Après l’indépendance, la Zambie est gouverné par l’UNIP (United National Independence Party) qui met en place à partir de 1972 « une démocratie à parti unique ». Bien que non aligné au début, le pays choisit alors un développement socialiste et compte de plus en plus sur l’aide du bloc de l’Est. Éléments-clés du combat pour l’indépendance nationale, les femmes continuent à jouer un rôle dans le Parti. Cet article examine l’économie politique de l’aide apportée par (...) les organisations officielles de femmes d’Europe de l’Est au jeune mouvement de femmes zambien, notamment pour développer et soutenir la UNIP Women’s League. Visites respectives, bourses d’études, aide au voyage, soutien technique et logistique spécifique : par ces moyens, les pays de l’Est contribuent à la construction d’un féminisme d’État en Zambie et aident les femmes zambiennes à s’affirmer politiquement au niveau international durant la décennie des Nations unies pour les femmes (1975-1985). (shrink)

This paper argues that ethnonational politics became the major obstruction for the class struggle of left-wing parties against the One-Unit scheme, from 1955 to 1958. The overwhelming emphasis on the One-Unit scheme pushed the left-wing parties away from the Marxist agenda. And because of this focus on ethno-national issue, the leftist parties failed to mobilize masses against the oppressive system. The left did not come up with the independent class struggle and remain attached with regional politics. Leftists’ alliance with (...) the National Awami Party was a political mistake because the NAP was relatively large political party with influential leaders. NAP overshadowed the leftist parties and used smaller parties for its own political goals. Eventually, the left became the instrument of NAP. This study explains ethnonational politics as one of the causes for the failure of leftist struggle in Sindh. (shrink)

Barnett argues that the United Nations, by operating on the principle of the consent of the parties, can encourage the development of a more stable and cooperative security architecture.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The National Commission on AIDSDonald S. Goldman (bio) and Jeff Stryker (bio)A decade after the first cases were recognized in the United States, AIDS continues to vex policymakers and fascinate the public. It has been said that AIDS acts as a prism, refracting a spectrum of controversial topics. For bioethicists, these topics include: equity in the allocation of resources for treatment and research; forgoing life-sustaining care and (...) proxy decision making; informed consent in the context of HIV testing and screening; the ethical duties of health care workers to provide care for persons with HIV disease; and competing obligations of health care professionals to patients and to third parties who may be put at risk.The Role of CommissionsIf AIDS is the quintessential case study for bioethicists, it is a potential quagmire for politicians. The association of HIV disease with drug use and sexual behavior makes it a topic that all but the most courageous (or the most homophobic) politicians shy away from. A frequent political response is to form a commission.Alexander Capron, who was executive director of the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine, has described some roles commissions play: a watchdog, overseeing the work of particular government agencies; a crucible, providing a means for "publicly hammering out conclusions on controversial issues when consensus, both in the public and in the relevant disciplines, is not yet apparent"; and "a lightning rod for public concern—or viewed less charitably, dumping ground for an issue that is too difficult for the ordinary political process to handle" (Capron 1983, p. 9).Nearly every state has created a gubernatorial-level task force or commission on AIDS. The National Commission on AIDS was established under the Health Omnibus Program Extension (HOPE) Act of 1988, which was signed by President Reagan on November 4, 1988. The official charter of the commission was approved August 2, 1989 and its original two-year term was extended for a third year. The mission statement crafted by the commission to reflect its Congressional mandate reads: [End Page 339]The National Commission on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is an independent body of 15 members created to advise the President and Congress. The Commission seeks to build a broad public understanding on the magnitude, scope and urgency of the HIV/AIDS epidemic; provide and inspire leadership at all levels of both the public and private sectors; empower individuals and communities; and advocate for effective, cooperative and non-discriminatory resources required for prevention, comprehensive care, and the research necessary to halt the epidemic.As the mission statement implies, the National Commission on AIDS has viewed itself from the outset not only as a crucible for policy analysis, but also as a forum for those affected by HIV disease. In site visits and hearings the commissioners have met with hundreds of people living with HIV disease, and with caregivers on the front lines. This odyssey has taken the commission on visits to homeless shelters in New York City; to "shooting galleries" where intravenous drug users congregate in Seattle; to Native American communities in four states; to private homes in rural Georgia; and to hospitals, HIV antibody testing centers, drug treatment clinics, and hemophilia treatment centers throughout the nation. It quickly became clear during the commission's travels that HIV disease cannot be understood outside the context of the racism, homophobia, poverty and unemployment that provide the medium that fosters its spread. It also became apparent that issues of HIV prevention, care and treatment, and clinical research are inextricably intertwined and must be dealt with as such.Early InitiativesUnder the leadership of Chairperson June Osborn and Vice-chairperson David Rogers, the commission decided that the problems it saw in its first few meetings were too urgent to await a full-length annual report. Hence the commission entered the fray with a series of brief interim reports on particular aspects of AIDS. These reports enabled the commission to draw attention to urgent problems of limitations in access to health care and to underscore the plight of people with HIV disease who might otherwise garner little media attention, such as prisoners and drug users (National Commission... (shrink)

With the independence of Republic of Macedonia and the adoption of the Constitution of Macedonia, the country went through a substantial socio-political transition. The concept of human rights and freedoms, such as religious freedoms in the Macedonian Constitution is based on liberal democratic values. The Macedonian Constitution connects the fundamental human rights and freedoms with the concept of the individual and citizen, but also with the collective rights of ethnic minorities, respecting the international standards and responsibilities taken under numerous (...) international human rights conventions and treaties, of which the country is a party. Republic of Macedonia has ratified all the so called “core human right treaties” and now the real challenge lies in the implementation of the international standards. Some of these international conventions and treaties of the United Nations and of the Council of Europe are inherited by succession from the former Yugoslavian federation. Religious freedoms are guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of human rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. According to the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia “The freedom of religious confession is guaranteed. The right to express one's faith freely and publicly, individually or with others, is guaranteed„. After the conflict of 2001 the Ohrid Framework Agreement secured group rights for ethnicities that are not in majority in the Republic of Macedonia. The present Law on the legal status of the church, religious communities and religious groups of 2007, repealed the Law on religion and religious groups of 1997. (shrink)

Since the 1990’s the rise of China provokes heated debates in the West. Numerous politicians and scholars, who study contemporary political affairs, pose the question, which will be the new role of China in international affairs? Many Western observers presume that China will act as the Western powers did in the past, promoting policy of domination, enslavement and gaining profits at all costs. The Chinese declarations on peace, co-operation, mutual interests, and harmony are often considered empty words, a certain decorum (...) of “real politics”, as it had been often practised in the West. An inquiry into the Chinese political and intellectual traditions, almost unknown in the West, challenges such widespread opinions and fears. Of course, it is an open question to which degree the traditional Chinese concepts will determine contemporary policy, since China had been westernised in enormous degree.Nevertheless, attitude to war, struggle, and competition constitutes one of the principal characteristics of each culture and appears closely related to its structure of values. Such attitudes determine political concepts and systems, foreign relations, norms of social life, etc. The analysis of Western and Chinese civilisations demonstrates that in this respect they represented divergent orientations. In Erich Fromm’s typology of societies, the Chinese culture could be considered non-destructive but aggressive, whereas Western civilisation could be called aggressive and destructiveOf course, there were great differences both within Chinese and within Western civilisations. Local/regional cultures belonging to each of them had their own characteristics in respect to struggle, and one could also notice great changes in the course of their histories. In general, at the dawn of these two civilisations, both of them were more or less bellicose, although in the cultures of the Chinese Central Plain “avoiding struggle” traits could be detected quite early. Appreciation of peace and harmony eventually prevailed with the predomination of the Confucian ideology, although Taoism and other schools of thought also condemned struggle and war. On the other hand, in the Mediterranean the bellicose cultures and war-mongering states prevailed. The beginning of this “great divergence” could approximately be dated for the middle of the 1st millennium BC, and the civilisations of East Asia and Europe took the opposite courses in theirsocial and political development. Struggle constituted a fundamental principle in the Western vision of the world-order, and its crucial archetype constituted the eternal struggle of Evil against Good, with the eventual triumph of God, who embodies Good and forces of Light. The Chinese tradition promoted instead the vision of the universe as one giant organism based on the principle of harmony, where Yin complements Yang. Hence both civilisations adopted the dualistic concepts, but one was antagonistic, and the second—complementary.In the 19th century, when Asian nations faced the colonial conquests, many of them tried to protect their independence and modernise themselves. For this end they tried to adopt not only Western armaments and military skills, but also Western bellicose ideology and values. Japan was obviously the champion of such a militarist course, but there were similar tendencies in China as well. Such bellicose ideology reached its apex there during the famous Maoist Cultural Revolution, when class struggle and bellicosity was exalted. The triumph of the Western bellicose approach and rejection of the traditional native heritage marked the century 1860’s–1960’s in China. However, after the unimaginable sufferings of the World War I and II, of Nazism and of communism, the West started to revalidate its traditions condemning war and violence. People started to appreciate peace and co-operation within and among nations. The United Nations and the European Union had been founded for such purposes: to promote peace and co-operation. However, the condemnation of wars did not halt military confrontation of the states, and the West still cultivates political ideologies, which propagate the “proper order” based on competition and struggle. Hence the concepts of multi-party democracy and of free market could serve as hallmarks of the West. In China, since the end of the 1970’s step by step the ancient ideological traditions have been appreciated again and the new concepts of peaceful and harmonious development evolved. At the beginning of the 21st century the Chinese leaders elaborated a new ideology of both harmonious domestic and international order aiming at peaceful development based on co-operation. Of course, there are still vivid the remnants of the previous Western-type approach of the brutal competition and of aggressive foreign policy.Notwithstanding divergent tendencies inside each of these civilisations, in general they both approach each other again, but this time in a common search for peace, cooperation and harmonious development. Their interpretations obviously differ, since in China such concepts are traditional, but rather new in the West, and in various respects both sides have different values and ideals. (shrink)

The objective of the paper is to examine the role of the two donor agencies, the IMF and the World Bank in the formulation of social welfare policies in the post-independence Sri Lanka. The ideologies of the two major parties in Sri Lanka, the United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), became the determining factor in the formulation of social welfare policies before 1977. In this context, the IMF and the World (...) Bank played two different roles before 1977. Meanwhile, the ideological gap existed between the two major parties began to disappear after 1977 with the introduction of liberalized economic policies. The IMF and the World Bank played an important role during the post-1977 period. There was evidence that these funding bodies influenced in the formulation of social welfare programmes under the two major parties. The guideline recommended by these two organizations adversely affected the subsidized rice ration, one of the major welfare programmes, in the country. (shrink)

The Irish national revolution of 1916–23 left behind a partitioned island, with a northern segment that remained part of the United Kingdom and a southern ‘Free State’ – later to become a Republic – that was dominated by conservative forces. Most of those who had been involved in the struggle for national independence peeled off to form new parties in the 1920s, leaving behind a rump of militant Irish republicans. Sinn Féin and its military wing, the (...) Irish Republican Army, would pose the greatest threat to political stability in the two Irish states. Although the Irish left has historically been among the weakest in Western Europe, repeated attempts have been made to fuse republicanism with socialism, from the Republican Congress in the 1930s to the Official Republican Movement of the 1970s and ’80s. At present, Sinn Féin poses the main electoral challenge to the conservative parties in the southern state, while holding office in a devolved administration north of the border. Eoin Ó Broin’sSinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanismoffers an assessment of these efforts from a leading Sinn Féin activist who maintains a certain critical distance from his own party’s approach, whileThe Lost Revolutionby Brian Hanley and Scott Millar andINLA: Deadly Divisionsgive comprehensive accounts of two earlier left-republican projects. (shrink)

Often ‘nationalism’ and ‘having a state proper to the nation’ are considered as inseparable. Relatedly, when these thoughts are applied to the reality of sub-state nations, such as Flanders, Catalonia Basque Country and Québec, sub-state nationalism (SSN) and separatism seem to be conceptually entangled in their aim for an independent state. This chapter considers sub-state nationalism and sub-state separatism as conceptually distinct, and aims at examining the relationship between sub-state separatist political parties and immigration policies. This requires, on the one (...) hand focusing on the integration policies, given that often immigration policies with regard to admission and removal lies beyond the competence of sub-state nations. On the other hand, it focuses on the two major Flemish pro-independence parties, namely the Nieuwe Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA), and Vlaams Belang (VB). While sub-state separatist movements appear to be particularly opposed to increasing immigration, they operate under a particular ‘legitimacy dilemma’ with its paradoxical tendencies to both exclude and include immigrants. The chapter will show contextually that even the relatively more inclusive political party positions, such as the ones taken by the N-VA, are not sufficiently inclusive, when the normative distinction between ‘cultural assimilation’ and ‘cultural integration’ is taken seriously. Theoretically, it will engage with a renowned articulation of the legitimacy dilemma offered by Will Kymlicka, to argue that it is not sufficient to account for the normative necessity to respect the ‘autonomy of immigrants’. As I will demonstrate, this has to do with the inability of the dilemma to distinguish sufficiently ‘cultural assimilation’ from ‘cultural integration’. In other words, on the one hand the chapter contributes to the apparent absence of strong defenses for ‘moral autonomy of immigrants, by describing what such an autonomy might imply for designing of integration policies. On the other hand, it critically assesses Flemish pro-independence parties’ concrete policies with respect to integration. By offering a contextual political theory on these issues, it offers an example of how a moral principle might be implemented, and serve as a critical focal point to evaluate public policies. (shrink)

It is almost a truism that political development is synonymous with the building of integrative institutions. The most important of these institutions is the political party. The political parties generally perform many manifest functions. Firstly, parties act as brokers of ideas, programmes and policies. In doing so, they articulate as well as aggregate the diverging interests of the country and help resolve cleavages within the nation. Secondly, they recruit support from all parts of the country and help elect political (...) office-bear ere. By developing machinery for the resolution of infra-party disputes, the parties help unite the people froth various regions from which they recruit their support arid develop a sense of identity among its supporters. She critical latent effect of these manifest functions of political parties is the creation of a high level of consensus and development and fostering of a national political culture. (shrink)

This paper emphasizes the crucial role that language use plays in climate change communication. In particular, this paper examines UN public discourse and narratives about climate change. It will be shown that the climate change is often described as a "threat to human wellbeing" and as an external enemy—the Other. On the other hand, humanity is often portrayed as a victim of climate change. The consequence of this rhetoric and logic of apocalypse is insufficient action in relation to climate change. (...) The narrative construction of the Other that is described as a threat is founded on binary oppositions: we/they, self/other, culture/nature, human/non-human and so forth. As long as climate change is described as an external enemy and "independent matter" and climate policy is based on binary oppositions, action to combat climate change will remain insufficient. (shrink)

The ascendency of executive power in the presence of weak parliamentary and societal control has given rise to a need for deliberative forms of diplomacy in international relations. As Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden regularly include members of parliament, party representatives, and representatives of civil society in their delegations to the General Assembly of the United Nations, does this imply that a Nordic model exists? This book reviews the practice of these countries and finds that the role (...) of societal representatives has diminished from participating members of delegations to mere observers. The Nordic examples illuminate the difficulties of achieving international governance through the practice of deliberative democracy. Table of Contents List of figures, images, and tables List of abbreviations Preface 1. Introduction The problem Why do the General Assembly and Norden matter? Theory and methodology Prior research 2. Challenges and traditions Delegation and representation at the United Nations Democracy and dilemmas at the UN General Assembly Nordic diplomacy at the League of Nations Unisex state actors and the representation of women 3. Parliament and UN delegations The Scandinavian model: Denmark An anachronism and parliamentarian stronghold: Norway Routine, squeeze-out, routine: Sweden Between Lilliputian and full-scale representation: Iceland Metamorphosis or parliament lost: The Finnish Sonderweg 4. The participation of civil society Scandinavian model revisited: Denmark The return of the body-snatched: Norway Corporatism and double universalism: Sweden Short stories: Finland and Iceland 5. Conclusions: On the way to deliberative diplomacy Archives Bibliography Author Index About the Author(s)/Editor(s) Norbert Gotz, Dr. phil. (2001) in Political Science, Humboldt University Berlin, Docent (2007) in Political History, University of Helsinki, habil. (2009) in Modern History and International Relations, University of Greifswald, is Professor at the Institute of Contemporary History, Sodertorn University, Sweden. His publications include the edited volume Regional Cooperation and International Organizations: The Nordic Model in Transnational Alignment (Routledge 2009). (shrink)

On the same day, 23 September 2003, that President George W. Bush defended his Iraq policy to the General Assembly of the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan also spoke to the Assembly. Annan reiterated his opposition to the view that states may independently be justified in using military force “preemptively” to avoid the dangers posed by the spread of weapons of mass destruction among states and terrorists, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

ABSTRACT It is more than probable that the Commonwealth Games in 2014 will be used by the Scottish government as a tool in the battle for independence. For the Scottish National Party, sport events constitute another opportunity to underline Scottish autonomy. During the last Olympic Games, SNP ministers refused to use the name “Team GB” in their message to the Scottish athletes. Nurturing Scottish pride during the Games has already begun, with the official mascot-the Clyde Thistle, which (...) is Scotland’s national flower and emblem. The mascot of the Commonwealth Games has never waved the patriotic flag as it does now. (shrink)

The ideal of the United Nations was first put forward by Immanuel Kant in his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace. Kant, in the tradition of Locke and Rousseau is a liberal who believes that relations between individuals can either be based upon law and consent or upon force and violence. One way that such the ideal of world peace could be achieved would be through the creation of a single world state, of which every human being was a citizen. Such (...) an ideal was advocated by a number of eighteenth century liberals. Kant, however, rejects this ideal and instead argues that the universal rule of law can be achieved through the establishment a federation of independent states. I examine the relevance of Kant’s arguments today, focusing on two questions: Firstly, as advocates of the rule of law, why advocate a federation of independent nations rather than a single world state. Secondly, is this ideal realizable? Is Kant right to think that republics are natural and are likely to live peacefully with one another? Kant’s arguments on this issue have been taken up again in recent decades by defenders of the theory of the “democratic peace”, the theory that democracies are more likely to live at peace with one another. (shrink)

The emergence of legal decolonization in the mid-twentieth century, as evidenced by the 1960 United Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, is often understood through the lens of race and the disruption of racial hierarchy. If we take seriously the transnational feminist contention that the colonial racial order was also gendered, however, how might this perspective shift our understanding of decolonization? In this article, I explore the debates on decolonization that take place (...) in the UN General Assembly from 1946–1960 that lead to the 1960 Declaration from a transnational feminist perspective to answer this question. Specifically, I use comparative historical and discourse methods of analysis to explore how colonialists and anti-colonialists negotiate the onset of legal decolonization, focusing especially on how colonialist hierarchies of race, culture, and gender are addressed in these debates. I argue that, on the one hand, colonialists rely on a paternalist masculinity to legitimate their rule (i.e., our dependencies require our rule the way a child requires a father). In response, anti-colonialists reply with a resistance masculinity (i.e., “colonialism is emasculating;” “decolonization is necessary for a return of masculine dignity”). I argue that decolonization in the United Nations transpires via contentions among differentially racialized masculinities. Ultimately, a transnational feminist perspective that centers the intersection of race and gender offers a richer analysis than a perspective that examines race alone. (shrink)

The Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal in the United States, but that statement does not hold true for words. Some words carry more weight than others--they seem to work harder, get more done, and demand more respect. Political Keywords: Using Language that Uses Us looks at eight dominant words that are crucial to American political discourse, and how they have been employed during the last fifty years. Based on an analysis of eleven separate (...) studies of political language, Political Keywords helps readers to understand what these terms mean and how they are used. For example, the book tracks what politics now means to modern commentators, how schoolteacher impress certain values upon the nation's children by invoking the office of the president, and why an innocent word like government sometimes makes people so upset. It details how the people are referenced in political talk and how the media portray themselves. The book also considers the work done by political parties, political promises, and political consultants because, together, they shed special light on modern elections. Combining social science with subtle forms of cultural interpretation, Political Keywords: Using Language that Uses Us provides a fresh look at both American politics and American language. It is an ideal text for undergraduate and graduate courses in political communication, political language, political campaigns, media and politics, political psychology, public opinion, rhetorical criticism, contemporary public address, and presidential rhetoric. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSome people might argue that there are already too many different documents, guidelines, and regulations in bioethics. Some overlap with one another, some are advisory and lack legal force, others are legally binding in countries, and still others are directed at narrow topics within bioethics, such as HIV/AIDS and human genetics. As the latest document to enter the fray, the UNESCO Declaration has the widest scope of any previous document. It embraces not only research involving human beings, but addresses broader (...) concerns in medicine and healthcare. The UNESCO draft declaration has some minor weaknesses, but on the whole, the strengths outweigh the weaknesses. One weakness is that some items in the draft are stated in a way that is too restrictive, thereby appearing to rule out legitimate activities. A strength of the Declaration is that it is relatively brief, yet at the same time contains sufficient detail to make it something more than a rehearsal of mere pieties. As the most recent of the numerous bioethics and human rights documents, the UNESCO draft draws on many of the earlier documents and also includes some of the most recent thinking about ethical norms and obligations. Perhaps its greatest strength lies not in details of the principles or their implementation, but rather in its stature as an international declaration issued by a United Nations organization. (shrink)

Traditional research into values has tended to dichotomise young people into categories of self and other orientations. In the present study values were explored within a contemporary context and analysed into more complex value sets. The sample comprised of 111 girls and 133 boys, aged 11-16 , who responded to four open-ended sentences designed to tap philosophies of life, fears and underlying values. The pleasures in life for girls tended to centre on relationships with family, friends and boys, whereas boys (...) enjoyed activities such as sport. Many desired to win the National Lottery, although they also concurrently held humanistic values. The potential impact of these value sets on development during adolescence is discussed. For these young people, the best things in life are free but, like many adults, they dream of fame and fortune. (shrink)

In the election of 17th Lok Sabha held in mid-2019, the Indian political parties tried hard to be a tie-up with each other against the present Modi-led NDA dispensation. In independent India, first, such attempt was made early in 1974 and started a new process of consolidation of opposition forces by the merger. In line, the Bharatiya Lok Dal was formed by the merger of seven political parties and in this process, the constituent units lost their identity in the BLD. (...) At the time although Congress and the Jana Sangh were ready to cooperate but refused to lose their existence. Their experiences of emergency proved a blessing for them and they came together and formed an alliance called Janata Party, to challenge the Congress leadership of the time. Likewise, as of today in 2018-19 the Bharatiya Janata Party is the country’s largest political party in terms of representation in the national parliament and state assemblies and all political parties of present-day India with Indian National Congress as forerunner with the help of regional party try a futile attempt first to challenge and then to defeat the BJP in various elections. Although with a great difference in the situation the motto of opposition parties has been one and only to give weighty protest to turn the events in their favour. This ups and downs of Indian politics may prove a path-breaking for other developing countries where political parties are struggling hard to gain power but did not succeed on account of causes best known to them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Just Revolution: A Christian Ethic of Political Resistance and Social Transformation by Anna Floerke ScheidRamon LuzarragaJust Revolution: A Christian Ethic of Political Resistance and Social Transformation Anna Floerke Scheid lanham, md: lexington books, 2015. 208 pp. $84.00Anna Floerke Scheid argues that the Christian just war and just peacemaking ethical traditions lack a comprehensive ethic for revolutionary nonviolent activity and warfare. She proposes to fill this lacuna through a (...) theological exploration of what constitutes a just revolution. While Scheid maintains a consistent [End Page 212] preference for nonviolent resistance against tyranny, she remains open to the possibility of revolutionary warfare.The author articulates four stages of a just revolution. The first stage is jus ante, nonviolent resistance against a tyrannical government. Here the opposition develops a democratic and revolutionary vision of society that respects human rights, models that vision within its organizations, and resists through nonviolent acts. Second is jus ad, the stage where a tyrannical government eliminates all avenues for negotiation and represses peaceful resistance. This forces the revolutionary opposition to consider armed resistance as a last resort. Here Scheid grapples with two limitations of traditional just war theory. The first reserves the authority to start a war with governments. She argues that the legitimacy for a just revolution comes from a revolutionary organization's ability to envision and model a just society. Because a tyrannical government's authority is illegitimate, a revolutionary movement's just vision and practices gain for it a de facto legitimate authority. This legitimacy is reinforced by a revolutionary movement's ultimate intention to effect reconciliation with their oppressors postwar. The second limitation is the reasonable hope of success. Scheid analyzes the history of this criterion and demonstrates how it supports defensive wars despite the uncertainty of success. Oppressed persons, as the subjects of their own hope of liberation, ought to decide what constitutes the probability for success in fighting tyranny. Throughout this stage, revolutionary warfare must be practiced in tandem with continuing nonviolent resistance.The third stage is jus in, the justice practiced during armed revolutionary resistance. Fighting is deemed necessary to force a tyrannical government to negotiations. Meanwhile, revolutionary military units would work to minimize violence and loss of life. The last stage is jus post, the reconciliation needed to prevent revolutionary warfare from spiraling into revenge. Here the exercise of restorative justice—where responsibility for past injustices is assumed by all sides and a just resolution developed for social reconciliation and the development of a new, democratic society that respects human rights—is all important. Throughout the book, Scheid uses the African National Congress's revolutionary struggle against the South African apartheid government as a successful example of her theory in practice.Scheid's well-argued proposal deserves careful consideration by ethicists. Students will profit from her excellent summary of just war theory, where she brilliantly recovers some of its forgotten features. On the other hand, her concluding chapter considering the Arab Spring's potential for just revolution would have been stronger if she extended beyond a comparison to South Africa to incorporate similar features found in other successful revolutions. The 1986 Philippine People Power Revolution, the 1989 collapse of Eastern European Communist regimes, and the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal come to mind. Moreover, important for South Africa's success was the durability of the [End Page 213] political institutions the British left behind. These institutions provided the framework that handled the transition of power from the pro-apartheid National Party to the post-apartheid African National Congress government. This feature could have been brought to light, as many recognize this structure as contributive to the peaceful transition of power in other countries that won independence through revolution, from the United States in the eighteenth century to India and the Caribbean in the twentieth.Ramon LuzarragaBenedictine University at MesaCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Belgrade University student demonstrations, 1996-97, represent a turning point in the emergence of a democratic civic culture and civil society in the former Yugoslavia. Large-scale student demonstrations were triggered by the regimens cancellation of the November 1996 municipal election victories by the united opposition, Zajedno, in more than a dozen cities throughout Serbia, Demonstrating independently of political parties, student demands concerned not only narrow issues of university education, funding and governance, but also much larger society-wide issues concerning democratic prospects (...) for Serbia Student demonstrations helped achieve several important goals, including the reinstatement of the 1996 opposition victories, and hastened Milošević's departure. Belgrade students sought consciously to transcend Serbian nationalism, effectively challenging the regime, while distancing themselves from all political parties. Crucial in terms of overcoming the virulent nationalisms, exploited by political leaderships throughout the Balkans in the 1990s, was the students' quest for universal human rights, democracy, pluralism, tolerance, and an open society. Following Milošević's demise, the studem movement became institutionalized in Otpor as a genuine civil society public-interest group and unofficial watchdog. (shrink)

Medical residency—specialty training after the completion of medical school—is an essential component of medical education and is required in order to be a licensed, independent medical practitioner in most jurisdictions. As things currently stand in the United States, the match between medical school graduates and residency programs is governed by a match between rank-order lists prepared by candidates and residencies alike. An applicant picks a number of residency programs and ranks them according to order of interest. The residency program (...) prepares a similar list, ranking the candidates it most wants in its program. A computer program compares the rankings and makes assignments according to a certain algorithm. Using these lists, the match system assigns approximately 24,000 applicants to approximately 21,000 training positions in pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, internal medicine, and the rest. These assignments are then announced to all parties on specific days. The system has been in place since 1952 and is overseen by the National Residency Match Program, a nonprofit organization. This system has several advantages. First of all, it standardizes the timetable for decisions, and applicants are in no position to tie up offers while waiting to hear from other institutions. Institutions are not held captive, either, in making assignments while waiting to hear from particular parties. (shrink)

This paper argues that the EuropeanCourt of Human Rights couldserve as a model for an international court ofhuman rights to be builtupon the United Nations Committee on HumanRights. It argues that theconcerns states might have over the surrenderof a significant portion oftheir national sovereignity might be lessenedif such an internationalcourt were to incorporate the margin ofappreciation doctrine employed bythe European Court of Human Rights. Thisdoctrine is intended to respectthe customs and traditions of sovereign statesin dealing with humanrights issues, (...) while maintaining that somerights such as the right not tobe tortured will be considered as basic andwill stand independently ofthe customs and traditions of sovereignstates. (shrink)

The academic community in the West tends to be suspicious of Russian philosophy, often relegating it to another category, such as “ideology” or “social thought.” But what is philosophy? There is no simple universal definition, and many thinkers consider it impossible to formulate one. The most credible attempt is nominalistic: philosophy is the practice in which Plato and Aristotle were involved. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a (...) series of footnotes to Plato.”If so, then Russian thought needs to be understood as an important part of the Western philosophical heritage, given that it offers perhaps the most elaborate set of footnotes to Plato's most mature and comprehensive dialogues: the Republic and the Laws. The status of ideas in Russian philosophy mirrors Plato's vision of them as ontological and political entities, “laws,” or ideal principles—as distinct from mere epistemic units or tools of cognition. The Platonic tendency to integrate and implement religious, philosophical, and political teachings culminated in twentieth-century Russia. In the Soviet state, perhaps more than anywhere else in history, philosophy became a supreme legal and political institution, acquiring the power of a suprapersonal, universal reason. Hence thought itself, in the moment of its triumph, became a prisoner in the social structures that Soviet ideocracy erected on a philosophical foundation. In discussing Russian philosophy, we inevitably consider the practical application of Platonic conceptions by the Soviet ideocracy to a state in which philosophy was called upon to rule.According to Sergei Averintsev, the emphasis on Platonism in the Russian intellectual tradition is nothing to be proud of; it should rather be lamented and repented. Despite the obvious Platonic preferences of Russian thinkers (from Ivan Kireyevsky to Aleksei Losev), Averintsev asks whether even now we might be able to reorient the tradition toward Aristotle instead—toward a more secular, tolerant, and analytic philosophy of human nature. “If Plato is the first utopian,” Averintsev writes, “Aristotle is the first thinker to look the spirit of utopia right in the eye and overcome it.... Aristotle's technique of thought is more neutral toward religion than is Plato's ecstasy.” Characteristically, the name index to the Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought contains almost twice as many mentions of Plato as of Aristotle.Each national tradition has its own “strange attractor,” as they say now in complexity theory. English empiricism, French rationalism, German Idealism, American pragmatism... However stereotypical these generalizations are, they help to clarify the nations’ distinctive contributions to philosophy. Where does Russia stand in this row? I think that Caryl Emerson is correct to pinpoint, among the most distinctive features of the Russian intellectual tradition, the striving for “wholeness” (tselostnost’). Many Russian thinkers seem to evade definitive and particular “isms,” preferring to find ways of complementing (and thus diluting) those that are on offer. Faced with the claims for rationalism, for example, the Russian response tends to be that true rationality is or should be coupled with fullness of feeling. The characteristic Russian “ism” is at best “holism,” at worst “totalitarianism,” and is usually directed against Western thought. Kireyevsky declares: There [in the West] is a bifurcation [razdvoenie] of the spirit, a bifurcation of thoughts, a bifurcation of the sciences, a bifurcation of the state, a bifurcation of estates, a bifurcation of society, a bifurcation of family rights and duties, a bifurcation of morality and the heart.... In Russia, on the contrary, there is a predominant tendency toward the wholeness of the inner and the outer, of public and moral being.Vladimir Solovyov held that the goal of all knowledge was to comprehend “total unity” and to overcome all kinds of unilateralism, which he referred to as “abstract elements” (otvlechennye nachala). These one-sided elements included Realism, rationalism, empiricism, and positivism, all of which had been advanced by Western philosophical movements.Reading the Handbook, I was struck by how steadily, from one thinker to another, the concept of “unity” is reiterated in various synonyms and contexts: “all-unity,” “wholeness,” “totality,” “integrity,” “edinstvo,” “tsel'nost,’” “tselostnost,” “sobornost,” and so forth. Russian thinkers endeavor not to create something original and special but to unify everything that has already been done and known. Consider opponents, like the Slavophiles and Westernizers; take Petr Chaadaev and Vissarion Belinsky, Kireyevsky and Alexander Herzen, Dostoevsky and Solovyov—all are united by this “super-idea,” proclaiming its embodiment to be the all-embracing vocation of the Russian people. At the same time, they sharply reject all “private principles” and “trashy certainty” (Belinsky's driannaia opredelennost’)—anything that restricts and divides individuals or nations. All these forms of privacy and particularity must be overcome on the way to a universal whole that is even greater in scale than Western Catholicism. According to this logic of totality, we would be better off left with nothing than to be content with the particular and the limited. The first original Russian thinker, Chaadaev (1794–1856), makes the salto mortale of declaring Russia a country that has given nothing to the world, then proclaiming that Russia's destiny is to rise above the rest of the world and resolve all its contradictions. From nothing to everything: such are the philosophical foundations for the totalitarian aspiration of Russian thought, which eventually expressed itself in the revolutionary movements and communist experiments of the twentieth century.As is well known, Russian literature is considered in the West a far more powerful and original expression of philosophical ideas than Russian philosophy as such. Characteristically, then, almost half of the Handbook, its entire second part, is devoted to the dialogue of Russian philosophy with literature and art. As M. N. Forster remarks in the Handbook's concluding essay: “It is natural to wonder why this striking asymmetry between relatively modest achievements in pure philosophy and spectacularly high achievements in literature came about.” To the literary focus of Russian philosophy, we can add a political focus. At least a third of part one of the Handbook is devoted to Russian political and revolutionary philosophy, to Lenin and other Marxists, to Ivan Ilyin, and so on. In this context, both literature and politics assumed philosophical dimensions, often overshadowing philosophy itself.Bertrand Russell lamented that the system of philosophical categories in the West featured mostly nouns (being, consciousness, idea, matter, substance, and so forth), omitting adjectives, verbs, prefixes, and other parts of speech. This criticism should be applied to the category philosophy itself. Why the noun philosophy rather than the adjective philosophical, which can be applied to many areas of activity and creativity, including literature and politics?In Russian intellectual history, the philosophical, rather than philosophy, is the predominant category. The state, ideology, economics, politics and geopolitics, literature, art, warfare, space exploration—all these spheres in Russia and the USSR have been and remain abundantly philosophical, subordinated to certain philosophical tasks, though philosophy as such has never been as developed and sophisticated as in the West. As a discipline, Western philosophy “outsourced” itself to Russian disciples, leaving it to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Lenin and Trotsky, to test in literary and political practices a host of Western philosophical ideas, from those of Plato, Rousseau, and Hegel to those of Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche.Likewise, the verb to philosophize is used in ways unusual and awkward in the West. “It is characteristic of the Russian people to philosophize [filosofstvovat'],” as Nikolai Berdyaev observed: “An illiterate Russian peasant likes to pose questions of a philosophical nature—about the meaning of life, about God, about eternal life, about evil and untruth, about how to realize the Kingdom of God.” The philosophical and philosophizing, as attributes and actions of the state and society, overpowered philosophy as a noun—as an academic discipline, if you will. Russian philosophy has had a very modest impact on the West, but the impact of the philosophical has been immense. Nineteenth-century Russian literature influenced Western culture with its philosophical interrogations and existential dilemmas, just as, in the twentieth century, the USSR influenced the West with the philosophical ideas (Marxism, materialism, dialectics, collectivism, socialism, communism) that determined Soviet ideology, politics, and economics.In the USSR of the 1920 and 1930s, for instance, philosophy as an independent academic subject was in a subdued position, as a servant of party ideology. But, meanwhile, the sphere of the philosophical spread to such distant domains as theater (Stanislavsky), physiology (Pavlov), and agriculture (Michurin), with all such activities glorified and sponsored by the state as “philosophically correct”—as faithful to “materialism” and “Realism.” Paradoxically, in the quintessentially philosophical state that was the USSR, the state of philosophy, with the repression of all independent thought and thinkers, was miserable. The fateful and often disastrous originality of Russian philosophy consisted precisely in its dissemination to other areas, in an act of kenosis or self-transcendence that can be viewed both as an aggressive philosophical appropriation of politics, economics, ideology, and literature—and as philosophy's sacrificial devotion to the world beyond its professional boundaries.So there are three features that make Russian thought relevant and dangerous: its Platonic utopian aspiration; its spirit of totality; and its tendency to transcend the boundaries of academic philosophy and to philosophize society, politics, and life in general. Russian philosophy has not been as good at explaining the world as at changing it, sometimes ethically and poetically, sometimes violently and aggressively. Teachers and students of Russian culture should be deeply motivated to draw more attention to the philosophical in Russia and to raise its status in the Western academy. In my view, we would do better service to Russian philosophy if we are frank enough to qualify it as dangerous, sometimes very toxic and addictive, fraught with totalistic tendencies. This philosophy is the voice of the “underground,” both in the Dostoevskian and Leninist senses.At the same time, however, the antidotes concocted in the Russian metaphysical laboratory are of enormous value: the Russian versions of personalism, existentialism, secular and religious liberalism, neorationalism, culturology, conceptualism, and postmodernism. These movements, which counteract totalization, need to be studied precisely because they were cooked up and tested under the same extreme conditions in which the most dangerous intellectual poisons have been produced. (shrink)

This article examines the crucial, yet frequently neglected, contribution of Haiti to the United States' quest for independence and territorial expansion. It explores Haiti's influence on U.S. foreign policy and economic strategies from a cross-national perspective, focusing on key historical events such as the American Revolution and the Louisiana Purchase. Despite Haiti's significant role, mainstream media and historical narratives have largely downplayed these connections, diminishing its impact on the U.S. trajectory. The article also contextualizes current issues, noting (...) the racism faced by the Haitian Community in Springfield, Ohio. The discrimination observed today mirrors wider trends of marginalization and racial bias shaped by a lengthy history of suppressing Haiti's contributions to the American narrative. This analysis reveals historical truths and links them to contemporary racial dynamics, highlighting how systemic prejudice continues to obscure Haiti's legacy in the U.S. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rethinking "Intersectionality":Michelle Obama, Presumed Subjects, and Constitutive PrivilegeErin C. TarverIn February 2008, Michelle Obama famously said to a gathering of supporters, "For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country." (Associated Press 2008). Her comment was swiftly seized upon by journalists and members of rival political campaigns, who used it to portray Mrs. Obama as "angry" and unpatriotic. In the weeks that followed, (...) Mrs. Obama's undergraduate sociology thesis on black students at Princeton was cited as further evidence of her supposed racial resentment and lack of patriotism, and there were widespread rumors that an audiotape existed of her using the word whitey.1 Around the same time, Fox News ran a headline referring to Mrs. Obama as "Obama's Baby Mama" (Koppleman 2008). Subsequently, there was a concerted effort on the part of Mr. Obama's campaign to "soften" her image through appearances on the shows The View and Paula's Party, and a speech at the Democratic National Convention that highlighted her motherhood and adoration of her husband, and avoided mention of her own career or political work. Despite such efforts, and perhaps in tension with the Obama family's general popularity following Mr. Obama's election, Mrs. Obama was later characterized by a cable news pundit as being reminiscent of "Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress" (The O'Reilly Factor 2009) and thus as a potential political liability for the Obama administration.While some feminists decried the "momification" (Traister 2008) of Michelle Obama as an act of appeasement by an administration that would [End Page 150] capitulate to the oppressive expectations of a public unwilling to find expressions of independent thought or professional ambitions appropriately First Lady-like, other critics noted that Mrs. Obama was being reviled more for daring to suggest that the United States' racial history was far from being strictly historical, opening her to the charge of being an angry Negro—while, ironically, being accused of "playing the race card." Others have pointed out that specific formulations such as "baby mama" are illustrative of the fact that such representations of Mrs. Obama are not easily classifiable as either sexist or racist, but instead draw on both sorts of tropes, as have such familiar representations of black women as promiscuous, or as militant, emasculating mammies.In this article, I consider methodologies for theorizing the function of such oppressions in the public discourses surrounding Michelle Obama, and suggest that a consideration of their manifestations in this context illustrates the need for more complex theoretical tools that can problematize the constitutive effects of such discourse for a multiplicity of subjects. Through parallel analyses of Beauvoir's The Second Sex and Fanon's Black Skin White Masks, I foreground the theoretical pitfall the consideration of sex- or race-based oppressions tends to occasion: the tacit presumption of some ostensibly "neutral" subject whose constitution is inadequately addressed. I suggest, with theorists of intersectionality, that this problem will not be solved merely by the addition of alternative explanatory frameworks (e.g., adding racism to sexism as a discrete phenomenon), since doing so is neither adequately representative of the experience of oppressions nor sufficient to the task of undermining the normative/perverse dichotomy or presumption of generic subjectivity that sustains them. However, I also argue that the work of intersectionality theorists should be taken farther than it has frequently been in the past (which, though given lip service by much of the feminist community, has not always been taken to imply the need for a major methodological shift), extending its insights to offer a critique of foundational subjectivity. Concomitantly, I argue that a failure by feminist philosophers to offer this critique could unintentionally result in the reinscription of the normativity of particular sorts of subjects—which is precisely what theorists of intersectionality have been concerned to call into question. I suggest that an analysis of the discourse surrounding Michelle Obama demonstrates that insofar as the intersectionality paradigm is understood merely to require the interrogation of overlapping oppressions on a given subject or subjects, and thus as leaving uninterrogated the constitutively privileging and subjectivizing effects of oppressive discourse, uses of intersectionality will reiterate... (shrink)

Modern democracy is impossible without political parties. They are necessary in the process of the construction of the political class and building of relations between politicians and ‘ordinary people’. So, in Poland in the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries the significance of parties is also very important. Their history is older than the history of the reborn Poland. Especially in Galicia, an autonomous province of the Hapsburg empire, we can see the activities of many politicians. A part of them in (...) 1895 declared the birth of the Popular Party which is a constant element of the Polish political scene. The second traditional current is the socialistic movement, which is also always legally active in Poland. These two camps represent, in simplification, the ‘two Polands’—the first more traditional, conservative and provincial, and the second more progressive, ‘European’ and urban. Actually, in the typical consciousness of a Polish citizen, the political representation of the ‘black’ country is the party Law and Justice of Jarosław Kaczyński, and the ‘red’ country admires the Citizen Platform with Donald Tusk as a leader. But probably the idea of a twoparty system, like in the Anglo-Saxon world, is still very distant to reality, because in the European continent, the tradition of pluralism in a policentric version is still very significant. In Poland, even in the period of the ‘real socialism’ this conception of the organization of political life was realized, though naturally in the specific version. There were three legal parties and the Polish United Workers’ Party (the PUWP) was the most important. From 1976, the PUWP in the light of the Constitution had the official hegemony in the Republic. It is possible to compare this situation with the period 1926–39, when, after the coup d’état by Marshal Piłsudski, the Government still won in the election and the official elite wanted to create a stable political force with a perspective of permanent rule. But we must remember that between the wars opposition always was legal. In our times of demoliberalism, this is quite normal (though under the Constitution, unconstitutional parties, for example, communist or fascist, are unacceptable); however, interesting is the fact that when you observe sine ira et studio the evolutional trend of the Polish political system, you easily find the tendency of the ‘stabilization’ of the party system in the way of legal operations. From 1997, the laws concerning political parties have changed the possibilities of the conquest of seats in the Seym. Actually, only the parties having 5 per cent (or 8 per cent in coalition) of votes can gain the representation in the Diet. So it is possible to claim that the little parties today are in a more complicated situation than in the first years after the ‘operation of Round Table’ in 1989. The contemporary system is maybe more stable, but less liberal. There are theoreticians who note the danger of the alienation of the political class in the situation of the renewal of the alienation of the political elite, which de facto is more connected with the state than with the society. Many theoreticians emphasize that in the future the role and the character of political structures will be profoundly different from today. Maybe they are prophets, but we can expect that the Polish political parties or ‘post-parties’ and also political structure as a whole will have many similarities with their actual equivalents, because the mentality of the Polish nation, including the politicians, is more or less enduring. (shrink)

One of the fields of protecting human rights within the framework of standards of the Council of Europe is the protection of national minorities – with the special issue of their linguistic rights. An intensification of actions aimed at adopting legal measures in this field happened in the 1960s. The concern for a proper range and level of regulation was expressed at the level of the Parliamentary Assembly and the Committee of Ministers. National experts formulated detailed resolutions to (...) include the goals of international organizations such as CSCE and the United Nations concerning this matter. The fact that the framework convention was chosen as the means bears witness to a significant provision that the guarantee of rights were realized in the most flexible manner, including the designations and capacities of State parties. This article includes an analysis of three stages of work connected with ensuring linguistic rights for national minorities, with a special emphasis on the linguistic rights in the education system. On the one hand, actions which resulted in the acceptance of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities are shown. On the other hand, the goals and details of this Convention are described. The third section concerns the analysis of mechanisms for monitoring the realization of the rights included in the Convention. Due to limitations in the terms of reference for this work, the analysis of the convention guarantees, and their realization, was limited to linguistic rights in the education system. The practice of these actions was shown through examples in Poland and Lithuania. The right to education for national minorities including knowledge about their culture, traditions, and their input into the development of the society of a given country is one of the rights clearly stated in the Framework Convention. By the same token are linguistic rights in an education system – the right to teach the language of a national minority or to teach in the language of a minority. As practice in Poland and Lithuania shows, the situation of education of national minorities is different, although some of the problems are common: an example for that would be access to proper coursebooks in the languages of national minorities, or properly trained teachers. (shrink)

As a party to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, the United States is under an obligation to criminalize all state torture. The aim of this article is to show that the United States has failed to fulfill that obligation and should correct that failure by broadening the respective definitions of “torture” in two federal criminal statutes, the War Crimes Act and the Torture Act. The broader definition that is proposed is formulated with an eye to (...) minimizing ambiguity and vagueness, avoiding both overcriminalization and undercriminalization, and facilitating accurate determinations of guilt or innocence. (shrink)

This paper investigates why some legislators tend to switch parties frequently while others tend to stay put. On the assumption that the ultimate goal of legislators is to be reelected, I argue that voters' demands for local/individual benefits, or pork, and legislators' lack of access to resources for such benefits are likely to lead the legislators to switch parties in order to improve their electoral chances in the subsequent election. By analyzing party switches by legislators from 1988 to 2008 (...) in South Korea, where the president controls access to the pork pipeline, I find that the president's party members are less likely and independents are more likely to change party affiliations, irrespective of voter demands for pork or national public policies. However, I also find that opposition party legislators who are elected from less-developed districts, where voters tend to desire pork over policy, are more likely to switch parties than those elected from more-developed districts. These findings suggest that interaction between voter demands and party access to resources influences politicians’ party loyalty: voter demands for pork (or policy) tend to lead politicians to be less (or more) loyal to their current parties. Voter demands, however, have little impact on the party loyalty of those who are already in parties with access to the pork pipeline. (shrink)

SUMMARY The research focuses on the three main political parties in Albania, namely Socialist Party, Democratic Party and Socialist Movement for Integration. Its objectives are to measure the Intra-Party Democracy(IPD) in the Albanian political parties and to explore the meaning that party members attach to it. The IPD is understood and broken down into categories and sub-categories so that parties in particular and all interested actors in the field of political parties and democracy could understand, which (...) component of IPD parties are performing better and where they are performing worse. IPD is measured against two dimensions: inclusiveness and decentralization. Inclusiveness denotes the extent to which party members have the right to express their opinions and participate in the decision-making process. With decentralization is understood the process which makes possible the decentralization of the decision-making process from the highest national party level to party sub-national levels and party members. In a decentralized party, subnational party units enjoy a certain level of autonomy from the party in the center. The analysis is based on both primary and secondary data. Content analysis of party statutes particularly focuses on measuring IPD, while focus groups with party members and interviews with high-ranking officials of the political parties are used to explore the meaning that party members have on IPD, as well as validate content analysis findings. The main findings are: -/- Content Analysis of Party Statutes: Parties do have rules that govern their internal life, however these rules need to be improved in order to strengthen IPD. Especially problematic were the provisions for the role of the executive committee and party president, which provide these two institutions, especially the leader of the party with powers that don’t hold him/her accountable to the party members and middle level organs. Furthermore, members were not sufficiently involved in the procedures of candidate nominations for MPs, in the election of the national Executive and Executive Committee and in the election of the Party President. The analysis also finds that voting procedures are not sufficiently at place to allow members express their will and participate in the decision-making process and that members are not or little consulted in terms of programmatic issues. The analysis of the relationship between the national and subnational levels of party organization revealed that the center of the party has accumulated power to the detriment of the subnational units which enjoy little autonomy in the decision-making process. -/- Focus Groups and Interviews: The study finds that party members linked system-level democracy with IPD and that they have a very clear understanding if IPD: what it is and how it could be achieved. They linked IPD with the structure and organization of the party, seeing it as an important instrument that allows for decentralization of power and integration of rank and file into the decision-making process. The party members considered the statute as an important educational political tool and invoked it whenever disputes rose or decisions had to be taken. They linked IPD with the electoral system and considered that closed list proportional was a system that strengthened the power in the hands of the few at the party top executive level and weakened IPD. (shrink)

A recent on-line discussion asked whether healthcare for Americans is a constitutional right or a privilege. One can debate whether one can extract a legal right to healthcare from the Declaration of Independence depending on whether one sees it is a philosophical or as a legal document. The Constitution of the United States of America lists “promote the general welfare” and protect “ourselves and our posterity” as some of its aims. Perhaps this would demand the inclusion of certain (...) basic health services such as immunizations and antimicrobial therapy for every citizen; even for illegal immigrants, in order to protect the public. America must decide whether health care is a privilege or a right! If it is a privilege, one must accept the exclusion of some individuals and the unintended consequences of epidemics. If it is a constitutional right, one must accept paying for that right with increased taxes and the unintended consequences on the economy. But who should pay, how much and for what? (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the basic ethical values underpinning national health care policies in the United States and Canada. We use the framework of ethical theory to name and elaborate ethical values and to facilitate moral reflection about health care reform. Section one describes historical and contemporary social contract theories and clarifies the ethical values associated with them. Sections two and three show that health care debates and health care systems in both (...) countries reflect the values of this tradition; however, each nation interprets the tradition differently. In the U.S., standards of justice for health care are conceived as a voluntary agreement reached by self-interested parties. Canadians, by contrast, interpret the same justice tradition as placing greater emphasis on concern for others and for the community. The final section draws out the implications of these differences for future U.S. and Canadian health care reforms. (shrink)

The damage caused by non-military aircraft to persons or property on the ground has long been a subject of international concern. Two key conventions were established to regulate liability arising from such damage: the 1952 Rome Convention, commonly known as the Rome Convention on “Damage Caused by Foreign Aircraft to Third Parties on the Surface,” and, later, the Montreal Convention of 2009, formally known as the “Convention on Compensation for Damage Caused by Aircraft to Third Parties.” The Montreal Convention was (...) a result of the signatory states to the Rome Convention recognizing the need to review and update certain provisions. Both the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are signatories to this convention. While international regulations play a significant role, domestic legislation is equally critical. It is therefore incumbent upon nations to enact clear legal provisions to regulate the liability of aviation investors for damage caused by aircraft to third parties on the ground, from a national legal perspective. This study addresses an issue of critical importance, namely the need for precise regulations that clarify the conditions of an aviation investor’s liability for damage to third parties on the ground within the national legal frameworks of the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Through comparative analysis, this research seeks to address the legislative gaps found in the UAE’s Civil Aviation Law No. 20 of 1991 on this matter. (shrink)

Recent discourse research has examined the rise of right-wing populism. Yet the predominant focus on political parties and politicians means that we know less about how right-wing identities are performed among ordinary people with different degrees of political engagement. This paper examines reader comments pages in three British newspapers, analysing how participants perform, defend and reinforce their political identities in online fora. It traces how supporters of the far-right United Kingdom Independence Party perform collective identities and enact (...) political antagonisms. The conclusions emphasise how online media particularly propitiate the blending of personal and societal discourses, and suggest that the internal dynamics of affordances such as comments pages propel conflict escalation and heighten antagonism. (shrink)

The Constitution of Independence is a contribution to the newly rejuvenated subject of comparative Commonwealth constitutional law, politics, and history. In Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, a series of fascinating developments have been under way for more than a decade, characterized by independent thinking, experimentation, and cross-Commonwealth borrowing of constitutional ideas. These include the final termination of constitutional ties with the United Kingdom Parliament and the emergence of controversial issues including variably entrenched or implied rights and freedoms; wide-ranging (...) claims by indigenous peoples; republicanism; and assertions of national, popular, and sectional sovereignty.This book explores the development of constitutional thinking in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand from early domination by Imperial ideas, through the adoption of the Statute of Westminster and the contemplation of severing Imperial connections, to irreversible acquisition of constitutional independence in the 1980s. This book focusses primarily on sovereignty and the legal system, concepts which are also central to contemporary constitutional theory in Europe and the United States. The book closes with an evaluation of recent varied and often contradictory accounts of the constitutional foundations of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, which depict a wide range of scenarios: from constitutional continuity and respect for the rule of law, to popular sovereignty and disguised revolution. Oliver argues that explanations of constitutional independence are characterized by their reliance on independent, country-specific constitutional thinking that evolved over the last century. on. (shrink)

The 2024 U.S. election will shape the future of global health policy, with crucial implications for continuing U.S. leadership in global health. The United States has long played a critical role in global health governance, through multilateral institutions under the United Nations (UN) and bilateral assistance to advance U.S. priorities. However, political shifts have challenged U.S. engagement in global health, with the politicization of global health policy threatening global governance under the World Health Organization (WHO) and dividing global (...) health support across political parties. This political polarization in global health proved catastrophic in the COVID-19 pandemic response and influential in the 2020 Presidential Elections. With the United States again seeking to advance global health policy, the 2024 Elections present a clear contrast in global health visions across U.S. political parties – with sweeping impacts on global governance, health funding, sexual and reproductive health, corporate regulations, tax equity, humanitarian challenges, and climate change. The future of U.S. leadership in global health hangs in the balance of this election, raising an imperative for candidates to highlight their global health positions and for voters to consider the global health implications. (shrink)

Relative to the abundance of literature devoted to the legal significance of UN authorisation, little has been written about whether the UN’s failure to sanction an intervention can ever make it immoral. This is the question that I take up here. I argue that UN authorisation (or lack thereof) can have some indirect bearing on the moral status of a humanitarian intervention. That is, it can affect whether an intervention satisfies other widely accepted justifying conditions, such as proportionality, “internal” legitimacy, (...) and likelihood of success. The more interesting question, however, is whether the UN’s failure to provide a mandate can make a humanitarian operation unjust independently of these other familiar considerations. Is a proportional, internally legitimate humanitarian intervention, with a just cause and strong prospect of success, still morally unacceptable if it is not approved by the United Nations Security Council? This is the question that I turn to in the second half of the paper. (shrink)

Samir Amin depicts a world in which NATO has taken over the role of the United Nations, in which US hegemony is more or less complete, in which millions are condemned to die in order to preserve the social order of the US, Europe and Japan. Amin's analyses of the Gulf War, the wars in former Yugoslavia and the war in Central Asia reveal the scope of US strategic aims. He argues that the political and military dimension of US (...) dominance is as significant as US economic preponderance in determining the future of capitalist development. (shrink)

Our planet contains 194 independent states and much more nations. They share membership of the United Nations and in consequence they subscribed the Universal Declaration of Rights. These are rooted in the modern universal conception of states and human rights formulated by philosophers of the Enlighten Age like Locke, Kant., Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau. Concepts like democracy are mirrored to the organization of the political life as it was developed in North America and Europe at the end of the (...) 18th and the 19th century. Universality was deeply rooted in the Western intellectual, moral and religious tradition of that part of the world. Even globalization of the economic and social life is governed by the same Western standards and worldwide consumed basic goods like prime matter,. food and energy is expressed in terms of Western currency like dollar, pound sterling or euro. Despite this economic globalization there were two contradictory political evolution to discern: At the one hand more than 70 new states where created and on the other hand 28 European states started to integrate to a political European Union. The latter trend was based on a deep economic integration and since the creation of the euro also a financial integration. Basic idea was the creation of a free economic market as bases for a political unified Europe. Euro criticism is not only identified with conservatism, nationalism, narrow mind and even racism, euro criticism is deprived from any intellectual significance. However other trends put some shadow on the European project. First the Soviet experience around Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism unified more different nations than the European Union but ended in a complete political and economic chaos. Secondly the financial euro crisis involves only the tacit undermining of the national political independence of the member states, but does not make room for a deep analysis what the fundamentals are of this crisis such as lack of confidence of the citizen in the created unified political and financial market and its main instruments like banks that we consider as the fundamental boundary conditions of the worldwide globalization of goods, power and all aspects of human life. Furthermore we claim that this market in al its aspects is the worst answer to the inconvenient yet unavoidable truth that Western way of life of consumption includes a ecological footprint that exceeds since many years the sustainability of our planet. -/- . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Malcolm X and Black Nationality—from Separation to Human RightsSefi Josef Kuperman1. Black Nationalism and the Issue of SeparationThe first question we have to raise when discussing the thought of Malcolm X is "Which Malcolm X are we discussing?" Malcolm X, who was a member of the Nation of Islam (1952–1964) and served as its speaker, is not the same Malcolm who left the organization and founded Muslim Mosque, Inc. (...) (1964), and both are different from the Malcolm who embraced Sunni Islam (from 1964 until his assassination in 1965). In each of these periods, Malcolm held a different perception of the desired future of members of black communities in the United States. Despite that, Malcolm X remained faithful to the idea of black nationality throughout his active years—even if the contents of this idea changed along the years. In this paper, I show that the developments that took place within Malcolm's positions, and specifically the changes on the issue of emigration, do not affect his support for black nationalism.I do not begin this discussion with an attempt to define black nationalism, as there is no one clearly and timelessly defined black nationalism. The perception of black nationalism that took center stage in the nineteenth century is fundamentally different from that of the twentieth century. In fact, as we will soon see, even in the nineteenth century, one can find conceptual plurality of black nationalisms, and the same is true for the twentieth century.Malcom's activism begins in the days of abundant civil and governmental support for the practice of racial segregation. Facing it is the Nation of Islam organization, of which Malcolm is a member in the first phase of his activism, calling for—in a sort of amplified mirror-image, redesigned so as to remove the sting of white nationalism—a complete territorial separation between whites and blacks, for the benefit of the black community, of course. The [End Page 23] organization links this call to what is termed "the racial problem" and argues that territorial separation is the only solution to the problem (Essien-Udom 259).When discussing separation, rather than emigration, in the context of the Nation of Islam, the emphasis is on Elijah Muhammad's (hereafter: E. Muhammad) demand for the US government to allocate a dedicated territory for the founding of the physical black nation.1 Along with land—and here we encounter a motif that is repeated in Malcolm X's speeches—is the demand for material aid for some time, so the black nation can find its footing (Essien-Udom 260). In fact, it is a call for independence on a territory allocated for that purpose, but part of the territory of the United States. Later, at the beginning of Malcolm's second phase of activism, after leaving the Nation of Islam, he said the following in a radio interview with A. B. Spellman:Spellman:What is the program for achieving your goals of separation?Malcolm:A better word to use than separation is independence. This word separation is misused. The thirteen colonies separated from England but they called it the Declaration of Independence; they don't call it the Declaration of Separation, they call it the Declaration of Independence. When you're independent of someone you can separate from them. If you can't separate from them, it means you're not independent of them.(Malcolm X, "Independence, Not Separation" 71–72)Whereas separation is a negative move—I break away from something—independence is a positive one: I become my own sovereign. In order to illustrate this, Malcolm argues, "[w]hen you're independent of someone, you can separate from them"—that is, that independence is a sufficient condition for separation. To this, he adds: "If you can't separate from them, it means you're not independent of them." That is, Malcolm emphasizes that separation is a necessary condition for independence. On the other hand, however, Malcolm's phrasing implies that separation is not enough for independence. Independence includes another process that separation lacks. It is therefore not "a better word," as stated in the beginning of the answer, but another process... (shrink)

The United Nations ad hoc tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda had primacy over national judicial agents for crimes committed in these countries during the most notorious civil wars and genocide of the 1990s. The UN Charter granted the Security Council the right to establish a tribunal for Yugoslavia in the context of ongoing civil war and against the will of recalcitrant national agents. The Council used that same right to punish individuals responsible for a genocide (...) that it failed earlier to prevent in Rwanda. In both cases the Council delegated a portion of its coercive title to independent tribunal agents, thereby overriding the default locus of punishment in the world order: sovereign states. (shrink)