The Political Use of Evidence and Its Contribution to Democratic Discourse

2018 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 645-649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Schlaufer ◽  
Iris Stucki ◽  
Fritz Sager
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Discourse

Response to John McCormick's review of Oligargy

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Winters
Keyword(s):  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Actual Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Excellent Review ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Political Concept ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic School ◽  
Democratic Discourse ◽  
Rome I

I am very grateful to John McCormick for his excellent review of Oligarchy. It is careful and thoughtful, and I especially appreciate the important criticisms he raises. On Rome, I fully concur that the scholarship in the “democratic school” raises important interpretative challenges. But I must confess to being more persuaded by the compelling work of Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp, Kurt Raaflaub, Robert Morstein-Marx, and especially Henrik Mouritsen than the admittedly influential authors McCormick cites. Fergus Millar and others have been criticized for their overly constitutional approach and relying perhaps too heavily on democratic discourse. Emphasizing factors like scale, place, and how power was exercised in actual practice, Mouritsen counters that the involvement of the poor—the vast majority—in the political affairs of Rome was exceedingly limited. At the contiones, “the people” were present more as a political concept than physically in attendance. The capacity of the comitium was at most 4,000 people for a demos of some five million citizens—who were themselves a privileged minority among tens of millions of non-citizens and slaves. The heavy time demands of direct democracy on these citizens trying to eke out a living would have been a major burden. Whatever democracy really meant or achieved in Rome (and Athens), it clearly did not aid the lower classes materially. There was a steady accumulation of wealth and power upward toward oligarchs as debt and poverty worsened among the plebs.

Representation as a political-theological concept

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 507-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Mulieri
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Democratic Discourse ◽  
Political Form ◽  
Field Of Inquiry ◽  
Theological Concept

In his 1923 work, Roman Catholicism and Political Form, Carl Schmitt claims that representation is a complexio oppositorum (a unity of opposites) and incarnates a hierarchical form of political authority, which is alternative to liberalism. This article shows that Carl Schmitt’s interpretation of the political theology of representation is based on a misreading. Schmitt selectively overlooks some meanings of the theology of repraesentatio to build his decisionistic political agenda. An investigation of the original conceptual meanings of representation in Tertullian, the first Christian author who theorized representation and established many of its subsequent theological meanings, shows a different picture. At its inception, representation already included mechanisms of plurality and participation, which anticipated, and perhaps motivated, the absorption of the representation vocabulary within democratic discourse and practice. Political theology is a valuable field of inquiry to prove the claim that there is no participation without the logic of representation.

The Social Origins and Provenance of the English Bishops during the Reign of Edward II

1959 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
K. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Early Career ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Edward Ii ◽  
The Social ◽  
Complete Study ◽  
History Of

During the last twenty or twenty-five years medieval historians have been much interested in the composition of the English episcopate. A number of studies of it have been published on periods ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A further paper might well seem superfluous. My reason for offering one is that most previous writers have concentrated on analysing the professional circles from which the bishops were drawn, and suggesting the influences which their early careers as royal clerks, university masters and students, secular or regular clergy, may have had on their later work as bishops. They have shown comparatively little interest in their social background and provenance, except for those bishops who belonged to magnate families. Some years ago, when working on the political activities of Edward II's bishops, it seemed to me that social origins, family connexions and provenance might in a number of cases have had at least as much influence on a bishop's attitude to politics as his early career. I there fore collected information about the origins and provenance of these bishops. I now think that a rather more careful and complete study of this subject might throw further light not only on the political history of the reign, but on other problems connected with the character and work of the English episcopate. There is a general impression that in England in the later middle ages the bishops' ties with their dioceses were becoming less close, and that they were normally spending less time in diocesan work than their predecessors in the thirteenth century.

Democrazy—Dem Go Craze, O: Monitoring the 1999 Nigerian Elections

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
Darren Kew
Keyword(s):  
Transition Program ◽  
The Political ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Soccer Match ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Military

In many respects, the least important part of the 1999 elections were the elections themselves. From the beginning of General Abdusalam Abubakar’s transition program in mid-1998, most Nigerians who were not part of the wealthy “political class” of elites—which is to say, most Nigerians— adopted their usual politically savvy perspective of siddon look (sit and look). They waited with cautious optimism to see what sort of new arrangement the military would allow the civilian politicians to struggle over, and what in turn the civilians would offer the public. No one had any illusions that anything but high-stakes bargaining within the military and the political class would determine the structures of power in the civilian government. Elections would influence this process to the extent that the crowd influences a soccer match.

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