Governmental Power (governmental + power)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Colonial Governmentality and the Public Sphere in India

JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2002
U Kalpagam
Colonial governmentality in India reconstituted the public sphere. New political rationalities that constituted modern governmental power and the liberal technologies of government effected a new conception of economy and society. Governmentality's governance of colonial conduct in an improving direction socialized native public opinion to question the legitimacy of the colonial covenant. As native opinion against colonial rule sharpened, colonial liberalism had often to make a volte-face of its liberal principle and was forced to suppress public opinion. Gandhi alone sought to overturn colonial governmentality and in doing so, provided a conception of public opinion that could transcend the limits of liberal reason. [source]


Toward a Psychosocial Theory of Military and Economic Violence in the Era of Globalization

JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES, Issue 1 2006
Marc Pilisuk
A theory of the roots of violent conflict in the global era focuses upon a pattern of intervention by the United States, its allies, and proxy forces. It emphasizes a dominant set of beliefs and powerful networks in a position to apply them. The networks protect and extend their concentrations of wealth using violence or the threat of violence to produce compliant governments, to identify enemies, to mobilize consent, and to minimize the perceived costs of such activity. U.S. government agencies and large global corporations are central to this effort. Illustrations are provided by descriptions of military actions in Venezuela, East Timor, and Iraq. Implications for research include the value of using network analysis to identify centers of combined corporate and governmental power and the value of combining the study of belief systems with studies identifying such centers of power. [source]


Making New Zealanders through commemoration: Assembling Anzac Day in Auckland, 1916,1939

NEW ZEALAND GEOGRAPHER, Issue 1 2006
Matthew Henry
Abstract:, Anzac Day in New Zealand has been traditionally framed within a nationalist discourse, in which the events of the day have provided the medium for the remembrance of a singular national event. Moving beyond this interpretative tradition the paper examines Anzac Day as a moment in the exercise of an ongoing governmental power concerned with issues of contemporary conduct. Focusing on interwar Auckland the paper traces the assemblage of time, space and rhetoric, which enabled the production of a commemorative, governmental landscape. [source]


Secret Law and the Value of Publicity*

RATIO JURIS, Issue 2 2009
CHRISTOPHER KUTZ
The dangers of secret law from the perspective of democratic accountability are clear, and need no elaboration. But distaste for secret law goes beyond questions of democracy. Since Plato, and continuing through such non-democratic thinkers as Bodin and Hobbes, secret law has been seen as a mark of tyranny, inconsistent with the notion of law itself. This raises both theoretical and practical questions. The theoretical questions involve the consistency of secret law with positivist legal theory. In principle, while a legal system as a whole could not be secret, publicity need not be part of the validity criteria for particular laws. The practical questions arise from the fact that secret laws, and secret governmental operations, are a common and often well-accepted aspect of governmental power. This paper argues that the flaw of secret law goes beyond accountability and beyond efficiency to the role that law plays, and can only play, in situating subjects' understanding of themselves in relation to the state. Secret law, as such, is inconsistent with this fundamental claim of the law to orient us in moral and political space, and undermines the claim to legitimacy of the state's rulers. [source]