This paper offers a politolinguistic analysis of four ‘state of the nation’ speeches delivered by the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán between 1999 and 2002. The analysis focuses on the ways in which Orbán’s self-representation, his discourse strategies and the tone of the speeches changed in response to changes in the ideological background over the four years in question. The findings demonstrate that Orbán’s voice was most active in the pre-election speech of 2002, that he (...) had become increasingly interpellative (in the Althusserian sense) over this period and that he increasingly tried to conversationalize the dominant ideology. (shrink)

Dear Readers,Welcome to this issue of our beloved Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics! In this sweltering heat we are all seeking for some cool and comfort. We bring this issue of BJB on different ethical practices and bring up related questions. Are we respecting the rights of every human being when we are either doing research or practicing health service provision? What are the minimum norms and standards to be maintained or are we circumventing those? The issue looks into different (...) issues and provides us with indepth information, queries, fears and reservations.In the article on Knowledge, attitude and practice of medical ethics among medical intern students in a Medical College in Kathmandu, Ramesh P Aacharyaand Yagya L Shakya, report on a Knowledge Attitude and Practice survey of 46 medical undergraduate interns of Maharajgunj Medical Campus. The result of the survey is quite interesting. ‘Doctors know the best irrespective of patients’ opinion was agreed upon by 35 %, ‘Confidentiality cannot be kept in modern era and should be abandoned’ was strongly disagreed by 34.8% and disagreed by 60.9%. The Authors hope that the findings will assist the faculties to strengthen the teaching of medical ethics and guiding the interns for ethical professional conduct. In the article titled Organizational Justice and Employee’s Service Behavior in the Healthcare Organizations in Bangladesh is an agenda for Research, Md. Nuruzzaman and Md. Humayun Kabir Talukder present a conceptual framework and a set of hypotheses regarding the relationships among distributive justice, procedural justice, interactional justice, employee’s citizenship behaviour, role prescribed behaviour and counterproductive behavior in the healthcare organizations in Bangladesh. The authors state that the purpose is to assist the policy makers and service providers in identifying desirable and undesirable HRM practices in order to maintain optimum level of employee commitment for ensuring quality and efficient service delivery to the communities. Though the article is theoretical it may be useful for the policy makers and service providers. If an operational research could be carried out to test the hypothesis the practical utility of the concept could be tested in Bangladesh.Zoheb Rafique in the article Ethical Justification of Conducting Research Trials in Lower and Middle Income Countries Including Pakistan: The Responsibilities of Research Enterprises explores the ethical aspects of research sponsored by commercial agencies. He looks into the factors that influence selection of a study site for a sponsored trial particularly in traditional countries like Pakistan where cultural values add to the problem in assuring that research is conducted in an ethical manner. In this paper, the Author discusses the responsibilities of researchers and funders in low and middle income countries like Pakistan and the ethical justifications of doing research trials in developing countries. He concludes that research participants should be fully informed about the research trial and their participation and it is their right to know all risks and benefits so that they have the option of rejecting participation.The article on Ethical aspects of Dhaka University Tele-medicine System by Ahmed Raihan Abir provides and analysis of the tele- medicine system in Dhaka University. The Author is a member of an extended group at Dhaka University (DU) which has been developing telemedicine equipment and data acquisition software to promote telemedicine practice in Bangladesh. Recently the Telemedicine group of DU and a local NGO named SAMAMA with support from Service innovation fund (SIF) of the Prime Minister Office (PMO) of Bangladesh took the initiative to establish eight rural telemedicine centers and one expert center for the field trial of telemedicine in Bangladesh. The aim of this paper is to examine the ethical challenges of such health care system and the effort to overcome these problems before starting the field trial. The author looks into the details of Data confidentiality and security, Responsibilities of Doctor and Rural Technician, Quality of service and Implications of telemedicine in Bangladesh. He concludes that DU telemedicine project will essentially bring the services of qualified medical experts to the doorsteps of the common people throughout the country, even in the remote rural areas. Although a telemedicine cannot match a face to face consultation, DU tele-medicine system is much better than no consultation at all.Sifat Rahman in the article on Ethical Issues of Fair Subject Selection in Research provides an overview of the criterion for maintaining ethical standards for conducting research. The Author reviews the three fundamental conditions to be met for adhering to strict ethical standards which are: Respect for Persons by protecting the autonomy of people, treating them with courtesy and respect and obtaining informed consent.; Beneficence which incorporates the philosophy of "Do no harm" while maximizing benefits for the research project and minimizing risks to the research subjects; and Justice by ensuring that reasonable, non-exploitative, and well-considered procedures are administered fairly. Finally the Author concludes that Researchers must be truthful and conduct no deception.Dear Readers, as you can see from the above ethics and maintaining the values in research and services are of utmost importance in the improvement of the quality of life. Through our queries, questions and sense of respect for every living being can our endeavors to ensure ethics in all spheres of development be successful.Dear Readers, please keep on sending your articles, notes or thoughts to us. Your participation will make a difference in the quality of our lives.Best regardsTahera AhmedEditor. (shrink)

On 30 March 2020, the Hungarian parliament approved emergency measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, granting prime minister Viktor Orbán the power to rule by decree. The very next day, the government repealed the legal recognition of transgenderism, ruling that assignations of biological sex are binary and permanent. The decision to place sexual difference under house arrest during a time of lockdown was not coincidental. As I argue in this short essay, Orbán’s move was itself (...) a kind of assignation, an act of discursive placing designed to eradicate transgenderism under the name of immunisation. -/- Drawing on Derrida’s motifs of the gift and the dance, I offer a topology of birthsex, the ontological category produced by Orbán’s law of immutable, dichotomous sexual dimorphism. I observe the movements of ipseity to show how Orbán’s placement of the birthsex legislation within his pandemic programme enabled him to define transgenderism as a dangerous and foreign illness that requires an immunising response. Finally, to consider the racial and colonial context of this assault on trans, intersex, and nonbinary lives, I turn to María Lugones and her work on the coloniality of gender, finding her choreography of resistance to be in step with Derrida’s. (shrink)

The phenomenon of «оrbanism» as a derivative of the perception of the politician and Prime-Minister of Hungary V.Orban is considered on the basis of the contradictions of the ontological aspects of the internal and external political background of his field of activity. It is noted that in Hungary «оrbanism» is perceived not as an artificially constructed slogan that highlights the activities of the country’s prime minister, but as a manifestation of healthy conservatism and the antithesis of (...) the values of liberal democracy, which are declared to be one of the pillars of building a united Europe. It is proved that in the person of the politician Orbán, «оrbanism» became a product of the national, cultural and historical retrospective of Hungary, which united a fairly significant part of society and Hungarian emigrants who, due to insurmountable circumstances, found themselves abroad. The article proposes to consider the phenomenon of «оrbanism» as a certain synthesis of five steps-strategies, which V.Orban successively implements in the country. They are as follows: step 1) adoption of the new Constitution of the country; step 2) the labor state instead of the market; step 3) regulation of emigration policy; step 4) compliance with the national energy policy; step 5) dialogue with the Hungarian diaspora and restraint in border conflicts. Collectively, these strategic steps are aimed at strengthening the national sovereignty of Hungary in the EU and weakening the «pressure» of the Eurobureaucracy. It is stated that for the national project «sovereign Hungary in the EU», which is aimed at the future, this means the presence of the Hegelian «basis» in the political prerogatives of the FIDES party, which gives this project an expected orbit and predictable result. Its main guidelines are the preservation of statehood within the EU, limiting the power of the Eurobureaucracy, productive cooperation with all partner countries, and distancing from conflicts that could harm the country’s national interests. (shrink)

Dear Editor, -/- One of the recent changes in the UK cabinet, after Liz Truss became the Prime Minister, was that Dr Therese Coffey become the new Health Secretary. Some news outlets were quick to point out her anti-abortion stance (see e.g. (1–3)) and that this, according to them, might be a problem. While pro-lifers might not completely rejoice over this situation as Coffey stated that ‘she wouldn’t “seek to undo” abortion laws’(3), I do not wish to (...) focus here on speculating on the future status of UK abortion legislation. Rather, I wish to focus on some statements quoted by the media as made by Clare Murphy, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), who stated that: (2,4) -/- ‘Earlier this year, our new Health Secretary voted to revoke access to at-home abortion care, and recriminalise women who end their own pregnancies without the approval of two doctors.’ ‘In doing so, Therese Coffey voted against the advice of leading medical bodies.’ ‘To have a health secretary who would place their personal beliefs above expert clinical guidance is deeply concerning.’ -/- Coffey is a Catholic, and this brings back to mind some of the aspects of the debate surrounding conflicts of interest in bioethics. There have been, for example, discussions and proposals that having a religious belief should be declared as a conflict of interest.(5,6) But something seems to be missing in these portrayals of conflict of interest and the disagreement between Coffey and these ‘leading medical bodies’. If we regard financial conflicts of interests as the classical case of such conflicts that is used as a reference to other types of conflicts of interest,(5,6) then why do we not see the media complaining that ‘leading medical bodies’ support procedures that will give them more work oppor-tunities and improve their financial stability? To paraphrase Murphy who (according to the BBC 'said while politicians were entitled to their own views on abortion, what mattered was whether their "personal convictions stand in the way of women's ability to act on their own”. (4) perhaps ‘BPAS and the leading medical bodies are entitled to considerations of their financial interests, but what matters is whether the advice they give is clinically sound and founded in the principles of ethical clinical practice. In Matthew 6:24 Our Lord said that one cannot serve two masters, so perhaps we should not be so concerned with Coffey consulting her conscience, but rather scrutinise clinical institutions. (shrink)

Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) is a weekly, half-hour long session in the British House of Commons, which gives backbench Members of Parliament (MPs) and the Leader of the Opposition (LO) the opportunity to ask the Prime Minister (PM) questions on any topic relating to the government’s policies and actions. The discourse at PMQs is often described as adversarial (see Bull & Wells 2011) and in this paper I will show how the notion of impoliteness can be (...) applied to both the questions and the answers which make up the session. Through the detailed analysis of six sessions of PMQs I will also demonstrate that PMQs is also a source of polite linguistic behaviour of the sort described in Brown & Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory. Comparisons between Gordon Brown’s and David Cameron’s speech styles will also be drawn. (shrink)

This paper aims at creating an adequate theoretical basis for a systematic integration of institutional insights into the pragma-dialectical analysis of argumentative exchanges that occur in institutionalised contexts. The argumentative practice of Prime Minister’s Question Time in the British House of Commons is examined, as a case in point, in order to illustrate how the knowledge of the characteristics of an institution, its rules and conventions can be integrated into the pragma-dialectical analysis. The paper highlights the role that (...) theoretical concepts and tools such as strategic manoeuvring, argumentative activity types and dialectical profiles play in this integration. (shrink)

Then newly elected Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, made a historic statement of “Sorry” for past injustices to Australian Indigenous peoples at the opening of the 2008 federal parliament. In the long-standing absence of a constitutional ‘foundational principle’ to shape positive federal initiatives in this context, there has been speculation that the emphatic Sorry Statement may presage formal constitutional recognition. The debate is long overdue in a nation that only overturned the legal fiction of terra nullius and recognised (...) native title to lan with the High Court’s decision in Mabo in 1992. This article explores the implications of the Sorry Statement in the context of reparations for the generations removed from their families under assimilation policies (known since the Bringing Them Home Inquiry as the Stolen Generations). We draw out the utility of recent human rights statutes—such as the Human Rights Act 2004 (ACT)—as a mechanism for facilitating justice, including compensation for past wrongs. Our primary concern here is whether existing legal processes in Australia hold further capacity to provide reparation for Australian Indigenous peoples or whether their potential in that regard is already exhausted. We compare common law and statutory developments in other international jurisdictions, such as Canada, as an indication of what can be achieved by the law to facilitate better legal, economic and social outcomes for Indigenous peoples. The year 2008 also saw Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper express his apology to residential school victims in the Canadian Parliament, providing thematic and symbolic echoes across these two former colonies, which, despite remaining under the British monarchy, both forge their own path into the future, while confronting their own unique colonial past. We suggest that the momentum provided by the recent public apology and statement of “Sorry” by the newly elected Australian Prime Minister must not be lost. This symbolic utterance as a first act of the 2008 parliamentary year stood in stark contrast to the long-standing recalcitrance of the former Prime Minister John Howard on the matter of a formal apology. Rather than a return to a law enforcement-inspired “three strikes and you’re out” approach, Australia stands poised for an overdue constitutional and human rights-inspired “three ‘sorries’ and you’re in”. (shrink)

Generally, the testimony of intoxicated witnesses has been considered relatively unreliable, but recent research has nuanced the knowledge base regarding these vulnerable witnesses.PurposeTo demonstrate the application of recent research findings regarding intoxicated witnesses to the statements made by a key witness to the murder of Olof Palme, Sweden's prime minister, in 1986. An additional purpose was to illustrate the use of a nuanced calculation of blood alcohol concentration for researchers.MethodsThe Palme murder has been debated since the crime was (...) committed and no one has yet been sentenced. One of the witnesses was intoxicated and to estimate a range for his BAC at the time, a comprehensive BAC calculation was conducted in this study to illustrate important factors to consider in these types of cases.ResultsThrough the demonstration of the use of a nuanced BAC formula and by applying recent research results from studies on intoxicated witnesses, it was estimated that the possible BAC of the witness in the Palme-case at the time of the witnessed crime ranged between BAC = 0 to BAC = 0.13, depending on the type of alcoholic beverage consumed and whether the witness was a social or heavy drinker. This puts the witness either well within the span of maintained completeness as well as maintained accuracy rate, or slightly exceeding this span into the BAC-range of reduced completeness but maintained accuracy rate. He was questioned immediately, and thereafter repeatedly, and he reported similar information throughout the interviews, which is in line with previous results on information maintenance over repeated interviews among intoxicated witnesses.ConclusionThe current case example shows how recent research on intoxicated witnesses can be applied in praxis, illustrating important factors for legal practitioners to consider when interpreting information from intoxicated witnesses. It also provides legal practitioners and researchers with an example of a structured approach to more nuanced BAC-calculations. (shrink)

Bishop Desmond Tutu's call, in 2013, for former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to be tried for war crimes, led to much reporting and comment in the online pages of UK newspapers. At first sight, it was a topic that seemed particularly conducive to the attraction of trolling, flaming and Ebile in the comments posted below journalistic pieces. Both Tutu and Blair are controversial and divisive characters, and the context of the Iraq War seemed fertile ground for heated (...) exchanges. A content analysis of 2,476 comments and 27,970 likes/dislikes offered a fairly substantial for identification of and evaluation of the value this discourse. In the event, trolling, flaming and Ebile were rare in the context of this political discourse, suggesting, at least a form of discourse closer to the ideals of Habermas. (shrink)

The article provides a systems-theoretical analysis of the Cartoon Crisis and the way the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, responded to the expectations of Muslim groups in particular and the business community. The analysis shows that the Prime Minister followed a single strategy throughout the crisis, namely, insisting on a secular understanding of the separation of politics and religion. Religion, in this view, should not interfere in politics, and politics should not interfere in religion. The (...) main outline of the analysis shows that Prime Minister Rasmussen, paradoxically, found himself using a theological distinction in order to make a political argument. In doing so, Rasmussen shows, in contrast to his former argumentations, that modern, so-called `secular' politics is actually based on a religious Protestant understanding of the separation of the two realms, though the use Rasmussen made of this separation remains political. (shrink)

This article examines the power relationship between the prime minister and ruling party legislators. I theoretically explore the power relationship between the prime minister and ruling party legislators, and examine legislators' parliamentary voting, focusing on the political process of postal service privatization of 2005. This analysis presents three arguments. First, theoretically, when the prime minister attempts to achieve a project, risking his or her job, he or she can firmly control ruling party legislators. Second, (...) empirically, the anti-Koizumi legislators' rebellion was based on their unfounded assumption about the prime minister's behavior or ultimate outcomes. Third, the anti-Koizumi legislators' electoral incentives to secure their reelection and ruling incentives to weaken or overthrow the Koizumi Cabinet drove them to rebel against the prime minister in the Lower House, while the ruling incentives alone caused the rebellion in the Upper House. (shrink)

As the official UK COVID Inquiry is investigating the response by the government to the 2020 global pandemic, revealing the difficulties that the Johnson administration had to face and the overall lack of adequate preparedness at the top of the UK executive, people are becoming growingly aware of the many challenges that such situations pose in terms of crisis management and public governance. Beyond the somewhat sterile blame game played by leading political actors, this formal accountability forum has also revealed (...) competing narratives about the crisis that might have hampered any coherent political solution. This article proposes to focus on the ‘official’ narratives by the UK government and to analyse critically the way Boris Johnson narrativised his political response to the pandemic in order to examine how his unconventional style of leadership was deployed during a global crisis. Using a typology of crisis management inspired by crisis expert and leadership scholar Arjen Boin, the objective is to examine how ‘crisis narratives’ framed the way the UK government responded to the crisis. (shrink)

This collection of inaugural and ascension speeches facilitates comparison of presidential themes, leadership styles, personal philosophies, and evolutionary communication strategies in Nigerian nation building. Each chapter opens with biographical notes on the speaker, followed by an introduction to the prevalent political climate; each chapter ends with the leader's unabridged speech.

On behalf of the Government of Ukraine, I congratulate you on the start of the International Scientific and Practical Conference "Religious Freedom in Ukraine in the Context of International Legal Experience" devoted to the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of the UN Human Rights.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation by Jennifer HarveyMichelle WolffDear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation Jennifer Harvey grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2014. 262 pp. $25.00Absent of opaque theory and disembodied ideology, Jennifer Harvey’s Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation presents an indispensable introduction to the problem of “whiteness” illustrated with concrete examples from US (...) history. Harvey’s text clearly communicates the trouble with invoking universalism, colorblindness, and most specifically reconciliation as means of improving race relations. Alternatively, in the spirit of the Black Power movement, Harvey suggests that reparations more effectively atone for racism. [End Page 202]Harvey begins with a sympathetic account of churches seeking integration as the logical counter to segregation within the context of midcentury US history. While these approaches align with the ideals of the civil rights movement, Harvey goes on to elucidate the limitations of what she calls a “reconciliation paradigm.” Pointedly, Harvey asserts that reconciliation efforts fail to acknowledge the problem of whiteness (11). She therefore provocatively contends that “to be white is to be in a state of profound moral crisis” (56). This is because white identity has been constituted by violence, consistently benefits materially from that violence, and remains indistinguishable from white supremacy’s agenda (52–55). For this reason, black identity, according to Harvey, is never parallel to white identity. Reconciliation, then, problematically masks such difference via appeals to universalism.Harvey adroitly reorients approaches to problem solving away from white progressive efforts and good intentions by attending instead to African American experience, history, and requests (11–12). For this reason, she prioritizes Black Power movements over civil rights movements (65). The former Harvey understands as properly focusing on power differentials, rather than separation, as the primary issue (106). In so doing, Harvey underscores white folks’ culpability in failing to secure reparations for African Americans.In the final section of her book, Harvey describes specific US churches’ attempts at reparations programs. This section, including some of the most demonstrative and relatable chapters, contains concrete examples that echo the defensiveness, pain, and good will that frequently surface on the part of white folks in conversations about race (228–29). The process of collecting these stories and histories appears to have been nearly as beneficial as Harvey’s proposed reparations program, for history functions as confession here (206). In addition, even these constructive chapters resist an optimistic gloss on the flawed and painstaking work of reparations programs (211).Although Harvey touches on other forms of reparations, she consistently returns to economic efforts as most pressing. While financial and material reparations are immediate and measurable, and therefore consistent with the author’s preference for pragmatism over theory, they obfuscate the pervasive disadvantages that people of color suffer in the United States today. Equal candidates for employment with identical resumes, for example, too frequently experience the bias of gender and race as signified in the candidate’s name. One’s gender performance and sexual identity can exacerbate such discrimination. These gesture at the role of social currency that permeates communal life even more thoroughly than material wealth. This is to say that reparations are an important aspect for “interrupting whiteness,” and yet they cannot be the conclusion to a more just and equitable church and society.Harvey’s extraordinarily accessible text propels conversations on ethical living in classrooms, churches, and politics. Her assessment of the problem [End Page 203] of whiteness and constructive alternative suggestion for reparations efficiently prime readers for open dialogue and practical action.Michelle WolffDuke UniversityCopyright © 2016 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The relation between the constitutionally founded supremacy of the parliament and the authoriy of the Prime Minister based on common law, is of a great importance in the Low Countries. This relation constitutes the difference between parliamentary and presidential regimes. It is the PM's duty to take care of the permanent support ofthe parliamentary majority. This is not an easy exercise. Members of parliament are not always as positive about the PM's parliamentary performances. Characteristics of the parliamentary activity (...) of the Belgian PM's Wilfried Martens, Jean-Luc Dehaene and the Dutch Ruud Lubbers are handled as: the frequency and the extent of the PM's parliamentary performances, the topics handled by the PM's in parliament, the PM's opponents in parliamentary debate and finally more generally the PM's parliamentary role behaviour. Due to the different position of both the parliament and the PM in the Belgian and the Dutch political system, the characteristics of the parliamenty activity of the Belgian and the Dutch PM are not always very similar. Additionally, remarkable differences occur between the parliamentary activity of different PM'swithin the same country. (shrink)

The position of the Belgian prime minister is hardly mentioned in the Belgian Constitution. lt was only after almost 140 years, in 1970 he was mentioned for the first time. lts power is rather a matter of common law. Since 1831 through the years, the position and power of the PM changed strongly. This often happened together with changes concerning the power of the King: the weaker the King, the stronger the PM.The existence of coalition governments puts forward (...) bis role as coordinator and even as arbitrator, whereas the federalisation process since the seventies places him as a conciliator between Regions and Communities. The growing importance of the European Council of Head of States have made him the most important decision-maker among the national politicians in the European integration process. The PM's skills concerning timing and agendasetting are very important because it is one of his most important power instruments. Other key skills are bis profound knowledge in certain issues but mostly as a generalist, his insisting on good minister nominations by the party leaders, the way he can motivate his cabinet members, a good team spirit among the government members and the existence of a clear government contract. In order to avoid a strongdependency on or tutelage from the political parties of the majority it is important to have their top politicians in the government. (shrink)

The starting point for studying the Croatian constitutional democracy is the adoption of the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia on 22 December 1990. The said Constitution defines the system of government as semi-presidential and its authors state as their model the Constitution of the Fifth Republic. However, the importing, in 1990, of French constitutional provisions was not neutral since the original French constitutional text was stripped of institutional obstacles, constitutional institutions for opposing the will of the President of the (...) Republic, constitutional-law conditions for the Prime Minister's primacy in the political system in case of co-habitation and discrepancies between the parliamentary and the presidential majority. The text was complemented by constitutional norms unknown to the original. French constitutional norms had to be put to good use, interpreted in line with and legally adapted to the desired political goal, i.e., the establishment of an effective state government in which the primacy of the President of the Republic would assert itself over both the Government and the legislature. The myth on the semi-presidential system was drawn on for both the adoption of the provisions regulating the organisation of government in the 1990 Constitution of the Republic of Croatia and their amendment in 2000. (shrink)

Romanian Prime Minister Al. Vaida-Voevod aired the “communist danger” that “threatens the constitutional order and aims to dismantle the Greater Romania” when he asked for parliamentary support for the Law on state of siege (martial law) in February 1933. This article will investigate the role of the transnational communist networks in Romania in the Grivița strikes to verify the truthfulness of the Prime Minister’s discourse. The communists’ role in the Grivița strikes is part of the general (...) performance of these transnational networks during the Great Depression. The political strength of the Romanian extreme-left will be assessed by taking into consideration the main goals of the Comintern towards the transport sector during the Great Depression, the institutions that were supposed to achieve the goals, and their effectiveness from mid-January until mid-February 1933. (shrink)

The “Italian invert’s confessions” have long been known to historians of sexuality, yet this new edition lends them an authenticity never before enjoyed. The Prime Mover in the publication is Micha...

Former Prime Minister Koizumi's surprising victory within the Liberal Democratic Party in 2001 and his subsequent popularity as prime minister led to increased interest in the study of populism in Japan. In addition to Ōtake Hideo's prominent contributions, several others have also employed populism as a prism to study Japanese politics. Compared to the major debates on populism and particularly on the populist radical right in Western Europe over the last two decades, however, the study of (...) Japanese populism seems to be at a less mature stage. Lessons may be learned from the European literature for the community studying Japanese populism. This paper first summarizes the studies on Japanese populism. Then, the main discussions and arguments presented in the academic literature on the PRR in Europe are discussed. Next, this study evaluates how arguments found in studies of European populism can be exploited in further research on populist politicians and parties in Japan. The author recommends further studies on conceptual definitions, on the classifications of politicians and parties, and on explaining the emergence and persistence of these parties and politicians. The findings in this paper encourage and support further research on populism in the Japanese political system. (shrink)

Recently, British Prime Minister Theresa May made a bold anti-cosmopolitan claim: ‘If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what citizenship...

The British Prime Minister Tony Blair has appealed to the other members of the European Union to engage constructively with the Bush administration as a means of working towards peace in a perilous world. The combination of highly developed destructive capacity, relative economic decline, diplomatic incompetence, and continuing political divisions among a frustrated and resentful population that is deeply ignorant of the wider world and subject to recurrent bouts of collective paranoia does indeed make the United States a (...) dangerous international agent. One of the main ways, in particular, in which the U.S. represents a particular menace to world peace at the moment is that it has come to be in Washington's short-term interest to make the world a place in which the quick recourse to violence, and the constant threat of violence, is accepted as part of normal practice in international relations. The use of military power presents itself as an increasingly attractive option primarily because the U.S. is becoming weaker and weaker economically and politically, and force is one of the few means U.S. politicians can deploy that offer any hope whatever of allowing them to advance or protect what they think are their vital interests. (shrink)

The British Prime Minister Tony Blair has appealed to the other members of the European Union to engage constructively with the Bush administration as a means of working towards peace in a perilous world. The combination of highly developed destructive capacity, relative economic decline, diplomatic incompetence, and continuing political divisions among a frustrated and resentful population that is deeply ignorant of the wider world and subject to recurrent bouts of collective paranoia does indeed make the United States a (...) dangerous international agent. One of the main ways, in particular, in which the U.S. represents a particular menace to world peace at the moment is that it has come to be in Washington's short-term interest to make the world a place in which the quick recourse to violence, and the constant threat of violence, is accepted as part of normal practice in international relations. The use of military power presents itself as an increasingly attractive option primarily because the U.S. is becoming weaker and weaker economically and politically, and force is one of the few means U.S. politicians can deploy that offer any hope whatever of allowing them to advance or protect what they think are their vital interests. (shrink)

A former Prime Minister of Israel is alleged to have said that her country would never ascend to the status of authentic statehood until it possessed certain well-known social attributes — organized crime, prostitution, and corruption. These features, while obviously undesirable, were she felt, reliable indices of societal maturation. This anecdote is suggestive in understanding current events pertaining to the field of applied ethics.Philosophers have produced a massive body of opinion and argument on a diverse range of subjects (...) under the rubric of applied ethics. Moreover, they have assumed positions on various panels, commissions, governmental bodies and committees in the hope of making an informed contribution to the formulation of institutional and public policy. These accomplishments have begun to elicit the kinds of attributes commonly associated with philosophical maturation — exposées, debunkings, refutations, and ideologically informed critiques. (shrink)

Whom a prime minister or president will not shake hands with is still more noticed than with whom they will. Public identity can afford to be ambiguous about friends, but not about enemies. Rodney Barker examines the available accounts of how enmity functions in the cultivation of identity, how essential or avoidable it is, and what the consequences are for the contemporary world.

Focusing on Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s 2008 apology to the Stolen Generations, this article asks: can colonial-settler states obtain forgiveness through political apologies? The article first defends Jacques Derrida’s observation that political apologies resemble the Christian practice of confession. In doing so, it subsequently draws on Michel Foucault’s detailed treatise on confession in order to assess the potential for absolution. For Foucault, the process of engaging in exhaustive truth-telling of sin before a demarcated authority provides a route (...) to such atonement. By contrast, any potential unburdening of sin is lost when there is either no adequate authority to coax the confession or if the confession is less than full. The problem for the settler state is that it is predisposed to re-evoking the imaginary of the settler nation and Westphalian sovereignty in the very process of apologising. Consequently, there is no scope to submit before a higher sovereign body and any truth-telling is necessarily partial. As such, the central argument is that forgiveness for the settler state must remain elusive. The political opportunities arising from this for Indigenous peoples are discussed in the final section. (shrink)

A former Prime Minister of Israel is alleged to have said that her country would never ascend to the status of authentic statehood until it possessed certain well-known social attributes — organized crime, prostitution, and corruption. These features, while obviously undesirable, were she felt, reliable indices of societal maturation. This anecdote is suggestive in understanding current events pertaining to the field of applied ethics.Philosophers have produced a massive body of opinion and argument on a diverse range of subjects (...) under the rubric of applied ethics. Moreover, they have assumed positions on various panels, commissions, governmental bodies and committees in the hope of making an informed contribution to the formulation of institutional and public policy. These accomplishments have begun to elicit the kinds of attributes commonly associated with philosophical maturation — exposées, debunkings, refutations, and ideologically informed critiques. (shrink)

In 2007, then Australian Prime Minister Howard said of the Murray-Darling Basin’s rivers that action was required to end the ‘The tyranny of incrementalism and the lowest common denominator’ governance to prevent ‘economic and environmental decline’. This paper explores the management of these rivers as an epicentre for three key debates for the future of Australia. Information on biodiversity, analyses of the socio-ecological system, and climate change projections are presented to illustrate the disjunction between trends in environmental health (...) and the institutions established to manage the Basin sustainably. Three key debates are considered: conflict over the allocation of water between irrigated agriculture versus a range of other ecosystem services as the latest manifestation of the debate between adherents of the pioneering myth versus advocates of limits to growth in Australia; cyclical crises as a driver of reactive policy reform and the prospects of the 2008 Water Act forming the basis of proactive, adaptive management of emerging threats and opportunities; and subsidiarity in governance of the environment and natural resources in the Australian federation. Implementation of the 2012 Basin Plan as promised by the Federal Government ‘in full and on time’ is a key sustainability test for Australia. Despite Australian claims of exceptionalism, the Murray-Darling Basin experience mirrors the challenges faced in managing rivers sustainably and across governance scales in federations around the world. (shrink)

In July 2003, Prime Minister Koizumi successfully passed the legislation to dispatch ground SDF units to Iraq in the Diet. His top-down policy process was completely different from Japan's traditional bottom-up system, which Aurelia George Mulgan calls the in which the bureaucrats in the ministries play a central role with the LDP being the only political power to negotiate with them. Mulgan also argues that the system has not changed despite recent institutional changes. On the contrary, this paper (...) illustrates how Koizumi and his Cabinet took advantage of the strengthened authority of the Cabinet Secretariat to initiate policies, and successfully pushed the controversial national security legislation through LDP decision-making organs and the Diet by gaining support first from the coalition partners, presenting a new style of Westminster system. (shrink)

This project has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council (project number CS170100008); the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science; and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. ACOLA collaborates with the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and the New Zealand Royal Society Te Apārangi to deliver the interdisciplinary Horizon Scanning reports to government. The aims of the project which produced this report are: 1. Examine the transformative role that artificial intelligence may (...) play in different sectors of the economy, including the opportunities, risks and challenges that advancement presents. 2. Examine the ethical, legal and social considerations and frameworks required to enable and support broad development and uptake of artificial intelligence. 3. Assess the future education, skills and infrastructure requirements to manage workforce transition and support thriving and internationally competitive artificial intelligence industries. (shrink)