Why Would Two-Level Consequentialists Punish Only the Guilty?

The most commonly encountered and most serious objection against consequentialist theories of punishment is that they could sometimes endorse punishing innocent people. Two-level consequentialists can resist this objection. Because of how deterrence works, a system of social protection would clearly need to be careful, most of the time, to pick out only the guilty for punishment. What about exceptional cases? Any institution empowered to secretly frame innocent people would pose a grave danger to democracy, a danger that could prove lethal under only moderately unusual conditions. Meanwhile, individual consequentialists working within the criminal justice system should fear that their own views could be distorted by confirmation bias and other cognitive errors. These officials should normally trust any moderately well-functioning adversarial trial process more than they trust their own judgment of who needs to be punished. They should use extra-legal discretion only in cases where both their confidence and the stakes are extremely high; and in cases where the stakes are extremely high, the consequentialist answer is no longer counter-intuitive.     

Seducing the people: Populism and the challenge to democracy in South Africa

Recent ructions in South Africa's ruling African National Congress have been described from time to time in the media as signalling a dangerous shift towards ‘populism’. The article examines this contention. It argues that South Africa is witnessing a significant challenge to the founding precepts of constitutional democracy. This challenge emanates from the (populist) equation of democracy with ‘the will of the people’. The article unpacks some of the implications of reducing democracy to majoritarianism. It provides also an analysis of why populist appeals of various kinds have been so appealing to South African voters 15 years into democracy. The article argues that the challenges that are currently being experienced in relation to democratisation in South Africa have to do with the inherent tension between the animating ideology of democracy, which suggests that power resides with the people, and the practical functioning of democracy, which relies on the devolution of power to the representatives chosen by a section of the people who rely on order and predictability in the polity in order to govern in a workable way. Populist appeals, it is argued, exploit this tension. But what makes it possible for this strategy to succeed is the failure on the part of political elites to engage in the process of building democracy by way of inculcating respect for democratic values.     

文科高职要加强学生软实力的培养

软实力是一个人具有的适应社会的综合能力。在社会化程度越来越高的今天,软实力也成了就业生存必备的能力。文科高职的特点和培养目标决定了文科高职学生必须具备必要的软实力才能走向社会。在培养文科高职学生软实力的意义、存在的问题以及如何实施等方面,需要加以研究。     

Conservative Economics and Globalisation

Since 1979, modern Conservatism has been torn between a traditional regard for the nation state and a powerful, internationalising, global capitalism. Increasingly, radical free marketeers in the party reject the diffuse and patriotic political economy of big government. Instead, they prefer the consumption ethic of radical supply side reform and privatisation. However, in a country in which private healthcare is expanding, in which private schools and home education are booming, and in which for every one state policeman there are now at least two private security guards, how far will this process go? When a Labour government issues a green paper highlighting the scope for the greater use of private military companies and it accepts the commodification of public space through the use of road pricing, what room is left for Conservatives who believe that 'the people should be big and the state small'?     

Iran's Tortuous Path Toward “Islamic Liberalism”

This article provides an overview of the intellectual and sociopolitical roots of Iran's tortuous path toward Islamic liberalism and reform. It analyzes the shift in the ideological orientation of a major faction within the political elite from a radical to a relatively moderate and liberal interpretation of Islam. The authors trace the roots of this ideological shift to a series of political developments since the triumph of the Islamic revolution in 1979, including various failures of the revolutionary regime to fulfill its populist and egalitarian promises; a considerable erosion in the legitimacy of the ruling clerics; the successful (though largely silent) resistance of the youth and women against the culturally restrictive policies of the Islamic Republic; the rise of a distinctly anti-fundamentalist, liberal-reformist interpretation of Islam by a number of Iranian theologians and religious intellectuals; and the precipitous decline in the popularity of revolutionary ideas in the 1990s. In spite of the increasing appeal of liberal-democratic ideas of individual freedom, pluralism, and political tolerance in the new reform movement and the overwhelming endorsement of these ideas in four recent national elections, including two presidential polls, the authors argue that the movement has had but a limited and, for the most part symbolic, influence on Iran's objective, and still repressive, political conditions.     

Is Liberal Democracy Sliding into ‘Democratic Despotism’?

Post‐democracy and cognate concepts suggest that the postwar period of democratisation has given way to a concentration of power in the hands of small groups that are unrepresentative and unaccountable, as exemplified by the rise of multinational corporations and their influence on democratic politics. This article goes further to argue that this does not fully capture the triple threat facing liberal democracy: first, the rise of a new oligarchy that strengthens executive power at the expense of parliament and people; second, the resurgence of populism and demagogy linked to a backlash against technocratic rule and procedural politics; third, the emergence of anarchy associated with the atomisation of society and a weakening of social ties and civic bonds. In consequence, liberal democracy risks sliding into a form of ‘democratic despotism’ that maintains the illusion of free choice while instilling a sense of ‘voluntary servitude’ as conceptualised by Tocqueville.     

所有权的观念性——近代私法上所有权的历史性格

所有权的观念性即所有权所体现的对物的观念上的支配,这种支配通过他人对所有权的尊重而得以实现,即使物不在所有人的现实控制之下。这种具有观念性的所有权在近代私法上亦可称为绝对所有权。所有权的观念性在不断变动的社会状况下并不总是一致和全面的。观念性作为近代私法所有权的历史性格的特征总是伴随着所有权现实性的修正而变化。     

Reflections of the nexus between justice and peacebuilding

This commentary reflects on eight articles recently published in this journal as part of a special issue on the nexus between transitional justice and statebuilding (Volume 10, Issue 3, 2016). It positions the special issue within an emerging ‘fourth phase’ literature on transitional justice that draws on critiques of liberal peacebuilding to urge an expansion of its boundaries to embrace socio-economic issues. It is argued that the type of analysis found in the special issue, characterized by in-depth, on-the-ground empirical analysis of complex domestic politics of material accumulation and ideological contestation, marks a significant and welcome advance in a literature which to this point has been largely de-contextualized, exhortatory and over-reliant on tired binaries of the ‘international and the local’ or the ‘liberal and legitimate’.     

The myopic Foucauldian gaze: discourse,knowledge and the authoritarian peace

ABSTRACT

The discourse of liberal peacebuilding has often been characterized by critics as a hegemonic discourse, in which power and knowledge are co-constitutive. Influenced by the work of Michel Foucault, an important strand of the literature has demonstrated how epistemic communities have produced knowledge that supports this discourse, while marginalizing other, contrary voices. A ‘local turn’ has sought to uncover what Foucault termed ‘subjugated knowledges’, peripheral voices that were seen as potentially contributing to a more emancipatory peace. This article, in contrast, argues that the explicit and implicit Foucauldian framing of discourse and knowledge is no longer adequate to conceptualize the contested nature of peace and conflict in a rapidly changing international system. In a period of significant geopolitical shifts away from a Western-centric international order, post-Foucauldian discourse theories offer a more productive analytical perspective that makes visible the multiple, competing discourses that attempt to achieve closure in defining meanings of peace and conflict. A theoretical framework that emphasizes discursive contestation rather than unitary domination allows serious consideration of alternative conceptualizations of peacemaking. In particular, theoretical frameworks that highlight contestation make visible an authoritarian, illiberal approach to managing conflict that challenges both liberal and emancipatory conceptualizations of peace and conflict, but is occluded in the current debate over post-liberal peace.