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Political Terms (political + term)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences75%

Selected Abstracts

Into Cerberus' Lair: Bringing the Idea of Security to Light1

BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 4 2005
Graham M. Smith
Using the motif of Cerberus, the three-headed monster watchdog of Hades, this article attempts to bring ,security' to light. Specifically, it addresses two related questions. The primary question is: What does ,security' mean?. Here it is argued that ,security' is related to ,order' and is a reflection not of a positive value in and of itself, but the relative success of any given order to realise its core values in relation to other orders. Therefore, ,security' is found to be like Cerberus insofar as it exists not as an independent value or being, but only in relation between two orders. Having located ,security' within this conceptual framework, the article then addresses its second question: What are the effects of security?. The motif of Cerberus suggests that security ,bites' in three ways: first, that specific measures of security control the members of an order; second, that the identification of security threats reinforce certain persons and structures of the order as being the definers of the order; and finally, that the implementation of certain security measures can change and transform the order itself. In this way the analysis offered here brings ,security' to light not only as an inherently political term connected to political values, but to provide foundations for critiquing the rhetorical use of ,security' in contemporary political discourse and thought. [source]

Parliamentary sovereignty and the new constitutional order: legislative freedom, political reality and convention

LEGAL STUDIES, Issue 3 2002
Mark Elliott
Although the constitutional reform programme undertaken by the Blair administration is formally consistent with the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, it is clear that the human rights and devolution legislation, in particular, significantly alter the political and constitutional environment within which Parliament's legislative powers are exercised. This paper considers whether it is meaningfiul, within this new constitutional setting, to adhere to the traditional notion of sovereignty. It is argued that the disparity between a Parliament whose powers are formally unlimited yet increasingly constrained, in political terms, by norms based on fundamental rights and devolved governance may be accommodated, in the short term, by means of constitutional conventions which trace the constitutionally acceptable limits of legislative action by Parliament. However, following examination of the nature of convention and its relationship with law and constitutional principle, it is argued that the possibility arises, in the long term, that conventional limits upon legislative freedom may ultimately evolve into legal limiis, thus ensuring that the fundamental values embraced by the legal order are acknowledged not merely in pragmatic or conventional terms, but as a matter of constitutional law. [source]

Effective Opportunity and Democratic Deliberation

POLITICS, Issue 2 2007
Michael Allen
This article develops a conception of effective opportunities of minority speakers that is tied to the possibilities of conceptual innovation in informally inclusive democratic deliberation. My argument proceeds through a critical engagement with Brian Barry and Bikhu Parekh on what it means to have an equal opportunity in a multicultural society. I claim that the exchange between Barry and Parekh reaches a conceptual deadlock over the possibility of producing a substantive revision in the concept of equality. I break this conceptual deadlock, however, by appeal to the potential of diverse speakers in informal deliberation to reinvent the meanings of their basic political terms of co-operation. [source]

Patterns and Prescriptions in Mexican Historiography

BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 3 2006
Alan Knight
This article offers a short resumé of recent Mexican historiography in the national (post-1810) period, noting three clusters of innovative research: post-independence politics; Porfirian economic history; and regional studies of the Mexican Revolution. It then addresses the recent call for historians of Mexico and Latin America to ,reclaim the political', analysing the implications of this kind of bold prescription which, it argues, is misguided in both historiographical and political terms. [source]