Search results for " Political theory"
showing 9 items of 9 documents
Farewell to Anarchy : The Myth of International Anarchy and Birth of Anarcophilia in International Relations
2018
This article scrutinizes the conceptual history of international anarchy. The argument purported here is that even though the idea of international anarchy is often seen as very central for the academic discipline of international relations, the concept is in fact not found from the forerunners or classics of the discipline. The assumption of international anarchy is commonly seen as a defining feature of a Realist school of international relations. Yet, the concept and especially its “Realist” implications are not to be found in the classics of Realism, from Thucydides, Machiavelli or Hobbes. The idea of “international anarchy” emerges quite tentatively during the First World War, in the w…
The Phantasmatic Core of Fascism: Psychoanalytic Theories of Antisemitism and Group Aggression Amongst the ‘Political Freudians’
2022
The period predating and overlapping with World War II saw psychoanalytic authors respond to the authoritarian and fascist developments in Europe through scholarly and analytical writings. These authors, sometimes referenced as ‘political Freudians’, were interested in bringing psychoanalysis in a dialogue with progressive social and pedagogical movements of their times, focusing their critique on the persecutory, eliminatory and purificatory fantasies, which they saw as animating the fascistic movements in Europe. This article analyses selected texts by Otto Fenichel, Ernst Simmel and Rudolf Loewenstein and argues that these authors asked about the political and ethical stakes of the fasci…
Paradigms for Political Action. A Draft for a Repertoire
2022
Whether politics is a separate sphere or an aspect of human action is a subject of academic controversy. I focus here on the political aspect of action, which is not exclusive of other aspects. There are no ‘naturally political’ issues nor is there anything completely devoid of a political aspect. I am now taking a step backwards to discuss the seemingly simple ‘political or not’ question, as compared to the ‘political in which sense’ question, which I have discussed elsewhere. In this article, I stay on the ideal–typical level, as I want to discuss alternative ways of marking the criteria for the political aspect, without discussing the views of other scholars in detail. I call the procedu…
Neville, Henry
2021
A descendant of a noble English family, Henry Neville (1620–1694) was an influential political figure and a prominent intellectual in the tumultuous phase from the execution of Charles I in 1649 to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, that is to say, the period when England went through the crucial stages of the civil war by ending royal absolutism, followed by the republican interlude and the Restoration, and the laying of the foundations of European constitutionalism.
Game Theory and Mutual Beliefs
1995
Conventional facts are based on mutual beliefs which work as reasons for actions. The question remaining is: How can other peoples’ beliefs in something, which leads them to act accordingly, be a reason for someone else acting in a similar way? What is the compelling force of conventional facts noticed by Durkheim?
Book Review: Das Jahrhundert der Politik. Eine Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts im Lichte ihrer Politikbegriffe by Friedbert Rüb, Nomos, 2020, 682 pag…
2021
Average Tax Rate Cyclicality in OECD Countries: A Test of Three Fiscal Policy Theories
2011
This paper investigates the cyclical properties of the average effective tax rate in 26 OECD countries over 1965-2003 in order to test the validity of three theories of fiscal policy: (i) the standard Keynesian theory which recommends that tax policy should be counter-cyclical, (ii) the Tax Smoothing hypothesis, which implies that changes in GDP should be uncorrelated with tax rates, and (iii) the positive theory of Battaglini and Coate (2008) which predicts that the average tax rate should be negatively correlated with GDP. Our main finding is that the correlations of tax rates with cyclical GDP are generally quite small and statistically indistinguishable from zero. This finding is quite …
The Nature of the ‘I Think’: Comments on Chapter 11 of Kant's Thinker
2014
AbstractThe article deals with Kant's theory of the self in Patricia Kitcher's Kant's Thinker in three respects: (1) I argue that it is doubtful whether accompanying representations with the ‘I think’ as such yields a principle for the categories since it does not require any strong kind of connection between them. (2) I discuss textual evidence for and against Kitcher's attempt to make sense of Kant's claim that the ‘I think’ requires the continued existence of cognizers per se. (3) I ask whether Kitcher's understanding of Kant's positive theory of the self leans towards minimal substantialism or towards functionalism.
Political Theory For The Anthropocene
2016
This paper explores the ways in which the Anthropocene, this new epoch in which noearthly place, form, entity, process, or system escapes the reach of human activity, puts underpressure some traditional categories and concepts of liberal democratic theory. We begin byexplaining the notion of the Anthropocene, and then show how it may affect traditional liberalnotions of agency, responsibility, governance, and legitimacy. We conclude by describing thechallenge of designing new institutions appropriate to the Anthropocene.