Democratic and constitutionalist elements in Khomeini’s Unveiling of Secrets and Islamic Government

This is a study of Khomeini’s two main pre-revolutionary political works: one, Islamic Government, in which he urges his audience to accept that Islam is a political religion and jurisprudents of Islamic law have a crucial role in government; and a second, The Unveiling of Secrets, of which only short excerpts have been translated into English and which has received scant attention by scholars outside of Iran. This latter work is crucial to study because in this work, he elaborates his view on democratic and constitutionalist principles, subjects he had treated only vaguely and briefly in Islamic Government. Contrary to much of the secondary literature produced on Khomeini, which claims that Khomeini’s theory is simply a theory of guardianship, antithetical to participatory government, the article claims that in The Unveiling of Secrets, and (though more ambiguously) in Islamic Government, Khomeini appeals to democratic and constitutionalist principles to argue that the views of common citizens, and not just experts in Islamic law, must be heeded by an Islamic government. Recognizing the complexities and ambiguities of Khomeini’s thought both in his earlier and later works allows us to understand and engage in dialogue with the scholars who inherit and critique his ideas today.     

Did Max Weber's Agony and Ecstasy Influence His Scholarship?

When exploring the intellectual history of a discipline, one cannot help but wonder about the “real” person behind the scholarship. To what extent do personal life experiences influence a scholar's theories, conceptualizations, and expectations? Max Weber, the German scholar whose intellectual curiosity was, at least partially, inspired by strong personal anxieties, became one of the most influential social scientists of the twentieth century. His own intellectual and personal obsessions, along with the efforts of his wife and colleagues to present his work to a larger audience, had much to do with who he was, as well as the body of scholarship that he created.     

Barack Hussein Obama: the use of history in the creation of an ‘American’ president

ABSTRACT

From the time of his nomination as the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential candidate onwards, Barack Obama was the target of a panoply of political attacks. Conservatives, Republicans and even some Democrats played on his alterity in a way that previous non-white political hopefuls, particularly the Reverend Jesse Jackson, had not had to endure. If the intricate twists and turns of Obama's past did not make those attacks particularly surprising, the way in which he chose to deal with them was. In what stands as a deliberate pre-emptive attack, Obama used two substantive texts, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, to create and shape a historical narrative of his own past in such a way as to present himself to the US voting public as a truly American figure, worthy of the presidency. By the time he was running for high office, therefore, Obama had already used his knowledge of the discipline of history to create a usable past with which he and his supporters could denude many of those political attacks of their potency, whether they were focused on the years of his upbringing in an Islamic state, his familial ties to Kenya, his religious background or his purported links to radicalism.     

Socratic Political Philosophy in Xenophon's Symposium

This interpretative commentary recovers the largely overlooked significance of a work that illuminates, by portraying in a subtle comic drama, the new perspective on existence, the new way of life, that Socrates introduced in and through his founding of political philosophy. The famous “problem of Socrates” as a turning point of world history (Nietzsche) remains a cynosure of controversy and puzzlement. How did Socrates understand the character of, and the relation between, civic virtue and his own philosophic virtue? What is the meaning of Socratic “eros”? What kind of educative influence did Socrates intend to have, on and through his varied followers and associates? And what diverse effects did he actually have? Xenophon's Symposium, viewed in the context of his other writings, affords a playful, but thereby deeply revealing, perspective—from the viewpoint of a slightly skeptical intimate.     

Charles Taylor, Marx and Marxism

Charles Taylor's engagement with Marx and the Marxist tradition has been relatively neglected in the literature on his work. This is a strange omission, because he was not only a pivotal figure in the development of the New Left, but also wrote many pieces which critically engaged with the main principles of Marx and Marxism. This paper re-examines Taylor's engagement with Marxism and thereby exposes a neglected element in his political philosophy. The following themes emerge: the self; Taylor's conception of the affirmation of ordinary life; democracy; ecology; and religion. In one area at least, the affirmation of ordinary life, a crucial element of Marxism is retained and positively endorsed by Taylor. In relation to the other themes, while he raises important issues for Marxist theory, he is, at times, far too quick to dismiss Marx's arguments and also misses similarities between those arguments and his own work.     

Pierre Bourdieu: From Neo-Kantian to Hegelian Critical Social Theory

Abstract

This paper challenges the commonly made claim that the work of Pierre Bourdieu is fundamentally anti-Hegelian in orientation. In contrast, it argues that the development of Bourdieu's work from its earliest structuralist through its later ‘post-structuralist’ phase is better described in terms of a shift from a late nineteenth century neo-Kantian to a distinctly Hegelian post-Kantian outlook. In his break with structuralism, Bourdieu appealed to a bodily based logic of practice' to explain the binaristic logic of Lévi-Strauss' structuralist analyses of myth. Effectively working within the tradition of the Durkheimian approach to symbolic classification, Lévi-Strauss had inherited Durkheim's distinctly neo-Kantian understanding of the role of categories in experience and action—an account that conflated two forms of representation—‘intuitions’ and ‘concepts’—that Kant himself had held distinct. Bourdieu's appeal to the role of the body's dispositional habitus can be considered as a retrieval of Hegel's earlier quite different reworking of Kant's intuition-concept distinction in terms of distinct ‘logics’ with different forms of ‘negation’. Bourdieu commonly acknowledged the parallels of his analyses of social life to those of Hegel, but opposed Hegelianism because he believed that Hegel had remained entrapped within the dynamics of mythopoeic thought. In contrast, Durkheim and Lévi-Strauss, he claimed, by instituting a science of myth, had broken with it. This criticism of Hegel, however, relies on an understanding of his philosophy that has been rejected by many contemporary Hegel scholars, and without it, the gap separating Hegel and Bourdieu narrows dramatically     

The antisemitism of Henry Wickham Steed

ABSTRACT

Henry Wickham Steed (1871–1956), then editor-in-chief of the London Times, adopted an ambiguous position with regard to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion when the tract first appeared in English in 1920. He neither endorsed nor rejected it but instead mused in the editorial pages of The Times about whether it might be authentic. The following year, when The Times correspondent in Istanbul brought out proof that The Protocols was a forgery, Steed accepted his correspondent's findings and publicly retracted his earlier ambivalent position. This incident reflects on Steed's (deserved) reputation as an antisemite but it also suggests something of the complexity of his position. Steed's denunciations of Jewish influence, discovered, by his own account, through his experience as a foreign correspondent in Vienna before the First World War, are recurrent in his writings. At the same time, Steed lent strong support to Zionist aspirations at the time of the Balfour Declaration and thereafter, and, in the 1930s, he was among the very first English critics of Hitler's antisemitism. In this article, I propose to offer some hypotheses regarding Steed's antisemitism. Strange as it may sound in the wake of the Second World War, it was Steed's visceral Germanophobia that lay at the heart of his antisemitism. Until the advent of the Third Reich, Steed identified Jews with Germans and with German interests. As an ardent exponent of the ‘principle of nationality’, however, Steed consistently extended his advocacy of statehood for various Eastern European nationalities to the Jewish national cause. A final factor that helps to explain Steed's suspiciousness and gullibility is that, by disposition and as a lifelong journalist, he was drawn to conspiracy theories. He created a number of sensations in his career and, to return to the example of The Protocols, he was loath to discount so spectacular a conspiracy story.     

Harry Pirie-Gordon: Historical research,journalism and intelligence gathering in the Eastern Mediterranean (1908–18)

British scholars were active in the Levant during the years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War. Harry Pirie-Gordon toured medieval castles in the region during the spring of 1908 under the auspices of the British School at Athens; T.E. Lawrence used his maps in the following year. Pirie-Gordon continued to travel widely in the Near East as a member of the Foreign Department of The Times and was involved with the survey of the Syrian coastline around Alexandretta. He was commissioned in the RNVR in 1914 and took part in the raid by HMS Doris on Alexandretta. Pirie-Gordon served in an intelligence capacity at Gallipoli before returning to Cairo to work with David Hogarth. In 1916 he was involved with the occupation of Makronisi (Long Island) in the Gulf of Smyrna. Later that year he took charge of the EMSIB operation at Salonica until its purge in early 1917. Pirie-Gordon returned to the Arab Bureau in Cairo and took part in the Palestine campaign.     

The fascist who would be king: Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk

ABSTRACT

Macklin and Fowlie explore the political life of Count Potocki de Montalk, a poet, pagan and pretender to the Polish throne. Count Potocki is perhaps most famous as a minor cause célèbre among London’s literary intelligentsia after his imprisonment for obscene libel in 1932. Historians, when they consider him at all, often discount him, viewing him as little more than a colourful eccentric, a view reinforced by Stephanie de Montalk’s fascinating biography of the man, which appeared in 2001. Eccentric he most certainly was. However, as this article demonstrates, Potocki also played a key role as an enabler of fascist and extreme right-wing activism through the services he provided myriad groups as a printer of their literature, a career that spanned the interwar and post-war periods. The article examines how his preposterous pursuit of the Polish Crown, coupled with the innate elitism this engendered, led him to reject egalitarianism and democracy and embrace fascism. While the Spanish Civil War saw an outpouring of literature from his literary contemporaries in support of the Spanish Republic, Potocki responded by establishing The Right Review as a mouthpiece for his own personal mélange of monarchism and fascism. Utilizing newly released security service files combined with archival research in the newly deposited Searchlight archive at Northampton University, this article pays closer attention to the political side of Potocki’s activities than has hitherto been the case, particularly his wartime publishing activities. This includes his anti-Soviet pamphlet on the Katyn massacre, which caused great vexation in government circles for fear of the harm Potocki’s (correct) accusations might do to relations with Britain’s crucial wartime ally. The authors conclude with a detailed examination of the role Potocki played in post-war National Socialist networks, for both personal and political ends, not least of which was his continued efforts to further his claim to the Polish throne, which he never ceased to believe was his by divine right.     

Memorial for a Revolutionist: Dwight Macdonald,A Critical American

A quarter century after his death in 1982, Dwight Macdonald is, unjustly, a largely forgotten man. But for 35 years, from 1940 to 1975, he was America’s leading literary-intellectual journalist and the best-known cultural critic to the general public. An undogmatic iconoclast and self-professed “revolutionist,” his finest work makes him a worthy descendent of H.L. Mencken and Edmund Wilson. He is worth remembering. John Rodden is the author, most recently, of Every Intellectual’s big brother: George Orwell’s Literary Siblings (2007).     

Ideology and Post-structuralism after Bernard Stiegler

What is the objective of ideology critique today? A unique answer to this question can be found in the work of Bernard Stiegler: the object of ideology critique is stupidity. Stiegler’s work will be situated with regard to the study of ideology and post-structuralism, reframed as respective versions of a dichotomy between critical and neutral theories, to show how Stiegler’s conception of ideology encompasses both. How he thinks ideology ‘after’ post-structuralism will be explored through his reading of Deleuze and Guattari. First, by seeing how Stiegler capitalizes upon the theoretical developments of Deleuze and Guattari to rethink the notion of ideology. Second, by seeing how this understanding of ideology is folded back on their work in order to discern how post-structuralism can be critiqued by a theory of ideology that utilizes its views. From the perspective of his reading of desire in Deleuze, Guattari and Freud, Stiegler shows how ideology destroys the desire to rethink ideas, and enforces stupidity. Third, after Stiegler’s theoretical labour, we arrive at a notion of ideology dichotomized between the critical and the stupid, tasking critique with the invention of new forms of desire, and the struggle against stupidity.     

Putting Conflict Where It Belongs: A Response to “Creating Shared Responsibility through Respect for Military Culture: The Russian and American Cases”

Professor Dale R. Herspring argues that civil‐military relations should move beyond a preoccupation with civilian control; instead, he says, the focus should be on the degree and nature of conflict within civil‐military interactions. This alternative theoretical view adds much to the extant literature and allows future work to concentrate both on a more nuanced account of the effects of civil‐military relations and, as Professor Herspring does, on the determinants of a “healthy” degree of civil‐military conflict. This piece responds to Professor Herspring’s alternative view, arguing that future work building on his framework could incorporate much from within public administration.     

Reflections on Leadership: An Interview with Sean O'Keefe

This interview with Sean O'Keefe by PAR Associate Editor W. Henry Lambright is a departure from traditional Administrative Profiles. It represents an opportunity to elicit from a man who has held executive positions in government, industry, and the university lessons he has learned about leadership from those experiences. It is his perspective, in his own words, about a host of questions of interest to scholars and practitioners of public administration. These include commonalities and differences in leading organizations in various sectors. O'Keefe discusses how executives can deal with people and get the most from them, how executives use administrative power in achieving organizational goals, and why executives sometimes make the wrong calls in key decisions. He comments on what he learned about leadership from mentors during his formative years. He explains the limits he faced in making controversial decisions, such as his termination of a Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission.     

Michael Leifer and the balance of power

Abstract

In the work of the late Professor Michael Leifer few concepts are invoked more often than the balance of power. It was due to his reliance on this concept that Michael Leifer came to be widely regarded as an exponent of realism and an advocate of countervailing balance of power practices. By reviewing Leifer's own writings, this article not only re-examines the now almost standard interpretation of his work, but also investigates the significance of the balance of power in his scholarship in new ways. The first section identifies the two key meanings Leifer explicitly imputed to the balance of power. It also examines Leifer's arguments relative to what he perceived as changes in the balance of power. This will be done with reference to his analyses of the international politics of Southeast and East Asia in the Cold War and post-Cold War period. The second section extends the discussion on the particularities of Leifer's writings on the balance of power, but relates it specifically to the question of what Leifer's writings suggest about his theoretical home. His ability to demonstrate the significance of the balance of power as a political factor in the foreign policies of individual Southeast Asian states is the focus of the third section. Finally, the article builds on Leifer's empirical writings on the importance of psychological factors in relation to the balance of power as policy to take up theoretically important questions that he himself did not pursue, particularly about the extent to which the balance of power is the product of struggles for security and recognition. The article draws three conclusions. First, Leifer should be thought of not as a diehard advocate of conventional balance of power practices, but rather as a scholar broadly working within English School parameters who was deeply wedded to the idea that the balance of power is necessary to uphold regional order in international society in the context of the rise of a potentially hegemonic power. Second, one of the finest aspects of Leifer's scholarly legacy is to be found in his discussion of the balance of power factor in the foreign policies of Southeast Asian states. Third, Leifer should also be an inspiration to those interested in empirical work underlining the importance of struggles for recognition in the formation and practice of the balance of power.     

A Haitian in Paris: Anténor Firmin as a philosopher against racism

ABSTRACT

Bernasconi's essay locates Anténor Firmin's De l’égalité des races humaines (1885) in the context of the discussions of the science of race at the time, and argues that when seen in that light the book should be considered a work of philosophy as well as a contribution to the science of its day. Particular attention is given to the debate between monogenesis and polygenesis, the impact of Charles Darwin on the discussion of the human races, particularly through the work of Clémence Royer, and the role of positivism within anthropology. Although Firmin addressed the contributions of Charles Darwin and Arthur de Gobineau to the understanding of race, they were not his main focus, which was to expose the fallacies employed by the advocates of racial inequality. Firmin's reliance on the Comtean doctrine of progress makes it impossible for us to embrace his overall theory today without considerable reservations. Nevertheless, the ease with which he exposed the prejudices of many of the leading scientists of his day provides an invaluable challenge to all those who want to excuse their failure to promote racial equality on the grounds that they were simply ‘children of their time’.     

How practices do not matter

Abstract

In his most recent work, Sangiovanni has retreated from his stronger claims about practice-dependence. Instead of claiming that principles of justice must be practice-dependent, he now expresses his claim in a modal form, arguing that there are several ways in which practices may matter. While merely mapping out the logical space of possibilities seems to look like a modest ambition, the conditions for when practices do matter according to Sangiovanni’s analysis are easily met in actuality. Consequently, if he is right, the practice-dependent approach covers a significant number of political theories. Sangiovanni’s main claim is that higher-level principles with an open texture, which include most higher-level principles in political philosophy, justify a practice-dependent method in the form of a mode of application called ‘mediated deduction,’ according to which a thoroughgoing investigation is made of the nature of the target practice. Our task in this paper is to reject this claim. This is done in two steps. First, we question Sangiovanni’s distinction between instrumental application and mediated deduction, arguing that it remains unclear whether it marks out two sufficiently distinct ‘modes’ to do any theoretical work. Second, we argue that the practice-dependent method is not required even if two such modes are established.     

Ernest S. Griffith: A Renaissance Man,a Pioneering Public Administrator

In the 1940s and 1950s, Ernest Stacey Griffith was well known on Capitol Hill and frequently featured in major newspaper and magazine articles about the work of Congress. He was also recognized as an influential scholar. Today, few members of Congress and only a handful of the thousands employed by the legislative branch have ever heard of him. Even at the Congressional Research Service—Congress's think tank—which he headed for 18 years, Griffith is mostly an unfamiliar name. During his century‐long life, this Rhodes Scholar left an indelible legacy in several arenas. Griffith was not only a pioneering advisor to the nation's legislators and an astute observer of American democracy, he also achieved acclaim as a public administrator, an innovative teacher and educator, an early supporter of the conservation movement, a prominent community and religious leader, and a record‐setting mountain climber.     

English Pluralism, Functionalism and Corporatism: The Legacy of Paul Hirst

Paul Hirst began his career as a Marxist, and in his later work he made important contributions to numerous debates, the most notorious of which was his pronounced scepticism towards the idea of globalisation. However, Hirst's principal legacy to political theory was the development of his normative theory of 'associative democracy'. This article presents a critique of Hirst's theory emphasising his indebtedness to the tradition of English political pluralism. On a preliminary analysis, Hirst's project appears to have been predicated on a normative defence of voluntarism, individualism and pluralism. However, I make the case that on closer examination this is undermined and contradicted in his work – and in the work of the earlier English pluralists – by an implicit assumption of social unity. This assumption is manifest in the functionalism and corporatism that Hirst presented as necessary components of pluralism, which in turn reflect his unwarranted presumption that industrial productivity, efficient economic governance and welfare provision represent impartial and incontestable axioms of social organisation.     

Remembering Tony King

Tony King combined scholarship with a real‐world grasp that few could match. This was evident both in his public activities and in his published work. His studies of legislatures and of career politicians changed the way in which issues were viewed and he was skilled at identifying emerging trends before anyone else. He analysed the failings of government, but always as a practical improver. He was a natural communicator in the Bagehot tradition, as evidenced in his writings on the constitution, and he wanted a less adversarial political culture. He showed political scientists that it was possible to combine good scholarship with an ability to communicate.