Columbia International Affairs Online

CIAO DATE: 10/07

Theoria

Vol. 52, No. 1, Issue 106 (April 2005)

Articles

• Constitutional Learning
  Andrew Arato

  Constitutional politics has returned in our time in a truly dramatic way. In the last 25 years, not only in the new or restored democracies of South and East Europe, Latin America and Africa, but also in the established liberal or not so liberal democracies of Germany, Italy, Japan, Israel, New Zealand, Canada and Great Britain, issues of constitution-making, constitutional revision and institutional design or redesign have been put on the political agenda. Even in the United States, given the new or renewed problems of our versions of presidentialism, federalism and electoral regime, Article V has come to be experienced as a veritable prison house, and judicial constitution-making (think of Buckley v Valejo) is often seen as much as a threat to, as the protection of, democratic mechanisms. And, most recently, in countries currently experiencing externally imposed revolutions, namely Afghanistan and Iraq, constitution-making has turned out to be a central stake in the ongoing political process. We are living in an epoch in which the nations seem to be slouching, or being prodded, toward Philadelphia and Americans, as the heirs of Madison and MacArthur, are sorely tempted to try teaching others the secrets of its success as a supposedly continuous 200-year-old constitutional democracy. But to be an effective teacher, it is not enough to be in a position of political-military superiority. One must first relearn to learn and even to re-learn.

• Political Theology: The Authority of God
  Avishai Margalit

  In this article, I will explore an idea of authority as depicted by a religious picture (note the indefinite article). It is a picture, not the picture. It is the picture of God as the supreme decision maker without him being a deliberator. I shall call it the decisionist picture of God. His authority is based on his absolute will unhindered by any laws and rules and in particular by any laws of morality. One may call the decisionist picture of God a fascist picture of God. This is perhaps abusive but not inaccurate. 'That there must be', in the language of the 18 th century Blackstone, 'a supreme, irresistible, absolute, and uncontrolled authority, in which the ... right of sovereignty resides', is the idea and ideal that I am interested in. Pompously put, it is the genealogy of authority that I am interested in.

• Religious Origins of Modern Radicalism
  S.N. Eisenstadt

  It is the major argument of this essay that the roots of modern Jacobinism in their different manifestations are to be found in the transformation of the visions with strong Gnostic components and which sought to bring the Kingdom of God to earth and which were often promulgated in medieval and early modern European Christianity by different heterodox sects. The transformation of these visions as it took place above all in the Great Revolutions, in the English Civil War and especially the American and French Revolutions and their aftermaths, entailed their transposition from relatively marginal sectors of society to the central political arena. From then on, these visions, especially in their various collectivistic, especially Jacobin, guises became a continual component of the modern political discourse and dynamics, in continual confrontation with more 'open' pluralistic visions.

• Attaining a Better Society: Critical reflections on what it means to be 'developed'
  Sally Matthews

  It is clear from these and other definitions that development, no matter how it is conceived, involves change. However, it is also clear that not all change constitutes development. A particular change could be part of a process of development, but could also be part of several other processes, such as those of alteration, modification, deformation, adaptation, regression, degradation and the like. Thus it is necessary to differentiate between changes that can be said to be part of a process of development, and those that cannot. In an attempt to make such a distinction and in line with the above-mentioned definitions of development one could say that changes that are part of development are changes that bring about increased likeness to some more advanced or better state of being.

• Globalization in the 21st Century
  David McLellan

  The theme of this article is the threat-and the opportunities-posed to progressive aspirations by the phenomenon that has come to be known as globalization. A decade ago the term globalization was a novelty both in academic circles and in the popular press. Now, no discussion of economics or political debate seems complete without reference to it. And the recent attacks of Al Qaeda and the invasion of Iraq push the problems of an international legal order and the potential universality of the rights of man to the top of the agenda. Yet in its essence globalization is not a recent-or even a 20th century-phenomenon. The view that globalization is no new phenomenon has some substance.

• Review Article: Asymmetrical Morality in Contemporary Warfare
  Deane Baker

  Asymmetrical Warfare: Today's Challenge to U.S. Military Power, by Roger W. Barnett. Washington DC: Brasseys Inc., 2003. ISBN 1574885634.

  Humane Warfare, by Christopher Coker. London: Routledge, 2001. ISBN 0415255767.

  The Heart of War: On Power, Conflict and Obligation in the Twenty-First Century, by Gwyn Prins. London: Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0415369606.

  The latest catchphrase to enter the English language as a result of military conflict is the term 'asymmetrical warfare'. At its broadest, asymmetrical warfare is simply any conflict in which there is a significant qualitative mismatch between opponents in any or all of the following: manpower, firepower, technology and tactics. While the phrase is new, the concept is not. Asymmetrical warfare has been going on for about as long as humans have fought each other in organized ways. In the South African context, for example, one need only think of the devastating attacks by King Shaka's highly-organized regiments (equipped as they were with revolutionary weaponry like the short stabbing spear or assegai), against the various tribes and groups that got in the way of Shaka's expansionist goals. Asymmetry was also an essential component in the successes of the rifle, canon and Gatling-gun equipped colonial armies who subdued the tribesmen of Africa and elsewhere. In the more recent past the ANC's low-tech guerrilla campaign against the conventional might of the apartheid regime is yet another example. There are, of course, complexities here, and asymmetries are not all of the same ilk, nor do they remain fixed, and certainly it is sometimes difficult to tell whether a conflict can properly be defined as asymmetrical. Nonetheless the general concept is easily recognizable.

• Reviews

  Climate of Fear: The Quest for Dignity in a Dehumanized World (The BBC Reith Lectures)
  Review by Derek Hook

  Racism: A Short History
  Review by Clifford L. Staples

• A Global Authority: Classical Arguments and New Issues
  W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz

  In this article I explore the question whether the condition of insecurity in which states are placed calls for the creation of a global authority. I present classical arguments for and against a world government, and inquire whether the tragedy of September 11 provides a new support for the idea of a world state. I argue that the real alternative to international anarchy, where no one is secure, is neither a powerful nation that is able to provide security for itself nor a world state but an international society.