The contributors to this collection offer seven case studies that treat different aspects of political and ritual legitimation in China and Europe over the past two millennia. With a primary focus on crisis and change, the contributors analyze how rulers and states work to produce a popular political consensus that accepts their rule.
This book examines and investigates the legitimacy of the European Union by acknowledging the importance of variation across actors, institutions, audiences, and context. Case studies reveal how different actors have contributed to the politics of (re)legitimating the European Union in response to multiple recent problems in European integration. The case studies look specifically at stakeholder interests, social groups, officials, judges, the media and other actors external to the Union. With this, the book develops a better understanding of how the politics of legitimating the Union are actor-dependent, context-dependent and problem-dependent. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European integration, as well as those interested in legitimacy and democracy beyond the state from a point of view of political science, political sociology and the social sciences more broadly.
This title was first published in 2000: Politics cannot be conceived of as just a subsystem of society, or as a network of particular interests. The concept of interests and their role within the normative political debate is given a new interpretation by this book, which examines how political interest, market mechanisms and rational choice theories exist in the light of democratic freedom and social justice. The book builds on different concepts of procedural justice, from Schumpeter, Buchanan and Habermas’s conceptions of democracy and the role of political compromise and coalition in the idea of consensus as a condition for political legitimation.
The Internet in Indonesia’s New Democracy is a detailed study of legal, economic, political and cultural practices surrounding the provision and consumption of the Internet in Indonesia at the turn of the twenty-first century. Hill and Sen detail the emergence of the Internet into Indonesia in the mid-1990s, and cover its growth through the dramatic economic and political crises of 1997 and the subsequent transition to democracy. Conceptually the Internet is seen as a global phenomenon, with global implications, however this book develops a way of thinking about the Internet within the limits of geo-political categories of nations and provinces. The political turmoil in Indonesia provides a unique context in which to understand the specific local and national consequences of a global, universal technology.
Published in Vienna in 1936, The Authoritarian State by Eric Voegelin has remained virtually unknown to the public until now. Sales of the German edition were halted following the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938, & the entire printing was later destroyed by wartime bombing. In this volume, Voegelin offers a critical examination of the most prominent European theories of state & constitutional law of the period while providing a political & historical analysis of the Austrian situation. He discusses the dismissal of Parliament in 1933, the civil war, the murder of Federal Chancellor Dollfuss, the adoption of the "Authoritarian Constitution" of 1934, & the predicament of being sandwiched between Hitler & Mussolini. A radical critique of Hans Kelsen's pure theory of law lies at the heart of this work, marking Voegelin's definitive departure from Neo-Kantian epistemology. For the first time, Voegelin elaborates on the important distinction between theoretical concepts & political symbols as a basis for explaining the nontheoretical & speculative character of ideologies, both left & right. He shows that total & authoritarian are symbols of ideological self-interpretation that have no theoretical value, a distinction basic to his later work in The New Science of Politics. Available for the first time in English, The Authoritarian State is a valuable addition to the Voegelin canon & to the field of intellectual history in general.
This important contribution to the study of the problem of order, which figures prominently in today's globalization debate, focuses on the role of sovereignty. It advances arguments based on psychocultural perspectives and looks at postcommunist transformations and changes in political, economic and cultural orders at all levels of social life.
The Rising Sons: China's Imperial Succession & The Art of War recollects 2,000 years of China's history by examining how some of its most representative imperial rulers seized power by applying tactics and strategies from Sun Tzu's The Art of War. This volume brings together tales of the nine princes of the Qin to Qing dynasties who rose to power through their cunning wit and prowess at psychological warfare. Brimming in equal measure with narrative interest and analytical insight, this book is as much a page turner about human greed, ambition and its capacity for cruelty as it is a treatise on power dynamics and court politics.
Representation of political power seems to have been necessary at all times in all complex urban societies. To secure order—to construct a certain social, ideological, religious, economic, and cultural stability—seems to be one of the main intentions of representation. When order breaks down or is threatened, political power comes under threat and the cohesion of the community is also in jeopardy. In times of impending change, crisis, or disorder, special effort is required to reassure the community of the rulers ability to maintain stability. What those in power did to convince the affected communities of their qualities as rulers, that is, their representational strategies — especially in times of change — is the subject of this book, explored through examination of case studies drawn from the ancient Near East. The volume is divided into three thematic parts: “Reestablishment of Order after Major Disruption,” “Changing Order from Within,” and “Perceptions of a New Order.”