that emancipatory ideals and human rights have a continuing relevance. This may seem a surprising proposition from a theorist often interpreted as critical of humanist and Enlightenment principles. This paper argues, however, that Derrida does not reject, outright, humanist, Enlightenment and emancipatory strategies but instead deconstructs these in order to propose alternate ‘ethical’ and ‘political’ possibilities. Focusing on ‘The ends of man’, ‘Force of law’ and ‘Autoimmunity’ this paper argues that Derrida does not advocate an anti-humanism but instead gestures toward an alternate unconditional hospitality, responsibility, friendship, justice and democracy-to-come, displacing the anthropomorphism of humanism and advocating instead an openness to a heterogeneous otherness.     

Kant’s Project of Perpetual Pacification

Richard Tuck locates a conundrum in the Hobbesian world view. Whereas the nation-state is desired to effect the pacification of the domestic sphere, a world state and the promise of global pacification is feared. Kant’s strong program for perpetual peace is presented as a moral imperative to establish through legal means a world republic based on reason and individual autonomy. Kant emphasizes the empirical impossibility of a world republic and hence advocates the weaker program of a world federation of states. This essay argues not the empirical but the logical impossibility of Kant’s strong program and by extension any program of perpetual peace that claims to be essentially different from ‘mere’ peace as truce. In so doing this essay distinguishes between political theory based on the assumption of the ontological priority of peace and political theory based on the assumption of the ontological priority of violence and argues for the necessity of thinking the latter.

The Media’s Coverage of Domestic Terrorism

Scholarly interest in terrorism has grown dramatically since September 11. One important line of inquiry within this body of research has been the media’s coverage of terrorism. Although there have been several important studies published on this topic, there has been little research examining media coverage of domestic terrorism. This study fills this gap by examining the media’s coverage of terrorism in the United States from 1980 until September 10, 2001. The analysis is based on a list of terrorist‐related incidents and New York Times articles pertaining to each incident. This study documents the amount and type of coverage received by domestic terrorism incidents, and identifies the variables influencing whether an incident is covered and how much space it receives. The results indicate that most terrorism incidents receive little or no coverage in the news, but a few cases are sensationalized in the press. There are several characteristics that consistently explain which incidents are covered and receive substantial news space. Incidents with casualties, linked to domestic terrorist groups, targeting airlines, or when hijacking is used as a tactic are significantly more likely to be covered and have more articles and words written about them. This study concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of these findings for the understanding of terrorism as a social problem.     

‘It’s deemed unmanly’: men’s experiences of intimate partner violence (IPV)

This study investigated male victims’ experiences of female-perpetrated intimate partner violence (IPV). Seven participants were interviewed and the data were analysed using Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Four essential themes were revealed. (1) Participants identified themselves as victims of abuse (experiencing physical and multiple forms of abuse). (2) They felt they were victims of controlling abuse (through the use of children and isolation). (3) Respondents experienced manipulation through gendered stereotypes of abuse. (4) They felt it was different because they were men. The participants within this study were often deeply affected by the abuse they had experienced. Previous research has found male abusers use societal structures and norms to enable their abuse. The participants in this study felt that their female abusers were equally adept doing this, although the mechanisms were different. Further research should look at the processes by which abusers of either gender control and abuse their victims.     

Coase’s world and Coase’s blackboard

In this contribution I focus on a particular characteristic of Ronald Coase’s work, as exhibited in “The Problem of Social Cost”: his ability to force upon his audience a clearer grasp of reality than they previously held. More specifically, I aim to consider to what extent the “blackboard economics” that Coase himself derided have been avoided in a Coasean world, taking that expression to refer in some sense to a world where Coasean insights can flourish, and as such to be a world not simply of Coase’s own making but a world that has been developed by others in applying the Coase Theorem. My strategy is to interrogate the nature of a Coasean world through developing a framework that can look more closely at different approaches to theoretical modelling, the different worlds involved in these models, and the different positive and normative applications that can be derived from them. I shall further consider whether the understanding of the law that inhabits a Coasean world reflects a “real-world” legal environment. Finally, I shall seek to assess the impact of Coase’s work on our understanding of the relationship between law and economics, in our world.     

China’s stolen children: internal child trafficking in the People’s Republic of China

Trafficking in children has attracted worldwide attention in the last two decades primarily due to its links with global migratory movements and the role ‘transnational organised crime’ is perceived to play in these. Internal trafficking is largely ignored primarily because of a preoccupation with cross-border, transnational migratory movements. Arguably, the growth of the relevant literature has given rise to certain widespread perceptions about the uniformity in the trade characteristics and actors under the common rubric of ‘trafficking in human beings’. By capitalising on direct linguistic access to a wide range of Chinese open sources, the purpose of the article is to offer an account of the various dimensions of the issue as they present themselves in the particular Chinese context. Our main concern has been to perform a systematic presentation of this material in light of the extant wider literature. In the Chinese case the combination of socioeconomic, political and cultural factors set a complex picture that highlights the shortcomings of dominant ways of thinking about the phenomenon. This complex picture serves usefully to cast doubts with regard to how the criminal activity itself is being conceptualised as well as to perceptions of victimisation embodied in current discourses on human trafficking.     

The long slumber of Dicey’s Indian monarch

AV Dicey treated amending power in written constitutions as an adjunct of sovereignty and he treated the body charged with the power of amending the constitution as the repository of sovereignty in the system – not any different in quality from the paradigm: the British Parliament. Debates of a piece with those surrounding parliamentary sovereignty reincarnate in systems with written constitutions as debates about the amending body’s power to amend the written constitution. This essay examines the points of contiguity between the debates about sovereignty in the unalloyed form they take in the British model and that of amending power in India and the methods of limiting parliamentary omnipotence adopted by the two systems. It will be argued that although for a while the Diceyian notion of parliamentary sovereignty reigned supreme, eventually India embraced a view of implied limitations on amending power qualitatively akin to common law constitutionalism that places implied limits on parliamentary sovereignty.     

Predictors of Women’s Same-Sex Partner Violence Perpetration

The present study examined family of origin, individual characteristics, and intimate relationship variables as predictors of women’s reports (N?=?209; M?=?29.5 years) of physical aggression toward their current or most recent same-sex partner in the past year. Participants completed measures that assessed a series of family of origin, individual, and intimate relationship variables. Results of a least-squares regression revealed that identifying as heterosexual (as opposed to lesbian), higher levels of relationship fusion, more experiences of psychological aggression victimization, and having more prior physically aggressive relationships were associated with more frequent perpetration of partner violence. Results of exploratory models testing whether internalized homophobia or dominance/accommodation were indirectly related to physical aggression perpetration revealed that fusion (i.e., enmeshment with one’s partner) mediated the relationship between internalized homophobia and perpetration of partner violence. Similarly, fusion mediated the association between dominance/accommodation and the perpetration of partner violence. Findings underscore the importance that individual and relationship characteristics have in predicting partner violence perpetration in women’s same-sex relationships.     

Levinas’s Contribution to the Law of Hospitality

Liverpool Law Review - This article examines the ethical thinking of Levinas, from which Derrida’s Law of Hospitality is derived, to see if it is sustainable in the face of Badiou’s...     

Foucault’s Critique: A Topology of Thought

In order to elucidate some of the ways in which critique and subjectivity become inextricably linked in Foucault’s oeuvre, the paper proceeds first by briefly discussing the concept of critique as limit-attitude as it appears in some of Foucault’s methodological writings. Subsequently, the main tenets of Judith Butler’s commentary on the essay ‘What is Critique?’ will be summarized, concentrating on the image of the virtuous, self-making subject that the author’s interpretation brings out of Foucault’s original text. The second part of the paper aims to develop an alternative reading of Foucault’s notion of critique by looking at the ways in which the notion of space operates as an underlying perspective in his archaeological analysis. Ultimately, it will be shown how the spatial implications of Foucault’s early works and a more passive form of subjectivity as unfolding from his discussion of the ‘author function’ and his own methodological reflections coalesce into a form of practical critique, which, as wished by the author, may take ‘the form of a possible transgression’ (Foucault 1984a, p. 45).     

Śālikanātha’s Criticism of Dharmakīrti’s svasaṃvedana Theory

The aim of this paper is to clarify how Śālikanātha’s epistemology can be distinguished from that of Dharmakīrti, especially in terms of their respective views on cognitive form (ākāra). It has been pointed out that Śālikanātha’s tripuṭī theory and svayaṃprakāśa theory are very close to Dharmakīrti’s epistemology. However, it remains questionable if Śālikanātha, who belongs to the Prābhākara branch of the Mīmāṃsā and is therefore a nirākāravādin, can subscribe to notions that Dharmakīrti developed on the basis of sākāravāda. The present paper concludes that Śālikanātha agrees with Dharmakīrti in assuming that a single cognition consists of three parts; unlike Dharmakīrti, however, Śālikanātha puts emphasis on the difference between these parts, especially between the cognition and its form, on the ground that the cognitive form belongs to the external thing, and not to the cognition (nirākāravāda). In Dharmakīrti’s epistemology, the cognitive form belongs to cognition (sākāravāda); in the ultimate level, there remains no difference between the three parts.     

A Criticism of M. Siderits and J. L. Garfield’s ‘Semantic Interpretation’ of Nāgārjuna’s Theory of Two Truths

This paper proposes a critical analysis of that interpretation of the Nāgārjunian doctrine of the two truths as summarized—by both Mark Siderits and Jay L. Garfield—in the formula: “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth”. This ‘semantic reading’ of Nāgārjuna’s theory, despite its importance as a criticism of the ‘metaphysical interpretations’, would in itself be defective and improbable. Indeed, firstly, semantic interpretation presents a formal defect: it fails to clearly and explicitly express that which it contains logically; the previously mentioned formula must necessarily be completed by: “the conventional truth is that nothing is conventional truth”. Secondly, after having recognized what Siderits’ and Garfield’s analyses contain implicitly, other logical and philological defects in their position emerge: the existence of the ‘conventional’ would appear—despite the efforts of semantic interpreters to demonstrate quite the contrary—definitively inconceivable without the presupposition of something ‘real’; moreover, the number of verses in Nāgārjuna that are in opposition to the semantic interpretation (even if we grant semantic interpreters that these verses do not justify a metaphysical reconstruction of Nagarjuna’s doctrine) would seem too great and significant to be ignored.