Politics Archives - Page 94 of 109

Blue Monday

Courts, Kavanaugh, and Constitutional Hardball

October 8, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

On November 22, 1895 Eugene V. Debs stepped outside of the Woodstock Jail in Chicago, where he had been imprisoned for six months. Debs, the President of the American Railway Union, had been one of the leaders of the Pullman Strike of 1894, considered by many to be the first ...

Courts, Kavanaugh, and Constitutional Hardball

Democracy

The Legitimacy of the Supreme Court?

The system is working and that is the problem

October 8, 2018 • by Ajay Singh Chaudhary

We Americans are “constitutional fetishists” in the apt phrase of the lesser-known mid-20th century critical theorist of law and economy, Franz Neumann. We tend to think that a particular order of state institutions -- for example, our current incarnation of the separation-of-powers -- embodies the essence of democracy instead of looking ...

Democracy

Defending “Open” Democracy

What would an open democracy based on different forms of non-electoral yet democratic representation look like?

October 5, 2018 • by Hélène Landemore

Democracy is in trouble, or so we are told. In this essay I argue that the crisis of democracy as we know it -- which has come to be symbolized by Trump or Brexit -- is a sign of its vitality as a normative ideal. People the Western world over ...

The Right

A Minor National Disgrace

A New Low for David Brooks, Self-Important Windbag

October 5, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

David Brooks long ago appointed himself the moral scold and philosopher kinglet of American society. For years he has pontificated about the importance of “moderation” and “epistemic humility” and the dangers of “incivility.” Without any sense of irony or performative contradiction, this pseudo-philosophic prepster has lectured intellectuals, most of whom ...

Democracy

Let’s Keep Democracy

But let’s look for better alternatives

October 5, 2018 • by Jason Brennan

The BMW 3-series is wonderful, often the best in its class, but it nevertheless has significant flaws. BMW’s engineers acknowledge its shortcomings and continually attempt to improve it. Consumers love the car, but also recognize in a given year that competitors may be better, and often buy the competitors instead. ...

Democracy

Can the Global Anticorruption Movement Survive Populism?

Where could this increased demand for new non-corrupt ruling elites on the part of voters, who care primarily for their self-interest rather than abstract principles, take us?

October 4, 2018 • by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi

On April 6, 2018, the former South Korean president Park Geun-hye was sentenced to 24 years in prison for abuse of power and corruption. The same day, South Africa's former President Jacob Zuma was charged with corruption, racketeering, fraud and money laundering linked to a 1990s arms deal, after he ...

Democracy

Why Do Authoritarian Leaders Appeal Today?

The age of the strongman

October 4, 2018 • by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Ours is the age of the strongman. In Hungary, Russia, and many other places, authoritarian leaders attempt, with varying degrees of success, to undermine the rule of law, purge state bureaucracies of non-loyalists, make public office a vehicle for private profit, use propaganda to spread their versions of reality, and ...

Blue Monday

Beyond the Three Faces of Power?

What we can learn from the recent Kavanaugh hearings

October 1, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Politics is about power. And power is everywhere. To locate it is to locate the social agents who have the ability to shape our lives and the processes by which they can do so. Social and political theorists have debated about the concept of power, and the sources and locations ...

Feature

Brett Kavanaugh Unhinged? Unlikely

Reflections on his testimony and on the need to resist his candidacy

September 29, 2018 • by Peter Dreier

Some reporters, bloggers, and pundits think that during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, Judge Brett Kavanaugh just “lost it” and became "unhinged." I disagree. I have no doubt that he was angry and emotional, but his belligerent and partisan comments were also very strategic and calculated. He was not out ...

Democracy

Censorship or Right Wing Infighting or Both?

Hungary in 2018

September 27, 2018 • by Ivan Szelenyi

The editor (Tamás Demeter, a distinguished and conservative philosopher) and his editorial group were fired. As far as I can tell the last time an issue of a journal was destroyed to prevent its circulation was in 1984. Do we see the return of the past; is this a case ...

Blue Monday

With Outrage and Injustice for All

Itinerary of a thought about the Kavanaugh controversy and the public significance of a fair hearing

September 24, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

“I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues.” -Duke Ellington As readers of this column know, I believe that Trumpism -- the Trump administration, the Republican Congress, and the Trumpist Republican party -- represents a profound threat to liberal democracy, human rights, social justice, and public decency. ...

Feature

I Believe Christine Blasey Ford

Republicans have no plausible argument about why Brett Kavanaugh is innocent

September 19, 2018 • by Claire Potter

What will come of the allegation by Christine Blasey Ford, a clinical psychologist and professor at Palo Alto University, that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when he was seventeen and she was fifteen? As of today, it is not clear that Ford will testify before the Senate ...