Authoritarianism

This article presents a longitudinal study during the Italian ‘short twentieth century’. Our focus is on the behaviour of the political field, the recruitment process of the ministerial elite and its impact on the stability of the political system. The main aim of the paper is to build a descriptive and explanatory model that sheds light on the fragility of the PS in Italy. There are two main findings: PF is formed through waves of new forces characterised by impermeable bonds. (...) The instability of the PS is largely due to a lack of inclusiveness in the PF. The National Solidarity governments showed that an inclusive PF which gathers loyal and disloyal forces even at a critical juncture phase is able to counterbalance the exogenous challenge. (shrink)

Explanations for the contemporary rise of fascistic attitudes and activism solely in terms of historical, political, and socioeconomic determinants, because they tend to assume the individual is a “rational actor,” are often limited in their capacity to account for the significance of individual enchantment with, and passion for, authoritarian movements. The article argues for the urgent need for greater understanding of the psychodynamic allure of fascist and authoritarian politics. In this context, Wilhelm Reich’s 1933 essay, “The Mass Psychology of Fascism,” (...) is reassessed. It is suggested that he presents a valid and profoundly significant thesis when he points to the connections among the attraction and ardor for fascism, societal oppression of sexuality, and the individual’s libidinal inhibitions, conflicts, and frustrations. But his essay needs substantial correction and modification in three respects: His ideas about “natural sexuality”; his assumptions about matriarchal bliss; and his pervasive heteronormativity or homophobia. The critique of these three aspects is primarily theoretical but also touches on Reich’s life history to the extent that it contextualizes his blind spots. Finally, it is suggested that, in subsequent psychoanalytic writings on the dynamics of authoritarianism and the rise of fascism, far too little attention has been paid to the libidinal underpinnings of these phenomena, to which Reich’s thesis should draw our attention. (shrink)

Q&A format, with Siegel answering questions posed by the magazine writer Colleen Walsh. The discussion features Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Rilke, Cotard's syndrome, and authoritarianism.

Efficiency requires legislative political institutions. There are many ways efficiency can be promoted, and so an ongoing legislative institution is necessary to resolve this choice in a politically sustainable and economically flexible way. This poses serious problems for classical liberal proposals to constitutionally protect markets from government intervention, as seen in the work of Ilya Somin, Guido Pincione & Fernando Tesón and others. The argument for the political nature of efficiency is set out in terms of both Pareto optimality and (...) aggregate welfare maximisation, and similar arguments can be generalised to other social values. (shrink)

We live in very Foucauldian times, as the many think-pieces published on biopolitics and COVID-19 show. Yet what is remarkable—biopolitically—about the current situation has gone largely unnoticed: We are witnessing a new form of biopolitics today that could be termed populist biopolitics. Awareness of this populist biopolitics helps illuminate what is needed today: democratic biopolitics.

Op-ed on the role of schadenfreude in political propaganda. Co-authored with Kelsey Ichikawa.

Op-ed arguing that the reliance of the population on epidemiological expertise may weaken authoritarianism.

Op-ed on the reaction to the outbreak of covid-19 in the Trump White House.

The article explores the distinction between authority and authoritarianism from the perspective of the concept of sovereignty.

This contribution aims at discussing constitutional democracy in the age of populisms, by explaining how populist movements oppose liberal-democratic constitutionalism and by presenting the thesis of a so-called ‘populist constitutionalism’, as proposed by Mark Tushnet. In the first section, a general and analytic exploration of populist phenomena will be drawn, by focusing on the so-called thesis of a ‘populist’ constitutionalism. In the second part, Tushnet’s arguments for a populist constitutionalism will be presented, through the analysis of his two main contributions: (...) Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts, in which Tushnet develops his critique of legal constitutionalism and judicial review as an undemocratic power by unelected justices, and Authoritarian Constitutionalism, a recent article in which Tushnet distinguishes between ‘authoritarian’ and ‘populist’ definitions of constitutionalism. In conclusion, such arguments will be discussed, by proposing a critical response to Tushnet’s position and presenting some risks of a majoritarian and populist constitutional democracy. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

The purpose of this article is to discuss Kant’s concept of juridical state as the foundation of the contemporary rule of law. Therefore, the article tries to answer two questions: (1) what character can be attributed to Kant’s concept of juridical state taking into account the obligations arising from it; (2) can the analysis of the Kantian juridical state have any impact on the contemporary understanding of the rule of law and if so, what can this impact be. In order (...) to accomplish this task, moral presuppositions of Kant’s juridical state are discussed, according to the commonly accepted view that Kant’s political philosophy is closely linked with his moral and ethical reflection. Then, two interpretations of Kant’s juridical state – the liberal one and the authoritarian one – are analysed. The crucial difference between these interpretations lies in establishing the circumstances in which the duty of obedience to state power should be carried out. Then, Kantian juridical state is compared with two ways of understanding the rule of law – the material one and the formal one – in order to evaluate whether the rule of law should be considered as continuity of or rupture with the Kantian concept. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the change of the meaning of “self-government” after it was introduced from Western world into East Asia in late 19th and early 20th century. By surveying the process of translation and dissemination of the concept “self-government” as well as the institutionalization of local self-government in Japan and China, the author points out that in Meiji Japan, the meaning of the word “self-government” underwent significant changes from “freedom” which means anti-authoritarianism that was transmitted in the English word (...) “local-government” to sharing the responsibility of national administration as embodied in the German word “Selbstverwaltung” along with the establishment of Prussian modeled local self-government system. In late-Qing China, on the other hand, the term “local-government” was accepted as “self-reliance” as a way to achieve national prosperity and independence by enhancing individuals’ capacity, or “provincial autonomy” as a step to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. Qing government enacted a set of “self-government” laws with reference to Japan’s system, but it turned out to be the same as its traditional counterpart enforced by local elites to offer public services under the profound influence of the Confucian tradition of xiangguan in ancient China instead of incorporating the local elites into the state administrative system. (shrink)

Статтю присвячено чинному президенту Сполучених Штатів Америки Дональду Трампу. Здійснено спробу показати елементи тоталітарного дискурсу у його публічній політичній діяльності і проаналізувати правомірність прямих порівнянь із вождями тоталітарних режимів XX ст., зокрема з Гітлером. Показано тло політичної та культурної історії Америки, на якому стала можливою перемога Дональда Трампа, відзначено ключові моменти, найбільш важливі для розуміння поточної ситуації. Приділено увагу основній виборчій базі та соціальним медіа, а також запропоновано перспективу для боротьби проти тоталітарних тенденцій.

Any social and political arrangement depends on acceptance. If a substantial part of a people does not accept the authority of its rulers, then those can only remain in power by means of force, and even that use of force needs to be accepted to be effective. Gramsci called this acceptance of the socio-political status quo “hegemony.” Every stable state relies primarily on hegemony as a source of control. Hegemony works through the dissemination of values and beliefs that create acceptance (...) and that serve the interests of the state and/or the ruling elite (the “hegemones”). Hegemony is most efficient if it remains invisible. A key hegemonic belief is the idea that there is no alternative to the current socio-political status quo or that the way things are is “natural.” The current hegemony – that is, the set of values and beliefs that bolster the current socio-political status quo – is a hegemony of psychopathy: it promotes “cultural psychopathy” and destroys empathy and compassion, thus threatening everything that makes us human. The hegemony of psychopathy is responsible for massive human suffering. It must be fought and replaced with a counter-hegemonic set of values and beliefs that promote compassion and care. Fighting hegemony requires fighting the “pillars” that support it. Most important among these are the mass media and culture industry, and mainstream economics. The former is responsible for a continuous stream of hegemonic propaganda; the latter – among others – for providing a pseudo-scientific justification for the false belief that there is no alternative. The book concludes with some considerations on tactics and strategy in the struggle against the hegemony of psychopathy, but does not – and cannot – offer any concrete advice. (shrink)

The practice of Emergency Management in Michigan raises anew the question of whose knowledge matters to whom and for what reasons, against the background of what projects, challenges, and systemic imperatives. In this paper, I offer a historical overview of state intervention laws across the United States, focusing specifically on Michigan’s Emergency Manager laws. I draw on recent analyses of these laws to develop an account of a phenomenon that I call epistemic redlining, which, I suggest, is a form of (...) group-based credibility discounting not readily countenanced by existing, ‘culprit-based’ accounts of epistemic injustice. I argue that epistemic redlining plays a crucial role in ongoing projects of racialized subordination and dispossession in Michigan, and that such discounting tends to have structural causes that can be difficult to identify and uproot. Contrary to the general thrust of recent work on the topic, I argue that epistemic redlining ought to be understood as a form of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

The Fifty-Year Rebellion invites us to consider Detroit’s recent history as both epitomizing and shaping national trends. But it’s not the kind of invitation we’ve all grown used to...

In the face of the Brexit vote and the election of Trump, there is serious worry about whether the liberal, democratic, and cosmopolitan values thought to underlie progressive immigration policies are in fact widely shared. In this article, I examine these worries and provide suggestions about how those who do favor just progressive immigration policies might best respond to the problems we currently face.

Recent developments in our globalized world are beginning the scholarly world to answer the question pertaining to the relationship between Islam—a “faith”—and politics and governance. In order to understand the Islamic worldview from the perspective of Ibn Khaldun, with whom many modern Islamists would agree with, a comparison is made with early progenitors of liberalism and the social contract, John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. By understanding the fundamental differences between the theorists, and how Ibn Khaldun’s is completely separate from the (...) western tradition, it becomes easier to understand exactly why Islamic models of governance are at direct odds with the west. The main difference between the two models of governance is the use of a fundamental criteria determining right from wrong, as opposed to Hobbes’ and Locke’s theories being based purely on assumption that the validity of their respective arguments is based upon the theory’s acceptance among the people. In other words, western political theorists lack the consistency and justification for their theories, at least from the Islamist point of view. (shrink)

As modern viewers, it is tempting to interpret Frank and Claire’s manipulations of democratic institutions as representing perversions or distortions of democratic ideals. After all, most of us think (or at least hope!) that real-world democracies we actually live in aren’t quite that badly governed. Whatever the moral faults of our leaders are, they don’t (as a rule) murder journalists, crudely provoke international crises for political gain, or cleverly set up their political adversaries with Bond-villain-like cunning. Real politicians, so the (...) story goes, lack the cleverness, the ruthlessness, and the luck of the Underwoods. While this sort of faith in the general validity of democratic ideals and institutions is now widely shared, the Underwoods’ clever “gaming” of the system can also be seen as providing an especially clear illustration of some of the things that might be inherently wrong with democracy. In this essay, I’ll take a look at how the Underwoods’ behavior might look to some of the most famous critics of democratic government, including Plato, Thomas Hobbes, and Karl Marx. According to these thinkers, the most significant flaws that Underwoods exploit to gain political power have little, if anything, to do with the peculiarity of their talents, the weaknesses of the individuals around them, or even the structures of the US political system. Instead, their success is made possible by certain fundamental features of democratic government, features that guarantee both the instability and eventual failure of any democratic government. On this reading, the fact of the Underwoods’ success presents a significant problem for all of us, since it changes the question from “How do real-world democratic politicians differ from the Underwoods?” to the much-more-difficult “What’s so great about democracy in the first place?”. (shrink)

There is a fault line running through classical liberalism as to whether or not democratic self-governance is a necessary part of a liberal social order. The democratic and non-democratic strains of classical liberalism are both present today—particularly in America. Many contemporary libertarians and neo-Austrian economists represent the non-democratic strain in their promotion of non-democratic sovereign city-states (startup cities or charter cities). We will take the late James M. Buchanan as a representative of the democratic strain of classical liberalism. Since the (...) fundamental norm of classical liberalism is consent, we must start with the intellectual history of the voluntary slavery contract, the coverture marriage contract, and the voluntary non-democratic constitution (or pactum subjectionis). Next we recover the theory of inalienable rights that descends from the Reformation doctrine of the inalienability of conscience through the Enlightenment (e.g., Spinoza and Hutcheson) in the abolitionist and democratic movements. Consent-based governments divide into those based on the subjects' alienation of power to a sovereign and those based on the citizens' delegation of power to representatives. Inalienable rights theory rules out that alienation in favor of delegation, so the citizens remain the ultimate principals and the form of government is democratic. Thus the argument concludes in agreement with Buchanan that the classical liberal endorsement of sovereign individuals acting in the marketplace generalizes to the joint action of individuals as the principals in their own organizations. (shrink)

Ecologically-motivated authoritarianism flourished initially during the 1970s but largely disappeared after the decline of socialism in the late-1980s. Today, 'eco- authoritarianism ' is beginning to reassert itself, this time modelled not after the Soviet Union but modern-day China. The new eco-authoritarians denounce central planning but still suggest that governments should be granted powers that free them from subordination to citizens' rights or democratic procedures. I argue that current eco-authoritarian views do not present us with an attractive alternative to market liberal (...) democracy even if we take a highly pessimistic view of our shared prospects under the latter sort of regime. (shrink)

The very thought of deliberative politics in contemporary China may seem surprising. Indeed, there are questions over its veracity. Analyses of scholarship on deliberative democracy in China to date might be said to fall into two camps: one sees the emergence of deliberative democracy in China as a real prospect for democracy; the other dismisses it outright. This essay offers an alternative evaluation to these two camps. It proposes a theoretical reconstruction of deliberative culture that accounts for a proliferation of (...) contemporary deliberative practices in China and the CCP’s sponsorship of deliberative experiments and institutions. The theoretical reconstruction of contemporary deliberative practices bears traces of the Confucian moral code of deliberation and the institutionalization of deliberation throughout the history of the Chinese imperial states. The upshot in taking this theoretical approach is that we can confirm that the practice of deliberation in contemporary China is well and truly alive, but it does not readily map with Western theoretical models of deliberative democracy. This essay sets up a contrast between an authoritarian deliberation—the use of actual deliberative practices by the authoritarian state to improve governance and enhance its authority— and the “western” idealized version of democratic deliberation. It considers the limitations of the Chinese model of authoritarian deliberation and explains why and how it may constitute, at least partially, a defensible normative account of the contributions of deliberation to political legitimacy, and in doing so hopes to illustrate some important historical lessons for Western deliberative democracy. (shrink)

This work, in English "Struggle for power, organic crisis and judicial independence", has its origin in research academics of the IAEN carried out to provide expert advise to the Inter American Court of Human Rights in the case Quintana and others (Supreme Court of Justice) vs the State of Ecuador. The research is about the nature of the evolution of the ecuadorian state, the dynamics of its institutions, its players, parties, laws, its factors of instability, the way rights have been (...) deployed since the return to democracy in 1979, those who have benefited from neoliberal democracy and those who have paid the costs, and where in all this was the Supreme Court of Justice. The Introduction takes a look at this origin of the work and its intellectual import, provides a brief characterization of the Inter American Sistem of Human Rights Protection, how the Quintana Case fits within it, and an overview of the chapters and their logic. The first chapter analyzes the institutional and sociological factors that have contributed to Ecuador's historically unstable state, based primarily in an antagonistic struggle for power between the Executive and Legislative branches. The second chapter analyzes the economic and political factors that provoked an organic crisis, or crisis of hegemony, between 1997 and 2007 in Ecuador. The third chapter analyzes the evolution of the way in which judges are selected in Europe, the outcomes they have generated, and how they compare with the ecuadorian systems of judge selection in terms of securing judicial independence. The fourth chapter develops a theory of judicial independence in democracy and analyzes how Ecuador measures up to that standard, from when it became a neoliberal minimal democracy in 1981, to when it became a neoliberal false democracy as a consequence of instalation of a system evidently lacking in the people's support under the guise of the 1998 Constitution and its system of judge selection, and the new democratic horizons set by the 2008 Constitution, and the judicial system that springs from it. (shrink)

This paper presents a theoretical sketch for how the existence of civic associations in authoritarian regimes might be analysed. By relating the concepts of ‘civil society’ and ‘recognition’, I explore how associations are a potential locus of mutual recognition in any society, democratic or undemocratic. While there are many theorizations of both civil society and recognition in relation to democratic political contexts, normative theories seeking to explain the existence of associations in authoritarian societies are less robustly developed. Recognition, more specifically (...) mutual recognition, is theorized not only as one key ‘good’ sought through the act of forming the associations of civil society, but also as a human need which will prompt the act of association within dangerous contexts. This analysis informs thinking behind acts of civil disobedience springing from civil society, as well as rationalizations for dissident activities undertaken by associations within authoritarian regimes. (shrink)

(2006). The Normative Justification of Traditional Chinese Authoritarianism. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 379-397.

Critical social theories look critically at the ways in which particular social arrangements hinder human flourishing, with a view to bringing about social change for the better. In this they are guided by the idea of a good society in which the identified social impediments to human flourishing would once and for all have been removed. The question of how these guiding ideas of the good life can be justified as valid across socio-cultural contexts and historical epochs is the most (...) fundamental difficulty facing critical social theories today. This problem of justification, which can be traced back to certain key shifts in the modern Western social imaginary, calls on contemporary theories to negotiate the tensions between the idea of context-transcendent validity and their own anti-authoritarian impulses. Habermas makes an important contribution towards resolving the problem, but takes a number of wrong turnings. (shrink)

The liberal constitution in South Africa, which entrenches a certain kind of socio-economic organisation, renders systems of socio-economic organisation traditional to Africa, dysfunctional. These traditional communitarian systems contain within themselves structures endorsing harmony, mutuality and reciprocity as ground rules or values which distribute significant resources (both material and moral) to all agents in accordance with their socially determined deserts. The absence of these structures in South Africa contributes to a condition, inflamed by liberal structures, of rights paralysis under which agents (...) are unable to translate rights into substantial benefits. In this article I examine this condition with reference to two traditional systems of socio-economic organization to exhibit their advantages as correctives to the paralysis of rights, and to compare them in order to establish which one is preferable. (shrink)

Objectives—The study was performed in order to investigate how end-of-life decisions are influenced by cultural and sociopolitical circumstances and to explore the compliance of doctors with patient wishesParticipants and measurement—Five hundred and thirty-five physicians were surveyed in Sweden , Germany , and in Russia by a questionnaire. The participants were recruited according to availability and are not representative. The questionnaire is based on the one developed by Molloy and co-workers in Canada which contains three case vignettes about an 82-year-old Alzheimer (...) patient with an acute life-threatening condition; the questionnaire includes different levels of information about his treatment wishes. We have added various questions about attitudes determining doctors' decision making process .Results—Swedish physicians chose fewer life-prolonging interventions as compared with the Russian and the German doctors. Swedish physicians would perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the event of a cardiac arrest less frequently, followed by the German doctors. More than half the Russian physicians decided to perform CPR irrespective of the available information about the patient's wishes. Level of dementia emerged as the most powerful determining attitude-variable for the decision making in all three countries.Conclusions—The lack of compliance with patient wishes among a substantial number of doctors points to the necessity of emphasising ethical aspects both in medical education and clinical practice. The inconsistency in the treatment decisions of doctors from different countries calls for social consensus in this matter. (shrink)

Feminism is an antiauthoritarian movement that has sought to unmask many traditional “authorities” as ungrounded. Given this, it might seem as if feminists are required to abandon the concept of authority altogether. But, we argue, the exercise of authority enables us to coordinate our efforts to achieve larger social goods and, hence, should be preserved. Instead, what is needed and what we provide for here is a way to distinguish legitimate authority from objectionable authoritarianism.