III Political Thought and Theory / Théorie et Pensée Politiques
| Published date | 01 August 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208345231194172 |
| Date | 01 August 2023 |
539
III
POLITICAL THOUGHT AND THEORY
THÉORIE ET PENSÉE POLITIQUES
73.4562 ARLEN, Gordon — Liberal plebeianism: John Stuart Mill on
democracy, oligarchy, and working-class mobilization.
American Political Science Review 117(1), Feb. 2023 : 249-
262.
How should democratic societies address inequality in an age of pluto-
cratic encroachment and populist indignation? What role should popular
movements play in progressive reform efforts? This article turns to the
19th-c. liberalism of John Stuart Mill for insights on an essential challenge
facing democracy today: how to mobilize social movements against inten-
sifying oligarchic threats while safeguarding liberal-democratic values. I
advance a novel reading of Mill as a proponent of “liberal plebeianism” —
that is, as an activist-theorist who confronted the threat of oligarchy by
promoting working-class mobilization within a liberal, parliamentary frame-
work. I trace two discourses within Mill’s writings and speeches: an antioli-
garchic discourse focused on countering “sinister interests” and a mobili-
zation discourse focused on working-class incorporation. Both follow from
Mill’s conviction that liberal reformers should operate as “tribunes of the
poor.” [R, abr.]
73.4563 BAE Byengseon ; ALGARA, Carlos — Fenno’s paradox in a
polarized age: how polarization lowers the mass public’s
assessments of Congress and legislators. Congress and
the Presidency 50(1), 2023 : 76-107.
R. F. Fenno famously posited that the mass public’s assessments of the
US Congress are rooted in a paradox, with citizens holding negative eval-
uations of the collective Congress while holding favorable views of their
individual members of Congress. Since the conceptualization of “Fenno’s
Paradox,” Congress underwent pronounced changes due to increased
ideological polarization between increasingly homogeneous parties com-
prised of more partisan loyal, ideologically extreme legislators. In this arti-
cle, we ask whether this partisan polarization shifted the public’s assess-
ments of Congress and their individual representatives over time. Lever-
aging over 45 years of new data measuring the monthly approval of Con-
gress and legislators with generalized error correction models, we find that
greater polarization lowers the approval rating of both over time, suggest-
ing that greater polarization weakens Fenno’s Paradox by considerably
lowering legislator approval. [R, abr.]
73.4564 BARDIN, Andrea ; RAIMONDI, Fabio — Shall we forget hu-
man nature? Political anthropology and technics from
Marx and Engels to Simondon. Contemporary Political The-
ory 22(1), March 2023 : 24-45.
Human nature is something of a taboo on the left wing of contemporary
political theory and scarcely more than a commonsense assumption on its
right wing. This article aims to expose the taboo and to challenge the as-
sumption. There is no way, we argue, to defeat conservative political the-
ory without delving into political anthropology. With this purpose in mind,
our article analyses the writings of Marx and Engels, and Simondon’s con-
cepts of the transindividual and technics. It shows that Simondon’s theory
of technics allows new interpretations of many of the themes scattered in
Marx’s and Engels’s works and helps to formulate a materialist political
anthropology which entails a political project of liberating ‘human na-
ture’ from labour. [R]
73.4565 BEHR, Valentin — Towards a transnational and social his-
tory of anti-liberalism. Insights from the trajectory of
Ryszard Legutko. European Politics and Society 24(1),
2023 : 22-39.
The ideological roots of the democratic backslide in Central Europe have
rarely been linked to the reconfigurations of the conservative right in Eu-
rope and in the United States. Here an attempt is made to fill this gap by
retracing Ryszard Legutko’s social traje ctory and political activities since
the 1980s. A founder of one of Poland’s main conservative think tanks and
a member of the European Parliament from the Law and Justice party,
Legutko has played a key role in the intellectual structuring of Polish con-
servatives. He also has become one of the leading figures in an emerging
anti-liberal Internationale. Drawing on the analytical framework of Pierre
Bourdieu’s field theory, I study Legutko’s social properties in relation with
the structure of the fields — intellectual and political, Polish and transna-
tional — in which he has been involved since the 1980s. Examining the
contexts of the production and reception of Legutko’s writings, I propose a
nuanced geography of transnational intellectual exchanges, emphasizing
that ideas can circulate from the ‘semi-periphery’ to the ‘core’, under cer-
tain conditions. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 73.4783]
73.4566 BROPHY, Charles — The “theory of the unity of all classes
and races against foreign capital” in Malaya: socialism,
communalism, and uneven development in the thought of
James Puthucheary. Modern Asian Studies 56(6), Nov.
2022 : 1813-1844.
Based on the writings of James Puthucheary in the late 1950s and early
1960s, this article seeks to highlight Puthucheary’s contribution to debates
within the Malayan Left on the national question. It will highlight Puthu-
cheary’s situating of the Malayan Left within a wider transnational flow of
nationalist, anti-imperialist, and socialist thought, as well as his attempt —
through his own Marxist-influenced assessment of the Malayan situation
— to answer the political problem of the relationship between socialist pol-
itics and nationalism in Malaya. In doing so the article will highlight the way
in which Puthucheary’s own position on questions of education and lan-
guage policy placed him in opposition to dom- inant trends within the Ma-
layan Communist Party and the left-wing of the People’s Action Party, pro-
vided a theorizing of the need for nation-building within Malayan socialism,
and contributed towards a socialist politics which placed emphasis upon
economic development and cultural nation-building from the perspective
of the Malay peasantry. [R, abr.]
73.4567 CHAMBERS, Dustin ; O’REILLY, Colin — The economic the-
ory of regulation and inequality. Public Choice 193(1-2),
Oct. 2022 : 63-78.
Stigler (1971) proposed that regulation benefits politically influential inter-
est groups rather than advancing the public interest. The Stiglarian per-
spective predicts that regulation raises barriers to entry that limit competi-
tion and creates economic rents for incumbents. Apart from the direct eco-
nomic harm of such policies, regulation generates additional conse-
quences. One hypothesized consequence ushered by anticompetitive
rules is the widening of income disparities. This article therefore surveys
the growing empirical literature that studies whether regulation u ltimately
exacerbates income inequality. Beginning with the literature on entry and
start-up regulation, we find that these rules, as predicted by Stigler, limit
entry and dampen entrepreneurship. Moreover, recent studies also indi-
cate that these regulations are associated with higher income inequality.
We also review the literature on occupational licensure. [R, abr.] [See Ab-
str. 73.4584]
73.4568 COLLIE, James ; BHATTACHARJEE, Ritwik — Problematiz-
ing settler grievances: Danielle Smith and contested colo-
nialism. Canadian Journal of Political Science 56(1), March
2023 : 222-228.
Premier of Alberta Danielle Smith's comments comparing the Alberta Sov-
ereignty within a United Canada Act to the Indian Act have sparked wide-
spread outrage and condemnation. Premier Smith would later clarify that
these remarks were intended to demonstrate that Alberta and First Nations
have a “common problem” with Ottawa. In this brief article, we argue that
these comments, as well as the act itself, can be analyzed using Jerald
Sabin's contested colonialism framework. We then provide a brief critical
discussion of what our analysis means for Canadian politics by addressing
the possible intentions and harms of the comments. [R]
73.4569 DOESER, Fredrik ; FRANTZEN, Filip — The strategic and
realist perspectives: an ambiguous relationship. Journal of
Strategic Studies 45(6-7), 2022 : 918-941.
This article aims at clearing up a widespread misunderstanding in previous
research that the classical strategic perspective, based on the writings of
Carl von Clausewitz and his contemporary followers, shares ontological
assumptions with realism. Although both perspectives perceive a constant
state of disharmony in international politics, they differ substantially in their
assumptions about state-centrism, actor behaviour, and the role of unpre-
dictability. As the relationship between the perspectives is ambiguous, the
article argues that scholars should treat them as two separate theoretical
entities. The greater scholarly relevance of the article lies in its contribution
to conceptual clarity. [R]
73.4570 DRAKE, Richard — Charles Austin Beard’s economic
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