Razi on Reason and Political Authority: A Study in Medieval Persian Political Thought

The Philosopher of Rey, Mohammad-e Zakariya-ye Razi and his Ismaili adversaries, Abu Hatam-e Razi and Naser-e Khosrow, share a political understanding of religion according to which religion is a theologico-political system of domination. However, they are at odds over the political philosophy appraisal of religion qua a system of authority. The paper explicates the latter disagreement in part based on Razi's and his opponents' conflicting ideas about the nature of the faculty of Reason and its distribution among men. Consequently, the paper underlines a democratic implication of Razi's thesis on the makeup of the human intellect.     

Land reform in the 1950s in Italy and the United States: the thinking of Mario Einaudi

The article discusses the thinking of Mario Einaudi in relation to the ambitious measures with which the Italian government sought to move towards land reform in the immediate post–war period. Einaudi, an intellectual and academic, was by birth Italian but moved to the United States during the Fascist period. Like his father Luigi, the noted economist, he was convinced of the need to stimulate the free market in land in order to increase productivity and modernise cultivation methods; in his writings he repeatedly sought to develop a plan of action that would facilitate collaboration between Rome and Washington in this field, identifying the Tennessee Valley Authority approach as especially suited to the Italian case. However, while his ideas achieved a good public airing, they had a limited impact: on the political front, Cold War priorities pushed Italian and US Marshall Plan experts more towards the redistribution of landownership than towards stimulating the productivity of agricultural businesses, in the attempt to rapidly build a consensus behind the government; and on the cultural front, at the end of the 1950s the issue of backwardness in the rural South started to be interpreted in terms of cultural and social anthropology, an approach which did not directly relate to the development of political programmes.     

The Development Authority and the formative years of the Israeli land regime

The history of Israel’s land allocation regime is traced from its inception in the formative years (1948–60), focusing on distribution of urban land to private and business entities. Rich archival materials provide documentation regarding the Development Authority (DA), established in 1950, and its practices. The prohibition on selling “national lands,” zealously observed in Israel’s rural regions, was never closely adhered to in urban areas. The DA’s double role, as a major actor in land allocation as well as the institution representing the “rules of the game,” serves as a platform for a preliminary examination into institutional path dependency theories.     

Hobbes and Schmitt

Many commentators are unconvinced by Carl Schmitt's interpretation of Hobbes's political theory which, to their minds, remakes Hobbes in Schmitt's own authoritarian image. The argument advanced in this essay comprises three claims about Hobbes and Schmitt and the ways in which they are construed. The first claim is that certain commentators are bewitched by a picture of authority which biases their own claims about Hobbes, perhaps in ways that they may not fully appreciate. The second claim relates to Hobbes's individualism. On Schmitt's account, it was this individualism that opened the barely visible crack in the theoretical justification of the state through which it was worm-eaten by liberalism. This essay argues that Hobbes's individualism is not what Schmitt or his critics take it to be. The individualism that figures in Hobbes's discussions of covenant and conscience, pace Schmitt, is an illusion, albeit one that lies at the very heart of his conception of the state and animates his understanding of the relationship between protection and obedience that sustains it. The essay concludes with some remarks about the wider implications of the argument it advances.     

Sport tourism and peace: crossing the contested wall

Abstract

Peace through tourism focuses on the place of tourism in promoting peaceful relations in positive multidimensional terms. Sport events are associated to tourism in that such events provide tourists with the opportunity to engage in friendly competition and social proximity brings local sport people, teams and communities in contact with societies from around the world. The main study aim is to examine and analyze how, why, under what circumstances, and to what extent a cross border sport tourism event can contribute to the promotion of a message of peace between Israelis and Palestinians in the Holy Land. The case study examines the Bethlehem to Jerusalem Peace Run in which participants were Catholic Italian pilgrims, Israelis and Palestinians. The qualitative methodology includes several forms of mixed data collection: participant observation; content analysis of media documents, and in depth interviews based on a grounded theory approach. The in-depth interview questions to the organizers focused on understanding the challenges and implications of organizing the event, and the extent to which it was important and successful, in their estimation. Participants were asked about their feelings during the event and their estimation of its importance and success. In light of the study findings, a typological model was constructed of tourism-sport-peace relations against a background of conflicts and confrontations. The model illustrates that the elements are interrelated and encourage peace-promotion aspects in three dimensions: at the decision-making and governmental level in the organizational dimension; at the level of people’s feelings in the field in the social dimension; and in the positive media image that emerges in the media dimension, promoting positive coverage and a positive image. These insights and the proposed model should be considered for implementation in other areas of the world suffering from closed and hostile borders.     

‘Uproot and destroy,build and plant’: legatine authority under Pope Gregory VII

Confronted with the need for scholarly criteria in properly defining the ad hoc papal institution existent under Pope Gregory VII (1073–85), this paper seeks to clarify the title, office, and jurisdiction of the eleventh-century reforming legate. Discussing the Roman origins of this office through to the twelfth century – taking into account the political, ecclesiastical and legal constraints of the period – questions are raised concerning the extent and nature of legatine authority (especially as the reformers understood it). Contemporary criteria are unclear, but modern scholars can infer some regularities from Gregory VII's Register and other contemporary sources as to how this office operated in the last quarter of the eleventh century, and ultimately, to understand more clearly how reform was being implemented in the provinces.     

‘Uproot and destroy,build and plant’: legatine authority under Pope Gregory VII

Confronted with the need for scholarly criteria in properly defining the ad hoc papal institution existent under Pope Gregory VII (1073–85), this paper seeks to clarify the title, office, and jurisdiction of the eleventh-century reforming legate. Discussing the Roman origins of this office through to the twelfth century – taking into account the political, ecclesiastical and legal constraints of the period – questions are raised concerning the extent and nature of legatine authority (especially as the reformers understood it). Contemporary criteria are unclear, but modern scholars can infer some regularities from Gregory VII's Register and other contemporary sources as to how this office operated in the last quarter of the eleventh century, and ultimately, to understand more clearly how reform was being implemented in the provinces.     

Shaikhly Authority in the Pre‐oil Gulf: An Historical–Anthropological Study

This article provides a comprehensive synthesis of existing studies of rulership and political allegiance in the Arabian Gulf before oil. It examines the main factors affecting the shaikhs’ authority and the interconnectedness and interplay between them. It shows how these factors affected the rulers’ authority in a dialectical fashion: sometimes empowering it, sometimes constraining it, sometimes both simultaneously.     

Hobbes and Schmitt

Many commentators are unconvinced by Carl Schmitt's interpretation of Hobbes's political theory which, to their minds, remakes Hobbes in Schmitt's own authoritarian image. The argument advanced in this essay comprises three claims about Hobbes and Schmitt and the ways in which they are construed. The first claim is that certain commentators are bewitched by a picture of authority which biases their own claims about Hobbes, perhaps in ways that they may not fully appreciate. The second claim relates to Hobbes's individualism. On Schmitt's account, it was this individualism that opened the barely visible crack in the theoretical justification of the state through which it was worm-eaten by liberalism. This essay argues that Hobbes's individualism is not what Schmitt or his critics take it to be. The individualism that figures in Hobbes's discussions of covenant and conscience, pace Schmitt, is an illusion, albeit one that lies at the very heart of his conception of the state and animates his understanding of the relationship between protection and obedience that sustains it. The essay concludes with some remarks about the wider implications of the argument it advances.