Towards a democracy-centred ethics

Abstract

The core idea of this paper is that we can use the differences between democratic and undemocratic governments to illuminate ethical problems. Democratic values, rights and institutions lie between the most abstract considerations of ethics and meta-ethics and the most particularised decisions, outcomes and contexts. Hence, this paper argues, we can use the differences between democratic and undemocratic governments, as we best understand them, to structure our theoretical investigations, to test and organise our intuitions and ideas, and to explain and justify our philosophical conclusions. Specifically, as we will see, a democracy-centred approach to ethics can help us to distinguish liberal and democratic approaches to political morality in ways that reflect the varieties of democratic theory, and the importance of distinguishing democratic from undemocratic forms of liberalism.     

Future generations as rightholders

Many people believe that we have obligations with respect to future generations concerning the state of the environment that we pass on to them. Apart from the practical problem of people not really acting on such beliefs, there are also conceptual or philosophical issues that make these obligations problematic. The so-called non-identity problem is especially difficult: depending on which courses of action we adopt, different people will be born in the future, which means that even future people who due to our behavior will live under fairly poor circumstances might not have any ground for complaint. Had we not behaved as we did, they would not even have existed. It is argued here that, at least within a rights-theoretical approach, the non-identity problem can be solved by moving from considering individual rights to generational rights, rights which future generations hold qua generations.     

Intersex/variations of sex characteristics and DSD citizenship in the UK,Italy and Switzerland

ABSTRACT

Citizenship studies is highly relevant to understanding intersex, variations of sex characteristics (VSC), and Disorders of Sex Development (DSD), yet little scholarship exists to date about intersex citizenship. This article outlines and develops the foundations for a distinctive intersex citizenship studies, addressing health citizenship, children’s citizenship, legal rights, and breaches of human rights experienced by intersex people and those with DSD. The paper presents original qualitative data from research in the UK, Italy and Switzerland with intersex people and their advocates, medics, and policy stakeholders. It shows that asserting citizenship is crucial for intersex people and those with VSC or DSD. This extremely marginalised population require social, intimate, children’s and health citizenship. Intersex citizenship addresses both medical and human rights issues in an integrated way.     

Defending popular sovereignty: discursive conflict in French and Swedish parliamentary debates on immigrant voting rights (1968-2017)

ABSTRACT

Through a discourse analysis of French and Swedish legislative debates from 1968 to 2017, this article examines how actors challenge and reinforce dominant ideas about the link between nationality and political rights. We argue that the broader political culture influences which discursive strategies – or ‘frames’ – are more likely to structure parliamentary debates in different national contexts. However, our analysis also shows that legislators sometimes develop new discursive frames in which they reinterpret dominant norms to make them consistent with their views. Through this incremental process of reinterpretation and reformulation of dominant ideas, debates over non-citizen voting rights have chipped away at the link between nationality and political rights. Our findings suggest that initiatives to enfranchise non-citizens trigger lower levels of conflict when they can be framed as a policy tool for immigrant integration rather than as a matter of popular sovereignty.     

Democratization,regional integration,and human rights: the case of the ASEAN intergovernmental commission on human rights

Abstract

In the post‐Cold War era, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has attempted to maintain and enhance its institutional status in the Asia‐Pacific by increasing its membership and range of activities. ASEAN has tried to assume significant responsibilities for regional security and economic relations through initiatives like the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and by demanding a major role in the Asia‐Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. This paper critically evaluates ASEAN's attempts at institutional expansion. It argues that ASEAN lacks the political, economic and military resources necessary to play the dominant role that it envisions for itself within the Asia‐Pacific. Its attempts to increase its diplomatic weight by increasing its membership actually have the potential to undermine ASEAN's unity as well as its standing in the world community. The East Asian economic crisis is largely exacerbating ASEAN's inherent weaknesses. If ASEAN is to remain relevant in the twenty‐first century its members need to modify their expectations of the level of international influence that ASEAN can afford them. They must also use ASEAN to directly address issues of dispute between member states. There is little evidence that ASEAN's members are prepared to reform the organization in this way. Therefore, ASEAN is likely to lose its pre‐eminent regional status to other institutions, and may even fade into irrelevance, in the next century.     

Theorising noncitizenship: concepts,debates and challenges

Abstract

Existing political theory, particularly which deals with justice and/or rights, has long assumed citizenship as a core concept. Noncitizenship, if it is considered at all, is generally defined merely as the negation or deprivation of citizenship. As such, it is difficult to examine successfully the status of noncitizens, obligations towards them, and the nature of their role in political systems. This article addresses this critical gap by defining the theoretical problem that noncitizenship presents and demonstrating why it is an urgent concern. It surveys the contributions to the special issue for which the article is an introduction, drawing on cross-cutting themes and debates to highlight the importance of theorising noncitizenship due to both the problematic gap that exists in the theoretical literature, and the real world problems created as a result of noncitizenship which are not currently successfully addressed. Finally, the article discusses key future directions for the theorisation of noncitizenship.     

Discriminating language rights and politics in the post-Yugoslav states

ABSTRACT

Pupavac examines the rise of linguistic human rights advocacy and its approach in a case study of language politics in the post-Yugoslav states. A core concern of contemporary linguistic rights advocacy has been to tackle ethnically based discrimination and promote ethnic diversity. It does not only seek to prevent states from discriminating against those who speak minority languages. It expects states to take positive steps to preserve their diversity of languages. However, strategies affirming distinct linguistic identities may become complicit in perpetuating ethnic discrimination and ethnic divisions, as is evident in the language politics of the post-Yugoslav states.     

Social Hope and State Lawlessness

Abstract

Hope is a precious resource. But, deluded, not based on a sober appraisal of the relevant realities, hope can also be lethal. One kind of hope is utopian hope. It does not exhaust what social hope is, or should be, about. The hope of remedying the most terrible injustices makes an urgent call on our attention. The world has travelled some way from the time when tyrannical governments could act with impunity in dealing with those under their jurisdiction. But it has not travelled far enough. There remain a number of deficits in the system of international law: "thresholds of inhumanity".     

Small winners and big losers: strategic party behaviour in the 2017 Dutch general election

Abstract

This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of March 2017, making use of issue-yield theory. It investigates whether parties strategically emphasise high-yield issues, by juxtaposing the issue opportunities provided by voters with parties’ issue emphasis during the campaign. More specifically, it asks whether parties strategically emphasised issues that were expected to reward them electorally. Analysing voter preferences and party campaign data, it is found that parties and most of their constituencies show high ideological consistency, that parties emphasise mostly positional issues and thus choose a conflict-mobilising strategy, and that most parties emphasise high-yield issues rather than following the general political agenda. Four small parties that won significantly behaved strategically while the social democrats – who severely lost – hardly did. The findings imply that the issue-yield framework can help to explain the election result in the fragmented Dutch multi-party context.     

The human rights and 'Asian values' debate in Southeast Asia: Trying to clarify the key issues

This article investigates the validity of the concept of 'Asian values' in Southeast Asia, and attempts to explain and reconcile where possible some of the key differences between the position on human rights of ASEAN, which has remained semi-united despite internal tensions, and 'the West', particularly the US, and the non-governmental organizations' (NGOs) in the ongoing 'Asian values' debate. The article explores differences over the issues of the changeability of values and hence rights as these affect the 'universality' argument, the relevance of timing and sequence, the omission of crime by agencies other than the state as a source of human rights violations, and the controversial issue of the use of conditionality by the West. It is argued that, in fact, the debate principally concerns the question of what constitutes 'good government' and the 'good society', and takes the position that the question of how to achieve these is significantly influenced by the values of a government and a society.     

The Structure of Political Competition: Dimensions of Candidate and Group Evaluation Revisited

In this paper, we take a fresh look at the structure of sociopolitical conflict through confirmatory factor analyses of survey data gathered in Florida during the presidential campaign of 1996. Our analysis shows both stability and change in the electorate. In line with prior research, a single bipolar partisan dimension underlies the mass public's evaluations of political leaders, though national figures fit more comfortably on this continuum than do those at the state level. Citizens' evaluations of key sociopolitical groups reflect orthogonal cultural disputes, class divisions, and conflicts relating to issues of social control. While all three of these dimensions impinge to some degree on voters' conceptions of party and ideology, our findings point to the leading role that cultural issues now play in shaping ideological images and identities.     

Rousseau's Dream: Nature and Artifice

Abstract

Nature,' can never be for us an objective reality. In one form or another, we must represent the natural world to ourselves, and these representations are both cultural and ideational. It is through them that we respond to nature: intervening by our absences or presence, by our scientific curiosity and artistic expression, by classificatory passion and economic calculus, by practical measures to harness the powers of natural forces and by prayer and magic.     

Social innovation driven by citizen-led digital innovation: technologies of citizenship and the war on unemployment in Flanders

ABSTRACT

Citizens’ participation in technology design is increasingly deployed as a means to tackle social issues and a technique of empowerment. Techniques of empowerment belong to a set of strategies and methods employed by governmental and nonprofit organizations to constitute active, participatory citizens. This contribution exposes the political rationalities underpinning emerging initiatives that perpetuate citizens’ subjection by deploying participation as their essential governing technology. It analyses an initiative developed by a Belgian nonprofit organization to involve citizens in the design and development of digital tools to tackle unemployment. Findings unveil the potential downsides of participatory practices of technology design for social innovation. Critical reflections invite practitioners to pay greater attention to their design and implementation towards making them truly empowering processes.     

Self-determination,group identity and the common will

ABSTRACT

Anna Stilz defends a political autonomy account of self-determination that, she argues, best explains our intuitions about why colonization, annexation and foreign occupation are wrong. These are wrong, on Stilz’s view, because they unilaterally coerce individuals living under those systems of government. I argue that Stilz does not show that her account of self-determination explains our intuitions about autonomy in these kinds of cases, because she does not have a separate argument for the value of belonging to particular political groups.     

Unequal access to human rights: the categories of noncitizenship

Abstract

International human rights law consists of a body of basic rights and principles that States are to enforce with respect to every person within their borders. The unfortunate reality, however, is that many States are incapable of ensuring the rights of everyone, and in some instances simply do not wish to do so. Accordingly, citizenship serves as an acknowledgment by a State that the status holder is entitled to a higher degree of protection. Conversely, noncitizens may enjoy less rights than citizens, and certain categories of noncitizens frequently find themselves outside of the State’s protection entirely. This article outlines many of the rights that international law directs should be enjoyed by every human being, the factors that contribute to unequal enjoyment of these rights, and the categories of noncitizen associated with the mediated allocation of basic human rights.     

Introduction to session 2: Magnitude of the crisis: The fiscal and human costs

Abstract

Many are looking to California and its state housing law for advice on how to deal with the affordability challenges affecting many metropolitan areas throughout the nation. It is thus critically important to go beyond the laws themselves and examine how state and municipal governance structure affects affordability, supply, and production. Some states give broad freedom to localities to develop policies that can potentially meet a range of goals and objectives. Others directly undermine those efforts by limiting local ability to pursue policy reforms while simultaneously failing to engage on the state level.

The redefinition of federalism on the national level, coupled with continued resistance to growth from some localities, establishes the state as at least an equal partner in dealing with housing supply and affordability issues. Understanding these distinctions is important, and the housing community needs to take them into account as it moves on the state front.     

Brokering power and property in China's townships

Abstract

This paper concerns the process of power at the periphery of state bureaucracy with a focus on township governments and their land development projects in the last two decades. I argue that townships at the bottom of the state bureaucracy operate like power brokers between the state and the village. When dealing with the formal party–state system above them, the township's delegated power is highly uncertain. Townships choose to maneuver in the unspecified legal and administrative zone to bypass the scrutiny of the supervising government. When it comes to the village below them, the township's power is under-defined, and therefore can be stretched to intensify and centralize the grips over village resources and land. In both cases, township officials strategize to maximize their control of village land and profit from the booming land-lease market in China's fast industrializing and urbanizing areas. Townships' land deals reflect the general power process of decentralization. Their brokerage of power corresponds directly with that of property rights in post-reform China.     

The business of noncitizenship

Abstract

Private actors play an increasing role in mediating the relationship between States and noncitizens and even in creating or perpetuating exclusions associated with noncitizenship. This paper offers a way to analyse the forms of engagement of the for-profit private sector in migration control and asks what it means for how noncitizenship is constructed. It presents the private sector as acting like a buffer, altering whether and how individuals may engage with a State constructing what noncitizenship means within a State’s territory, and removing so-constructed individuals from a relationship with that State. It shows how this may occur directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly. The paper addresses two main concerns: the impact on the State-noncitizen relationship and whether there are some areas of the relationship between the State and the noncitizen that should not be so-delegated. It argues that privatised migration control raises problems for standard justifications of migration control and noncitizenship construction.     

Theory and Concept Development in Political Marketing

Abstract

In this article we argue that the state of theory and concept development in political marketing needs to be related to several epistemological as well as topical themes and issues. Seven meta-theoretical issues are discussed with regard to current theoretical position of political marketing research and some initial recommendations are made on how these issues can be developed further. The second part of the article focuses on topical aspects of theory and concept development in political marketing and highlights nine themes for further research. These themes of political marketing are singled out because of their characteristics which show them to be significantly distinct from commercial marketing practice, and therefore need more careful modelling in concepts and theories of political marketing.     

Parties’ issue strategies on the drawing board: the 2017 Austrian case

Abstract

Parties may rely on different issue agendas when tailoring their electoral campaigns in an attempt to win elections. This paper compares two key party issue strategies to examine which one the victorious Austrian Peoples’ Party (ÖVP) relied on the most during the 2017 Austrian election campaign vis-à-vis its main competitors. These two key party strategies are the ‘riding-the-wave’ model, which posits that parties focus on issues that currently concern voters the most and the recent ‘issue-yield model’, which instead suggests that parties adopt strategic behaviour targeting all those issues with genuine opportunities for electoral expansion. It is found that, compared to the other main parties in the 2017 Austrian election campaign, the ÖVP was the one most clearly relying on the issue-yield approach. These results have important implications for our understanding of electoral campaigns, party’s exploitation of issue strategies, and voter representation beyond the Austrian case.