Search Results

This chapter attempts to discover the attitudes of young black Americans towards the government. Two perspectives are considered in this chapter. The first perspective relates to Kanye West's cynicism and frustration on the American political community. With typhoon Katrina as a reminder, black people believe that they are still treated like second-class citizens and government help is sluggish in times of crisis. The second perspective, on the other hand, promotes hope and a positive outlook on the government which has been popularized by Barack Obama. This is seen during the rallies for Obama, wherein thousands of young people participated to demonstrate their support. In addition, the chapter examines the reason why black people are still politically alienated despite the increasing opportunities provided to them.

This chapter analyses the nature of the state and political community, and the basis of legitimate authority. It defines community to be able to offer an account of political community. It aims to show that political community is not as important a form of community as has been suggested, especially when the form of political community in question is the state.

Some preliminary reflections are offered on the place of citizenship in a theory of federalism. Citizenship is one of the central concepts in political theory, and an account of citizenship, at the very least, defines the criteria for, and the method for the acquisition of, membership in a political community; more importantly, it also lays down the rights and responsibilities that attach to membership. The first section in this chapter makes the point that the three chapters following in this last section of the book further the debate on citizenship and federalism by invoking three different conceptions of citizenship, ethnocultural (Ch. 17), civic (Ch. 15), and economic (Ch. 16), which in turn express different underlying conceptions of political community; these different conceptions are discussed. The second section argues that the three chapters do not fully address the complication that federalism poses for citizenship, which is termed here the problem of divided, multiple or conflicting allegiances/loyalties; this is done by discussing conceptions of citizenship in the EU, and contrasting them with the situation in the USA.

If community oriented thought is needed to support and justify environmental policies, what kind of community do we have in mind? The notion of a multi‐species community, suggested by many environmental philosophers, is rejected as inconsistent. The idea of localism—local human communities—also popular among environmentalists, is rejected on moral and environmental grounds. The idea of ‘collective rational reflection’ as a moral and political community is put forward.

This chapter explores the issue of democracy as a basis of international community. It reviews the debate on the European Union as a political community, NATO, and a speech by the leader of a major Western power who advocates a ‘doctrine of international community’ which would make democracy and human rights a global standard of conduct. It argues that pluralism or international freedom is a greater international good than democracy. This, in turn, makes democracy possible by giving people a choice on whether or not to establish democracy in their own country.

Uses Michael Walzer's Spheres of Justice as a vehicle for reflecting on the problem of universalism and relativism, with particular attention to the question of the moral relevance of cultural differences between political communities. It celebrates Walzer's contextual approach to theory and defends some of his key insights, using the Override Clause in Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms as a way of illustrating the moral importance of differences in political culture. But it also argues that Walzer's assertion that there is a tight link between moral community and political community conflicts with claims that he makes about justice in other societies. The chapter explores the question of whether and how we should judge history. It then uses gender equality and democracy as test cases for exploring how far our moral minimalism should extend and how open we should be to moral and cultural relativism.

The main goal of this chapter is to use an extensive body of comparative survey research to map patterns and forms of political support across a wide range of political conditions. While the goal is primarily descriptive, at least two themes emerge: first, there are no major trends suggesting a decline in support for democracy as a form of government in the abstract or as applied to existing democratic experience, and certainly, no evidence of a crisis of democracy; second, the fact of dissatisfaction does not imply danger to the persistence or furtherance of democracy. A significant number of people around the world can be labelled ‘dissatisfied democrats’, they clearly approve of democracy as a mode of governance, but they remain discontented with the way their own system is currently operating. This chapter exploits the resources of the World Values Surveys to map certain key elements of political support among the mass publics in established, consolidating, and non‐democracies. Specifically, it develops indices fitted reasonably well to three forms of support: for the political community; for regime principles or democracy as an ideal form of government; and approval of the regime's performance. Attitudes towards these three dimensions are examined through cross‐national surveys.

This chapter is the first of four on the question of legitimacy in the EU, and deals with the core question of whether and to what extent the citizens of the EU have grown together into a political community. The first section discusses the common European heritage, and sources of conflicts and diversity, and then introduces the concept of sense of political community, in which two dimensions are distinguished: identification (which refers to the citizens themselves) and ‘we‐feeling’ (which refers to fellow citizens). These two dimensions are compatible with modern theories of intergroup relations, and are discussed further in the next two sections of the chapter. The first of these monitors the evolution of European identifications from 1982 to 1995, and compares the pride of EU citizens and political elites in being European. The second investigates whether EU citizens trust their fellow Europeans, and where the geographical borderline is drawn between ingroup and outgroup.

Joseph Carens argues that Michael Walzer's account of the moral autonomy of political communities is not true to our shared understanding of justice. Drawing upon a wide range of cross‐cultural examples, he argues that our understanding of justice requires us sometimes to criticize institutions and policies of political communities that are culturally different to our own communities. Focusing on issues of gender and democracy, he also argues that the ‘we’ who make these judgements does not always correspond to the members of a political community but can be either wider or narrower.

Argues that although many Third World countries have experienced democratic openings, a large part of them are stuck in the initial phases of a democratic transition. International actors have contributed to this outcome in the following ways: (1) failing to appreciate the role of nationalism and political community; (2) overemphasizing economic and political liberalism; (3) supporting elite‐dominated democracies. It explores the connection between democratization and state strength, citing examples of transitions in Africa.

This chapter presents an extended treatment of our feelings about a variety of oaths and affirmations. Oaths are a mixture of pure form and substantive content. Their formal nature may remind us of the “contentless” seals formerly used to give legal validity to contracts. Vows also signify a desire to be considered a member of a particular community and a willingness to remain within its boundaries. This chapter focuses on the American political community and its extraction of loyalty oaths attesting to a shared commitment to certain beliefs—usually involving the legitimacy of the state, its particular political structure, or its ideological aspirations. It also considers two other kinds of communities. One is the classical religious faith community. The other is the marriage by which two individuals join together in constituting a special kind of common enterprise.

This chapter explores the claims regarding the importance of three separate levels of political community and political agency: sub-state minority nations, nation-states, and transnational institutions. It is argued that these levels are mutually reinforcing rather than mutually competing. Since nation-states can no longer protect the interests of their citizens on their own, establishing well-functioning transnational institutions can help states focus on the goals they can successfully pursue. Self-government of minorities should not be viewed as a threat but a precondition to long-term stability of states.

This chapter is divided into three parts. The first discusses the emergence of communalist interpretations of Indian past and their political implications. It also relates to the Indian scepticism about the modern concept of history. The second section attempts to understand the multicultural reality of India through its tensions and contending tendencies rather than trace it back to an original state of harmony. The final part traces the role of women, Dalits and Adivasis in the writing of Indian history and their role in contributing to a rethinking of the political community.

Whereas in democratic national systems institutions are legitimated by a political community, at the European level institutions are constructed in order to produce such a community. As a result, institutions like monetary union run a risk of having low popular legitimacy. The authors use this issue to consider the general problem of EU legitimacy.

David Miller outlines the central ideas of Michael Walzer's Spheres of Justice, focusing on the notions of political community, social goods, and complex equality. He critically examines Walzer's reliance on the interpretative method in determining the requirements of distributive justice. Miller argues that the concept of complex equality needs to be interpreted alongside that of equal citizenship.

This chapter explicitly addresses political community as an underexplored dimension of black transnationalism, synthesizing issues of ideology, micro- and macropolitics, and ethics to argue for more politically sophisticated understandings of black solidarity that can have salience not only for adherents to solidarity-based movements and organizations but also their detractors.

This last chapter addresses the puzzle of why parliamentary democracy has become the legitimacy standard for the EU when there is no demos. We witness a development from a situation in which democracy served as a guiding norm for national systems only, to one where democracy has become an increasingly relevant standard also for evaluating the EU. Following its empowerment, the European Parliament, together with national parliaments, is part of a European multi‐level parliamentary field. But why has the reform process taken the form of support for a parliamentarian model of representative democracy when central conditions for it to work properly are not in place? The solution to the puzzle is sought in the normative thrust of the parliamentary principle as the main embodiment of popular rule. But the lingering question is whether there can be democracy based on an empowered parliament without a political community.