Explaining the demise of the national–New Zealand first coalition

This article considers the fall of New Zealand's first coalition government under the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) electoral system, through the prism of a ‘unified’ model of Cabinet durability. This model incorporates both the ‘structural attributes’ of the government at the time of its formation, as well as the stochastic ‘critical events’ that occur over its lifetime. However, the conventional attributes of the National–New Zealand First coalition were considered favourable, and the critical event that precipitated its demise did not by itself appear to be a sufficient condition for termination. It is argued that the hitherto unspecified structural attribute of intra‐party stability was a significant factor for this particular coalition, and that this case also demonstrates the cumulative impact of non‐terminal events in undermining the incentives for continued cooperation between coalition partners.     

Direct election of regional presidents and party change in Italy

This article assesses the impact that direct election of regional presidents has had on party politics in Italy. It finds regional presidents exert a growing personalisation of power within parties at sub-national levels, primarily through their capacity for political nomination and de facto status as party negotiators in the governing coalition. While presidents may shape structures of regional party competition, they remain constrained by coalitional politics and can struggle to assert their authority against powerful governing partners or local powerbrokers rooted in the legislature. They also possess few mechanisms to consolidate their position at national level, consistent with a broader tendency towards ‘stratarchy’ in multi-level parties. Although the distinction between densely and loosely structured parties remains relevant, a common trend towards ‘cartelisation’ at sub-national levels is noted as political parties prioritise the control of state resources and the governing legitimacy this entails. This article contributes to our broader understanding of the multi-level dynamics of party politics in Europe, as well as the unintended consequences of experimenting with an untested hybrid model of ‘directly elected Prime Minister’ in the Italian regions.     

On the current absence and future improbability of political Catholicism in Italy

Clerical ‘non-negotiable values’ were actively promoted by right-wing governments in the 2000s, the Monti government that replaced them was strongly supported by the Vatican and the Italian bishops, and the current left-wing government is led by a former member of the Catholic popolari who attends Mass every Sunday. But this article argues that, rather than a new golden age of political Catholicism, the return of Catholicism to Italian politics has taken a ‘low intensity’ form which lacks the robust combination of ideas, leaders, organizations, and interests that informed earlier, genuinely political forms of Catholic engagement. The article demonstrates this by focusing on the ‘Todi movement’, which played a crucial role in the Monti government, and on Matteo Renzi’s current leadership of the Partito democratico and the national government. It also proposes a theoretical framework to explain the apparent contradiction between the high visibility and the low political relevance of Catholicism in Italian politics.     

Nudging Bentham: indirect legislation and (neo-)liberal politics

SUMMARY

The debates over Sunstein and Thaler’s Nudge oppose libertarianism and paternalism, or defend the authors’ proposed manipulation of individuals’ ‘choice architectures’ as a consistent system of libertarian paternalism. My essay looks beyond the terms of this debate and revisits Bentham’s ‘Indirect Legislation’ in order to excavate the issues raised by the deployment of technologies of behavioural economics in schemes of government. On the one hand, nudging is nothing other than a mild and carefully considered mode of indirect legislation, and the authors are right to join Bentham in pointing out that the landscape they seek to improve is always with us; we are always already governed and governing others, and we might as well govern and be governed better than we do/are. On the other hand, nudge-like innovations reveal the extent to which Bentham’s insights have been captured by a disciplinary orientation that removes its subjects from political space. Put differently, the issue with this kind of government is not that it interferes with our liberty so much as that it presumes our lack of political orientation and efficacy. Bentham’s liberal subjects inhabit a public and even republican space that Sunstein and Thaler’s neo-liberal subjects have long since abandoned.     

Gulliver unbound. Possible electoral reforms and the 2008 Italian election: Towards an end to ‘fragmented bipolarity’?

This article considers the systemic effects of the electoral reform approved by the centre-right in December 2005, and the factors that led to the crisis of the Prodi government, highlighting the way in which the issue of electoral reform and the likelihood of an electoral referendum contributed decisively to the breakdown of the fragile coalition maintaining the Prodi government in office. The article then analyses the ‘game’ surrounding possible electoral reforms, examining the interweaving of the preferences and vetoes of the various political actors, showing how these were influenced by the strategic aims of each actor and by the process of re-structuring of the party system. Finally, the new configuration of the political supply as it took shape in the run up to the 2008 general election is analysed, showing how this new format derives from the actors’ strategic adaptation to the electoral rules in force, and how the election may signal the end of a period of Italian politics marked by ‘fragmented bipolarity’.     

Management and Community: Some Problems with New Labour

Abstract

This essay examines some tendencies in New Labour's political rhetoric, in particular its reduction of what counts as political and what counts as community. What will be argued is firstly, that the quest for managerial efficiency has functioned to reshape political discourse. This has come about primarily through the attempted removal of political control from economic and public life through the rhetoric of audit and the proliferation of executive agencies and other quangos. Secondly, I will also claim that the language of something called ‘the value of community’, despite being the primary moral principle underpinning the whole New Labour agenda, is politically virtually redundant, principally because its sphere has been reduced to the ‘voluntary’ sector. This redrawing of the boundaries of politics does not augur well for the long-term survival of the British political system: serious questions about the role of the state and the future of democracy emerge from the policies of the past five years and will be discussed briefly in the final section.     

Building the New Cultural Finland: the student magazine Ylioppilaslehti,the public sphere and the creation of the Finnish cultural elite in the post-war era

The Finnish student magazine Ylioppilaslehti has been an important publication in the Finnish public sphere. This article studies the role of Ylioppilaslehti in creating the Finnish public sphere in the post-war decades. On the one hand, this was a period in which the political position of Finland was unstable, but, on the other, the students experienced ‘a hunger for culture’. The article is also interested in what role Ylioppilaslehti played in creating the Finnish elite. The magazine is an institution, which has been an arena for the Finnish cultural and political elite throughout the 20th century, and the 1950s was a particularly significant period for its participation in the Finnish process of social construction.     

Editorial: Social Spirituality: Monastic Cell or Hectic Street?

Abstract

What makes theology political? Is it the social location of the author, the sources drawn upon, or the content of the argument? Each of these three possibilities is theologically significant, but a little reflection proves none of them decisive in claiming the adjective ‘political’ for a theology. The ‘material production’ of theological works cannot, by itself, render one theology political and another apolitical; for all theological works share a similar ‘social location’ given the similar socio-economic reality of publishing. Whether or not theology is political, or adequately political, cannot finally be determined by material production, the authors' social location or the content of the argument per se. Such forms of apodictic reasoning cannot distinguish apolitical from political theology. It can only be a function of practical reasoning. It alone can advance the current stalemate among persons that theology should be characterized as ‘church’, ‘confessional’, ‘sectarian’, ‘liberatory’, ‘political’ or ‘public’. I argue that the best we can do to adjudicate these differences is to engage in, as Charles Taylor has so aptly put it, practical ad hominem arguments.     

Agamben and the Migrations of Glory

Abstract

In the American political imagination, there is a longstanding and wide-ranging discussion about the separation of church and state. Though Americans argue about whether it should be a ‘‘high wall,’’ or whether certain ‘‘breaches’’ in it might be desirable, they all take ‘‘separation’’ to describe an institutional arrangement. From Giorgio Agamben's perspective, however, ‘‘separation’’ is an image that conceals much more than it reveals about the religious character of the state and the global economy. Agamben traces ‘‘the migrations of glory’’ from church, to state, to global capitalism. For part of this task, Agamben accepts Michel Foucault's diagnostic approach to power. By one reading, certainly, governmentality has us in its grip. But now government itself is overshadowed by the power of global capitalism. While Foucault sought only to make us ‘‘a little less governed,’’ Agamben is interested in a deeper iconoclasm and a greater emancipation. According to Agamben, our less-than-free condition can be illuminated by reflection on: (1) the state of exception and the camp, which are only made possible by a form of idolatry in which the sovereign assumes to themself a power that they should not have; (2) On another of the ‘‘maps’’ drawn by Agamben, however, there is a further ‘‘migration of glory,’’ away from national sovereignty, toward postmodern global capitalism; (3) The Coming Community provides the barest sketch of Agamben's hope for a remedy, while his reading of Paul's Letter to the Romans in The Time that Remains brings a more visible kind of messianic expectation or vocation back into the discussion of political life. A concluding section discusses five sorts of questions that might be put to Agamben about the overall shape of his project.     

European solidarity: a semantic history

Abstract

‘European solidarity’ is one of the most frequently used words in contemporary public discourse, but what does it mean? This article investigates the historical and semantic background of the term in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish since the French Revolution, when ‘solidarity’ became a political keyword for the first time in European history. With the founding of the Holy Alliance in 1815 the idea of ‘European solidarity’ as an instrument for achieving political order on the continent emerged. A historical longitudinal analysis via the Ngram Viewer reveals that the frequency of ‘solidarity’ follows or depends on certain crisis moments in history, such as revolutions, wars or economic troubles. ‘Solidarity’ belongs to the history of emotions and propaganda but is not a stable value system that consolidates political culture. It also seems to play a greater role in the national rather than in the European context. As a European political expression, ‘solidarity’ is not genuinely European but borrowed from the national political vocabulary. Moreover, the article outlines the semantic field of ‘European solidarity’ by showing linkages between ‘solidarity’ and other words.     

The polis and the res publica: two Arendtian models of violence

The influence of the ancient Greek world on Hannah Arendt’s thought is well documented, yet her interest in the politics of the Roman Republic is often considered less central to her work. This paper explores Arendt’s analysis of both these political worlds, with a particular emphasis on what this comparison can tells us about her understanding of the role of violence in politics. Arendt has generally been understood to structurally exclude violence from the political, in part due to the claims she makes in her later essay ‘On Violence.’ Yet in her portrayal of Roman politics, and her preference for this political system above the Greeks’ (in certain respects), a genuinely political engagement with violence can be discerned. The paper claims that this particular case study indicates the framework of the vita activa, set out by Arendt in The Human Condition, should be reinterpreted, particularly insofar as ‘fabrication’ or ‘work’ here appears as something that is legitimately part of the political, and incorporates within it some forms of violence. The claims that violence is structurally anti-political, this paper concludes, are temporally specific to a twentieth-century context, rather than constituting a foundational ‘rule’ of political practice for Arendt.     

Cronies,economic crime and capitalism in Putin's sistema

The books included in this review article are essential for the understanding of what I call Putin's sistema—the governance model that originated in the Soviet system but has transformed and adapted to global change. Each book tackles, from a different angle, the issues of Russia's transition and suggests ways to describe its political consequences. The books all attempt to identify some underlying logic or organizing force in a Russian society that has emerged through weak institutions. Although I join the authors in their criticisms of the ‘transition paradigm’ and its ‘opening‐breakthrough‐consolidation of democracy’ formula, transformations of the Soviet sistema seem to resonate with the ‘opening‐breakthrough‐consolidation of capitalism’. Perestroika can be seen as an ‘opening’ in shaking the foundations of sistema; Yeltsin's era as a ‘breakthrough’; and Putin's regime as the ‘consolidation’ of capitalism but with its distinct characteristics.     

Irish Republican Politics and Violence before the Peace Process, 1968–1994

Analyses of the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland tend to underplay the influence of political strategy in the 1970s, preferring to emphasise militarism. Similarly, the persistence of militarism in the 1980s is often obscured by the attention paid to a ‘new’ republican political orientation. This article seeks to draw attention to the IRA's evolving attitude to the ‘problem’ of Ulster unionism, and republicanism's various estimations of the likely efficacy of violence throughout the period. Republicanism is best understood as a deeply rooted working-class ethno-nationalist movement interacting closely with the other agents of the Northern Ireland conflict: constitutional nationalism, unionism and the British government. ‘Armed struggle’ became a declining asset for republicanism as it came to be seen less as a form of ‘popular guerrilla warfare’ and more as ‘terrorism’. 1 [1] For valuable advice, thanks to Prof. Roy Foster. Opinions expressed are my own. View all notes     

The main components of the situation in Poland: 1980–1983

The paper consists of five parts. Part I describes the situation on the eve of martial law. Its main conclusion says: The release of this enormous tension could be achieved only through free elections, but it was absolutely clear that such a solution, tantamount to the total surrender of Communism in Poland, would never be accepted by the Russians’.

Part II describes the evolution of the system of ‘partocracy’ in Poland from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. This evolution consisted in the gradual de‐ideologization of the party and the consequent change in the basic principle of legitimation. In the beginning it legitimized its rule by the Marxist theory of historical progress, in later years this was replaced by invoking the objective interests of the nation in given historical conditions. A positive feature of this development was the de‐ideologization of many spheres of life; this, however, did not entail their de‐politicization, in the sense of replacing changing and arbitrary political commands by stable and general rules of law. In the economic sphere it resulted in a series of irresponsible decisions, the rule of fiction and widespread corruption.

Part III deals with some features of the historically‐formed national character of the Poles, concluding that it was peculiarly uncongenial to Soviet‐type socialism.

Part IV describes the attitudes of the main strata of the population. It shows the Solidarity movement as a populist movement, often anti‐socialist at a conscious level but almost always deeply socialist at an unconscious one. The author sees the main contradiction of this movement in the fact that its hostility towards ‘really existing socialism’ as a political system was not combined with a readiness to accept a consistent de‐politicization of the economy, i.e. the replacement of political commands by market mechanisms. The author also shows the plight of the Polish peasantry and the attitudes dominant among the intelligentsia.

The last part, ‘The Effects of Martial Law and the Prospects for the Future’, presents the efforts of Jaruzelski's government to introduce economic reform and to base its rule on the principle of ‘socialist constitutionalism’. The author is pessimistic about the chances of economic reform and stresses the necessity of a minimum of political and moral consensus. He concludes: ‘The experiment in participatory democracy and in dual power has failed, but the only acceptable alternative is the greatest possible liberalization’.     

‘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.     

Decadent Conservatism: Politics and Aesthetics in The Senate

Abstract: The relationship between late-Victorian Decadence and Aestheticism and politics has long been vexed. This article explores the hitherto under-explored confluence of conservatism and avant-garde literature in the period by introducing The Senate, a Tory-Decadent journal that ran from 1894-7. While Decadent authors occupied various political positions, this article argues that The Senate offers a crucial link between conservatism and Decadence The article presents the journal in its political and publishing context, outlining its editorial position on such issues as the Liberal Unionist-Conservative coalition governments, Britain's relationship with Europe and the threat of ‘State Socialism’, as well as its valorisation of Bollingbroke and eighteenth-century Toryism, and its relationship to, and difference from, key Decadent journals the Yellow Book and The Savoy. It then goes on to articulate its relationship to Decadence by focussing on the presence of Paul Verlaine in its pages and its vitriolic response to the press coverage of Oscar Wilde's trials. The article concludes by exploring the surprising wake of The Senate, briefly tracing the editors' influence in the development of Modernism and links with the journal BLAST.     

China's strategic partnership with Latin America: a fulcrum in China's rise

China has over the last two decades been committed to creating a strategic partnership with Latin American states by persistently extending its economic and political involvement in the continent. China's efforts in this regard reflect not only its desire to intensify its economic cooperation and political relations with nations in Latin America, but also its strategic goals of creating its own sphere of influence in the region and enhancing its ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power in order to elevate China's status at the systemic level. With access to Latin American markets, resources and investment destinations, China may sustain its economic and social progress that bases its long cherished dream of restoring its past glory of fuqiang (wealth and power) and rise as a global power capable of reshaping the current world system. The enormous economic benefits deriving from their economic cooperation and trade may persuade Latin American nations to accept the basic premise of China's economic strategy: that China's rise is not a threat, but an opportunity to gain wealth and prosperity. This will help China gain more ‘soft’ power in and leverage over its economic partners in Latin America, and thereby help it to rise in the global power hierarchy.     

The Injustice of Some Attacks: A Response to Stephen Strehle

Abstract

Despite Stephen Strehle's criticisms, the ‘just war’ tradition can be a useful and appropriate way of thinking through the ethical problems of war. If it remains grounded in the memory of human suffering, including the suffering of the enemy, then it is a flexible framework, open to new developments, which can guide ethical reflection. In fact, the just war tradition is a good example of the appropriate relation of religion to politics. Religious traditions must neither dictate political options directly, nor be separated from them entirely, but must engage the political sphere ‘indirectly’, via reasoned argumentation. Four elements of this indirect relation are described.     

Landscapes of Desire in the Poetry of Vittorio Sereni

The article studies trasformismo (party-switching) in Italian regional councils, examining Lombardy, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, and Puglia from 1970 to 2010. Although lato sensutrasformismo – enrollment in the mixed group and party switches among the electoral lists – also has empirical relevance at regional level, stricto sensutrasformismo – the transition from the majority to the opposition, or vice versa – was quantitatively negligible. In the transition from the first to the second phase of the Italian Republic (after 1994), the regional system was reorganized according to a government model in which there is a clear distinction between the roles of the majority and the opposition, by virtue of the direct election of presidents from 1995 onwards. Thus, the thesis formulated by Giovanni Sabbatucci is confirmed: trasformismo is a pattern of government from the ‘center’ of the political space, which is a very different option from the adversarial model of democracy which has emerged in the regions over the last two decades. As a result, this also seems to confirm the neo-institutionalistic thesis expressed by Robert D. Putnam in his classic Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993), according to which ‘institutions shape politics’ and the behavior of its actors.     

On Female Presences and Absences in Heavenly Places

James (Oceania 1991) criticizes some of my interpretive proposals on the political ideology of ancient Tonga, claiming that my emphasis on predominantly male relationships in the titular system reduces ‘Polynesian truths’ to ‘Freudian dogma‘. James sees Tonga as a ‘markedly bilateral’ rather than ‘patrilineal’ society, manifesting symptoms of Malinowski's ‘matrilineal complex’, particularly an incestuous fixation on the sister rather than the mother, correlated with the importance of the brother/sister relationship in social structure, and the alleged transmission of rank through females only. James attempts to find evidence for her claims in the origin myth of the titular system. I show that — contrary to her interpretation — no brother/sister incest can be found in this myth, where, moreover, the female presence is subdued and desexualized. My rejoinder raises issues of general anthropological interest in the realms of symbolism, gender, the analysis of political myth, and of the interrelationship of psychological and cultural processes.