Este ensayo se propone plantear una nueva perspectiva acerca de una tendencia inquietante que está configurando nuestro mundo en estos primeros años del siglo XXI: el auge del despotismo. Nos preguntamos si los regímenes de poder que se ponen de manifiesto en países como Rusia, Vietnam, Arabia Saudita, Turkmenistán, China y Brunéi, y los Emiratos Árabes Unidos tienen características en común, a pesar de ser a su vez tan diferentes en otros aspectos. La respuesta es afirmativa; empezando por su concentración (...) geográfica en la región Euroasiática, definida ampliamente de tal suerte que incluya el espacio territorial que se extiende a lo largo de Rusia, Turquía, las monarquías del Golfo e Irán en el oeste, atravesando las repúblicas de Asia central, China y Japón, hasta Indonesia, Australia, Nueva Zelanda y Fiji en el extremo este. Esta región es el nuevo centro gravitacional geopolítico del planeta. Este ensayo explica por qué el despotismo, término en desuso, merece ser retomado, y porqué los regímenes despóticos de nuestro tiempo no deben considerarse simplemente como un tipo de estado territorial.This essay sets out to make new sense of a disturbing trend shaping our world in these early years of the 21stcentury: the rise of despotism. It asks whether the regimes of power displayed in countries otherwise as different as Russia, Vietnam, Iran; Saudi Arabia; Turkmenistan; China and Brunei, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates share things in common. It answers that they do, beginning with their geographic concentration in the Eurasian region, broadly defined to include the territorial spaces stretching from Russia, Turkey, the Gulf states and Iran in the west through to the central Asian republics, China and Japan, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and Fiji in the far east. The region is the new geo–political centre of gravity of our planet. It is also the heartland of the new despotisms, which are proving to be powerful actors, both in the region and within a wide range of global settings. The essay explains why the old–fashioned term despotism deserves to be revived, and why the new despotisms of our time should not be thought of simply as a type of territorial state. (shrink)

: The history of modern feminist political theories is often framed in terms of the already existing theories of a number of radical nineteenth-century men philosophers such as James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Charles Fourier, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. My argument takes issue with this way of framing feminist political theory by demonstrating that it rests on a derivation that remains squarely within the logic of malestream political theory. Each of these philosophers made use of a particular discursive trope (...) that linked the idea of women's emancipation with the idea of social progress. I argue that this trope reproduced the masculinist signification and symbolism inherent in their particular political philosophies. I argue for a more positive, less masculinist, account of the history of feminist political thought. (shrink)

: Liberal philosopher James Mill has been understood as being unambiguously antifeminist. However, Terence Ball, supposedly informed by a feminist perspective, has argued for a new interpretation. Ball has reconceptualized Mill as a feminist and the sole source of the feminism of his son (J. S. Mill), suggesting a revision of the received wisdom about their relationship to the development of nineteenth century feminist thought. This paper takes issue with Ball's "new interpretation" and its presumed feminist basis.

This article reappraises the political ideas of William Manning, and through him the trajectory of early modern republicanism. Manning, an early American farmer writing in the 1780s and 1790s, developed the republican distinction between and into a novel On this theory, it is the dependent, laboring classes who share an interest in social equality. Because of this interest, they are the only ones who can achieve and maintain republican liberty. With this identification of the interests of the dependent classes with (...) the common good, Manning inverted inherited republican ideas, and transformed the language of liberty and virtue into one of the first potent, republican critiques of exploitation. As such, he stands as a key figure for understanding the shift in early modern republicanism from a concern with constitutionalism and the rule of law to the social question. (shrink)

Agnes Heller continued her commitment to socialist theory, seeking a democratic alternative to the actually existing socialist system in Soviet-type societies in the early 1980s. Heller conceptualized socialism as a long-term social experiment based on social imagination and the radicalization of democracy, which contrasted with the Soviet socialist project on the one hand, and went beyond Western parliamentary systems on the other hand. My aim in this paper is to examine the 1982 pamphlet, Why We Should Maintain the Socialist Objective, (...) and present it as a crucial step that Heller takes to depart from Marxism and explore her post-Marxist socialist theory. This paper will examine the social imagination, radicalization of democracy, and other key ideas elaborated in the pamphlet, linking these ideas to her subsequent book, Dictatorship Over Needs, and her essay ‘The Great Republic’. (shrink)

‘On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality’. B. R. Ambedkar’s famous last speech to the Constituent Assembly on 25 November 1949 still resonates within contemporary Indian constitutional law, and even more so his following interrogation: ‘how long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?’ Prima facie societal, the contradiction is however also a temporal (...) one, Indian constitutional law being founded on both the British traditional idea of ‘continuum’ and the American inspired revolutionary principles of ‘pursuance’ of a novel legal and social order. Two recent Indian Supreme Court decisions pertaining to the de-criminalisation of same sex relations ( Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India) and for the right of menstruating women to enter the Sabarimala Temple in Kerala ( Indian Young Lawyers Association v. Union of India) offer through their differing and sometimes dissenting opinions a glimpse at those temporal contradictions. Through an analysis of both decisions and in particular that of Chandrachud J. and Malhotra J.’s judgements, this article seeks to highlight two radically differing conceptions of temporality applied to constitutional issues, which can themselves be linked back to the transposition of the legal positivist discourse in India within the colonial era: on the one hand, an attempt to continue Common law’s empirical-based tradition and on the other hand, an (apparently) a-historical perception of Law drawn from neo-Roman civilian legal discourse and later normative positivism. If both branches of legal reasoning aim at protecting minorities’ rights, the value they inscribe to History within the realm of Law cannot be further apart. (shrink)

Thomas Jefferson’s famous proposal; whereby a state’s constitution should be re-enacted every 19 years by a majority vote; purports to solve the intergenerational problem caused by perpetual constitutions: namely that laws which were enacted by people who are already dead bind living citizens without their consent. I argue that the model fails to fulfil its own normative consent-based aspirations. This is because it produces two groups of people who will end up living under laws to which they did not give (...) their consent: citizens who reach the voting age after the re-enactment process; citizens who did not assent to being obliged by the majority vote’s results. I reject possible responses to my argument by showing that they result in making the model either impractical or redundant. The remainder of the paper discusses whether implementing the model would enhance the consent-based legitimacy of the modern state. (shrink)