Partisanship and public reason

In the large body of literature concerning John Rawls’s Political Liberalism (1993) and his conception of public reason, little attention has been paid to the implications that the constraints of public reason have for partisans, i.e. citizens who participate in politics through political parties. This paper argues that even on the basis of a ‘mild’ understanding of Rawls’s conception of the constraints of public reason, which takes into account the various stipulations Rawls provided throughout his later work, when applied to partisans the constraints of public reason lose none or little of their hindering force. This seriously undermines the contribution that parties and partisans can provide to the change and the varieties of public reason that Rawls himself advocates as a response to social change and, therefore, to political justification and legitimacy. Parties articulate, coordinate and enhance societal demands which, without their support, may remain unheard and fail to change the acceptable terms of public reason and political justification. If the political speech of partisans is restrained, this potential for change (and, therefore, its contribution to political legitimacy) is seriously undermined.     

Institutional Models for Track Two Interventions

Conflict resolution as an academic field was built by pioneers like John Burton on the idea that conflict resolution academics must accomplish three basic interlocking tasks: conduct cutting‐edge research, educate students, and make a positive contribution to the real‐world work of practitioners engaged in resolving actual conflicts. Over time and as the field has grown, so have the demands to produce research deemed rigorous enough according to increasingly competitive and rigid traditional standards and so too have the demands of teaching growing numbers of students. Research and teaching commitments thus diminish the time and support available to engage in practice. In this article, I consider those pressures within universities and also consider the options available to conflict resolution scholar–practitioners outside the traditional university     

Perfect Failure: the USA,Cuba and the Bay of Pigs, 1961

In 1961 the US Central Intelligence Agency master‐minded a sea‐borne invasion by Cuban exiles aimed at overthrowing the regime headed by Fidel Castro. With minimal logistical support from the USA the attempted counter‐coup launched at the Bay of Pigs was an unqualified disaster: a ‘perfect failure’, in the words of an authoritative contemporary. This essay locates the fiasco in the longer history of US–Cuban relations, concentrating on the Cold War years, the history of US political intervention and subversion in Latin America, and the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and the rise of Castro himself—both men offering different models of Latin American caudillismo (the power and cult of military strongmen). The essay concludes with an analysis of Cuba as an issue in US domestic politics and the impact of the Bay of Pigs in consolidating the Cuban revolution and setting the framework for the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.     

哈佛大学肯尼迪政府学院课程与学位结构分析

哈佛大学肯尼迪政府学院在每一学年为研究生开设超过200门的课程,这些课程除强调基础理论方法、手段方面的政策与制度分析、公共组织的战略管理、政治主张及领导艺术外,还包括企业和政府政策、健康照料政策等12个专业领域的课程。肯尼迪政府学院硕士学位有MPA、MPP等多种类型,博士学位研究方向有公共政策、健康卫生政策、政治经济和政府、政府与社会政策等4个领域。     

The Hole in the Centre: A Comment on Lowe and Pemberton,The Official History of the British Civil Service,Volume II: 1982–1997

This article looks at Prime Ministers’ attempts to reform their operation in Number Ten and their relationship with the Cabinet Office in response to frustrations they encounter trying to drive their policy agenda from the centre. Prime Ministers have developed new institutions to bolster their meagre resources in Number Ten. There is particular focus on the experience of John Major in trying to push his Citizen's Charter. It notes how resistant departments were to many of the changes. Finally the article discusses recent changes in Boris Johnson's Number Ten that marked the brief tenure of Dominic Cummings and his clear centralising mission.     

Social Justice and Communication: Mill, Marx, and Habermas

This article concerns how one may theorize a social justice of communication. The article argues that the theory of democracy cannot neglect an analysis of communication and that, indeed, a social justice of communication can be identified in the discourse ethics of Jürgen Habermas’s “deliberative” theory of democracy. The socio-political analyses of communication in John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx are examined as precursors to Habermas’s position because they are useful for setting off the unique synthesis of the liberal and critical traditions that Habermas develops. Such a social justice of communication shows how the communicative mediation of the public sphere can ameliorate the tension between individual autonomy and the solidarity of group membership by communicatively empowering individuals under conditions of mutual respect and equal dignity.

Self-respect and public reason

In A Theory of Justice John Rawls argues that self-respect is ‘perhaps the most important’ primary good, and that its status as such gives crucial support to controversial ideas like the lexical priority of liberty. Given the importance of these ideas for Rawls, it should be no surprise that they have attracted much critical attention. In response to these critics I give a defense of self-respect that grounds its importance in Rawls’s moral conception of the person. I show that this understanding of self-respect goes well beyond giving support to the lexical priority of liberty, also supporting Rawls’s still more controversial view of public reason. On my account, taking self-respect seriously requires the coercive enforcement of public reason. This is a novel argument for public reason, in that it grounds the idea in justice as fairness and mandates its coercive enforcement.     

The Presidential Election of 2008*

Senators Barack Obama and John McCain each has severe problems. McCain must take his distance from the very unpopular President Bush while keeping the support of the core Republican voters, but suffers from lack of rapport with the Fundamentalist Protestants and traditionalist Catholics. In foreign policy, he is more devoted to US global hegemony (in a world which stubbornly refuses it) than the incumbent. Senator Obama knows that this is a dangerous illusion but thinks that it is unwise to say so. He supports Israel in exaggerated terms and repeats the fabrications of the war party about Iran. Obama has the difficulty of being part black and entirely intellectual, and he needs the votes of the working class men and women who are very reserved about him. McCain seeks low taxes and less government expenditure and intervention, but tens of millions of economically hard‐pressed citizens are ready to return to the ethos and practices of the New Deal. Obama promises to revive the regulatory and redistributive role of government to help them, but his reluctance to criticise the arms budget may makes him seem unrealistic. Obama's vision of the United States puts the achievement of the American Revolution in the future whereas McCain thinks of the nation as already perfected. In many respects, we have a classical conflict between left and right.     

Pope Benedict XVI Confronts Religious Relativism

Pope Benedict XVI’s inflammatory speech at Regensburg highlights a subtle difference between Benedict and John Paul II. John Paul called Muslims and Jews “sons of Abraham,” and he organized high-profile interfaith events. Benedict is more skeptical of interreligious dialog and more confrontational toward Islam than was his predecessor. This shift in tone toward Islam stems from changed historical circumstances. Islam has replaced communism as Europe’s biggest ideological challenge. But, there are also subtle theological differences between the two Popes. John Paul was trained by Dominicans, and throughout his papacy, he was a champion of St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Augustine, with his bleaker view of non-Christian cultures, is the dominant influence on Benedict. Benedict believes that theologies of religious pluralism, which lead to metaphysical and religious relativism, have replaced liberation theologies as the most serious threats to Catholic orthodoxy.

John Amery: the antisemitism of the 'perfect English gentleman'

Copsey explores the antisemitism of John Amery, the fascist renegade who along with William Joyce was hanged for treason after the Second World War. Like Joyce, Amery was a radio propagandist who made a series of war-time broadcasts from Berlin. Beyond this, he also tried to enlist British POWs to fight against the Soviets on the Eastern Front. Amery was the son of a senior British cabinet minister and yet, compared with Joyce, he has received little serious attention. What has been written about Amery tends to denude him of any ideological sophistication and presents him as a rather farcical figure, an irresponsible and foolhardy adventurer who was motivated by a simple fear of Communism. Copsey departs significantly from these standard representations and, using Amery's radio broadcasts and much-neglected propagandistic writings, shows the extent to which antisemitism became Amery's core obsession. Attentive to the ways in which an upper-class background influenced Amery's thinking, Copsey delineates the contours of his virulent antisemitism. What this article reveals is that, beneath the surface charm of the 'perfect English gentleman', Amery's hatred of Jews was deeply rooted in conspiracy theory and racial ideology. Despite all this, one cannot escape the curious fact that Amery's father was half-Jewish. On this point, Copsey examines whether Amery's passionate antisemitism was also psychologically driven.