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Political Argument (political + argument)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Making Sense of Our Lives

POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 3 2007
Susan Mendus
Williams, B. (2005) In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument, ed. G. Hawthorn. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Williams, B. (2006) The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy, ed. M. Burnyeat. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Williams, B. (2006) Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, ed. A. W. Moore. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. [source]

Locke, Sincerity and the Rationality of Persecution

POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2003
Paul Bou-Habib
According to the most influential contemporary reading of John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), his main argument against religious persecution is unsuccessful. That argument holds that coercion is ineffective as a means of instilling religious beliefs in its victims. I propose a different reading of the Letter. Locke's main consideration against persecution is not the unsuccessful belief-based argument just outlined, but what I call the sincerity argument. He believes that religious coercion is irrational because it is ineffective as a means of inculcating the right intentions in people. Once this alternative argument is placed at its centre, the Letter is seen to be a more fertile source of political argument than is suggested by alternative readings. In particular, the sincerity argument gives us a powerful reason for rejecting state moral paternalism, the doctrine that the state may use coercion to make people morally virtuous. If moral virtue depends upon people having the right intentions, and if coercion is ineffective as a means of instilling the right intentions in people, then state moral paternalism is ineffective and hence irrational. [source]

Imagining Postnationalism: Arts, Citizenship Education, and Arab American Youth

ANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2009
Thea Renda Abu El-Haj
This article explores an Arab American community arts organization as a site for promoting youth civic participation and social activism. Studying a citizenship education project outside the school walls, and focusing on the arts as a medium for this work, foregrounds the role of the symbolic for engaging youth as active participants in democratic society. The article also examines the symbolic political argument for postnational citizenship that the young participants articulated through a film they produced.,[Arab American youth, citizenship education, arts, immigration] [source]

Presidential Attribution as an Agency of Prime Ministerial Critique in a Parliamentary Democracy: The Case of Tony Blair

BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 3 2004
Michael Foley
The allusion to presidentialism in relation to the status, role and meaning of a prime minister's position is almost invariably skewed towards positive, purposive and expansive interpretations of strong executive authority. This study examines the negative and critical dimensions of the presidential attribution, and analyses the nature of its appeal as a device for organising and rationalising political dissent. The incidence and conditions of its usage in political argument during Tony Blair's premiership are reviewed. As a consequence, seven strands of usage are identified in the selection of presidentialism as a focus of opposition. In assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of the presidential critique, the analysis not only shows its utility in drawing upon other sources of complaint, but also demonstrates its limitations in the delegitimation of executive authority. [source]

The State of Christendom: history, political thought and the Essex circle*

HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 213 2008
Alexandra Gajda
The State of Christendom, published in 1657, is a forgotten Elizabethan treatise, and a significant but neglected work of late Elizabethan scholarship and political thought. It is argued that the treatise was authored by members of the circle of Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex in the mid fifteen-nineties, and that it reflects the political and scholarly concerns of Essex and his followers, especially Anthony Bacon, and their engagement with Catholic politics and polemic. The scholarly methodology of the author and the political arguments of the treatise are analysed, in particular the author's interest in tyranny and the remedies for the restraint of tyrants, which shed light on the contexts that shaped the discussion of political ideas in late Elizabethan England and the mental world of the Essex circle. [source]