scholarly journals Citizenship goes to the dogs

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
E. Alexander Howe

The conclusion I defend is that "domestic animals" have a moral claim to what I refer to as "basic citizenship rights," and that they do so for the same reason that "non-autonomous humans" do. I define each of these key terms. The bulk of this dissertation is structured around the following formal argument, which I refer to as the Political AMC, on account of its strategy being borrowed from the so-called Argument from Marginal Cases, or AMC: (P1) Non-rationally autonomous humans have an undefeated moral claim to basic citizenship rights. (P2) If non-rationally autonomous humans have an undefeated moral claim to basic citizenship rights, then possessing vulnerability and no decisive defeaters is a sufficient condition for having an undefeated claim to basic citizenship rights. (C1) Possessing vulnerability and no decisive defeaters is a sufficient condition for having a claim to basic citizenship rights. (P3) Domestic animals possess vulnerability and no decisive defeaters. (C2) Domestic animals have an undefeated claim to basic citizenship rights. The defense offered for Premise 2 is abductive--an inference to the best explanation-- and treated accordingly

Itinerario ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Már Jónsson

On 2 January 1625, the English ambassador Robert Anstruther met with King Christian IV of Norway and Denmark and requested his participation in a union of Protestant states against Emperor Ferdinand II and the Catholic League in Germany. Within three days, King Christian proposed to contribute five thousand soldiers for one year, as part of an army of almost thirty thousand men. In early June, despite opposition from the Danish Council of State, reluctant to put a huge amount of money into foreign affairs, Christian decided to join what he called “the war for the defence of Lower Saxony”. He then headed an army of mercenaries southwards through Lower Saxony, secured all crossings over the river Weser and prepared to confront the Catholic forces. On 29 November, it was decided that Denmark would be in charge of military operations in Northern Germany, whereas England and the United Provinces would provide a monthly subsidy. The political and military prospects for Denmark were excellent, to say the least. It had the fourth strongest navy in Europe (after Spain and the two new allies), and only a few years before the Danish warships had been described by a French observer as “merveilles de l'océan”. A small standing army of two regiments had recently been established and Denmark was the fourth European state to do so after France, Spain and the neighbouring Sweden.


2021 ◽  
pp. 205789112199169
Author(s):  
Kana Inata

Constitutional monarchies have proved to be resilient, and some have made substantive political interventions even though their positions are mostly hereditary, without granted constitutional channels to do so. This article examines how constitutional monarchs can influence political affairs and what impact royal intervention can have on politics. I argue that constitutional monarchs affect politics indirectly by influencing the preferences of the public who have de jure power to influence political leaders. The analyses herein show that constitutional monarchs do not indiscriminately intervene in politics, but their decisions to intervene reflect the public’s preferences. First, constitutional monarchs with little public approval become self-restraining and do not attempt to assert their political preferences. Second, they are more likely to intervene in politics when the public is less satisfied about the incumbent government. These findings are illustrated with historical narratives regarding the political involvement of King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand in the 2000s.


2021 ◽  
pp. 263300242110244
Author(s):  
Alice M. Greenwald ◽  
Clifford Chanin ◽  
Henry Rousso ◽  
Michel Wieviorka ◽  
Mohamed-Ali Adraoui

How do societies and states represent the historical, moral, and political weight of the terrorist attacks they have had to face? Having suffered in recent years from numerous terrorist attacks on their soil originating from jihadist movements, and often led by actors who were also their own citizens, France and the United States have set up—or seek to do so—places of memory whose functions, conditions of creation, modes of operation, and nature of the messages sent may vary. Three of the main protagonists and initiators of two museum-memorial projects linked to terrorist attacks have agreed to deliver their visions of the role and of the political, social, and historical context in which these projects have emerged. Allowing to observe similarities and differences between the American and French approach, this interview sheds light on the place of memory and feeling in societies struck by tragic events and seeking to cure their ills through memory and commemoration.


1995 ◽  
Vol 27 (9) ◽  
pp. 1463-1491 ◽  
Author(s):  
J D Sidaway ◽  
M Power

As Mozambique was one of a number of Third World states that embraced Marxism-Leninism during the 1970s, the establishment and subsequent collapse of a socialist development project since independence in 1975 has had profound social, political, and economic consequences. Against these contexts, and through a chronological account which begins with the impacts of Portuguese colonialism and Mozambican nationalist responses, we analyse the contradictory impact of political and economic changes accompanying colonialism, independence, attempted socialist transformation, and the end of socialism in Mozambique as they are mediated through the built environment of the Mozambican capital city of Maputo. The combined political, social, and cultural facets within these transformations and continuities are evident throughout the account and we specify some of the ways in which these are intertwined with the political economy of urbanization. In the conclusion we reconsider what the changing trajectory of Maputo represents in global and comparative terms. We do so with reference to debates about the changing forms of international capitalist regulation and the reconfiguration of dependency.


1982 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas S. Engeman

According to Publius (the nom de plume of The Federalist's authors), a primary task of the Convention was to create an executive of sufficient energy and independence. As he says in Federalist, No. 70: “There is an idea, which is not without its advocates, that a vigorous executive is inconsistent with the genius of republican government. The enlightened well-wishers to this species of government must at least hope that the supposition is destitute of foundation.” The president must be able to administer the government and defend the nation but he must do so without destroying or being destroyed by constitutional limitations or the political independence of Congress.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-150
Author(s):  
Silvia Schultermandl

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of this contribution to this forum: The advent of Facebook in 2004, Twitter in 2006, Tumblr in 2007, Instagram and Pinterest in 2010, and Snapchat and Google+ in 2011 facilitated the emergence of “everyday” autobiographies out of keeping with memoir practices of the past.[1] These “quick media” enable constant, instantaneous, and seemingly organic expressions of everyday lives.[2] To read quick media as “autobiographical acts” allows us to analyze how people mobilize online media as representations of their lives and the lives of others.[3] They do so through a wide range of topics including YouTube testimonials posted by asylum seekers (Whitlock 2015) and the life-style oriented content on Pinterest.[4] To be sure, the political content of these different quick media life writing varies greatly. Nevertheless, in line with the feminist credo that the personal is political, these expressions of selfhood are indicative of specific societal and political contexts and thus contribute to the memoir boom long noticed on the literary market.[5]


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrina Quisumbing King

A perennial question in the scholarship of the state asks how states rule and expand their capacity to do so. Scholars have paid special attention to activities that rationalize and build administrative capacity, known as legibility projects. Alongside these projects, state actors also rule through ambiguous and unclear techniques that have been given less scholarly attention. I introduce the concept of institutionalized ambiguity in legal status to extend the study of state rule. I ask what generates ambiguity, what purposes it serves in law and policy, and what consequences it has for the management of populations. I propose an analytic approach that draws attention to equivocation in law as enabling classificatory debates and discretion in the political realm. To illustrate the purchase of institutionalized ambiguity in legal status, I analyze how, during the years of formal imperial rule (1898-1946), U.S. state actors debated the racial fitness and membership of Filipinos in the imagined U.S. nation. I consider the broader implications of this analysis for scholars of modern state formation and suggest that foundational conflicts over national identity can be institutionalized in law, in turn facilitating a range of contradictory, but co-existing, legally defensible policies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 799-803 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Stockemer ◽  
Sebastian Koehler ◽  
Tobias Lentz

ABSTRACTDo researchers share their quantitative data and are the quantitative results that are published in political science journals replicable? We attempt to answer these questions by analyzing all articles published in the 2015 issues of three political behaviorist journals (i.e., Electoral Studies, Party Politics, and Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties)—all of which did not have a binding data-sharing and replication policy as of 2015. We found that authors are still reluctant to share their data; only slightly more than half of the authors in these journals do so. For those who share their data, we mainly confirmed the initial results reported in the respective articles in roughly 70% of the times. Only roughly 5% of the articles yielded significantly different results from those reported in the publication. However, we also found that roughly 25% of the articles organized the data and/or code so poorly that replication was impossible.


Author(s):  
Matthew John Paul Tan

This chapter will explore the varieties of political thought informed by divine revelation as understood in the Christian tradition. It will do so with reference to the metaphysical assumptions of what happens when transcendence meets history, and accordingly divide the inquiry into three archetypes. The first are the monists, for whom transcendence collapses into the temporal. The second are the dialecticians, for whom the uncrossable distinction between heaven and earth results in a struggle between the two. The third are the participationists, for whom the transcendent and the historical can harmoniously cohere through a ‘mediating third’ plane. For each mode, a brief sketch will be given of the writings of exemplary thinkers, and of the promises and pitfalls. In highlighting this variety, the aim of charting this map is to nuance the discussion currently taking place concerning the motivations and modus operandi of religiously informed political actors.


Author(s):  
Richard Alba ◽  
Nancy Foner

This chapter discusses the political integration of immigrant groups. Entry into the inner precincts of power is a paramount indicator of the overall inclusion of newcomer groups. Indeed, the ability of politicians from immigrant backgrounds to be elected to office is the gold standard for political inclusion, bringing rewards of societal power and a voice in political decisions. The chapter then provides data on the success of immigrant-origin groups in winning positions in local, regional, and national legislatures in the six countries of this book's study; probes the factors that explain the differences in electoral representation; and considers whether, and to what degree, convergences in national laws and policies have reduced the importance of national differences in political integration and may continue to do so in the future.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document