II Political Thinkers and Ideas / Penseurs et Idées Politiques
| DOI | 10.1177/0020834519880800 |
| Date | 01 October 2019 |
| Published date | 01 October 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Abstracts |
628
II
POLITICAL THINKERS AND IDEAS
PENSEURS ET IDÉES POLITIQUES
69.6126 AGIOMAVRITIS, Dionyssios S. — The applicability of
human rights: a Voegelinian interpretation. Perspectives
on Political Science 47(4), 2018 : 264-270.
The human rights discourse in large part determines the way we under-
stand justice and therefore plays a crucial role in shaping the way we
think and act. But despite its prevalence and widespread acceptance,
this discourse is not without its difficulties. One of the more persistent,
significant, and well-documented problems associated with human rights
is whether they are universal or relative in their application. The following
essay attempts to confront this question from a novel and more informa-
tive perspective than the ones offered thus far. Analyzing the debate
concerning the universality or relativity of human rights from within the
intellectual framework of Eric Voegelin's philosophy of history, this essay
endeavors to uncover the essence of human rights and thus bring to light
their true function lest we burden them with tasks that are beyond their
scope. [R, abr.]
69.6127 ANDEWEG, Rudy B — Peter Mair on representative de-
mocracy. Irish Political Studies 34(2), 2019 : 145-153.
That paper is not only an important milestone in Mair’s work on party
organizations, but it also marks the start of a development in his thinking
that links party organization to the functioning of representative democ-
racy more generally. He wrote about representative democracy as a
linkage mechanism between the policy preferences of citizens and the
policy-making of their elected representatives in an increasingly pessi-
mistic voice. That growing pessimism, and Mair’s reasoning behind it,
are still relevant today. Although Mair’s views evolved gradually, we can
discern roughly three phases in this development: the first phase in-
cludes the work with Katz on the cartel party and related papers, the
second phase contains a series of papers around 2004-2007, and the
third phase covers the last years before his untimely death. [R]
69.6128 AVRAMENKO, Richard ; BUNTING, Thomas — Sportsman-
ship and politics: Xenophon on Ponos and democratic
competition. Perspectives on Political Science 47(3), 2018 :
142-153.
Even though agonistic democratic theory espouses and celebrates
competition, it seemingly lacks a coherent ethic for decent winning and
losing in everyday political life. This article is an effort to fill this void by
suggesting a practice-based, non-perfectionist ethic drawn from sport.
Focusing on Xenophon's On Hunting, we argu e that sport, properly
defined, offers an appropriate experience with ponos (toil, suffering) that
teaches citizens perseverance, humility, generosity, empathy, and
stewardship. This sporting ethic, we argue, provides a more suitable
model for winning and losing in public life than the martial basis of ago-
nistic democratic theory. [R]
69.6129 BAIN, William — International anarchy and political theol-
ogy: rethinking the legacy of Thomas Hobbes. Journal of
International Relations and Development 22(2), 2019 : 278-
299.
Anarchy is one of the most important concepts in international theory;
Thomas Hobbes is regularly invoked to illustrate the character and the
consequences of anarchy. This article interrogates the theological aspect
of Hobbes’ political philosophy in a bid to move beyond the distorting
mythology that has grown up around “Hobbesian” international relations.
In doing so, it advances a positive argument that presents Hobbes as a
theorist of interstate society that is made and unmade in the way that
God made the universe. The concept of anarchy that is attributed to
Hobbes is rooted in a theological dispute about the nature of God and
the extent of his power, which entails a particular way of constituting and
comprehending reality. [R, abr.] [First article of a special issue on “Politi-
cal theologies of the international: the continued relevance of theology in
international relations”, edited and introduced, pp. 269-277, by Vassilios
PAIPAIS. See also Abstr. 69.5949, 6040, 6043, 6165, 6170]
69.6130 BATES, Richard — Democratic babies? Françoise Dolto,
Benjamin Spock and the ideology of post-war parenting
advice. Journal of Political Ideologies 24(2), June 2019 : 201-
219.
This article looks at the political implications of child-rearing advice. The
period after 1945 offers an important example of how this topic can
interact with developments in political ideology. This article takes the
example of France, with substantial comparative reference to the US and
Britain. It argues that the mid-20th c. was characterized by a move from
a hygienist and behaviorist approach to child rearing to a more liberal,
humanist approach informed by Freudian psychoanalysis. This occurred
significantly later in France — in the 1970s — than in Britain or the US,
where it is associated with the years immediately after World War II.
Through a comparison of two celebrated childcare experts who epito-
mized the change — Françoise Dolto in France, Benjamin Spock in the
US — the paper explores the reasons for this temporal discrepancy. [R,
abr.] [See Abstr. 69.5975]
69.6131 BENNETT, Nolan — Unwillingness and imagination in
Frederick Douglass's The Heroic Slave [1852]. Review of
Politics 81(2), Spring 2019 : 281-303.
Frederick Douglass testified often to his experiences and the injustice of
slavery. Yet how did he explain those who were unmoved, and what did
he envision as compelling them to act? I turn to The Heroic Slave to
investigate Douglass on white unwillingness. A fictional account of the
factual mutiny of the enslaved Madison Washington in 1841, Douglass's
novella narrates Washington's emancipation through the perspectives of
a white northerner and southerner who waver in response to testimony
when confronted by the spaces and scripts of white society. Although
Douglass suggests that friendship may encourage whites, I find in the
story's contents as well as its publication a heroic imagination in which
black resistance is inevitable and natural, independent of white alliance,
opposition, and judgment itself. [R, abr.]
69.6132 BOURGET, Renaud — Le ministre des Finances selon
Gaston Jèze: États-Unis, Angleterre et Argentine (The
minister of finance according to Gaston Jèze: United
States, England and Argentina). Pouvoirs 168, Jan. 2019 :
105-124.
Invited by the University of Buenos Aires in 1923 for a series of confer-
ences, Gaston Jèze explained the meaning of the reform to implement in
Argentina whose financial system, with its obsolete and outdated charac-
teristics inherited from the colonial period, contrasted, according to him,
with the large and rich country it had become. In his second conference,
Jèze discussed the functions of the Argentinian minister of Finance and
described from the outset the weakness of his situation. He suggested
turning to England, the country of “budgetary balance” and of a “strong
minister of Finance” and to the United States, where Congress had just
created the Budget Office, to find the appropriate examples to follow.” [R,
abr.] [See Abstr. 69.6192]
69.6133 BRADLEY, Arthur — Dismembered: citizen sacrifice in
Rousseau's “The Levite of Ephraïm”. Review of Politics
81(2), Spring 2019 : 231-253.
This essay explores the position of citizen sacrifice in Rousseau's politi-
cal theology from The Social Contract to “The Levite of Ephraïm” [1762].
To summarize, I contend that Rousseau's political theology starts out by
seeking to prohibit religious sacrifice as something inimical to both
natural and positive law, but ends up attempting to appropriate or inter-
nalize this sacrificial economy within his theory of citizenship. If Rous-
seau presents his theory of civil religion as a means of neutralizing the
violence of sectarian religions, for example, I contend that this civil
profession of faith is itself a species of sacrific ial theology which is
explicitly designed to create a citizen who is capable of sacrificing their
life to the state. In “The Levite of E phraïm” Rousseau's political theology
of citizen sacrifice assumes its most graphic allegorical form. [R, abr.]
69.6134 BRICK, Howard — Inventing America, again. Journal of
Political Ideologies 24(2), June 2019 : 182-200.
In US intellectual and academic life, the 1940s and 1950s stand out as a
period abounding with attempts to assay the characteristic and distinctive
forms of “American culture” and “American society”, from Gunnar
Myrdal’s An American Dilemma [1944] and the oft-noted “Tocqueville
revival” to works by Harold Laski, Max Lerner, David Riesman, C. L. R.
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