Political institutions,punctuated equilibrium theory,and policy disasters

This paper develops a theory of the relationship between policy disasters and political institutions. Policy disasters, defined as avoidable, unintended extreme negative policy outcomes, are important political, and historical events above that receive relatively little attention from political scientists and scholars of public policy. Using the predictions of punctuated equilibrium theory, I argue that systems with higher error accumulation will experience more policy disasters. Systems with more veto players and weaker information flows will experience more policy disasters, but information flows will have a stronger impact than veto players. I test this theory using data on financial crises and natural and technological disasters across 70 countries over 60 years. I find strong evidence that systems with weaker information flows and more veto players tend to have greater policy disaster risk.     

Representative democracy and the ‘spirit of resistance’ from Constant to Tocqueville

ABSTRACT

The role of resistance in the politics of modern representative democracies is historically contested, and remains far from clear. This article seeks to explore historical thinking on this subject through a discussion of what Benjamin Constant and Alexis de Tocqueville had to say about resistance and its relationship to ‘representative government’ and democracy. Neither thinker is usually seen as a significant contributor to ‘resistance theory’ as this category is conventionally understood. But, in addition to their more familiar preoccupations with securing limitations on the exercise of political authority and averting majority tyranny, both thinkers wrote extensively on the nature and meanings of resistance in ‘representative governments’ or democratic societies. Both thinkers are examined in the context of revolutionary and Napoleonic discussions about the legitimacy of resistance or ‘right to resist’ oppression, and against eighteenth-century discussions of the ‘spirit of resistance’ since Montesquieu. The article notes conceptual distinctions between resistance, revolution and insurrection in the period, and addresses the broader question of the extent to which early nineteenth-century French liberals sought to ‘institutionalise’ principles of resistance within modern constitutional frameworks.     

Intimations of democratic impatience: The Book of Job

This article challenges democratic theorists’ disregard for democratic impatience by showing that the Book of Job not only defends impatience but that it intimates the merits of democratic impatience. Job is impatient along four dimensions that should speak to democratic theorists: he refuses to suffer, identifies his suffering as unjust, seeks to hold arbitrary power accountable, and recognizes patience’s irrationality in the face of injustice. Critically, I demonstrate that Job remains impatient in his mind, and thus does not abandon impatience – not even in an epilogue designed to stifle his impatient voice. While Job’s impatience is justified, it is not yet democratic, for it reneges on broader democratic claims, is not shared, and is undermined by his social privilege. I thus turn to Job’s wife – who is “Everywoman” both in a feminist and more generally democratic sense – to more fully develop a concept of democratic impatience.     

Rethinking the Politics–Religion Distinction

William T. Cavanaugh argues that the politics–religion distinction presupposes covert commitments that inappropriately support a “migration of the holy” from the church to the state. Despite his strong critical instincts, several of his genealogical propensities appear to stand in tension with his commitments to constitutional democracy and the universality of grace. By contrast with Cavanaugh, John Rawls’ post-metaphysical reformulation of the politics–religion aims to identify a public criterion compatible with a plurality of comprehensive doctrines. Although I commend Rawls for retaining some form of this distinction, I question the possibility of a post-metaphysical standpoint and its compatibility with his commitment to what he calls the “fact of pluralism.” Drawing on Bernard Lonergan’s transpositions of human nature and grace in this paper’s final section, I develop an alternative account of the relationship between politics and religion that aims to harmonize some of the strongest insights from the work of Cavanaugh and Rawls.     

The autonomous world reversed: comparing liberal policy and autonomy in the performing arts

Comparative studies of cultural policy commonly emphasize the way in which states treat the autonomy of the arts. Such studies often claim that liberal states promote autonomy, while social democratic states promote more external, instrumental values, such as solidarity, universalism and equality. This article challenges this conception by claiming that in actual cultural policy-making it is in fact the other way around. Based on a comparative study of theater policy in England, Norway and the Netherlands, I find that the focus on artistic autonomy is surprisingly absent in the liberal state of England, compared to what it is in the social democratic state of Norway. Conversely, English theaters are more obliged to work for, and with, the citizens and the community than theaters in Norway are. In the Netherlands, where recent development in general policy has headed in a liberal direction, artistic autonomy actually appears to be increasingly challenged.     

Australian bicameralism as semi-parliamentarism: patterns of majority formation in 29 democracies

The article analyses the type of bicameralism we find in Australia as a distinct executive-legislative system – a hybrid between parliamentary and presidential government – which we call ‘semi-parliamentary government’. We argue that this hybrid presents an important and underappreciated alternative to pure parliamentary government as well as presidential forms of the power-separation, and that it can achieve a certain balance between competing models or visions of democracy. We specify theoretically how the semi-parliamentary separation of powers contributes to the balancing of democratic visions and propose a conceptual framework for comparing democratic visions. We use this framework to locate the Australian Commonwealth, all Australian states and 22 advanced democratic nation-states on a two-dimensional empirical map of democratic patterns for the period from 1995 to 2015.     

Limiting democracy and framing the economy: Hayek,Schmitt and ordoliberalism

This article shows how Hayek’s understanding of ‘unlimited democracy’ was influenced by the work of Carl Schmitt. It goes on to make the case that ordoliberal ideas informed his suggestions for limiting democracy, made in response to Schmitt’s work. A number of authors have drawn attention to the influence of Schmitt on Hayek’s thought. Similarly, the ordoliberal relationship has been explored. However, these two influences must be read alongside each other in order to arrive at a full understanding of Hayek’s deep ambivalence towards democracy and how that developed from the 1930s through to the 1970s. Finally, the article makes the case that the decisive influence on Hayek’s later authoritarian turn was not the work of Schmitt, as certain authors have argued, but ordoliberal interpretations of dictatorship. It also argues that Hayek’s model constitution is informed by fundamental ordoliberal concerns.     

Politics and social violence in developing democracies: Theory and evidence from Brazil

How do the political institutional features of developing democracies influence how violence occurs? Building on research showing that ‘hybrid democracies’ are more prone to social violence, this article argues that elite competition for power in the context of limited institutional oversight plays an important role in explaining violence. The framework here presents possible mechanisms linking subnational political dynamics and rates of social violence in poorly institutionalised contexts. It highlights how political competition, concentrated political power, and constraints on cooperation can create opportunity structures where violence is incentivised and the rule of law is undermined. This is examined empirically using sub-national homicide data from over 5000 Brazilian municipalities between 1997 and 2010. Findings suggest violence is greater in contexts that are highly competitive – where political actors face credible challenges and have a more tenuous grip on power – and those where power is highly concentrated – where political actors have held power for longer periods or face limited credible challenges. Findings also suggest violence varies depending on whether interactions between state and municipal government are likely to be constrained or cooperative; and are consistent with literatures emphasising the importance of structural explanations of social violence. In light of on-going democratic transitions across the globe, the article highlights the value of understanding links between institutional context, contentious politics and social violence.     

Reregulating for Freshwater Enclosure: A State of Exception in Canterbury,Aotearoa New Zealand

In this paper, we argue that democracy is increasingly indistinguishable from authoritarianism, in a process that is entangled with neoliberalisms. To build this argument, we examine a case study of central government intervention in regional environmental decision making in Aotearoa New Zealand through the lens of Agamben's “state of exception”. The intervention—unprecedented and unconstitutional—squeezed democratic spaces for decision making about freshwater and sought to smooth the way for capital accumulation. The audacity of government actions indicate, we argue, an abandonment of efforts to disguise neoliberal encroachments on democracy, known as the double truth tactic. Yet we also argue that in identifying this as a state of exception, we can examine it as part of a process and therefore demonstrate the possibilities for counter‐hegemonic actions to emerge.     

Colonies and Colonisation in Bulwer Lytton’s The Caxtons,A Strange Story and The Coming Race

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, an eminently popular novelist, published The Caxtons in 1849. Though sub-titled A Family Picture and mainly concerned with domestic life, it included a lengthy disquisition on colonisation and emigration, its value to British society and its role in extending civilisation by spreading ‘God’s law, improvement’. His colonial example was ‘Australia’. A Radical MP in the 1830s, but opposed to the encroachment of ‘democracy’ and supportive of the Corn Laws, in the early 1850s Lytton turned to the Conservative Party. In 1858–59 he served as secretary of state for the colonies. In the light of his experience, his view of Australia and of self-governing colonies was modified, as A Strange Story (1862) shows. But in 1871, in The Coming Race, an elaborate satire on democracy and egalitarianism, he made a distinct addition to the colonial theme of The Caxtons. He did not doubt that ‘improvement’ and colonisation produced evidence of ‘the triumph of civilization’, but a metaphor embedded in the later novel indicated the inevitability of displacement of aboriginal inhabitants by Anglo-Saxon settlers.