II Political Thinkers and Ideas / Penseurs et Idées Politiques
| DOI | 10.1177/002083451906900102 |
| Published date | 01 February 2019 |
| Date | 01 February 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Abstracts |
27
II
POLITICAL THINKERS AND IDEAS
PENSEURS ET IDÉES POLITIQUES
69.260 ABULOF, Uriel — Nationalism as legitimation: the appeal
of ethnicity and the plea for popular sovereignty. Nations
and Nationalism 24(3), July 2018 : 528-534.
W. Connor is seemingly both a primordialist and a modernist: Nations
emanate from basic human sentiments but em erged in late modernity. Is
this not an aberration, a contradiction both conceptual and causal?
Connor, a champion of academic clarity, obviously thought not, and he
was right. What accounts for Connor's unique take on nationalism, and
why, for many, does it still seem odd? The answer to both quandaries, I
argue, lies in Connor's own unique splice: He effectively delved into, and
fused, two thorny matters that mo st scholars shy away from, let alone try
to bring together: human nature and legitimation. Both underpin his
remarkable scholarship and its solitude standing. I explore both facets:
first, Connor's take on human nature; then, more extensively, his analy-
sis of legitimation — via "popular sovereignty" and "self determination".
[R] [See Abstr. 69.333]
69.261 AVRAMENKO, Richard ; PROMISEL, Michael — When
toleration becomes a vice: naming Aristotle's third un-
named virtue. American Journal of Political Science 62(4),
Oct. 2018 : 849-860.
Toleration is lauded as a chief virtue of contemporary liberalism . Without
this vir tue, it seems, citizens are ill equipped to reconcile ethical disa-
greements appropriately in pluralistic societies. In recent scholarship and
practice, however, toleration has undergone significant transformation.
The tolerant citizen, we are told, avoids causing the discomfort or pain
associated with uncomfortable conversations, criticism, or even differ-
ence of opinion. Regrettably, this understanding of toleration hinders
rather than facilitates dialogue and conflates pain or discomfort with
cruelty. To offer a more viable theoretical grounding for toleration, this
article turns to the third unnamed virtue of Aristotle's Nicomachean
Ethics. When conceptualized as an Aristotelian moral virtue with vices of
both deficiency and excess, it is clear how toleration, taken too far,
becomes a vice. [R, abr.]
69.262 BAKINER, Onur — A key to Turkish politics? the center-
periphery framework revisited. Turkish Studies 19(4), Sept.
2018 : 503-522.
This article offers a critical rereading of Ş. Mardin’s center-periphery
framework. This cleavage has offered a simple and politically appealing
theoretical foundation to scholarly and journalistic works for several
decades. Empirical evidence, however, suggests institutions and
worldviews have not been continuous across time, as the center-
periphery framework suggests. Furthermore, disagreements and con-
flicts among groups perceived as peripheral, the fluidity of relationships
between peripheral and central actors, and the lack of cohesion within
the institutions of the center leave no reason to maintain the center-
periphery cleavage as an organizing framework. The authoritarian turn in
Turkey in the 2010s under the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi invites further
scrutiny of the framework. [R, abr.]
69.263 BAMBRICK, Christina — “Neither precisely national nor
precisely federal”: governmental and administrative au-
thority in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Publius
48(4), Fall 2018 : 586-606.
Tocqueville’s insights on local politics in Democracy in America have led
some scholars to ask where he fits into longstanding debates about the
balance of power between the national government and state govern-
ments in American constitutionalism. Although Tocqueville’s observa-
tions speak to these questions, he also transcends them by developing
the concepts of governmental and administrative (de)centralization. In
differentiating governmental and administrative capacities, Tocqueville
offers language by which to understand and evaluate the federal system
in terms of the nature of the authority each level of government exercis-
es, rather than simply by the objects of national, state, and municipal
powers. This article clarifies Tocqueville’s understanding of governmen-
tal and administrative (de)centralization and thereby contributes to a
better understanding of political authority in the American federal system.
[R]
69.264 BARDIN, Andrea — Philosophy as political technē: the
tradition of invention in Simondon’s political thought.
Contemporary Political Theory 17(4), Nov. 2018 : 417-436.
Gilbert Simondon has recently attracted the interest of political philoso-
phers and theorists, despite the fact that he is renowned as a philoso-
pher of technics, who also elaborated a general theory of complex
systems in Individuation in the Light of the No tions of Form and Infor-
mation. A group of scholars has developed Gilles Deleuze’s early sug-
gestion that Simondon’s social ontology might offer the basis for a re-
theorization of radical democracy. Others, following Herbert Marcuse,
have instead focused on Simondon’s analysis of the relationship be-
tween technology and society. However, only a joint study of Simondon’s
two major works can reveal their implicit political stakes. Simondon’s
anti-Aristotelianism and his anti-Heideggerian understanding of the
Greek origins of philosophy, allow us to conceive philosophical thought
as a ‘tradition of invention’. [R, abr.]
69.265 BARREYRO, María Emilia — The purest form of commu-
nicative power. a reinterpretation of the key to the legiti-
macy of norms in Habermas's model of democracy. Con-
stellations 25(3), Sept. 2018 : 459-473.
The relevance of clarifying the core of J. Habermas's conception of
legitimacy lies in the significance of his work for the theory of democracy.
In order to understand this heart of legitimacy, I analyze the concept of
communicative power, the relevance of which is undeniable in Haber-
mas's model since it ties the principle of popular sovereignty to the
discourse principle. But although commentators on Habermas's theory
broadly agree that his concept of communicative power is the core of
legitimacy within his political architectonic, there is no such consensus
about its role and scope. In effect, where such power comes from and
how it is generated are obscure points of his theory. [R, abr.]
69.266 BAXTER-MOORE, Nick, et al. — Explaining Canada-US
differences in attitudes toward the role of government: a
test of S.M. Lipset’s "Continental Divide". Commonwealth
and Comparative Politics 56(4), 2018 : 472-492.
For decades scholars have engaged in a lively debate about the distinc-
tiveness of Canadian and American value systems. S.M. Lipset [Conti-
nental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and
Canada; Routledge, 1990] argues that divergent responses to the Amer-
ican Revolution led Canada to embrace Tory values of ‘peace, order,
and good government’ while Americans pursued classical liberal values
of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’. Other scholars question the
extent, or even the existence, of the differences Lipset describes. Using
surveys of students from Canadian and American universities close to
the Canada-US border, we identify compelling support for Lipset’s
hypothesized differences on the role of government in the least likely
setting imaginable. [R]
69.267 BERGÈS, Sandrine — What’s it got to do with the price of
bread? Condorcet and Grouchy on freedom and unrea-
sonable laws in commerce. European Journal of Political
Theory 17(4), Oct. 2018 : 432-448.
István Hont identified a point in the history of political thought at which
republicanism and commercialism became separated. According to
Hont, Emmanuel Sieyès proposed that a monarchical republic should be
formed. By contrast the Jacobins, in favor of a republic led by the people,
rejected not only Sieyès’s political proposal, but also the economic
ideology that wen t with it. Sieyès was in favor of a commercial republic;
the Jacobins were not. This was, according to Hont, a defining moment
in the history of political thought. I offer a different analysis of that par-
ticular moment in the history of the commercial republic, one that instead
of focusing on Sieyès and the Jacobins, looks at the thought of Girondins
philosophers Nicolas de Condorcet and Sophie de Grouchy. [R, abr.]
[See Abstr. 69.273]
69.268 BHATIA, Gautam — Discursive democracy and the limits
of free speech. Constellations 25(3), Sept. 2018 : 344-358.
One of the most contested issues in modern democracies is the regula-
tion of speech and expression. European countries legislate and enforce
hate speech codes, whereas the US does not. Consistent with the
European Convention of Human Rights, many European countries
outlaw certain forms of pornography. On the other hand, a narrowly
drawn pornography statute, regulating only sexually explicit material that
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