The article is about defining ethnic parties and their classification. We define and discuss the terms politics, political party, ethnis group and ethnical party. We state differences about the traditional model of politics and the modern one. We analyze the importance of the political parties in representing the political rights of the people and what is needed so a political party can be established in the Republic of Macedonia. Also we show how to determine which party is (...) an ethnical party and show a number of ethnic parties in Republic of Macedonia using the name of the party as an indicator. In this part we discuss the indicators and we state that good indicator is the program of the election campaign of the party. But still this is not 100% sure indicator if the party is ethnical. We concluded this because there are a lot of examples when the ruling party before the start of the election campaign does a research about the ethnical groups and after the research makes projects meant for the ethnic groups so the party can get the votes from the chosen ethnicity. At the end we concluded that the programs and the statues of the political parties are the best indicators and answer if a political party is a non-ethnical, multi-ethnical or ethnical political party. (shrink)

One under-theorized aspect of "multiculturalism and the antidiscrimination principle" is religious and ethnicity based political parties. With political organization, the fact of pluralism is made concrete for democratic purposes. When the struggle for empowerment is "waged within the world of democratic politics" it is waged through parties. That is the associational form modern democracies have settled on for participation, representation, and governing, and for countervailing power and regular opposition. Particularist parties and bloc voting are key instruments of (...) political conflict and, as important, of political integration. This Paper looks at the challenges these parties pose to democracy; specifically, at the principal reasons given for banning parties from participation in electoral politics. I identify four categories of justification for disqualification: violent overthrow, incitement to hate, altering the character of the nation, and outside support or control. This is a preliminary to setting out regulative principles of "defensive democracy.". (shrink)

This article presents results from a nationally representative survey conducted in Taiwan in November 2011 that explores Taiwanese attitudes toward China and the world. It demonstrates that while (KMT) and (DPP) supporters maintained different attitudes towards China, few Taiwanese supported reunification. Taiwanese attitudes towards other countries, the sources of Taiwanese party identification, and policy implications for cross–Strait relations are also explored.

Elements of the relation between religion and politics are standard themes in political theory: toleration and free exercise rights; the parameters of separation of church and state; arguments for and against constraints imposed on religious discourse by philosophic norms of public reason. But religious parties and partisanship are no part of political theory, despite contemporary interest in value pluralism and in liberal democratic theory's capacity to address multicultural, religious, and ethnic group claims. This essay argues that religious (...) class='Hi'>parties are missing elements in discussions of identity politics. They play an important role not just in expressing but also in constructing and mobilizing religious political identity. Political activity linked to parties is a principal way of bringing diffuse, politically unorganized groups, whose leaders are self-appointed and not regularly accountable for the way they represent co-religionists in political life, into the democratic mainstream. With political organization and especially partisanship, the fact of pluralism is made concrete for democratic purposes. (shrink)

In societies divided on ethnic and religious lines, problems of democracy are magnified – particularly where groups are mobilized into parties. With the principle of majority rule, minorities should be less willing to endorse democratic institutions where their parties persistently lose elections. While such problems should also hamper transitions to democracy, several diverse Eastern European states have formed democracies even under these conditions. In this book, Sherrill Stroschein argues that sustained protest and contention by ethnic Hungarians (...) in Romania and Slovakia brought concessions on policies that they could not achieve through the ballot box, in contrast to Transcarpathia, Ukraine. In Romania and Slovakia, contention during the 1990s made each group accustomed to each other's claims and aware of the degree to which each could push its own. Ethnic contention became a de facto deliberative process that fostered a moderation of group stances, allowing democratic consolidation to slowly and organically take root. (shrink)

Ethnic violence in Gujarat in 2002 killed at least a thousand Muslims. Compiling data from the Times of India, we investigate variation across 216 towns and rural areas. Analysis reveals the political logic of violence. Killing was less likely where the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party was weakest, but was even less likely where the BJP was strong; it was most likely where the party faced the greatest electoral competition. Underemployment and Muslim in-migration also increased violence. The political logic (...) is confirmed by analysis of the subsequent election: the BJP’s vote increased most in districts with the worst violence. Police chiefs in districts where violence was severe were more likely to be promoted. (shrink)

: Whilst the recent electoral performance of Parti Islam seMalaysia and Pertubuhan Kebangsaan Melayu Bersatu in Terengganuhas generated much interest, there are lack of studies over the involvementand motivations of the most committed party players; the grassrootsparty activists. PAS and UMNO are strongly supported by committed andextraordinary party members at the grassroots level who devote their time,money, effort, and energy to ensure the party they support wins elections andremains relevant. Unlike other professions, they are working for the party on afull-time (...) basis yet receive no specific income from the party. Their uniquenesshas directed this study to examine the factors which influence them to becomepolitical party activists. This study interviewed thirty-two party activists whowere selected using the purposive sampling technique, and the data was thenthematically analyzed through the content analysis method. Combining theCivic Voluntarism Model and the General Incentives Model into a frameworkto understand factors that motivate informants’ political party activism. Thisstudy discovered five major factors which include the ideology of the party,religious beliefs, defending ethnic supremacy, parental influence, significantpolitical events and educational institutions. This study also academicallydefies the common perception that party activists enjoy material rewards byvirtue of their party activism. (shrink)

Political parties do not merely reflect social divisions, they actively construct them. While this point has been alluded to in the literature, surprisingly little attempt has been made to systematically elaborate the relationship between parties and the social, which tend to be treated as separate domains contained by the disciplinary division of labor between political science and sociology. This article demonstrates the constructive role of parties in forging critical social blocs in three separate cases, India, Turkey, and (...) the United States, offering a critique of the dominant approach to party politics that tends to underplay the autonomous role of parties in explaining the preferences, social cleavages, or epochal socioeconomic transformations of a given community. Our thesis, drawing on the work of Gramsci, Althusser, and Laclau, is that parties perform crucial articulating functions in the creation and reproduction of social cleavages. Our comparative analysis of the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States, Islamic and secularist parties in Turkey, and the Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress parties in India will demonstrate how “political articulation” has naturalized class, ethnic, religious, and racial formations as a basis of social division and hegemony. Our conclusion is that the process of articulation must be brought to the center of political sociology, simultaneously encompassing the study of social movements and structural change, which have constituted the orienting poles of the discipline. (shrink)

In 1998 the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities will come into force. But this treaty will only achieve its potential as the centrepiece of ethnic and cultural rights in Europe if the narrow, biased perspective held by many of the state parties can be overcome. This article argues that a just and workable approach to ethnic rights should be informed by contemporary socio-anthropological understandings of ethnicity and culture. When this understanding is (...) considered within the liberal philosophical foundations of the European human rights system, a universal right to ethnic identity emerges. It is thus apparent that immigrant minorities, often excluded from the development of minority rights in international law, have an equal claim to the benefits of the Framework Convention. There is, moreover, a strong argument that ethnic minority rights must involve some measure of long term, positive support for minority languages and traditions. (shrink)

While research on political violence often focuses on its outcome, there is little attention to the process of political violence. Filling the knowledge gap, the present research applies the theory of instrumentalism to understand political violence as a means to achieve certain political ends. The research is a qualitative case study on Lyari, which was a comparatively peaceful neighborhood in Karachi but transformed into a violent no-go area during 2000s. The paper describes the process of instrumentalization of political violence in (...) Lyari with the objective of outlining the relationship of three key actors – political parties, state authorities, and criminal gangs – using violence for their respective interests. The paper explains how the convergence of their interests influenced the intensity of political violence and converted it into an ethnic conflict. Hence, it expands the literature on political violence by outlining the complexities of the real world where multiple political actors simultaneously use violence to achieve varied objectives that sometimes compliment and sometimes clashes with each other, resulting in further extension of violence. (shrink)

How does segregation along ethnic boundaries emerge in social networks? Human evolution resulted in highly social beings, capable of prosociality, mindreading, and self-control, which are important aspects of the “social brain.” Our neurophysiologically “wired” social cognition implies different cognitive goal frames. In line with recent developments in behavioral theory, the present study defines network ties as episodes of social exchange. This dynamic definition can account for shifts in goal frames during an exchange episode: whereas deliberate choice and hedonic or (...) gain goals drive the initiation of a tie, given the opportunity structure, the normative goal frame activates a strong dynamic effect of reciprocity, which limits actors’ choice set and appears as “self-organization” at the network level. Longitudinal analyses of 18 birthday party networks comprising 501 students support the definition of network ties as exchange episodes, as well as the relevance of humans’ inherent tendency to reciprocate. However, reciprocation is much stronger in dyads of the same ethnicity than in dyads of different ethnicities. Network segregation along ethnic boundaries results from deliberate decisions during the initiation of an episode, but also from different commitments to reciprocity during the ongoing exchange process, depending on intra or interethnic dyadic constellations. (shrink)

The Cameron Highland’s by-election held in January 2019 waskeenly contested by two major political coalitions in a district in Pahang. Itwas an election with a difference. The ruling coalition at the national level wasthe underdog contesting in a state controlled by BN/UMNO, the oppositionwhich, in turn, has been in shambles since GE 14, with only three of 13 partiesremaining in the coalition. The by-election created history by electing an OrangAsli as a member of parliament. The ruling coalition lostthe by-election which (...) was attributed to the use of race and religion by theopposition BN/UMNO in alliance with a party promoting race and religion.The candidate of the ruling coalition won the Chinese and some Indian votes.Based upon ethnographic fieldwork, targeted interviews, and documentarymaterials, this study analyses the Cameron Highland’s by-election by focusingupon several factors including the nature of the constituency, the party system,and the candidates campaigning highlighting the local and national issues. Thestudy found that racial issues did play a strategic role in the outcome of the byelection.The ruling coalition needs to manage the economy and address theissues faced by Malaysia’s myriad ethnic communities. (shrink)

I address four major objections that have been advanced against the system of multiparty majority democracy that I proposed as an alternative to Wiredu’s non-party consensual democracy. First, that the system is not durable since it is structured around ill-defined ethnic groups; second, that since it envisions each ethnic group as a semi-autonomous entity, the system undermines the integrative process of nation-building; third, that, as a type of federalism, the system has no precedents on African soil, and consequently, (...) that it is likely to face the problem of imperfect fit; and fourth, that some African ethnic groups are too small to stand as semi-autonomous entities. I then underscore four advantages of my system over Wiredu’s: It honours the right of freedom of association; addresses the problem of the marginalisation of minority ethnic groups; reaps the benefits of both non-party and multiparty democracy; and entrenches the ingredients of consensual democracy. (shrink)

This article is about the rights of the Roma in Sweden and the level of discrimination that Roma are facing. The aims and objectives of the article is theoretical and practical understanding of the situation of the Roma and their human rights through our research and analysis of reports from international organizations, civil society organizations, deep interviews and data from the collected 57 questionnaires. The data is collected during the two study visits in November 2016 and February 2017. The article (...) sumarises the actual situation of the Roma in Sweden and shows new data I have collected while visiting Göteborg, Stockholm, Vänersborg and Trollhättan. I did 4 deep interviews with representatives from Civil Right Defenders, Kronan School and members from UNHCR Sweden. The interviews were composed out of 22 questions about the current condition of Roma in Sweden, implemented projects for improving the Roma human rights, discrimination, police harasment, Roma register, legal remedies against discrimination, financial benefits if persuing education, non-governmental organization working for and with Roma, equitable representation of Roma in the state bodies, affirmative actions, Romani political parties, allocated funds for projects improving the Romani situation, system of minority right protection, equality of Roma among the Swedish citizens. The questionnaire about discrimination is composed out of 15 questions about the forms of discrimination, feeling or witnesing discrimination, discrimination in delivering services, discrimination in employment, and reporting discrimination. (shrink)

Both in the pre-war and the post-war period right-wing extremism was not very strong in Britain. Historians, political scientist and politicians have suggested a whole range of elements to explain this failure. In the light of this limited success the victory of the British National Party in an election of the Millwall district in the London Bourough of Tower Hamlets was indeed a surprise. lt raised the question whether this was the beginning of something similar to what happened earlier in (...) France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. The very specific characteristics of the London East End and ofthe Millwall district in particular make the BNP victory however quite exceptional, and do not enable a generalization of the phenomenon. This is supported by the electoral results for the London Borough and District Council of May 5 1994. Yet one can still argue that the specific danger of the BNP is not its electoral potential, but the impact of its local activities on the relations between the ethnic groups in the neighbourhoods where it is present. (shrink)

The Yugoslav socialist framework enabled major advances in what concerns the legal, economic and social equality of women, advances which radically changed their traditionally subordinated family and social position. In spite of the postwar period of revolutionary enthusiasm, female political activism and the access of women intellectuals to the male-dominated spheres of journalism, diplomacy, administration and governmental offices did not exist for long. Taking into account memoirs and oral histories of five distinguished women, the article reveals the reasons for the (...) Party’s antifeminist attitudes: a) the political fear of ambitious female “quality staff ”; b) the ideological fear of the women guardians of the traditional and religious foundations of collective identity; c) a cultural mistrust toward the mobile woman who easily transcends family, social and ethnic boundaries. These biographical sources reveal that any attempt at free thought and autonomous action outside of the party line was severely punished. (shrink)

In this article, we analyse the ideological differences between extreme rightwing parties and their voters in the Flemish and Walloon part of Belgium. Extreme right-wing ideology consists of five core elements: racism, extreme ethnic nationalism, the leadership principle, anti-parliamentarianism and an anti-leftist attitude. All these attitudes refer to the basic value of rightwing extremism: the belief in the inequality of individuals and groups. An analysis of the ideology of the Vlaams Blok in Flanders shows that it adheres to (...) these core elements of extreme right-wing ideology. An analysis of the attitudes and motives of the voters of this party, however, shows that they cannot be considered as right-wing extremists. The ideological gap between the Vlaams Blok and its electorate is due to the strategy of this party, since it cultivates 'two faces': a populist, moderate face in order to attract votes, and a radical extreme rightwingface in order to recruit and motivate militants. In Wallonia, less is known about the ideology of right-wing parties and that of their voters. Current research however, suggests that the conclusions from Flemish research may very well be generalized to Wallonia as well. (shrink)

Feminist Policymaking in Turbulent Times offers a unique and timely reflection of the critical debates around the institutionalisation of feminist and gender-focused ideas and norms into policy. Many states and non-governmental organisations are increasingly invested in 'feminist policymaking' at the domestic and international levels. Yet, this liberal (feminist) agenda is also vastly disputed by critical, intersectional and decolonial voices on the one hand, and by anti-gender movements around the world on the other. Indeed, while opposition to 'gender ideology' is mounting (...) from reactionary, religious and secular forces, feminist policymaking is also being challenged in important ways from within. Thus, this book situates feminist policymaking in a challenging and 'turbulent', global context. This book explores feminist policymaking in multiple areas of policy, examining various gender-focused programmes that states and international organisations have undertaken in the last decade, offering critical interventions and rethinking the relationship between feminism and policy. The book not only reflects on the advances of feminist policymaking globally, but also critically assesses the intersectional challenges embedded within it and lying ahead. It moves the field forward by creating opportunities, based on lived experiences, for re-imagining the transformative potential of the nexus between feminism and policymaking. Interdisciplinary in scope and bringing to the fore the voices of both academics and practitioners, the book is the product of an international collaboration, forging links and dialogue that are increasingly necessary to question some of the exclusionary, militaristic and hierarchical assumptions of policymaking which is labelled as feminist. Feminist Policymaking in Turbulent Times will be of interest to all scholars, students and practitioners interested in the role of gender in policymaking and concerned with contestations around gender-focused projects. (shrink)

In this study there are presented a series of aspects concerning the religious behavior of the Romanian population. By using quantitative analysis we have identified a series of religious key factors which can be used by parties and politicians to obtain votes during election campaigns. The obtained results highlight the fact that people with a lower level of education are more receptive to the political messages transmitted by religious means. Also, the influence of political actions and messages having a (...) religious character is more powerful at the level of the population with a lower standard of living. By means of quantitative analysis we have also evaluated the impact of religious and ethnical fractionalization on the political representation in the national parliament. (shrink)

This book draws on case examples of contemporary black activism in South Manchester and contrasts them with events that surrounded C.L.R. James and his activism between 1935 and 1950. In doing so, the author considers what Brexit, the Labour Party and Theresa May's audit on racism in the UK have in common with the wartime decline of the British Empire, the rise and fall of the trade unions and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Clennon dialogues with James' theoretical frameworks around (...) capitalism, neoliberalism and post-colonialism, and uses this creative interplay of ideas to help make sense of contemporary events and issues of social justice from a UK ethnic minority perspective. Using Fanon, Gordon, Marx and Chakrabarty amongst others, the study explores James' take on dialectical materialism and uses this as an ongoing analytical tool throughout the volume with which he weaves an uneasy path between post-colonial and post-Marxist theories. The Polemics of C.L.R. James and Contemporary Black Activism will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of social science disciplines, including sociology, cultural studies, education and black studies. (shrink)

When discussing whether or not our elected governments should intervene to end genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity in other countries, the humanitarian intervention debate has largely been assuming that liberal democracies bear no responsibility for the injustice at hand: someone else is committing shameful acts; we are merely considering whether or not we have a positive duty to do something about it. Here I argue that there are important instances in which this dominant third party (...) perspective (TPP) is empirically false and normatively misguided. Much before our positive ?responsibility to protect? potential victims from mass atrocities, we violate our negative duty not to harm these victims. Employing work by Thomas Pogge and Leif Wenar, I argue that this harm currently comes about as our elected governments either buy, or allow our corporations to buy, the world's most precious resources from brutal dictators and warlords, who dominate some of the states that are at the heart of intervention discussions. In these cases, democracies' most immediate duty is not intervention but rather humanitarian disintervention: boycotting severely oppressive regimes, and in particular stopping to recognizing these regimes ? whether dictators or civil warriors ? as possessing legitimate authority to sell their peoples' resources. I begin with a brief survey of the intervention literature, followed by the foundations for the disintervention alternative. I then elaborate the conceptual and practical advantages of disintervention, concluding with thoughts on the reasons for TPP's lasting dominance. (shrink)

In this Article I argue that the citizenship status of Israel’s Palestinian citizens has been eroding since the "events" of October 2000 and that, as a result, Israel, within its rpe-1967 borders, may be moving from a form of democracy that has been termed "ethnic democracy" towards a form of non-democratic state that has been termed "ethnocracy." My argument is based primarily on two legal documents: the new Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, 2003, which denies Palestinian citizens the (...) right to unite with their closest family members who are residents of the Occupied Territories, and the decision of the High Court of Justice that upheld the constitutionality of this law in 2006. Two other developments that seem to support my thesis are analyzed as well: the "events" of October 2000 themselves and the report of the state commission of inquiry that investigated these events, and the plan, advanced by Yvette Lieberman and his political party, "Yisrael Beytenu," to shift the border between Israel and the West Bank westward, depriving tens of thousands of citizen-Palestinians of their Israeli citizenship. (shrink)

L’étude de 110 histoires de nominations individuelles dans l’administration publique au Gabon permet d’analyser l’importance des solidarités sociales situées en dehors d’une logique ethnique. Les relations individuelles qui prévalent au sein des réseaux des futures élites administratives montrent que la relation ethno-communautaire est latente dans le processus de sélection des élites de l’administration publique. Le lien ethnique devient actif dans le processus de nomination individuelle dès que s’ajoute un lien supplémentaire situé en dehors de l’affinité ethnique, comme les relations d’anciens (...) camarades de « fac », les relations avec les notables locaux et les liens engendrés par l’appartenance à des entités collectives. Cet article étudie la complexité des solidarités ethniques et les dynamiques relationnelles dans les nominations individuelles.A review of the process that led to the appointment of 110 Gabonese civil servants makes it possible to analyze the importance of social solidarity as well as ethnic solidarity factors. A close study of how future members of the elite connect within networks shows that ethnic relations act as a backdrop to the selection process of civil service elites. Ethnic relations are revived as soon as an additional factor is involved : old schools ties, relations with local prominent citizens, as well as connections resulting from memberships of political parties and freemasonry. The article assesses the complexity of ethnic logics and the relationship dynamics in the appointments reviewed. (shrink)

This paper examines the impact religious affiliation and faith commitment exerts on the political life of one inner-London borough. It gives a historical sketch of the interaction of faith and politics in the period from about 1975-2006 and attempts some explanation of the patterns of voting in local elections and political involvement by members of the many faith communities which are found in the borough. The key to this is seen in the changing urban ecology of the area and the (...) communal interests of particular ethno-religious groups who have striven and, to a measure, succeeded in gaining representation in local politics over this period. Drawing on many years participation observation, an analysis of the religious and community affiliations of elected members, and a series of interviews with Councillors and faith leaders, it reflects political issues and conflicts involving faith communities. Evidence will be presented which suggests that while many Christians involved in politics are primarily motivated individually by beliefs and values which centre on service to the whole community, politicians from other faith communities are more likely to be cast in a role as communal representatives and advocates of particular sections of the community. (shrink)

The text offers an examination of socio-political bases, modes of functioning, and of the consequences of political instrumentalisation of popular narratives on Serbian disunity. The first section of the paper deals with what is being expressed and what is being done socially when narratives on Serbian disunity are invoked in everyday discourses. The next section investigates what political actor sty, by publicly replicating them, or by basing their speeches on key words of those narratives. The narratives on Serbian disunity are (...) then related to their historical and social contexts, and to various forms of identity politics with which they share common traits. The nineteenth century wars over political and cultural identity, intensified by the struggle between contesting claims to political authority, further channeled by the development of party politics in Serbia and radicalized by conflicts of interest and ideology together provided the initial reasons for the apparition of modern discourses on Serbian disunity and disaccord. Next, addressed are the uninnally solidifying or misinterpreting really existing social problems, or because of intentionally exploiting popular perceptions of such problems, the constructive potential related to existing social conflicts and splits can be completely wasted. What results is a deep feeling of frustration, and the diminishing of popular trust in the political elites and the political process in general. The contemporary hyperproduction of narratives on disunity and disaccord in Serbia seems to be directly related to the incapacity of the party system, and of the political system in general, to responsibly address, and eventually resolve historical and contemporary clashes of interest and identity-splits. If this vicious circle in which the consequences of social realities are turned into their causes is to be prevented, conflicts of interest must be discursively disassociated from ideological conflicts, as well as from identity-based conflicts, and all of them have to be disentangled from popular narratives on splits and disunity. Most important of all, the practice of political instrumentalisation of popular narratives on disunity and disaccord has to be gradually abandoned. U radu se istrazuju istorijske i drustvene osnove narodskih prica o srpskom nejedinstvu i neslozi, kao i posledice njihove politicke instrumentalizacije. Paznja se prvo usmerava na ono sto se narodskim pricama o srpskom nejedinstvu i neslozi najcesce postize u svakodnevnoj komunikaciji. Narodskim pricama se, pre svega, ukazuje na pretpostavljeno nepromenljivo svojstvo srpskog identiteta. Njima se odredjuje i glavni uzrok poraza ili neuspeha, u kom slucaju one neretko prerastaju u jeremijade nad istorijskom sudbinom Srba. Najzad, nesloga se moze predstaviti i kao posledica jednog, ili citavog niza faktora, od mentaliteta ili kulture Srba, pa do tudjinske zavere. U sledecem segmentu rada, istrazuju se vidovi politickog instrumentalizovanja narodskih prica o neslozi i ne jedinstvu Srba, odnosno njihova upotreba kao ogleda, modela i velova. U prvom slucaju, politicki akter narodsko vidjenje stanja stvari koristi kao izgovor za svoje neuspehe, ili kako bi naglasio razlike izmedju sebe, svojih takmaca i pobornika. Narativi o neslozi omogucuju akteru i da usmerava publiku na zeljeni nacin, bilo da zeli da unese nove podele u grupu, zaostrava sukob vec postojecih frakcija i povezuje se sa nekom od njih, ili a uspostavlja izgubljeno jedinstvo grupe. Obe prethodne mogucnosti akter moze iskoristiti da bi obezbedio retoricki veo kojim ce prikriti svoje prave namere. Analiza se potom pomera ka ispitivanju istorijskih i drustvenih osnova prica o srpskom ne jedinstvu. Ratovi oko politickog identiteta iz sredine i druge polovine devetnaestog veka, pojacani trvenjima izmedju rivalskih pretenzija na politicki autoritet, dodatno usanceni razvojem stranackog sistema, i radikalizovani novim oblicima sukoba izmedju interesa, vrednosti i identiteta na pocetku dvadesetog veka, zajedno su uslovili razvoj narativa o srpskom ne jedinstvu i rascepima. Na takvu osnovu su se potom nadovezivali rascepi izazvani dinastickim, konfesionalnim ili nacionalnim razlikama, svi zajedno zacementirani iskustvima ratova i revolucija. Analiza se najzad pomera ka nenameravanim posledicama narodskih prica o srpskom ne jedinstvu i razlicitih oblika njihove politicke instrumentalizacije. Zbog pogresnog predstavljanja ili objasnjavanja stvarnih problem a, karakteristicnog za narodske price, a pogotovu zbog politicke zloupotrebe narodskih prica o tim problemima, konstruktivni potencijal vezan za drustvene konflikte i njihovu narativizaciju biva ozbiljno ugrozen. Sledi duboki osecaj frustracije i opadanje poverenja u politicke elite i politicki proces uopste. U zakljucku se skrece paznja na cinjenicu da je savremeno umnozavanje narodskih prica o srpskom ne jedinstvu, kao i prakse njihove politicke instrumentalizacije, povezano sa nesposobnoscu srpskog partijskog sistema i politickog sistema uopste da se odgovorno suoci sa, a pogotovu da razresi splet istorijskih i savremenih sukoba interesa i identitetskih rascepa koji su izvoriste narodskih prica. (shrink)

Chantal Mouffe is one of the most influential political theorists at work today. Her work has influenced political parties across Europe and continues to inform the direction of left politics. In this work, Mouffe argues that liberal democracy misunderstands the problems of ethnic, religious and nationalist conflicts because of its inadequate conception of politics.

Nigeria is a multi-ethnic and multicultural society, and therefore, Nigeria’s religious inclinations differ broadly. There are currently three religions dominant in Nigeria, namely Christianity, Islam and African Traditional Religion (ATR). These three religions, especially the first two, have demonstrated varying levels of fanaticism in the past leading to many recounted crises and jungle justice incidents in Nigeria. Because of Nigerian politics, we have witnessed the use of armed thugs by politicians to harass and even kill party opponents and displace (...) their families. These two factors have caused many young, highly skilled persons to flee Nigeria for a safer haven. This study therefore tries to review current religious fanaticism and electioneering thuggery leading to loss of lives and property, which consequently sees to the fall of the Nigerian economy and the subsequent enthronement of insecurity in the country. It suggests that these factors are foundational problems consequent to the amalgamation of 1914 and are leading causes for the rapid rate of migration of Nigerian experts out of the country. Contribution: At a time when Nigeria is in dire need of great brains to help in its developmental struggle, politicians and religious bigots have constituted a serious blockade to this ambition. This article is a review of recent political and religious turmoil in Nigeria with a view to call the attention of all warring religious and political stakeholders to the damage their extremism has already caused and to also bring the attention of Nigerians to the foundation of these problems, namely the amalgamation and the need to address it. (shrink)

In an era when much of what passes for debate is merely moral posturing--traditional family values versus the cultural elite, free speech versus censorship--or reflexive name-calling--the terms "liberal" and "politically correct," are used with as much dismissive scorn by the right as "reactionary" and "fascist" are by the left--Stanley Fish would seem an unlikely lightning rod for controversy. A renowned scholar of Milton, head of the English Department of Duke University, Fish has emerged as a brilliantly original critic of the (...) culture at large, praised and pilloried as a vigorous debunker of the pieties of both the left and right. His mission is not to win the cultural wars that preoccupy the nation's attention, but rather to redefine the terms of battle. In There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, Fish takes aim at the ideological gridlock paralyzing academic and political exchange in the nineties. In his witty, accessible dissections of the swirling controversies over multiculturalism, affirmative action, canon revision, hate speech, and legal reform, he neatly eviscerates both the conservatives' claim to possession of timeless, transcendent values, and the intellectual left's icons of equality, tolerance, and non-discrimination. He argues that while conservative ideologues and liberal stalwarts might disagree vehemently on what is essential to a culture, or to a curriculum, both mistakenly believe that what is essential can be identified apart from the accidental circumstances to which the essential is ritually opposed. In the book's first section, which includes the five essays written for Fish's celebrated debates with Dinesh D'Souza, Fish turns his attention to the neoconservative backlash. In his introduction, Fish writes, "Terms that come to us wearing the label 'apolitical'--'common values', 'fairness', 'merit', 'color blind', 'free speech', 'reason'--are in fact the ideologically charged constructions of a decidedly political agenda. I make the point not in order to level an accusation, but to remove the sting of accusation from the world 'politics' and redefine it as a synonym for what everyone inevitably does." Fish maintains that the debate over political correctness is an artificial one, because it is simply not possible for any party or individual to occupy a position above or beyond politics. Regarding the controversy over the revision of the college curriculum, Fish argues that the point is not to try to insist that inclusion of ethnic and gender studies is not a political decision, but "to point out that any alternative curriculum--say a diet of exclusively Western or European texts--would be no less politically invested." In Part Two, Fish follows the implications of his arguments to a surprising rejection of the optimistic claims of the intellectual left that awareness of the historical roots of our beliefs and biases can allow us, as individuals or as a society, to escape or transcend them. Specifically, he turns to the movement for reform of legal studies, and insists that a dream of a legal culture in which no one's values are slighted or declared peripheral can no more be realized than the dream of a concept of fairness that answers to everyone's notions of equality and jsutice, or a yardstick of merit that is true to everyone's notions of worth and substance. Similarly, he argues that attempts to politicize the study of literature are ultimately misguided, because recharacterizations of literary works have absolutely no impact on the mainstream of political life. He concludes his critique of the academy with "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos," an extraordinary look at some of the more puzzing, if not out-and-out masochistic, characteristics of a life in academia. Penetrating, fearless, and brilliantly argued, There's No Such Thing as Free Speech captures the essential Fish. It is must reading for anyone who cares about the outcome of America's cultural wars. (shrink)

The post-Westphalian Nation State developed by becoming more and more an Information Society. However, in so doing, it progressively made itself less and less the main information agent, because one of the main forces that made the Nation State possible and then predominant, as a historical driving force in human politics, namely Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), is also what is now making it less central, in the social, political and economic life of humanity across the world. ICTs enable and (...) promote the agile, temporary and timely aggregation, disaggregation and re-aggregation of distributed groups around shared interests across old, rigid boundaries represented by social classes, political parties, ethnicity, language barriers, physical and geographical barriers, and so forth. Similar novelties call for a serious exercise in conceptual re-engineering. This paper argues for the need to understand how the new informational multiagent systems may be designed in such a way as to take full advantage of the socio-political progress made so far, while being able to deal successfully with the new global challenges (from the environment to the financial markets) that are undermining the legacy of that very progress. (shrink)

Sylviane Agacinski has never shied away from controversy. Vilified by some -- including many feminists -- and celebrated by others as a pioneer of gender equality, she has galvanized the French political scene. Her articulation of the theory of "parity" helped inspire a law that went into effect in May 2000 requiring the country's political parties to fill 50 percent of the candidacies in every race with women. Sylviane Agacinski, according to _The New Yorker,_ "is sometimes credited with making (...) _parité_ respectable." Agacinski begins with the notion that sexual difference should be affirmed rather than denied. Sex, Agacinski points out, is not a social, cultural, or ethnic characteristic -- it is a universal human trait. In her argument for the necessary recognition of sexual difference, she enters into today's most controversial social territory. Agacinski's model of parity does not strive for the nebulous ideal of "equality" between the sexes; instead, it demands a concrete formula for political contests: an equal number of female and male candidates in every election. It is a theory that has sparked impassioned debate across France: Are female politicians necessarily different from male politicians? Is parity democratic? Is it truly feminist? Agacinski's sophisticated polemic will stimulate debate on American shores as it has in France. _Parity of the Sexes_ sheds light on one of the crucial spheres of public life in which earlier French feminists left their work unfinished -- the realm of political power. (shrink)

In the making of a new home, immigrants have always wanted to settle with people that share similar religious beliefs, given that religion is the only common point that offers universality contrary to culture and other social factors that are subject to change in respect with the surrounding. Given the increase in the global population statistics of the Lutheran church, this article presented a case study of the lives and activities of immigrants of Lutheran origin in Kenya. Based on the (...) existing literature, factors like the religiosity, culture and language of the host community will be analyzed. Moreover, the major finding of this study identifies that the separation between immigrants and locals is based on the fact that there is lack of a common language between the two parties. Emphasis was put on language as the biggest unifying factor. A realization of the factors that hinder integration of immigrants into the host society as explained in this article will aid in the formulation of new policies by the Lutheran church of Kenya and as well go a long way in resolving the existing barriers to immigrant integration. (shrink)

Sylviane Agacinski has never shied away from controversy. Vilified by some--including many feminists--and celebrated by others as a pioneer of gender equality, she has galvanized the French political scene. Her articulation of the theory of "parity" helped inspire a law that went into effect in May 2000 requiring the country's political parties to fill 50 percent of the candidacies in every race with women. Sylviane Agacinski, according to _The New Yorker,_ "is sometimes credited with making _parité_ respectable." Agacinski begins (...) with the notion that sexual difference should be affirmed rather than denied. Sex, Agacinski points out, is not a social, cultural, or ethnic characteristic--it is a universal human trait. In her argument for the necessary recognition of sexual difference, she enters into today's most controversial social territory. Agacinski's model of parity does not strive for the nebulous ideal of "equality" between the sexes; instead, it demands a concrete formula for political contests: an equal number of female and male candidates in every election. It is a theory that has sparked impassioned debate across France: Are female politicians necessarily different from male politicians? Is parity democratic? Is it truly feminist? Agacinski's sophisticated polemic will stimulate debate on American shores as it has in France. _Parity of the Sexes_ sheds light on one of the crucial spheres of public life in which earlier French feminists left their work unfinished--the realm of political power. (shrink)

Decisions based on algorithmic, machine learning models can be unfair, reproducing biases in historical data used to train them. While computational techniques are emerging to address aspects of these concerns through communities such as discrimination-aware data mining and fairness, accountability and transparency machine learning, their practical implementation faces real-world challenges. For legal, institutional or commercial reasons, organisations might not hold the data on sensitive attributes such as gender, ethnicity, sexuality or disability needed to diagnose and mitigate emergent indirect discrimination-by-proxy, such (...) as redlining. Such organisations might also lack the knowledge and capacity to identify and manage fairness issues that are emergent properties of complex sociotechnical systems. This paper presents and discusses three potential approaches to deal with such knowledge and information deficits in the context of fairer machine learning. Trusted third parties could selectively store data necessary for performing discrimination discovery and incorporating fairness constraints into model-building in a privacy-preserving manner. Collaborative online platforms would allow diverse organisations to record, share and access contextual and experiential knowledge to promote fairness in machine learning systems. Finally, unsupervised learning and pedagogically interpretable algorithms might allow fairness hypotheses to be built for further selective testing and exploration. Real-world fairness challenges in machine learning are not abstract, constrained optimisation problems, but are institutionally and contextually grounded. Computational fairness tools are useful, but must be researched and developed in and with the messy contexts that will shape their deployment, rather than just for imagined situations. Not doing so risks real, near-term algorithmic harm. (shrink)

Contemporary bioethics recognizes the importance of the culture in shaping ethical issues, yet in practice, a process for ethical analysis and decision making is rarely adjusted to the culture and ethnicity of involved parties. This is of a particular concern in a health care system that is caring for a growing Aboriginal population. We raise the possibility of constructing a bioethics grounded in traditional Aboriginal knowledge. As an example of an element of traditional knowledge that contains strong ethical guidance, (...) we present the story of the Gifts of the Seven Grandfathers. We note a resemblance of this Ojibway teaching to virtue ethics in European traditions, but we suggest that there are also important differences in how these two traditions are currently presented. We hope that further engagement with a variety of indigenous moral teachings and traditions could improve health care involving Aboriginal patients and communities, and enrich the discipline of bioethics. (shrink)

The National Socialist Physicians League, was a professional medical organization founded upon the same ideologies that shaped the broader National Socialist agenda. Despite the vast historical and ethical literature focused on physician involvement in Nazi atrocities during the Holocaust, little attention has been paid to the NSDÄB. However, the establishment of this group is important to understanding the forces shaping physician participation in the Nazi party. Physicians often look to professional medical organizations as a source of moral guidance; thus, ideologies (...) of racism and the active harassment of ethnic or racial minority groups by this professional organization may have contributed to the establishment of this behavior as not only permissive but normal. This article will explore how this organization contributed to normalizing, desensitizing and legitimizing behavior that could not be justified by any normative theory of professional medical ethics. (shrink)

The post-Westphalian Nation State developed by becoming more and more an Information Society. However, in so doing, it progressively made itself less and less the main information agent, because what made the Nation State possible and then predominant, as a historical driving force in human politics, namely ICTs, is also what is now making it less central, in the social, political and economic life of humanity across the world. ICTs fluidify the topology of politics. They do not merely enable but (...) actually promote (through management and empowerment) the agile, temporary and timely aggregation, disaggregation and re-aggregation of distributed groups around shared interests across old, rigid boundaries represented by social classes, political parties, ethnicity, language barriers, physical barriers, and so forth. This is generating a new tension between the Nation State, still understood as a major organisational institution, yet no longer monolithic but increasingly morphing into a multiagent system itself, and a variety of equally powerful, indeed sometimes even more politically influential and powerful, non-Statal organisations. Geo-politics is now global and increasingly non-territorial, but the Nation State still defines its identity and political legitimacy in terms of a sovereign territorial unit, as a Country. Such tension calls for a serious exercise in conceptual re-engineering: how should the new informational multiagent systems (MASs) be designed in such a way as to take full advantage of the socio-political progress made so far, while being able to deal successfully with the new global challenges (from the environment to the financial markets) that are undermining the legacy of that very progress? In the lecture, I shall defend an answer to this question in terms of a design of political MAS based on principles borrowed from information ethics. (shrink)

Recent military coups in West Africa have put the continent’s democratisation itself into question. In some places, for the moment, these coups appear to have popular backing. Nigeria, where radicalism is firmly rooted in democratic values and a human-rights framework, the radical grassroots opposition to the Buhari government’s creeping authoritarianism lies drenched in blood. The roots of this development go back to the history of Nigeria’s radicalism in the twentieth century. Much has appeared on the global 1968 recently, including that (...) of Africa. 1970s/1980s-style radicalism is reappearing today with Omoyele Sowore’s 2018 presidential candidacy, with the African Action Congress party, the #EndSARS protests and the tragic Lekki Toll Gate massacre (2020) in Nigeria. The shift towards radicalism is palpable with protest music such as Falz’s This is Nigeria, and Burna Boy’s Monsters you Made, both explicitly targeting neocolonialism and police brutality. Contrary to Achille Mbembe’s sweeping dismissal of African radicalism, the movement with very deep roots under study is meaningful once again, and is gathering momentum in West Africa’s giant polity. This article applies Walter Benjamin’s and also Nigerian radical thinkers’ conceptualisation of political, social and artistic radicalism, while it frames the Nigerian version via the movement’s history, in which marxisant theory and praxis, feminism, human rights and pro-democracy movements interact with emancipatory strands of Islam, Christianity, Igbo Judaism, and animism. In the context of Nigerian radicalism, even expressly pro-capitalist art theory performs a radical social function by stressing the African’s right to make universal statements (Olu Oguibe) in its de facto defiance of the neo-colony. As these different strands of protest meet, ethnic uprisings (amongst them IPOB) find ways to establish common cause with social radicalism, posing a composite threat to the prebendalist oligarchy that rules and oppresses the country via a militarised neoliberalism. (shrink)

We encounter offense through various media: an intended facetious remark, a protester’s photographic image of an aborted fetus, an epithet, a stereotypical joke of a minority racial group. People say things that cause offense all of the time. And causing offense can have serious consequences, both personal and professional; the offending party is subject to termination, suspension, or social isolation and public opprobrium. Since the stakes are so high we should have a better understanding of the mechanisms of offense involved (...) in these media and how they work. In this dissertation I focus on two mechanisms for communicating offense—i.e. racial and ethnic slurs and racial humor. First, I lay out a few distinctions concerning the particular kind of offense being targeted, objective versus subjective offense, and when state involvement might be appropriate for penalizing offensive behavior. Next, I discuss racial slurs and the conditions of their offensiveness. I offer a non-content based view of slurs’ offense, which contradicts the consensus view held by most philosophers of language and linguists working on this issue. Also, I look more closely at a purportedly non-offensive use of slurring language, so-called linguistic appropriation, and determine that appropriated uses are permissible in certain settings only under certain conditions. And finally, I propose a tri-partite analysis of racial jokes that provides conditions for when they are merely racial, racially insensitive, or racist. (shrink)

Solidarity is a valuable tradition of Vietnam Communist Party and Vietnamese people and Ho Chi Minh is the personification of the great national Solidarity. Ho Chi Minh Solidarity is reflected by tolerant, which is not tight in national matter but also extends to the contemporary world. This is the foundation of national Solidarity as well as international Solidarity to the liberating, building and developing carier of a country. It is difficult to reach a common point between 54 minority ethnics in (...) all around Vietnam with different culture, custom, religious beliefs. However, Ho Chi Minh, by his thinking and action, he was successful in establishing a great united bloc of all the minority ethnics in Vietnam. It leads to a happy, comfortable and peaceful life. That is the reason why people said that: “In the past, there were few men could be a part of legend when he was still alive, but Ho Chi Minh extremely did it”. (shrink)

This essay offers a brief overview of Mihajlo Mihajlov's efforts in the USA to publicize human rights violations in Titoist Yugoslavia, Mihajlov co-founded the Committee to Aid Democratic Dissidents in Yugoslavia (CADDY) within The Democracy Intemational in 1979, Its CADDY Bulletin became a reliable source of information regarding persecutions and prosecutions of individuals and groups championing basic human rights and freedoms, the rule of law, pluralism, tolerance, and an open society in Yugoslavia, CADDY thus became a platform urging the democratization (...) of the country as the only way to avoid inter-ethnic conflagration. CADDY inspired Freedom House conferences and publications by both Freedom House and the Helsinki Committee USA as well as the most comprehensive multi-author volume on Human Rights in Yugoslavia, CADDY challenged not only one-party rule in Titoist Yugoslavia, but also the US, State Department's favorable view of this maverick communist state as the first to break away from the Soviet monolith. (shrink)

Ghana has earned many accolades for multi-partisan democracy in sub Saharan Africa. This political system has also produced many social and economic benefits for the citizenry. However, political parties are also a vehicle for the promotion of ethnic fragmentation that perils nation building. This article explores how partisan politics in Ghana is undermining nation building. I propose a three-pronged approach to working towards nation building amidst the fragmentation of adversarial multi-partysm.

" Notre Musique includes a lengthy sequence that involves a presentation by Godard on the relationship between text and image. The occasion of the lecture is a conference in Sarajevo titled European Literary Encounters, an annual event first organized in 2000. Godard gave his lecture in 2002 and the long middle-section of the film offers a "lightly fictionalized restaging" of his address and of other encounters surrounding the conference. The narrative setting of the majority of this film, then, is a (...) space of discourse (a conference and a lecture), but I suggest that the film is conceptually sited more generally and abstractly in the "space" or “frame” of discourse itself. Because it ponders various parameters—spatial, historical, conceptual—that allow or disallow discursive connection, I regard Notre Musique as an extended meditation on the possibilities for and barriers to discourse. By siting the film in Sarajevo, Godard is clearly highlighting a frame for this meditation—a frame that includes a history of violence and reconciliation. The conference is decidedly international and takes place in a city with a rich cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic history, even as it bears the scars of violence and ethnic division. Sarajevo, moreover, is a city with a complex relationship to the state—having been a nucleus to various formations of state and empire in the last century. In its history and in the present, Sarajevo is a site of discourse and discord; of the union and clash of influences (be they religious, political, or ethnic). Hence, Sarajevo’s relevance to the film is not merely one of documentary fidelity (because it was the host city for the conference). It is a perfect site for Godard to pursue a line of reflection on discourse and its breakdown in the frame of changing formations of power. Sarjevo as a site also calls attention to how the parties or constituencies for discourse remain in states of flux—either through processes of self-definition from within or misrecognition (or nonrecognition) from without...". (shrink)