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Democracy

Illiberal Democracy Belongs to the Hybrid Regimes

Reflections on Jeffrey C. Isaac’s Illiberal Democracy

August 2, 2017 • by András Bozóki

Since the end of the “transition paradigm”[i] which displayed an optimistic belief in political progress, analysts had to accept that the development from dictatorship to democracy could be halted or reversed. General expectations notwithstanding, the democratic upheaval of 1989-1991 did not end in turning all dictatorships into liberal democracies. Not ...

Democracy

Aristotelian Reflections on President Trump’s Unauthorized Missile Strikes in Syria

The opposite of cowardice is rashness, and courage the mean between

April 8, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

Earlier in the same work, while concluding his general discussion of virtue and vice, Aristotle refers to the famous story of Odysseus facing the original “rock and a hard place” dilemma. Odysseus knows that he has no choice but to pass through the middle of the whirlpool and a ferocious ...

Aristotelian Reflections on President Trump’s Unauthorized Missile Strikes in Syria

Democracy

What is Political Resistance?

An exploration of the word and its political connotations

February 16, 2017 • by William E. Scheuerman

Resistance now serves as a useful catch-all phrase for a diverse collection of individuals and groups outraged by our reactionary president and his allies in Congress. The term’s popularity rests on the sound shared intuition that the only way to stop Trump’s relentless Twitter-powered presidency is by no less relentless ...

Europe & Central Asia

The Tragedy of the 2015 Turkish Elections

Examining the AKP victory

November 10, 2015 • by Ertug Tombus

The November 2015 election brought a landslide victory to the Justice and Development Party (AKP), increasing its vote almost nine points in 5 months. This surprising comeback would be hard to explain in an ordinary situation where such drastic shifts in voting in a short time period would not be ...

The Tragedy of the 2015 Turkish Elections

Europe & Central Asia

On the Ankara Massacre

October 11, 2015 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

While I empathize with this mood, I have been frustrated by the reports I have read about the massacre in my usual news sources, as have many of my associates who are from Turkey (Zeyno included) or follow events there carefully. A former student, Solen Sanli made things clear on ...

Europe & Central Asia

Reflections on the Recent Elections in Turkey

The disintegration of majoritarianism through elections and social protest

June 15, 2015 • by Kumru Toktamis

During the summer of 2010, as I was strolling in Lower Manhattan with my 75-year-old mother, we came upon Professor Andrew Arato at a café. At the time, he was gaining quite a bit of notoriety in my home country of Turkey with his substantive and significant support to the ...

Europe & Central Asia

We Say No to the “Sacred Union”

January 22, 2015 • by Public Voices

In the aftermath of the killings at Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher, critical voices have largely been drowned in the general sea of undifferentiated outrage. But this statement by French colleagues, which recently appeared in Le Monde, is a major intervention and a welcome exception.

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Europe & Central Asia

Is Solidarity Without Identity Possible?

On the Charlie Hebdo attack

January 10, 2015 • by Cinzia Arruzza

The time I saw Charb in Paris was January 24, 2010, the day of the crowded commemoration of the French philosopher and activist Daniel Bensaïd at La Mutualité. During the speeches, Charb kept drawing and projecting vignettes about his comrade Daniel, whose book, Marx: Mode ...

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Europe & Central Asia

The Overlooked Besieged Alternative in the Middle East

The Rojava Cantons

October 13, 2014 • by Hakan Topal

In my previous article I wrote about how both soft and hard Islamists render a very dark future for the Middle East. I finished my article by stating that the Kurdish Movement may provide a salient alternative for the whole region. However, this alternative is currently under attack by ...
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Europe & Central Asia

Adding Injustice to Injury

One year on from the Gezi Park protests in Turkey

June 20, 2014 • by Public Voices

Our colleague, Zeyno Ustun, is back in Istanbul this month. We corresponded about the situation there on the occasion of the anniversary of the Gezi protests. She reports political paralysis with maximum police presence and sent a report from Amnesty International that she judges to summarize the situation ...
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Democracy

Reflections on a Revolutionary Imaginary and Round Tables

The new always appears in the guise of a miracle

April 11, 2014 • by Elzbieta Matynia

This is the prepared text answering the question "What do we really know about transitions to democracy?" for the General Seminar of The New School for Social Research, March 19, 2014.

It was a quarter of a century ago, in 1989, that a new kind of revolutionary imaginary emerged, one that ...
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Europe & Central Asia

Gezi Resistance: Re-claiming Democracy

October 30, 2013 • by Ertug Tombus

A prominent political theorist, Judith Shklar, once said that the rule of law has become “a self-congratulatory rhetorical device” [1] used by the politicians, who try to legitimize whatever they do just by uttering the word “the rule of law.” I think we can say the same thing for democracy ...
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