The Place of Sovereignty

Abstract

This article addresses the relationship between sovereignty, biopolitics and governmentality in the work of Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault. By unpacking Foucault’s genealogy of modern governmentality, it responds to a criticism leveled against Foucauldian accounts of power for their alleged abandonment of the traditional model of power in juridico-institutional terms in favor of an understanding of power as purely productive. This claim has most significantly been developed by Agamben in “Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life”. I argue that Judith Butler’s analysis of power, in particular in her essay “Indefinite Detention”, presents a more differentiated account of power that registers the significance of practices of sovereignty and resonates with Foucault’s lectures on “Security, Territory, Population”.     

Popular Interpretations of ‘Corruption’ and their Partisan Consequences

Using a large six-city exit poll from 2000, we examine popular judgments of what constitutes “political corruption” in the United States. We find two distinct evaluative dimensions: corruption understood as lawbreaking, and corruption as favoritism. These judgments are heavily conditioned by the voter’s socioeconomic background and are politically consequential. Subjective understandings of “corruption” shape perceptions of how much corruption actually exists in government. Furthermore, and more importantly, these normative assessments play a significant part in voting decisions. Individuals who judged illegal activities such as bribe-taking to be “corrupt” were more inclined to back one of the major party candidates in 2000; those who believed that favoritism in politics was “corrupt” (e.g., an official recommending an unemployed friend for a government job) were more likely to vote for Al Gore or Ralph Nader.     

Utopia,Food Sovereignty,and Ethical Fashion: The Narrative Power of anti-GMO Campaigns

ABSTRACT

The idea of utopia has become pervasive in the age of everyday humanitarianism. Digital media communicate utopian ideas that allow people to “do good” for vulnerable others and the environment. At the same time, campaigns mobilize citizens by invoking apocalyptic images, such as genetically modified (GM) “monster” foods. This article looks at the construction of utopian and apocalyptic narratives in social movement campaigns and how they contribute to the construction of identities in the campaigns against GM food and Bt cotton, especially in India. Based on an analysis of campaign material, we show that “organic food” and “ethical cotton” products would be less successful without the concurrent use of apocalyptic narratives. Narratives that are more radical enabled the anti-GM food movement to mobilize large resistance. By contrast, a more inclusive narrative approach in the cotton/textile sector risks supporting interests that are detrimental to social justice and environmental protection.     

Legitimacy, Authority and the Transfer of Power in Ghana

The problems of authority and legitimacy experienced by post-colonial states are often explained in terms of a 'colonial legacy'. The validity of this hypothesis is examined, in the case of Ghana, by analysing changes in the kinds of legitimacy claimed by the state from the colonial period through decolonization to independence. It is concluded that, whilst the most enduring legacy of colonialism was the attempt to found legitimacy in particularistic, indigenous systems of law, the decolonization process failed to transfer any one of the new, competing claims to legitimacy which emerged. Nationalism, of its very nature, was precluded from claiming authority on the basis of expertise in being European, and was also led to deny the validity of indigenous cultures. Representative democracy too was contradictory in so far as its results often challenged the nationalists' conception of a non-ethnic national identity. Ultimately neither democracy nor 'being African' was a sufficient basis for the legitimacy of the new state.     

Sino-US Competition in the South China Sea: Power,Rules and Legitimacy

Journal of Chinese Political Science - The increasing competition between China and the United States in the South China Sea necessitates that some important issues be resolved. What are China and...     

The Messianic,Sovereignty and the Camps: Arendt and Agamben

Abstract

After centuries of relative neglect, the notion of the messianic is again in vogue in radical discourse. This paper explores the meaning and significance of this concept in the work of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben. They have been chosen not only because of their biographical and theoretical linkages to the thinker most responsible for the current resurgence of the concept of the messianic – Walter Benjamin – but also because they offer two alternative readings of precisely this concept. After exploring the meaning of this concept in Benjamin, Arendt and Agamben, the analysis turns to the related concepts of sovereignty and the “camps” in our principals in order to further elaborate the difference between them and to bring into focus the strengths and weaknesses of the theoretical/political deployment of messianism in contemporary leftist thought.     

Suisheng Zhao,ed., Debating Regime Legitimacy in Contemporary China: Popular Protests and Regime Performances

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

The Paradox of the Politically-Sophisticated Partisan: The French Case

The erosion of partisan ties observed in many advanced industrialised democracies has been attributed to a cluster of factors associated with societal modernisation. This article considers the impact of one of these explanatory factors, the political sophistication of the electorate, in the case of France. Specifically, it tests the proposition that a more highly-educated and better-informed electorate will be less partisan. Its findings challenge a number of the assumptions behind the ‘independent’ voter thesis. The evidence points to the fact that it is lower rather than higher cognitive mobilisation that is associated with apartisanship. More politically-sophisticated voters, young and old alike, tend to have stronger party attachment and to rely on this rather than on complex evaluations of issues and policy to guide their voting decision.     

Immigration,Latinos, and White Partisan Politics: The New Democratic Defection

Immigration is profoundly changing the racial demographics of America. In this article, we seek to understand if and how immigration and increasing racial diversity are shaping the partisan politics of individual white Americans. We show that whites’ views on immigration and Latinos are strongly related to their core political identities and vote choices. Using a range of different surveys, we find that, all else equal, whites with more anti‐immigrant views or more negative views of Latinos are less apt to identify as Democrats and less likely to favor Democratic candidates. This rightward shift harkens back to an earlier period of white defection from the Democratic Party and highlights the enduring but shifting impact of race on American politics.     

The Power of the Square: Public Spaces and Popular Mobilization after the Wenchuan Earthquake

Journal of Chinese Political Science - The wave of volunteerism and popular participation in disaster relief activities after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in authoritarian China has attracted much...     

Splitting the Atom of Sovereignty: Term Limits, Inc.'s Conflicting Views of Popular Autonomy in a Federal Republic

In his concurrence to U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thorton, JusticeAnthony Kennedy described federalism as an attempt to "splitthe atom of sovereignty." As Term Limits demonstrates, the taskis an incredibly difficult one, which deeply rends the Court.One block, currently composed of Justices John Paul Stevens,David Souter, Ruth Baider Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer, viewthe source of constitutional authority as residing in the peopleof the nation as a whole; the other block, made up of ChiefJustice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor,Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas, argue that the constitutionalwellspring is the people of each individual state. Justice Kennedy,now occupying the Court's middle ground, stresses the "dualcharacter" of federal government. The debate is much morethanacademic. Depending on how it is played out, the argument mayhave profound implications for the understanding and practiceof U.S. federalism.     

The Party Faithful: Partisan Images,Candidate Religion,and the Electoral Impact of Party Identification

We argue that the factors shaping the impact of partisanship on vote choice—“partisan voting”—depend on the nature of party identification. Because party identification is partly based on images of the social group characteristics of the parties, the social profiles of political candidates should affect levels of partisan voting. A candidate's religious affiliation enables a test of this hypothesis. Using survey experiments which vary a hypothetical candidate's religious affiliation, we find strong evidence that candidates’ religions can affect partisan voting. Identifying a candidate as an evangelical (a group viewed as Republican) increases Republican support for, and Democratic opposition to, the candidate, while identifying the candidate as a Catholic (a group lacking a clear partisan profile) has no bearing on partisan voting. Importantly, the conditional effect of candidate religion on partisan voting requires the group to have a salient partisan image and holds with controls for respondents’ own religious affiliations and ideologies.