After anarchy Hurd, Ian
2007., 2008, 2007, 2007-01-01, 20070101
eBook
The politics of legitimacy is central to international relations. When states perceive an international organization as legitimate, they defer to it, associate themselves with it, and invoke its ...symbols. Examining the United Nations Security Council, Ian Hurd demonstrates how legitimacy is created, used, and contested in international relations. The Council’s authority depends on its legitimacy, and therefore its legitimation and delegitimation are of the highest importance to states. Through an examination of the politics of the Security Council, including the Iraq invasion and the negotiating history of the United Nations Charter, Hurd shows that when states use the Council’s legitimacy for their own purposes, they reaffirm its stature and find themselves contributing to its authority. Case studies of the Libyan sanctions, peacekeeping efforts, and the symbolic politics of the Council demonstrate how the legitimacy of the Council shapes world politics and how legitimated authority can be transferred from states to international organizations. With authority shared between states and other institutions, the interstate system is not a realm of anarchy. Sovereignty is distributed among institutions that have power because they are perceived as legitimate.
Rethinking the Senate Baker, Lynn A
Harvard journal of law and public policy,
01/2021, Letnik:
44, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
There are two particular harms today that derive from the fact that the existing allocation of representation in the Senate provides small population states what we all understand to be ...disproportionate power relative to their populations. The first is that the Senate systematically and unjustifiably redistributes wealth from large population states to small population states. Secondly, the Senate, systematically and unjustifiably, affords large population states disproportionately little power, relative to their shares of the nation's population, to block federal homogenizing legislation. The Senate will help provide the blocking power, but the problem is the allocation of that power: the large population states will be at a disadvantage relative to the small population states in protecting their own minority viewpoints in this way. Here, Baker go into some detail now about each of these aspects of the Senate.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
CEKLJ, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, PRFLJ, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Proposes a fresh approach to analysing the violence of Indigenous incarceration using the theory of necropolitics : the use of social and political power to dictate how some people may live and how ...some must die. Demonstrates how an analytical framework based on necropolitics has the potential to elevate the often silenced voices of vulnerable populations, such as Indigenous Australians, within the criminal justice system. Source: National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, licensed by the Department of Internal Affairs for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
This article explores whether recent institutional reforms within Africa have modified the traditional criterion of effective control as the decisive requirement for recognition of de jure ...governments in the region. It examines in particular whether measures adopted by the African Union (AU) for outlawing unconstitutional changes of government have elevated democratic legitimacy to an (additional) criterion for governmental recognition. The article illustrates that on the whole, the practice of the AU has been neither consistent in the condemnation of coup regimes nor keen to support popular movements that oppose authoritarian rule, or scrutinize the democratic pedigree of governments for the purposes of (continued) recognition. In essence, the AU’s institutional commitments to oppose unconstitutional changes of government amount to guiding principles, rather than binding obligations. While at times decisive, democratic legitimacy has not yet replaced effective control as the point of departure for governmental recognition.
Constitutional designers establishing a new judicial review mechanism can fail to make that mechanism a relevant instrument for checking the power of incumbent legislators or presidents. Judges may ...refuse to exercise their newly established powers, politicians may refuse to obey their rulings, or the judiciary may be packed, among other possible reasons. The causes can be attributed to the existence of a dominant party system, the lack of political competition, problems of institutional design, or judicial culture. This article contributes to the understanding of this problem by exploring the failed constitutional mechanism that Chilean constitutional designers established in 1925. The 1925 Chilean 'Constitution' established the power of judicial review of legislation for the first time in Chile's history, but the Supreme Court generally avoided to be involved in political battles. Chile had a competitive political system with frequent and regular rotation in power. The literature claims that, under these conditions, we should expect judges to be more independent and empowered, but this is not what happened in the Chilean case. Scholars studying this period of Chilean constitutional history generally associate the passivity of the Supreme Court with a legalistic culture promoting an apolitical and formalistic judicial behavior. This article claims that the narrative of judicial apoliticism served to justify, and perhaps to persuade, the Supreme Court's choice not to intervene in politics, but more attention needs to be given to the institutional weaknesses of the judiciary of that time and to the possible strategic judicial choice.
Mass mobilization is among the most dramatic and inspiring forces for political change. When ordinary citizens take to the streets in large numbers, they can undermine and even topple undemocratic ...governments, as the recent wave of peaceful uprisings in several postcommunist states has shown. However, investigation into how protests are organized can sometimes reveal that the origins and purpose of "people power" are not as they appear on the surface. In particular, protest can be used as an instrument of elite actors to advance their own interests rather than those of the masses.
Weapons of the Wealthyfocuses on the region of post-Soviet Central Asia to investigate the causes of elite-led protest. In nondemocratic states, economic and political opportunities can give rise to elites who are independent of the regime, yet vulnerable to expropriation and harassment from above. In conditions of political uncertainty, elites have an incentive to cultivate support in local communities, which elites can then wield as a "weapon" against a predatory regime. Scott Radnitz builds on his in-depth fieldwork and analysis of the spatial distribution of protests to demonstrate how Kyrgyzstan's post-independence development laid the groundwork for elite-led mobilization, whereas Uzbekistan's did not.
Elites often have the wherewithal and the motivation to trigger protests, as is borne out by Radnitz's more than one hundred interviews with those who participated in, observed, or avoided protests. Even Kyrgyzstan's 2005 "Tulip Revolution," which brought about the first peaceful change of power in Central Asia since independence, should be understood as a strategic action of elites rather than as an expression of the popular will. This interpretation helps account for the undemocratic nature of the successor government and the 2010 uprising that toppled it. It also serves as a warning for scholars to look critically at bottom-up political change.
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