Political participation of non-national residents in Portugal

Em Portugal, novas medidas de participação política têm vindo a ser introduzidas tanto por força da transição para uma sociedade multicultural como pela sua participação na integração política europeia que se direcciona para um novo nível de cidadania. O presente artigo pretende mostrar até que ponto os residentes não-nacionais, de países terceiros e da União Europeia, efectivamente usam os seus novos direitos políticos e participam nos actos eleitorais em Portugal, conferindo-lhes a oportunidade de uma maior integração política no seu Estado de residência. In Portugal, new rules of political participation have been imposed by the transition to a multicultural society, in addition to the European political integration that is currently developing towards a new level of citizenship. This paper intends to show to what extent non-national residents, both from EU and non-EU countries, effectively use their new political rights and participate in the Portuguese electoral acts that give them the opportunity for a wider political integration in their state of residence.

The political principles of Mencius / by Francis C.M. Wei.

http://www.archive.org/details/thepoliticalprin00weicuoft

An analysis of political efficacy socialisation among threshold voters in the Republic of Ireland

The spread of democracy in the latter part of the twenty first century has been accompanied by an increasing focus on its perceived performance in established western democracies. Recent literature has expressed concern about a critical outlook among younger cohorts which threatens their political support and engagement. Political efficacy, referring to the feeling of political effectiveness, is considered to be a key indicator of the performance of democratic politics; as it refers to the empowerment of citizens, and relates to their willingness to engage in political matters. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the socialisation of political efficacy among those on the threshold of political adulthood; i.e., 'threshold voters'. The long-term significance of attitudes developed by time of entry to adulthood for political engagement during adulthood has been emphasised in recent literature. By capturing the effect of non-political and political learning among threshold voters, the study advances existing research frames which focus on childhood and early adolescent socialisation. The theoretical and methodological framework applied herein recognises the distinction between internal and external political efficacy, which has not been consistently operationalized in existing research on efficacy socialisation. This research involves a case study of 'threshold voters' in the Republic of Ireland, and employs a quantitative methodology. A study on Irish threshold voters is timely as the parliament and government have recently proposed a lowering of the voting age and an expansion of formal political education to this age group. A project-specific survey instrument was developed and administered to a systematic stratified sample of 1,042 post-primary students in the Cork area. Interpretation of the results of statistical analysis leads to findings on the divergent influence of family, school, associational, and political agents/environments on threshold voter internal and external political efficacy.

The Irish House of Lords, 1780-1800: politics and ideology

This thesis covers the Irish House of Lords in the last two decades of its life. A number of important themes run through the work - the regency crisis, patronage, the management of the Lords, the relationship between the Lords and Commons. These themes, explored from different angles, are vital to an understanding of the political role of the upper house in the 1780s and 1790s. This study is confined to the Lords as a political institution and thus its judicial role as final court of appeal, which was restored to it in 1782, will not be explored here. The thesis consists of two parts. Part one examines the structure and powers of the House of Lords while part two looks at the parties and policies of the house. Chapter one discusses the British constitution as imposed upon Ireland. Chapter two suggests the reasons why constitutional changes were introduced in 1782, and looks at the contribution made by the Irish House of Lords in securing these changes. Chapter three explores the various channels of influence which the peers enjoyed. Chapter four explores the sometimes tense relationship between Lords and Commons. Chapter five examines management of the House of Lords by Dublin Castle. Part two, begins at chapter six. This chapter explores the leadership of both parties within the Lords. Chapter seven looks at how patronage was used to reward those who were loyal to the government. Chapter eight explores the influence of the Whig opposition. Chapter nine looks at the controversial attempts made by Pitt and his ministry during the 1790s to win the support of catholics and turn them from the lure of French ideas, and of the response of the peers to these attempts. Chapter ten is concerned with the relationship between the peers of the House of Lords and the lords lieutenant during the 1790s. Chapter eleven looks at the Union and the House of Lords and attempts to answer the question historians have long asked: why did the Irish parliament and the House of Lords in particular, look favourably on the proposed union of the two kingdoms and the end of their own institution? The House of Lords in the closing decades of the eighteenth century was an institution within which the wealth and power of the kingdom could be found. Its members were politically active, both inside and outside the house. It contained a majority who saw the Crown as the source of stability, but it was a living and evolving political organism and therefore it contained men who believed that the Crown should have its influence limited. This evolution is also demonstrated in its desire for political change in 1782 and 1788. Its last, and perhaps most radical decision, was to vote for its own demise in 1900.

Police accountability in Ireland: an analysis of the problems posed by the legal, constitutional and political dimensions and how they might be addressed

The concept of police accountability is not susceptible to a universal or concise definition. In the context of this thesis it is treated as embracing two fundamental components. First, it entails an arrangement whereby an individual, a minority and the whole community have the opportunity to participate meaningfully in the formulation of the principles and policies governing police operations. Second, it presupposes that those who have suffered as victims of unacceptable police behaviour should have an effective remedy. These ingredients, however, cannot operate in a vacuum. They must find an accommodation with the equally vital requirement that the burden of accountability should not be so demanding that the delivery of an effective police service is fatally impaired. While much of the current debate on police accountability in Britain and the USA revolves around the issue of where the balance should be struck in this accommodation, Ireland lacks the very foundation for such a debate as it suffers from a serious deficit in research and writing on police generally. This thesis aims to fill that gap by laying the foundations for an informed debate on police accountability and related aspects of police in Ireland. Broadly speaking the thesis contains three major interrelated components. The first is concerned with the concept of police in Ireland and the legal, constitutional and political context in which it operates. This reveals that although the Garda Siochana is established as a national force the legal prescriptions concerning its role and governance are very vague. Although a similar legislative format in Britain, and elsewhere, have been interpreted as conferring operational autonomy on the police it has not stopped successive Irish governments from exercising close control over the police. The second component analyses the structure and operation of the traditional police accountability mechanisms in Ireland; namely the law and the democratic process. It concludes that some basic aspects of the peculiar legal, constitutional and political structures of policing seriously undermine their capacity to deliver effective police accountability. In the case of the law, for example, the status of, and the broad discretion vested in, each individual member of the force ensure that the traditional legal actions cannot always provide redress where individuals or collective groups feel victimised. In the case of the democratic process the integration of the police into the excessively centralised system of executive government, coupled with the refusal of the Minister for Justice to accept responsibility for operational matters, project a barrier between the police and their accountability to the public. The third component details proposals on how the current structures of police accountability in Ireland can be strengthened without interfering with the fundamentals of the law, the democratic process or the legal and constitutional status of the police. The key elements in these proposals are the establishment of an independent administrative procedure for handling citizen complaints against the police and the establishment of a network of local police-community liaison councils throughout the country coupled with a centralised parliamentary committee on the police. While these proposals are analysed from the perspective of maximising the degree of police accountability to the public they also take into account the need to ensure that the police capacity to deliver an effective police service is not unduly impaired as a result.

The political and economic context of Keynes’s 1933 Finlay lecture: transforming a business practitioner’s ways of knowing

This thesis is structured in the format of a three part Portfolio of Exploration to facilitate transformation in my ways of knowing to enhance an experienced business practitioner’s capabilities and effectiveness. A key factor in my ways of knowing, as opposed to what I know, is my exploration of context and assumptions. By interacting with my cultural, intellectual, economic, and social history, I seek to become critically aware of the biographical, historical, and cultural context of my beliefs and feelings about myself. This Portfolio is not exclusively for historians of economics or historians of ideas but also for those interested in becoming more aware of how these culturally assimilated frames of reference and bundles of assumptions that influence the way they perceive, think, decide, feel and interpret their experiences in order to operate more effectively in their professional and organisational lives. In the first part of my Portfolio, I outline and reflect upon my Portfolio’s overarching theory of adult development; the writings of Harvard’s Robert Kegan and Columbia University’s Jack Mezirow. The second part delves further into how meaning-making, the activity of how one organises and makes sense of the world and how meaning-making evolves to different levels of complexity. I explore how past experience and our interpretations of history influences our understandings since all perception is inevitably tinged with bias and entrenched ‘theory-laden’ assumptions. In my third part, I explore the 1933 inaugural University College Dublin Finlay Lecture delivered by economist John Maynard Keynes. My findings provide a new perspective and understanding of Keynes’s 1933 lecture by not solely reading or relying upon the text of the three contextualised essay versions of his lecture. The purpose and context of Keynes’s original longer lecture version was quite different to the three shorter essay versions published for the American, British and German audiences.

The political philosophy of Miki Kiyoshi: A close reading of the philosophical foundations of cooperative communitarianism

The thesis is a historical and philological study of the mature political theory of Miki Kiyoshi (1897-1945) focused on Philosophical Foundations of Cooperative Communitarianism (1939), a full translation of which is included. As the name suggests, it was a methodological and normative communitarianism, which critically built on liberalism, Marxism and Confucianism to realise a regional political community. Some of Miki’s Western readers have wrongly considered him a fascist ideologue, while he has been considered a humanist Marxist in Japan. A closer reading cannot support either view. The thesis argues that the Anglophone study of Japanese philosophy is a degenerating research programme ripe for revolution in the sense of returning full circle to an original point. That means returning to the texts, reading them contextually and philologically, in principle as early modern European political theory is read by intellectual historians, such as the representatives of Cambridge School history of political thought. The resulting reading builds critically on the Japanese scholarship and relates it to contemporary Western and postcolonial political theory and the East Asian tradition, particularly neo-Confucianism. The thesis argues for a Cambridge School perspective radicalised by the critical addendum of geo-cultural context, supplemented by Geertzian intercultural hermeneutics and a Saidian ‘return to philology’. As against those who have seen radical reorientations in Miki’s political thought, the thesis finds gradual progression and continuity between his neo-Kantian, existentialist, Marxian anthropology, Hegelian and finally communitarian phases. The theoretical underpinnings are his philosophical anthropology, a structurationist social theory of praxis, and a critique of liberalism, Marxism, nationalism and idealism emphasising concrete as opposed to abstract theory and the need to build on existing cultural traditions to modernise rather than westernise East Asia. This post-Western fusion was imagined to be the beginning of a true and pluralistic universalism.

Depression and 'crises of meaninglessness' in the political-economic theology of the money-God

The thesis starts with a historical analysis of the development of depression as a concept. Through this inquiry, the controversies behind the apparent consensus about depression’s etiology and treatment are illuminated, suggesting that the understanding of the climbing rates of depression in contemporary Western civilization is still up for grabs. That’s what the thesis sets out to investigate. In order to accomplish this aim, the study builds upon the classical accounts of Georg Simmel, Émile Durkheim and the more contemporary ideas of Dany-Robert Dufour, in dialogue with an array of supplementary theoretical sources. Navigating through this ‘sea’ of extraordinary and different theories, a new avenue of reflections arises, contributing for the sophistication of the questions made about the phenomenon of depression’s rates. The fundamental argument emerging from this theoretical undertaking is that ‘crises of meaninglessness’ that pervade the collective body of Western contemporary societies have, as one of its consequences, the expansion of depression rates. Meaninglessness in contemporary times is the primary object of investigation of the thesis. The concept, in the context of this study, is not understood as merely an effect of the historical decline of shared social norms due to processes of individualization. Rather, it is claimed, it originates from and is reinforced by the ‘political-economic theology of neo-liberalism’ which becomes virtually generalized in the West, erecting money as a God. The study concludes that by undermining culturally established values, ideals, institutions and principles that may block the dissemination of commodities this new transcendence has been challenging the task of signifying life, potentializing – among other subjective difficulties – the diffusion of depression.

Les parties du discours dans la grammaire de Port-Royal

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Hannah Arendt's Theory of Political Judgment

Hannah Arendt's theory of political judgment has been an ongoing perplexity among scholars who have written on her. As a result, her theory of judgment is often treated as a suggestive but unfinished aspect of her thought. Drawing on a wider array of sources than is commonly utilized, I argue that her theory of political judgment was in fact the heart of her work. Arendt's project, in other words, centered around reestablishing the possibility of political judgment in a modern world that historically has progressively undermined it. In the dissertation, I systematically develop an account of Arendt's fundamentally political and non-sovereign notion of judgment. We discover that individual judgment is not arbitrary, and that even in the complex circumstances of the modern world there are valid structures of judgment which can be developed and dependably relied upon. The result of this work articulates a theory of practical reason which is highly compelling: it provides orientation for human agency which does not rob it of its free and spontaneous character; shows how we can improve and cultivate our political judgment; and points the way toward the profoundly intersubjective form of political philosophy Arendt ultimately hoped to develop.

The Justice Gap in Global Forest Governance

Claims of injustice in global forest governance are prolific: assertions of colonization, marginalization and disenfranchisement of forest-dependent people, and privatization of common resources are some of the most severe allegations of injustice resulting from globally-driven forest conservation initiatives. At its core, the debate over the future of the world's forests is fraught with ethical concerns. Policy makers are not only deciding how forests should be governed, but also who will be winners, losers, and who should have a voice in the decision-making processes. For 30 years, policy makers have sought to redress the concerns of the world's 1.6 billion forest-dependent poor by introducing rights-based and participatory approaches to conservation. Despite these efforts, however, claims of injustice persist. This research examines possible explanations for continued claims of injustice by asking: What are the barriers to delivering justice to forest-dependent communities? Using data collected through surveys, interviews, and collaborative event ethnography in Laos and at the Tenth Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, this dissertation examines the pursuit of justice in global forest governance across multiple scales of governance. The findings reveal that particular conceptualizations of justice have become a central part of the metanormative fabric of global environmental governance, inhibiting institutional evolution and therewith perpetuating the justice gap in global forest governance.

Vietnam’s political economy: a discussion on the 1986-2016 period

Being a member of the thriving ASEAN and successfully implementing economic renovation (Doi Moi) have drawn the world's attention on Vietnam around the turn of the millennium. Some even expected a much faster pace of transformation, and renewed economic, AND political, reforms in Vietnam, or Doi Moi II.However, in the recent transition turmoil the Vietnamese economy has experienced some significant setback, and the solution for getting the country out of the downward spiral of low productivity, waning purchasing power and increasing costs of doing business cannot be worked out without addressing those political economy issues that have shaped the modus operandi of the nation's economic system. This article discusses the post-Doi Moi political economy in Vietnam, from 1986 to 2016 – when the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam takes place – and prospects of reviving reform momentum in subsequent years.

Les derniers écueils vers la parité politique en Belgique: Une analyse des élections régionales de 2004

In Belgium, gender-parity has been compulsory for all party lists (in local, regional, federal and European elections) for several years. As a result, the proportion of women has risen from a fourth up to a third of the deputies. Yet, strict parity is still far from realised. This article seeks to establish what causes this glass ceiling, namely the parties' reluctance to place female candidates in the top positions or even as the front-runner. In a proportional representation system with half-open lists, and especially when the constituencies are small, this automatically leads to a smaller proportion of women among the elected deputies. One important reason for the parties' reluctance to rank female candidates higher is their assumption that women are less effective as "election locomotives" than men. However, the analysis of the Belgian election results makes clear that this is not the case. Female candidates in top positions are as successful as their male counterparts. © (2008) Swiss Political Science Review.