Dyskursywne uprawomocnienie refleksji teoretycznej w naukach o polityce

Author(s): Jarosław Nocoń / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2017

The article addresses the topic of scientific validation of theoretical reflection in the context of academic discourse. The primary thesis states that the status of a stance, school or a theoretical tradition is, on the one hand, determined by factual arguments relying on rational justification and explanatory pragmatism, and on the other hand, by numerous irrational factors that determine contemporary discourse in scientific community. The author focuses on both cultural, systemic and institutional determinants of discourse.

Political Concepts and the Concept of the Political

Author(s): John G. Gunnell / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

Although concepts are typically assumed to be at the core of both the language of politics and the language of political inquiry, the meaning of “concept” has remained notoriously vague. In everyday usage, prominent elements of philosophy, and the literature of political science and political theory, concepts are, however, primarily assumed to be mental phenomena that are expressed in words and actions. This assumption has been challenged by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gilbert Ryle, and a variety of contemporary philosophers who claim that human thought is primarily linguistic. This suggests that concepts are best understood as forms of linguistic usage. The concept-word “politics” refers to a culturally and historically variable category of social phenomena, and it is a mistake to assume that the phrase “the political” designates a theoretical concept.

Theoretical Malnutrition and the Realist Therapy in Political Science

Author(s): Stephen Welch / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

David Easton’s 1953 complaint of political science’s ‘theoretical malnutrition and surfeit of facts’ has been echoed numerous times, recently for instance in the ‘Perestroika’ movement in American political science. Proposals for rectifying the theoretical deficit have been numerous, but one line of argument has come to predominate: the realist critique of political science’s positivism. This essay examines that critique and finds fault both with its characterization of positivism and its proposed remedy for the theoretical deficit. Its diagnosis and therapy are both philosophically inflated, with a dangerous promotion of a transcendental or speculative ontology and concomitant neglect of empirical constraints on theorizing. Yet with a restored but deeper emphasis on the empirical basis of theory, taking the question of the nature and causal mechanisms of ‘political culture’ as illustrative, and disregarding the inhibitions created by disciplinary boundaries, progress beyond theoretical malnutrition remains possible.

How Values become Political?

Author(s): Alvydas Jokūbaitis / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

The aim of the article is to reveal the nature of political values. One group of theoreticians thinks that political values are derived from non-political spheres. The representatives of the other group hold the view that there are purely political values. These two different understandings are to be found in the works of Michel Foucault and John Rawls. Foucault thinks that any non-political value can be transformed into a political value, and Rawls claims that there are purely political values. Both of these positions face difficulties. Foucault cannot explain how non-political values become political, and Rawls cannot explain how non-political values can influence politics. To solve the problem of the origin of political values we have to turn to what Carl Schmitt calls the political. Without a definition of the political it is impossible to explain political values.

Subsistence: from Social Rights to Human Rights?

Author(s): Fabrizio Sciacca / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

I will focus here on three perspectives related to the question of the application of social rights as rights to subsistence in European affluent societies. It can be said that the problem of the equalisation between subsistence rights (as social rights) and patrimonial rights did not lead either to narrow distinctions or to acceptable solutions. In fact, if subsistence rights, as many affirm, are social rights entailing duties of assistance from others, the second point should also be self-evident, that is to say, every subsistence right would determine the equal distribution regarding the relation between social services and patrimonial rights. Nevertheless, this problem appears to be hanged on the social structures of control of power.

BOOK REVIEW: WHY NOT SOCIALISM?, BY G.A. COHEN, PRINCETON AND OXFORD: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2009

Author(s): Oana Ghiocea / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

Túl a legitimitáson? Xenophón Anabasziszának tanulságai a kortárs realista politikaelmélet számára

Author(s): Zoltán Gábor Szűcs / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 4/2017

Legitimacy seems to be the problem of contemporary realist political theory to which most attention is paid. The reason for this is that contemporary realism aims to take a kind of intermediate position between on the one hand a ‘political moralist’ standpoint, which traces back the justifi cation of political acts to moral principles outside of politics, mostly exemplifi ed as Rawlsian philosophy by the realists, and the standpoint they call ‘Realpolitik’, ‘Machiavellism’ or ‘might is right’, which justifi es political acts solely by the success of maintaining power over the other. However, it is questionable whether such an intermediate position is possible. Relying on Xenophon’s Anabasis, the paper argues that it is not, but that this is not fatal from the point of view of realist political theory, and it does not necessarily result in the acceptance of the standpoint of ‘might is right’. The essence of Xenophon’s thought is that the norms of correct political action are to be sought in the continuous urge to choose created by the confl icts of various normative viewpoints rather than in the form of abstract political norms detached from morality (as the concept of legitimacy would suggest). This is a lesson that contemporary realism should consider adopting, instead of the fruitless conceptual discussions of legitimacy.

Idea wyodrębnienia dyscypliny naukowej „nauki o bezpieczeństwie” i jej konsekwencje

Author(s): Marian Lutostański / Language(s): Polish Issue: 25/2018

There are numerous controversies regarding the fields of study of “security”. Reported objections are represented in the context of “nationalization” and another field of study – “defense studies”. The study is an attempt to answer two questions: 1) what is the rationale to contest the current list of areas of academic study, academic disciplines and fields of study in the area of security and defense studies?; 2) what are the possible solutions to remove controversial issues in that classification? The article also provides a short reflection on the “security engineering” as an autonomous discipline. In the final part of the foregoing shows the original model solutions of an existing problem.

Kierunki przemian dydaktyki w naukach o bezpieczeństwie

Author(s): Andrzej Pieczywok / Language(s): Polish Issue: 25/2018

Current times carry a huge load of various events because the 21st century is the century of great changes and huge progress in various spheres of human life. The feeling of security in many environments and social groups diminishes due to developmen

Theological ideas of Nichifor Crainic and their relevance for his political activity

Author(s): Iuliu-Marius Morariu / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2018

mportant and, in the same time, controversial personality of interwar period and the later one, Nichifor Crainic was in the same time poet, theologian, philosopher and politician. He published many articles, book reviews, chronicles, meditation and theological studies in books and journals like Gândirea or Ramuri (the first one founded by him). In the same time, he was the first professor of mystical theology in a Romanian Faculty of Theology, the one of Bucharest. His theological ideas are still relevant today for the theological space and this make them to be analysed, referred to and quoted. In the same time, some of them have influenced his political attitude, making them to become exponential for Romanian Nationalism during the interwar period, to see, as others (for example Nae Ionescu) of being Orthodox as linked with national identity, and also to be closed with far-right movement during the aforementioned period, but also during the Second World War.

Michel Foucault’nun “Biyopolitika” Kavramının Teorik Çerçevesi

Author(s): Altuğ Koç / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 2/2018

In the works which Michel Foucault debated power, he didn’t try to answer whatthe power is. For him, power is already in everywhere. He seeks how the powers isapplied to individuals and subjects. The relation between power and subject, andgovernance problematic are main course of his works. The surveillance devices of thestates, closure devices, punishment transformations and Panopticon concept whichhe started to examine with The Birth of the Clinic, Discipline and Punish: The Birthof the Prison, transformed into biopolitics concept with the History of Sexuality. Theaim of this study is to analyze the Michel Foucault’s biopolitics concept and draw itstheoretical frame

Polityczność różnorodności jako problem hermeneutyczny

Author(s): Edyta B. Pietrzak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2019

In public discourse we can observe many ways of using the term “diversity”, therefore it is neces-sary in this respect to organize the concepts and a reliable, hermeneutical analysis of the discourse, which is a theoretical introduction to further, detailed research in various disciplines and an indication of how this ambiguity affects political practice.In the article will be analysed aspects of political diversity. The aim of the article is to outline a re-search area, including the political nature of diversity, posing and justifying research questions, which will be developed in further research. Due to the specificity of the data used in the study, their transdis- ciplinary character and the intersection of different points of view, the hermeneutical method by Hans Georg Gadamer will be the most appropriate method for their analysis.The starting point here may be the hypothesis that due to the change in the conditions of function¬ing of the public sphere, such as globalisation processes, widespread education and increased migration activity, it can be observed that representatives of various groups who have remained in the shadow of the private sphere or on the outskirts of the public sphere are relocating their activity to its centre, thus changing the dynamics of democratic political systems.

Despre naționalismul defensiv

Author(s): Valentin Constantin / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 04/2019

A Theory of Functional Legitimacy

Author(s): Francesco Nicoli / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2016

“ L’Europe se fera dans les crises et elle sera la somme des solutions apportées à ces crises” Jean Monnet, Memoirs, 1978 “I am sure the euro will oblige us to introduce a new set of economic policy instruments. It is politically impossible to propose that now. But some day there will be a crisis and new instruments will be created.” Romano Prodi, Financial Times, 2001

Kapitalizam/demokratija, reprezentacija

Author(s): Alpar Lošonc / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 3/2019

The paper focuses on the relationship between capitalism and democracy, with particular reference to the issue of representation in the framework of democracy. Furthermore, the paper (that attempts to synthesize conceptual dilemmas and analyze conjunctural tendencies) consists of three parts. In the first part, I highlight four different views regarding the compatibility and incompatibility of capitalism and democracy, with the orientations that make this relationship irrelevant. In part two, I discuss the conjunctural crisis tendencies of capitalism that produce negative expectations and produce political effects. I relate these expectations to the recurrence of the crisis that broke out in 2007, and treat the continuity of the various protest struggles that indicate a significant manifestation of the potential of democracy's resistance. Finally, in the last part, I discuss the issue of representation from the perspective of democracy and build on the previous two chapters. I emphasize that the aforementioned movements, the protest groups created by the crisis, were simultaneously developing different counter-representation practices, again problematizing the relationship between capitalism and democracy. There is no way for democracy to be cleansed of its heterogeneous meanings. However, the practice of counter-representationreminds us that democracy still contains the potential for resistance.

Humanizam i racionalnost

Author(s): Nermina Mujagić / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 2/2016

Gerrymandering az Egyesült Államokban. Megmentheti-e a matematika a demokráciát?

Author(s): Máté Czene-Joó / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 3/2019

In this paper I review the extensive scholarly literature on gerrymandering, particularly that of the tests and standards of gerrymandering, that are used to assess redistricting plans and identify partisan bias. The tests are grouped into two subcategories: mathematical – statistical models, that are outcomebased, meaning their only inputs are election results; and geographical, mapbased methods, that evaluate the spatial attributes of constituencies with the use of geographic information systems.

Az állam újrafelfedezése – alkotmányos változások Magyarországon

Author(s): Benedek Varsányi / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 3/2019

Prof. István Stumpf: Reinventing Government – Constitutional Changes in Hungary. Budapest, Gondolat, 2017., 212 oldal

A globális demokratizálás válsága. Az amerikai demokráciakutatás fősodrának konceptuális kudarca

Author(s): Attila Ágh / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2020

The ruling paradigm of democracy research for decades has been formulated by Huntington in his book on the Third Wave, which states that the process of democratization has reached its third, global wave, therefore democratic transition and consolidation have become the key terms of democracy theory. In the big euphoria of democracy, however, it was forgotten or marginalized that Huntington had also predicted recession or a counter-wave between particular waves, and referred that such a counter-wave might also follow the third wave described by him. The positive scenario of democratization remained valid until the late 2000s, moreover, the topic of recession was not discussed meaningfully either, as if global democratization had reached the point of no return. But in the 2010s there was a sharp turn in democracy theory and the global counter-wave has become the central topic of democratization. It has also produced the conceptual failure of the previously dominant American democracy theory. In such a way, the crisis of global democracy has come “home” to the US in the second half of the 2010s. This paper, from the huge literature of democracy research, only deals with the conflict between the mainstream concepts of US and European democracy research, and its implications for the East-Central European region.

A liberalizmus architektúrája és az illiberalizmus dilemmája

Author(s): Tamás Paár / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2020

Patrick J. Deneen: A liberalizmus kudarca. Ford. Kisantal Tamás. Libri, 2019. Patrick J. Deneen: Why Liberalism Failed. Yale University Press, 2018.