Radical (Evangelical) Democracy: The Dreams and Nightmares of Martin Luther King,Jr. and Antonio Negri

Abstract

This essay critically examines the theories of radical democracy offered by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision of the beloved community and Antonio Negri's vision of the multitude. The radical democratic visions of King and Negri continue to critically inform progressive reflections on democratic theory and propel new dreams of democracy. Despite their similarities, the differences between Negri and King are substantial. I argue that Negri's dream of the multitude and King's dream of beloved community have been shaped by different conceptions of radical democracy. While Negri works out of a tradition of Italian Marxism, King works within a critical tradition of prophetic evangelicalism. Thus, the political task, according to King, is to translate Jesus' teaching of the Kingdom of God into a beloved community on earth. King's creative negotiation of transcendence and history provides the requisite theological and political resources to develop a truly transcendent and immanent vision of a radical democratic society that is attentive to the demands and dignity of "all God's children."     

Italian politics: no improvement in sight

Abstract

The victory of the center left in the April 2006 elections was the product of a small numerical majority that has been translated into a slim parliamentary majority in the Senate. However, the difficulties of Prodi's government have deeper roots. This article explores the structural factors of Italy's never ending political and institutional transitions, both in the political and in the social sphere. Electoral and institutional reforms may help, but the crisis runs deeper because it also affects the authorities, their origin, their quality, their performance and the political community, its fragmentation and its anti-political beliefs.     

Believing in the USA: Derrida,Melville and the Great American Charlatan

ABSTRACT

This essay considers the relationship between the prophet and the charlatan, particularly as they figure in the contemporary American political landscape. It argues that at moments of democratic political crisis these figures arise and reveal the vacancy of sovereignty within the democratic model. The essay treats Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man along with Jacques Derrida’s writings on democracy and the apocalyptic tone as resources in this endeavor. It considers as well why recent worries over the status of facts in the era of “fake news” have led to critiques of deconstruction.     

On the Temptations of Sovereignty: The Task of Catholic Social Teaching and the Challenge of UK Asylum Seeking

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of the main tenets of Catholic social teaching as they relate to the politics of asylum in a UK context. Addressing the multilayered and complex crisis of confidence and asylum seekers with regard the moral performance of the UK system, this article proposes that the significance of CST's contribution to public discourse has been heightened by three key shifts in state practice. While the constructive contours of this teaching are explored, to be of service to forced migrants CST itself requires a deeper understanding of and engagement with the political cultures that shape practices of democratic exclusion. To this end the conclusion proposes two areas for further dialogue between CST and asylum experience.     

Re-examining a modern classic: does Putnam's Making Democracy Work suffer from spuriousness?

What makes democratic institutions work efficiently? Robert Putnam argued in Making Democracy Work that a mixture of political participation and immersion in associative and social networks in the community, conceptualised as ‘civic community’ or ‘social capital’, is the explanation. Ever since its publication, many questions have arisen about the validity of Putnam's theory. Among the most relevant concerns stands the influence of the Italian Communist Party on Putnam's empirical tests. This paper aims to fill the gap left in the literature by testing Putnam's hypothesis against the political party in the regional government and the PCI's electoral support. Supporting Putnam, this paper finds that variations in the quality of democratic governments in Italy's regions are a function of civic community even after adjusting for the presence of the Italian Communist Party.     

Greece in the future enlarged European Union

Abstract

For Greece, to be part of the European Communities/European Union, it has always been a constant challenge to the country's international position. Sixteen years of EC membership have had a remarkable political, diplomatic, socio-economic and cultural effect on the country's internal domain. Indeed, EC membership has contributed to the consolidation of democratic internal processes, it has influenced the administrative capacity of the state, it has affected the external political orientation of the country's foreign policy objectives, it has benefited the economy from substantial financial community transfers and it has brought the Greek culture closer to the other western European cultures. Seen from a more critical perspective, BC membership has also produced severe shock effects, as the Greek economy has been increasingly exposed to European trade and the subsequent single market and it keeps on breeding social tensions in the process of economic and monetary integration.     

Martin Luther King,Jr, and the Possibilities of Democratic Politics

Abstract

This essay moves beyond the limits of the post-September 11 debate over national security versus civil liberties to consider again the possibilities of democratic politics. It briefly surveys three Protestant interpretations of American democracy that have dominated recent debates. These interpretations leave us with the dilemma of having to choose between democratic dissent and the political pursuit of the good. Such a dilemma begs for other interpretations. Martin Luther King, Jr, stands as an obvious but neglected resource. His interpretation of democracy reconciles the pursuit of the good, a substantive politics, with diversity and dissent. This argument requires the retrieval or reconstruction of King's interpretation, which involves an examination of King's religious convictions as well as his engagement in and reflection on the political arena. The essay concludes by suggesting how King's interpretation informs contemporary debates and shapes Christian practice.     

Political Phenomenology: Radical Democracy and Truth

Abstract

In light of the "theological turn" in recent phenomenology, a question arises for contemporary thought of how the relationships among philosophy, religion, and democratic politics might be recontextualized and understood from a specifically phenomenological perspective. Essential in addressing this question is a critical examination of the method of reduction, or epoche instituted by Edmund Husserl as the original, core practice of phenomenology. Reinterpreting the epoche in terms of its social, historical, and political dimensions, later phenomenologists Enzo Paci and Jan Patocka demonstrate how phenomenology's conception of truth is necessarily coordinated with a commitment to collective democratic praxis. In Paci, the practice of epoche initiates critical resistance to ideological and idolatrous social and political forms through contrast with the infinite openness of truth's real universality. In Patocka, phenomenological method as applied to historically-embedded religious and philosophical traditions helps to clarify what in particular distinguishes democratic from autocratic forms of life. By drawing the insights of Paci and Patocka into conjunction, a new conception emerges of the unique religio— the collective, existential commitment— of phenomenology as such: to express the experience(s) of truth through democratic praxis in collaboration with other analogous philosophical, religious and scientific traditions.     

Today's State of Exception: Abu-Jamal,Agamben, JanMofiamed,and the Democratic State of Emergency

Abstract

This essay engages the political philosophy of Giorgio Agamben and the literary criticism of Abdul R. JanMohammed in critically exploring the contours of the present arrangement of democratic politics in the United States. Giorgio Agamben's exception theory of sovereignty and bare life are deployed in order to grasp the political meaning of surprisingly unprecedented and exceptional recent court rulings in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been on Pennsylvania's death row since 1982. Abu-Jamal's experience of exceptional rulings also requires a critical elaboration of the racialized nature of American democracy. Thus, Agamben's theory finds a critical complement with the work of literary theorist Abdul R. JanMohammed, particularly JanMohammed's formulations of "social death" and the "dialectics of death" for "death-bound-subjects." The theories of Agamben and JanMohammed make clear the nature of Abu-Jamal's political struggle and the state of democratic politics that so often transforms the exception into the rule, specifically in the case of the marginal and dispossessed. The significance of Abu-Jamal's case thus becomes one of understanding the production and reproduction of the state of exception and the (im)possibilities of political transformation and liberation from the arrested state of democracy in the modern world.     

‘Divided Within Itself’: The Parliamentary Labour ‘Right’ and the Demise of Post‐War Revisionist Social Democracy in the 1970s

The article seeks to identify a neglected dimension of the ‘crisis’ and schism of British social democracy in the 1970s from within the ranks of the parliamentary Labour ‘right’ itself. Accounts of the so‐called ‘Labour right’ and its influential revisionist social democratic tradition have emphasized its generic cohesion and uniformity over contextual analysis of its inherent intellectual, ideological and political range and diversity. The article seeks to evaluate differential responses of Labour's ‘right‐wing’ and revisionist tendency as its loosely cohesive framework of Keynesian social democracy imploded in the 1970s, as a means of demonstrating its relative incoherence and fragmentation. The ‘crisis of social democracy’ revealed much more starkly its complex, heterogeneous character, irremediably ‘divided within itself’ over a range of critical political and policy themes and the basis of social democratic political philosophy itself. The article argues that it was its own wider political fragmentation and ideological introspection in the face of the ‘crisis’ of its historic ‘belief system’ which led to the fracture of Labour's ‘dominant coalition’ and the rupture of British social democracy.     

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words: Building American National Identity Through Art

ABSTRACT

Even though agonistic democratic theory espouses and celebrates competition, it seemingly lacks a coherent ethic for decent winning and losing in everyday political life. This article is an effort to fill this void by suggesting a practice-based, non-perfectionist ethic drawn from sport. Focusing on Xenophon's On Hunting, we argue that sport, properly defined, offers an appropriate experience with ponos (toil, suffering) that teaches citizens perseverance, humility, generosity, empathy, and stewardship. This sporting ethic, we argue, provides a more suitable model for winning and losing in public life than the martial basis of agonistic democratic theory.     

Mapping cultural policy in Portugal: From incentives to crisis

Abstract

Taking into account the course of cultural policy in democratic Portugal, and against the backdrop of the international crisis of 2008 and the sovereign debt crisis of 2011, this article seeks to interpret recent changes in the cultural sector in Portugal. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods it focuses on three main aspects: institutionalisation of democratic cultural policy; government funding; cultural organizations and facilities. The 2008 crisis put an end to a period in which investment tended to grow. We place Portugal in the broader European context, concluding that the Portuguese cultural scene may once again diverge from that of other European countries.     

Methodism and the Rise of Political Correctness

Abstract

Does Aristotle's case for honorable statesmen endanger the case for democratic institutions and equal rights, as two critics contend? It had better not: democracies too need the guidance of a Mandela, an FDR, a Washington. Also, the ancient thinkers had their own doubts about grand ambition, seeking to cabin such types through education and moderate republics, including democratic republics. Also, the objection neglects the relativism, doctrinairism, and postmodernist disillusion that eventually undermined modern political philosophy. Might the old philosophers’ reasonableness, not least on the topic of leadership, be now indispensable to political science? After such points I address the other criticisms: have I not neglected the Biblical improvements on classical political science? Do I portray adequately Plato's analysis of that quintessential lover of power and glory, Alcibiades?     

A Review of “The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact,Theory, and Sign of Contradiction”

Abstract

Responding to Samuel Huntington's argument in Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, this article explores the problematic character of American national identity. While Huntington presents himself as trying to conserve a traditional American identity based on both political creed and Anglo-Protestant culture, I contend that America's founding political theory and its philosophic sources are ambiguous on the question of culture and national identity. The Declaration of Independence and the social contract theories that helped inform it seem to invite a kind of cosmopolitan commitment to a creedal identity while at the same time leaving open the possibility of a more exclusive cultural identity. In the end, this ambiguity works to undermine a public sense that the political order should try to conserve a particular culture, a tendency that is furthered by a democratic regime's natural inclinations toward universalism and egalitarianism. It seems, then, that the problem of the preservation of American cultural identity is rooted in the very culture that Huntington wishes to preserve.     

Unsociable Sociability and the Crisis of Natural Law: Michael Hissmann (1752–1784) on the State of Nature

Summary

This article studies the impact of the debate about human sociability on the crisis of natural law in the later eighteenth century examining the Untersuchungen über den Stand der Natur of 1780 by the Göttingen scholar Michael Hissmann. It makes the case that this crisis ensued from Rousseau's Discours sur l‘inégalité and a revival of neo-Epicurean trends in moral philosophy more generally. The sociability debate revolved around the question to what extent society was natural or artificial to man. This had important implications for the problem of whether distinctions between right and wrong or just and unjust were natural and inborn, or had developed at a much later stage of mankind's history, reflecting merely the respective needs and utility of different societies and cultures. Hissmann's essay summarises this European debate concisely. His point of departure is Rousseauian premises, yet his political conclusions turn Rousseau upside down. Here, Hissmann's essay opens up several questions regarding the allegedly radical political character of one-substance theories in philosophy.     

Ceaser's American Political Science

Abstract

The transition and subsequent consolidation of countries that move from an authoritarian to a democratic regime have been widely explained by factors such as the international environment, economic conditions, political culture, institutions, and most prominently, elite behavior.¹ But although elites can make decisions about the institutional, political, and economic future of a country in transition, they cannot guarantee that those decisions will be implemented or supported by the populace, or that the incipient democratic system will stabilize. What is frequently neglected in these elite-centered accounts of democratic transitions, then, is civil society and its links to elites.     

A Response to Tomás Halík

Abstract

The Churches were significant players in the debate surrounding what has been called Britain's "lost opportunity" in the 1940s and 50s to play a leading role in building a united Europe. This article focuses on Christian theological and historical assumptions about humanity as a universal community, the nation and the Church. It examines Christian discourse about the political dimension of these communities and the part that Christianity as a belief system should ideally play between them. It then outlines the "Christendom" narrative, which represented medieval Europe as a model for the future of Europe, as a partial realization of the ideal alignment of power and culture, which in its decay was the cause of international crisis. Finally, some of the points of tension between Christendom, British national identity, and a united Europe among Christians are discussed.     

Negotiating for Space and Autonomy: Strategies of Finnish Missionary Women in Japan, 1900-1941

ABSTRACT. This article focuses on the strategies Finnish women used to influence their status and the missionary practices in the Japan mission of the Lutheran Evangelical Association of Finland during the early part of the 20th century. Women had a head-start in the mission compared to men but lost this later as the organization developed. However, the early years demonstrate how women were able to gain a foothold simply by exceptional circumstances, such as a political turmoil. The crisis years of the Finnish mission in the early 1910s illustrate how organizational rigidity was created at the cost of women's status, but also that everyday work carried out separately from the men's work offered women satisfactory roles regardless of the patriarchal structure. An additional strategy is introduced by the career of one missionary, Siiri Uusitalo. A lifelong career in the mission and a pioneer's status enabled Siiri Uusitalo to carve out an independent position inside the Finnish mission which can be defined as matriarchal. Through the Finnish female missionaries, the contested male control of the mission in the Japanese context is discussed. The article presents one historically unique case that nevertheless points to certain patterns in contesting and redefining the gendered hierarchy in a religious community amidst a foreign culture.     

Austerity and consociational government in Northern Ireland

Abstract

This article examines the institutional crisis of the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2015 as a case study on the impact of austerity on multiculturalism in Ireland. I make a case for viewing the Assembly as a multicultural institution through pointing to the historical role of community relations policy, which was directed at reconciling “sectarian” Irish nationalists and Ulster unionists. It did so through shifting from an understanding of the conflict as one based on the struggle for Irish national self-determination to one based on conflicting identities. I argue that Sinn Féin’s embracing of multiculturalism is a product of its accommodation to British rule in Ireland. Sinn Féin has made a virtue out of its political volte-face by becoming the strongest advocate of ethnic Irish nationalism in Northern Ireland. The ethnic power politics of Sinn Féin has found its unionist equivalent in the political manoeuvrings of the Democratic Unionist Party. Austerity measures imposed by the Westminster government have created problems for the parties in the power-sharing Assembly, problems that threaten the collapse of the Assembly. It is because of, rather than in spite of, the multicultural mechanisms embedded in the Assembly that the institution has got to crisis point. This is an institutional crisis, not a crisis of multiculturalism.