Can Civil Society Succeed Where Elites Have Failed in the War on Sectarianism? Towards an infinitely demanding politics for the North

Caught between the well-armed imaginations of paramilitary organisations competing for the hearts and minds of a divided population, and state engineering of a liberal peace, civil society's impact on Northern Ireland's identity politics was limited during the thirty-year conflict. Specifically, the community and voluntary sector itself has tended to replicate as much as it challenged patterns of segregation in many of its own structures. With plans set out in the Northern Ireland Executive's Programme for Government (2008-11) to engage civil society in opening a new era of ‘good relations’ work to counter sectarianism and racism, civil society organisations will face a complex terrain, facing scepticism about their contribution to peace-making before the Good Friday Agreement, and working in a post-Agreement environment marked by continuing elite and communal antagonism demonstrated by the crisis at the turn of 2009 over devolution of justice and policing powers to the Northern Ireland Executive. A significant aspect of the resolution was a belated agreement by Sinn Fein and the DUP on a new community relation strategy, Cohesion, Sharing and Integration. This article suggests that civil society has a significant role to play in encouraging communities to confront the contradictions and tensions that continue to haunt the political architects of the Good Friday Agreement by affirming a radical and contingent vision of democracy as democratisation at a distance from the identity-saturated politics of the state-region of Northern Ireland. It draws on the work of Simon Critchley, Emmanuel Levinas and Wendy Brown, to offer an approach to identity politics in post-conflict Northern Ireland, focusing on the future orientation of civil society.

Representing War as Punishment in the War on Terror

This paper shows how the notion of punishment has been invoked by former US President George W. Bush, and ex UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to represent war. It is suggested that in this context, the notion of punishment serves different objectives: legitimizing violence, suggesting the sovereign role taken by the US and highlighting the emergence of new sensibilities. Building on previous literature in criminology and international relations it examines points of contact between two previously distinct security mechanisms - war and punishment- and suggests possible effects of this discursive blurring. It highlights not only the need for criminologists to engage with international relations literature but also the need to evaluate closely the different nature of the international context.

Frontline Leisure::Securitizing tourism in the War on Terror

This article argues that the terrorist bombings of hotels, pubs and nightclubs in Bali in October 2002, and in Mombasa one month later, were inaugural moments in the post-9/11 securitization of the tourism industry. Although practices of tourism and terrorism seem antithetical – one devoted to travel and leisure, the other to political violence – this article argues that their entanglement is revealed most clearly in the counter-terrorism responses that brought the everyday lives of tourists and tourism workers, as well as the material infrastructure of the tourism industry, within the orbit of a global security apparatus waging a ‘war on terror’. Drawing on critical work in international relations and geography, this article understands the securitization of tourism as part of a much wider logic in which the liberal order enacts pernicious modes of governance by producing a terrorist threat that is exceptional. It explores how this logic is reproduced through a cosmopolitan community symbolized by global travellers, and examines the measures taken by the tourism industry to secure this community (e.g. the physical transformations of hotel infrastructure and the provision of counter-terrorism training).

The overlap between war and crime: unpacking Foucault and Agamben’s studies within the context of the war on terror

This article will consider the current convergence between war and crime by unpacking Foucault’s analysis of power and Agamben’s elaboration on the conjunction between the banning of a life and the constitution of the polity. It will show that these perspectives link together crime and war as mechanisms that contribute to the governance of the population by legitimating authority and their use of force through the military and the police while excluding part of the population. It will expose how these convergences highlight the problem of the political in the constitution of the social order at the global level. In the current contingency, crime and war are strongly implicated in the crucial political function of calling people to share their similarities and differences, and yet are not the best mechanisms for dealing with the sharing of a world in common.

Presidential power and congressional acquiescence in the "war" on terrorism: a new constitutional equilibrium?

US presidents have expanded executive power in times of war and emergency,sometimes aggressively so. This article builds on the application of punctuated equilibria theory by Burnham (1999 and Ackerman (1999). Underpinning this theory is the notion that rapid changes in - or external shocks to - domestic and international society impose new and insistent demands on the state. In so doing, they produce important and decisive moments of institutional mobilization and creativity, disrupt a pre-existing, relatively stable, equilibrium between the Congress and the president, and precipitate decisions or nondecisions by the electorate and political leaders that define the contours for action when the next crisis or external shock occurs. The article suggests that the combination of President George W. Bush's presidentialist doctrine, 9/11 and the 'war' on terror has consolidated a new, constitutional equilibrium. While some members of Congress contest the new order, the Congress collectively has acquiesced in its own marginalization. The article surveys a wide range of executive power assertions and legislative retreats. It argues that power assertions generally draw on precedent: on, for example, a tradition of wartime presidential extraconstitutional leadership extending to presidents, such as John Adams and Abraham Lincoln,as well as to Cold War and post-Cold War presidentialism.

Introduction: the impact of the 'War on Terror' on executive–legislative relations: a global perspective

In democratic polities, constitutional equilibria or balances of power between the executive and the legislature shift over time. Normative and empirical political theorists have long recognised that war, civil unrest, economic and political crises, terrorist attacks, and other events strengthen the power of the executive, disrupt and threaten constitutional politics, and damage democratic institutions: crises require swift action and executives are thought to be more capable than parliaments and legislatures of taking such actions. The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 and the ensuing so-called 'war on terror' declared by President Bush clearly constituted a crisis, not only in the United States but also in other political systems, in part because of the US's hegemonic position in defining and shaping many other states' foreign and domestic policies. Dicey, Schmitt, and Rossiter suggest that critical events and political crises inevitably trigger the concentration of (emergency) powers in the hands of the executive. Aristotle and Machiavelli questioned the inevitability of this process. This article and the articles that follow in this Special Issue utilise empirical evidence, through the use of case studies of the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Australia, Israel, Italy and Indonesia, to address this debate. Specifically, the issue explores to what extent the external shock or crisis of 9/11 (and other terrorist attacks) and the ensuing 'war on terror' significantly changed the balance of executive-legislative relations from t (before the crisis) to t+1 (after the crisis) in these political systems, all of which were the targets of actual or foiled terrorist attacks. The most significant findings are that the shock of 9/11 and the 'war on terror' elicited varied responses by national executives and legislatures/parliaments and thus the balance of executive-legislative relations in different political systems; that, therefore, executive-legislative relations are positive rather than zero-sum; and that domestic political contexts conditioned these institutional responses.

Congressional acquiescence to presidentialism in the US ‘War on Terror’

Congressional dominance theory holds that not only can the US Congress control the executive, it does. The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 and the Bush administration's ensuing global 'war on terror' suggest a different result. Bush's response to 9/11 signalled not only new directions in US foreign and domestic policy but a new stage in the aggrandisement of presidential power in the United States and a further step in the marginalisation of the Congress. Informed by a constitutional doctrine unknown to the framers of the US Constitution, the Bush administration pursued a presidentialist or 'ultra-separationist' governing strategy that was disrespectful to the legislature's intended role in the separated system. Using its unilateral powers, in public and in secret, claiming 'inherent' authority from the Constitution, and exploiting the public's fear of a further terrorist attack and of endangering the lives of US troops abroad, the administration skilfully drove its legislation through the Congress. Occasionally, the Congress was able to extract concessions - notably in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when partisan control of the government was split - but more typically, for most of the period, the Congress acquiesced to administration demands, albeit with the consolation of minor concessions. The administration not only dominated the lawmaking process, it also cowed legislators into legitimating often highly controversial (and sometimes illegal) administration-determined definitions of counter-terrorism and national security policy. Certainly, the Congress undertook a considerable amount of oversight during the period of the 'war on terror'; lawmakers also complained. But the effects on policy were marginal. This finding held true for periods of Democratic as well as Republican majorities.