Between Psychoanalysis and Political Philosophy: Towards a Critical Theory of Political Myth

Abstract

This paper focuses on a specific aspect of political imaginaries: political myth. What are political myths? What role do they play within today's commoditized political imaginaries? What are the conditions for setting up a critique of them? We will address these questions, by putting forward a theory of political myth which situates itself between psycho analysis and political philosophy, in line with the tradition of critical theory that many still associate with the name of the Frankfurt School. We will first discuss the notion of political myth by illustrating the contribution of both disciplines to its understanding and then, through a discussion of the notion of social unconscious, we will apply this analysis to a contemporary example of political myth, that of a clash of civilizations.     

Misreading the Post-tsunami Political Landscape in Sri Lanka: The Myth of Humanitarian Space

The 2004 tsunami is one of several recent high profile natural disasters that raise important questions about ‘disaster geopolitics’ or the relationship between humanitarian assistance for victims of natural disasters and the stabilisation of political spaces. In Sri Lanka, it was thought that a ‘silver lining’ would result from the collaborative effort on behalf of victims of the tsunami by the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, belligerents in a decades-old war. Ultimately, however, the contest over tsunami aid deepened the rift between the two sides. This paper considers this misreading of the post-tsunami political landscape in Sri Lanka by examining two key spatial assumptions contained in popular humanitarian discourses: that humanitarian space can be identified, represented and maintained separately from political space, and that humanitarian relations are confined to the places where a disaster has occurred and chiefly serve its victims. Several key events are highlighted in the paper including the curtailed visit of the UN Secretary General in January 2005 and the failure of the Post-tsunami Operational Management Structure, a mechanism designed to allow both parties to the conflict to distribute aid. The paper concludes with a discussion on the difficulties of setting politics aside even during times of humanitarian crisis.     

Testing Times: The Growing Primacy of Responsibility in the Euro Area

The aim of this paper is to address one of the growing causes of tension between responsiveness to electorates and responsibility to partners by analysing the new rule-bound system of economic governance that is evolving within the euro area in response to the crisis. The key argument is that the nature and depth of the external constraints that have been agreed since 2010 represent a step-change in the intrusion of external actors in the domestic government and politics of the euro states. Responsibility to the collective has emerged as the central norm of the framework of economic governance that is evolving. The norm is backed by a strong regulatory framework including sanctions. The paper concludes with an analysis of the likely impact of the new system on domestic politics and political parties under the rubric of the politics of constrained choice.     

The New Federalism Game: Primacy Implementation of Environmental Policy

Federal environmental laws have substantially preempted statepowers over pollution control. Many of these laws contain aunique implementation scheme called "primacy," which offersa state the opportunity to become the primary enforcement agentfor federal policies. Primacy relieves the federal governmentfrom enforcing laws within state boundaries even while it retainsultimate control over the policies involved and sets minimumstandards. By and large, states have chosen to accept primacy.Characteristics of the units involved in the implementationprocess explain much of this success. Deviations from the expectedpatterns reveal how states can manipulate primacy to their ownadvantage. It is possible, however, that game playing by thestates under primacy could undermine the ultimate goals of nationalenvironmental policies.     

Myth and reality: The causes and persistence of poverty

Policies directed at alleviating poverty rest on a set of assumptions regarding the demographic composition of the poor and the psychological dispositions of poor individuals. Evidence from a long-term study of a representative sample of low-income individuals shows that poverty is very widespread but not usually very persistent, and that the characteristics of the persistently poor do not conform to the conventional wisdom. Furthermore, the economic status of the poor does not appear to have been caused by psychological dispositions. Intergenerational data from the same study show generally weak links between the poverty or welfare status of parents and that of their children. Public policies for dealing with poverty can be properly devised without attempting to resocialize poor people and without undue concern that poverty programs will generate dependency among the majority of those they help.     

The Myth of Postmodernity

In this paper the claim that the advanced market economies have entered a new era of postmodernity (or a postmodern turn) is critically assessed and found to be unjustified by the changes at the economic, political, cultural, or scientific and theoretical levels of the last quarter of a century or so. These changes in no way reflect a kind of break with the past, similar to the one marking the transition from the 'traditional' society to modernity. It is therefore argued that advanced market economies, following the collapse of liberal modernity in the 19th century and that of statist modernity (in both its versions of social democracy and Soviet statism) in the 20th century, have in fact entered a new form of modernity that we may call neoliberal modernity , rather than a postmodernity. Neoliberal modernity represents a synthesis of the previous forms of modernity and at the same time completes the process which began with the institutionalisation of the market economy and representative 'democracy' that have been presently universalised in the form of the internationalised market economy and the developing supra-national forms of governance respectively.     

Anti-Minotaur: The Myth of a Sociological Morality

Recently Philip Gorski has argued that sociology can help us answer moral questions such as how to live and how to organize societies. Gorski rejects “value-free sociology” and the distinction between factual statements and value judgments, but actually factual statements and value judgments are distinct and sociology can be value-free.  The practice of value-free sociology is ethically imperative, even, if we are to be honest with our audiences and if we are to fulfill our vocation as sociologists.     

Neoconservatism: Myth and reality

Seymour Martin Lipset is the Caroline S. G. Munro Professor of Political Science, professor of sociology, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He taught previously as the George D. Markham Professor at Harvard University. Among his books are Consensus and Conflict, Political Man, The First New Nation, Party Coalitions in the 1980s,and Revolution and Counterrevolution.This text was originally delivered as the First Ernst Fraenkel Lecture, given at the John F. Kennedy Institute at the Free University of Berlin.     

Myth-Free Space Advocacy Part II: The Myth of the Space Frontier

Space advocates commonly compare the settling of the “space frontier” to the settling of the “western frontier” in the United States, arguing that space settlement will realize the same benefits purportedly realized by the western expansion of the United States: the generation of new cultures; the development of new technologies; and the empowerment of democratic governance. However, much of the reasoning here is based on a faulty understanding of history and on an overly optimistic view of what it will be like to live in a space settlement. Thus, I argue that ardent faith in the promises of settling the space frontier is a mythological belief, rather than a well-confirmed one.     

Congressional tenure: Myth and reality

Congressional tenure is longer now than in earlier times, but it is largely a myth that the era of the professional politician is a modern phenomenon. Here, tenure is compared between the 57th and 86th Congresses. Tenure is linked to a simple median voter model. Increased tenure is associated with an increased ability to transfer government expenditures to the political unit. The increased size of government at the time of the 86th Congress compared to the 57th Congress, largely explains the greater length of time in office. The higher tenure of southern legislators is linked to lower per capita incomes.     

Populists and Referendums in Europe: Dispelling the Myth

Many researchers, journalists and politicians are inclined to connect populism and referendums. While in theory the two rest on similar principles, in practice this is not the case. This article shows that populist political elites make limited use of referendums compared both to their rhetoric and to non-populists. Our findings indicate that the use of referendums is not a reflection of populist politics. They also illustrate how populists may initiate referendums strategically, and they win them quite often. The analysis draws on all sixty-four national level referendums in Europe initiated by political elites between 2000 and 2019.     

The Political Economy: Political Attitudes and Economic Behavior

It has long been recognized that voters bring their political behaviors in line with economic assessments. Recent work, however, suggests that citizens also engage in economic behaviors that align with their confidence—or lack thereof—in the political system. This alignment can happen consciously or, as we suggest, unconsciously, in the same way that positivity carries over to other behaviors on a micro-level. Using monthly time series data from 1978 to 2008, we contribute further evidence of this relationship by demonstrating that political confidence affects consumer behavior at the aggregate level over time. Our analyses employ measures more closely tied to the theoretical concepts of interest while simultaneously accounting for the complex relationships between subjective and objective economic indicators, economic behavior, political attitudes, and the media. Our results suggest that approval of the president not only increases the electorate’s willingness to spend money, but also affects the volatility of this spending. These findings suggest that the economy is influenced by politics beyond elections, and gives the “Chief Economist” another avenue by which they can affect the behavior of the electorate.