Civil rights on the white earth reservation

Abstract

The concept of “civil rights” is based on assumptions that do not extend to all lands within U.S. borders, including Native American reservations. A central policy tension exists between enforcing Euro‐American “civil rights” and recognizing Native American sovereignty. This tension is discussed in light of the situation on the White Earth Reservation, one of six reservations that make up the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. Four possible means of addressing White Earth civil rights issues are discussed, each with possible applications in other reservation settings. None of the four is found to be clearly effective in gaining the civil rights defined for U.S. citizens for reservation residents. Although the underlying question of the relationship between civil rights and sovereignty defies easy solution, some suggestions are offered.     

When US Scholars Speak of 'Sovereignty', What Do They Mean?

The term 'sovereignty' figures prominently in international affairs and academic analysis. But does 'sovereignty' mean the same thing in different countries and political cultures? In this article, we examine conceptions of sovereignty as they appear in the writings of US scholars of international law and those international relations scholars who deal with international law, in order to obtain a clearer picture of what 'sovereignty' means in American academic discourse. At first glance, the US literature is dominated by two distinct conceptions of sovereignty: (1) a statist conception that privileges the territorial integrity and political independence of governments regardless of their democratic or undemocratic character; (2) a popular conception that privileges the rights of peoples rather than governments, especially when widespread human rights violations are committed by a totalitarian regime. On closer examination, what seem to be two conceptions are in fact different manifestations of a single, uniquely American conception of sovereignty which elevates the United States above other countries and protects it against outside influences while concurrently maximising its ability to intervene overseas.     

American Republican Religion? Disentangling the Causal Link Between Religion and Politics in the US

Recent research in American political behavior has examined at length the link between evangelical Protestants and the Republican Party. These works however do not consider the idiosyncratic nature of religiosity in the US, and insist on treating religion as an ‘unmoved mover’ with respect to political contexts. The question posed herein is: during the participation of religious communities in partisan politics, should we expect politics to eventually constrain religious behavior? Motivated by a political social identity approach, I use American National Election Study panel data and structural equation modeling techniques to explore the untested possibility that religious and political factors are linked through reciprocal causation. Conditional upon religious and temporal context, findings highlight the causal impact of ideology and partisanship in shaping religious behavior.     

Rousseau's Critique of Representative Sovereignty: Principled or Pragmatic?

In the Social Contract, Jean‐Jacques Rousseau advanced an impassioned critique of representative sovereignty, yet it is often thought that his objections were merely pragmatic and that he did not consider the question of representation to be a matter of basic political right. This article maintains, to the contrary, that Rousseau did have a principled argument against representative sovereignty and elucidates the nature and bearing of that argument by situating it in response to Hobbesian accounts of representation. Rousseau's argument is shown to have far‐reaching implications, as it entails that the existence of representative sovereignty contravenes two principles central to the legitimacy of modern democratic states: the sovereignty of the people and the moral equality of the citizens.     

Agonism and Hope in William Apess’s Native American Political Thought

This article examines the Native American thinker, William Apess (Pequot), and especially his Eulogy on King Philip (1836), which argues, ironically, that King Philip—the seventeenth century Wampanoag leader who launched the bloodiest rebellion in New England’s history—ought to be embraced as an American pioneer and canonized as a founding father. Apess satirizes conventional founding narratives, even as he upholds the principles of freedom those narratives support. The effect of this irony is to interrupt and invert discourses of progressive history and American patriotism that underlie Manifest Destiny policies, in ways that open spaces for new historical accounts to surface and compete in a force field of agonistic powers. I argue that Apess’s ironic historical revisionism expresses a political theory of hope, one that I contrast with representations of hope by other nineteenth century Native American political thinkers, such as Plenty Coups (Crow).     

Radio Public Service Announcements and Voter Participation Among Native Americans: Evidence from Two Field Experiments

Although similar to other U.S. minorities in terms of socio-economic status and political interest, Native Americans are more dispersed geographically and much less likely to vote. This pattern suggests that at least part of the disparity in turnout might be due to Native Americans’ lower exposure to statewide and national mobilization campaigns. To test this idea, a randomized experiment was conducted in order to evaluate the effectiveness of a radio campaign that encouraged Native Americans to vote. In 2008 and 2010, experiments were conducted across a total of 85 radio markets spanning more than a dozen states. Results suggest that this nonpartisan radio campaign increased turnout among registered Native American voters in both elections, although the estimated effects fall short of conventional levels of statistical significance.     

Westphalia and the Taiwan Conundrum: A Case against the Exclusionist Construction of Sovereignty and Identity

It is often argued that at the root of the Taiwan question are the myriad differences in politics, ideology, identity, and economy between mainland China and Taiwan. Any prospect for its peaceful resolution, it seems, hinges on bridging those differences through economic and/or political integration. Although the Taiwan conundrum has much to do with wide-ranging cross-strait divergence, this article argues that it cannot be disconnected from one important commonality between Beijing and Taipei, namely, a cross-strait normative convergence on the Westphalian notion of state sovereignty. Encompassing an exclusionary understanding of final authority, territory, and identity, Westphalian sovereignty provides both Beijing and Taipei with a common meaning that Taiwan is an issue of sovereignty, central to their respective national identity and political survival and hence not subject to compromise. As a consequence, it argues that this common meaning is paradoxically responsible for much of the mistrust, tension, and deadlock in cross-strait relations. In order to find a long-term solution to the Taiwan impasse, we need to pay attention to this particular normative convergence as well as to the many differences across the Taiwan Strait.     

‘Solidity or Wind?’ What's on the Menu in the Bill of Rights Debate?

This article examines the pronouncements and positions of the leading political parties on the Human Rights Act and the proposals for a new British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. It analyses the main arguments made in support of a British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, which are advanced around five main issues: security, the judges, parliamentary sovereignty, responsibilities and 'British rights'. The article was written before the government published the Green Paper Rights and Responsibilities: developing our constitutional framework in March 2009 and provides a political context with which to analyse it.     

Questions of Sovereignty: Redefining Politics in Scotland?

The issue of sovereignty has never been resolved in Scotland. The 1998 Scotland Act, creating the Scottish Parliament affirmed that the Westminster Parliament is sovereign, but this is disputed. In practice, the issue was left largely in abeyance as sovereignty was seen as an outdated concept. The Scottish independence referendum of 2014 and the UK Brexit referendum of 2016 both brought back the question of sovereignty in stark terms. Analysis of data from the British Election Study of 2019 with regard to (a) the right of Scottish self‐determination, and (b) the right of a UK‐wide majority to take Scotland out of the EU, allows us to identify ‘sovereigntists’ and ‘unionists’. Sovereigntists, on both dimensions, now constitute a majority. A smaller group of unionists reject both positions. There remains a group of ‘semi‐sovereigntists’ who accept Scottish self‐determination, but also that the UK as a whole should decide on Brexit. Controlling for the social and political factors, Scots are increasingly polarised around issues of sovereignty, which have become central to contemporary Scottish politics.     

Looking to the future: Prospective economic voting in 2008 Presidential Elections

Despite the economic turmoil of the time, a typical study of vote choice in the 2008 US Presidential Election would (falsely) find little evidence that voters’ opinions about the future state of the economy affected their vote choice. We argue that this misleading conclusion results from serious measurement error in the standard prospective economic evaluations survey question. Relying instead on a revised question, included for the first time in the 2008 American National Election Study, we find that most respondents condition their prospective economic evaluations on potential election outcomes, and that these evaluations are an important determinant of vote choice. A replication in a very different political context – the 2008 Ghanaian election – yields similar results.     

Ideas,spaces and ‘sovereigntyscapes’: Dramatising Scotland's production of a new institutional fix

Abstract

As part of a general endeavour to ‘modernise’ Britain for the epoch of globalisation, Britain's New Labour government has sought to integrate wide‐ranging constitutional reform with new structures for regional governance. Perhaps the most radical proposal concerns the attempt to align continued UK sovereignty with an elected parliament for Scotland in what has been called a ‘new covenant with the people’. This paper draws on Jane Jenson's neo‐Gramscian discourse‐regulation theory and its stress on social agency and the politics of representation, to explore the political, economic and socio‐spatial tensions and the related ideas, discursive forms and political processes that have given rise to this emergent institutional and representational ‘fix’. The author argues that rather than being perceived of solely as some ‘modernisation move’ on the part of a New Labour project, this reconfiguration of power and representation also needs to be traced to the political and representational style of Thatcherism, in particular, the latter's continuous ‘testing’ of the 1707 Treaty between Scotland and England as a negotiated settlement of economic and political union. The paper concludes with some reflections on the future prospects facing any future Scotland‐UK institutional settlement, including the question of sovereignty.     

A comparative view of indigenous citizenship issues

Following the Wik decision it is being suggested that Australia ought now to revisit the translation of special legal norms formulated in international law with respect to the human rights of indigenous citizens. These have previously underpinned developments in both Australia and Scandinavia with respect to indigenous people. Recent Australian developments, particularly the struggle over indigenous property rights, exemplify the argument of O'Neill (1997) in the first volume of Citizenship Studies, which points to the absorption of civic autonomy by market sovereignty. O'Neill is correct to suggest that the dominance of market sovereignty reduces the political participation of those incapable of the competitive struggle for private affluence and that this has a squalid dimension. Central to this is the denial of the notion of community and dominance of the market. This dominance has obscured the significance of the Australian High Court's recognition of aboriginal land rights in Mabo. The decision put the incorrect application of terra nullius—or no man's land—to Australia to rights. It made it possible for the nation to contemplate indigenous sovereignty consequent upon the recognition of native title property rights. Australia's translation of those rights with the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) looked to international law for its rationale. The rights of the Sami people have been developed in Scandinavia largely with reference to the evolution of international law on indigenous peoples. As we approach 2000, Australia cannot continue to ignore the special legal norms in international law relating to citizenship of indigenous peoples. International law informs attempts by indigenous people in modern times to regain some of what they lost in the past.     

Invisible capitalism: political economy and the regulation of undocumented ­immigration in France

What explains the French government’s unwillingness to accept more legal immigrants or at least ignore those who enter or over-stay clandestinely? This paper answers this question by exploring the political economy and regulation of undocumented immigration in France during the 1990s. In light of a broad liberal and Marxist literature on the political economy of immigration, I argue that three ‘proximate determinants’ shape the regulation of undocumented immigration in France (a ‘Europeanized’ security agenda, ‘self-limited sovereignty’ and control of the labour market, especially informal employment). However, these proximate determinants do not necessarily excavate the social relations of power (that is political economy) which constitute the basis for policy making. I argue then that a return to the importance of the labour market (and thus the class and racial constitution of French society) is essential, but without a simple return to Marxist political economy. Instead, I suggest the value of ‘virtualism’ for carving out a new post-structuralist/‘postmodern’ political economy of immigration.     

Fictitious Issues Revisited: Political Interest, Knowledge and the Generation of Nonattitudes

It has long been suspected that, when asked to provide opinions on matters of public policy, significant numbers of those surveyed do so with only the vaguest understanding of the issues in question. In this article, we present the results of a study which demonstrates that a significant minority of the British public are, in fact, willing to provide evaluations of non-existent policy issues. In contrast to previous American research, which has found such responses to be most prevalent among the less educated, we find that the tendency to provide 'pseudo-opinions' is positively correlated with self-reported interest in politics. This effect is itself moderated by the context in which the political interest item is administered; when this question precedes the fictitious issue item, its effect is greater than when this order is reversed. Political knowledge, on the other hand, is associated with a lower probability of providing pseudo-opinions, though this effect is weaker than that observed for political interest. Our results support the view that responses to fictitious issue items are not generated at random, via some 'mental coin flip'. Instead, respondents actively seek out what they consider to be the likely meaning of the question and then respond in their own terms, through the filter of partisan loyalties and current political discourses.     

Indians 78, Washington State 0: Stories about Indians and the Law

In the 1970s Washington State lost a series of legal cases related to Native Americans. These cases exemplify the need for knowledge of federal Indian law-but such knowledge, out of context, is insufficient. Key aspects of federal Indian law are hard to accept because of conflicting stories that Americans already believe. The authors discuss the importance of stories and review commonly believed stories that block acceptance of federal Indian law. They then discuss basic principles of Indian law and distill four questions to help determine tribal jurisdiction. The authors review the Marshal trilogy—three Supreme Court cases that set the foundations of modern Native American law—and show how the legal principles play out in an analysis of three contemporary court cases.     

Citizenship as horizon

The idea of citizenship has today emerged as a global horizon under which a proliferating range of claims and demands for recognition, visibility, care, moral dignity, and inclusion are made. Initially a legal concept tied to self-determination and national sovereignty, the global human rights agenda has made citizenship less tied to the nation-state and instead a carrier of multiple cultural and political meanings and agendas from the global level to the most localized context. But can there be meaningful forms of citizenship that are not guaranteed by a sovereign state?     

论西方国家公民对政府的监督与制约

主权在民是西方国家宪法的一项重要原则,其实质是公民对政治过程的参与和监督,由此构成了西方民主制度的实质与核心。从静态的结构来讲,公民监督权是体现主权在民的一系列制度;从动态的过程来看,公民监督是一系列的政治参与活动。公民监督构成了西方国家监督体系的基础,是监督体系有效运转的动力源泉,在国家政治生活中发挥着不可替代的重要作用。     

Globalization and citizenship: an Australian dilemma

Democratic citizenship, as it exists in countries like Australia, is premised on a nation-state that has sovereignty over a specific territory demarcated by internationally agreed boundaries. According to this model, citizens are supposed to control the state through democratic processes, and the state is supposed to control what happens on its territory and to decide who or what may cross its boundaries. But today globalization is eroding the capacity of the nation-state to control cross-border flows of finance, commodities, people, ideas and pollution. Powerful pressures are reducing state autonomy with regard to economic affairs, welfare rights and national culture. This leads to important questions: Does the quality of democratic citizenship remain unchanged? Are citizens still the source of political legitimacy? Do we need to rethink the meaning and mechanisms of citizenship to find new ways of maintaining popular sovereignty? How can citizens influence decisions made by global markets, transnational corporations and international organizations? These are problems that all democratic polities face, and Australia is no exception. Political and legal institutions derived from the Anglo-American democratic heritage have worked well for a century and more, but they may need to change significantly if they are to master the new realities. The central question in Castles's article is thus: What can we do to maintain and enhance democratic citizenship for Australians in the context of a globalizing world? To answer this question, he examines some of the inherent contradictions of nation-state citizenship, discusses the meaning of globalization and how it affects citizenship and looks at the effects of globalization and regional integration on Australia. He concludes that it is important to improve the quality of Australian citizenship by various measures: recognizing the special position of indigenous Australians and action to combat racism; combatting social exclusion; reforming the constitution to inscribe rights of active citizenship in a bill of rights; and reasserting the model of multicultural citizenship.     

Military Policies and the State System as Impediments to Democracy

Military policies impose severe limits on democracy and call into question the viability of the liberal democratic state. Military mentality undermines democratic culture; the complexity of warfare defies public understanding; speed required in decision-making prevents public debate; secrecy misleads the public while often disguising executive abuse of power; vested interests in high military expenditure skew political processes; and concentration of power among a few obstructs democratic participation. Even state sovereignty, which military policies bolster, obstructs democracy because interdependence requires governments to be held accountable, through transnational law and institutions, to 'foreign' as well as 'domestic' citizens since both are affected by national decisions.