A decade of electoral democracy: continuity,change and crisis in Paraguay⋆

In 1989 President Stroessner was overthrown after almost 35 years in power. This led to a process of transition over the following decade which included elections at presidential, congressional, and municipal levels, as well as a democratic constitution, which guaranteed full political and civil liberties. However, the transition has been complicated by the continued prominence of the same political and military forces that supported Stroessner, and that have proved reluctant to withdraw from power. As a result, instead of representing a complete break with an authoritarian past, the transition has combined elements of continuity and change. This has led to a conservative and faltering transition, characterised by frequent political crises and the lack of socio‐economic reform. This article analyses the major structural and institutional obstacles to the consolidation of democracy in Paraguay. It then brings the reader up to date, by examining the events of 1998/1999, a period in which Paraguay's transition came under the greatest threat, and which revealed both its greatest strengths and weaknesses.     

The Neoconservative Critiques of and Reconciliation with Capitalism

The neoconservatives have fallen out of favor among Washington policy-makers under President Obama as well as among conservatives themselves. However, neoconservatives’ impact on contemporary political discourse remains significant. This article is about the evolution of neoconservatives’ thinking about capitalism. Specifically, it is about neoconservatives’ ideological journey from right-wing critics of capitalism to one of its most ardent defenders. At the heart of their writing about capitalism are two distinct, but related cultural critiques of capitalism. In their view, capitalism creates a culture that is decadent, effeminate, and preoccupied with immediate gratification. This culture threatens the Protestant ethic and the heroic virtues of patriotic self-sacrifice. The Protestant ethic legitimizes capitalist accumulation and inequality, while the heroic virtues made the US a global superpower. Through supply-side economics and American empire the neoconservatives sought to recover both, the cultural foundations of capitalism located in the Protestant ethic and the heroic virtues of a global superpower. Neoconservative writings on capitalism are key to understanding the shift in the discourse on the economy, the welfare state, and foreign policy over the last thirty years.     

Plasticity and Post-Colonial Recognition: ‘Owning,Knowing and Being’*

In this article the author traces the limits of the philosophy and politics of recognition as manifest in colonial settler contexts. Forms of property ownership and ways of being, sutured by the racial body, are contained by a restricted economy of owning, knowing and being. Bringing the concept of plasticity to bear on the relationship between the body, property and the colonial, the author illuminates the ways in which practices of ownership that exceed the restricted economy of recognition exhibit a temporal and spatial plasticity in the context of the Palestinian struggles over land in the West Bank.     

Laski on Rights and the Problem of Liberal Democratic Theory

From 1919 until the mid-1920s Laski developed a cogent egalitarian theory of democratic rights. In the 1930s he turned his attention to the conflict between such rights and the capitalist property rights of liberal theory. His defence of democratic rights is significant in the context of contemporary discussions of rights, autonomy and democracy.