Zetter, Roger. "More Labels, Fewer Refugees: Remaking the Refugee Label in an Era of Globalization". Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol.20, No.2 (2007): 172-192.

Zetter, Roger. "More Labels, Fewer Refugees: Remaking the Refugee Label in an Era of Globalization". Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol.20, No.2 (2007): 172-192.

• 'Refugee' is not a neutral term, but a political label used by different groups to construct an idea of 'refugee' around a diverse group of people with different experiences. This label is particularly used by humanitarian agencies, governments, and NGOs to advance different political goals by including different people under the label 'refugee' (173).
• The label 'refugee' was connotations about the way that 'refugees' should act and relate to their surroundings. This places societal pressure on those labelled as 'refugees', often leading to a contrast between actually people and the idealized concept of 'refugee' (173-174).
• The author argues that, as opposed to the 1970s, when NGOs were dominant force in shaping conceptions of refugees as a uniform group to be protected and saved, the contemporary label of 'refugee' is much more fractured and contains multiple conflicting definitions. The term is now much more politicized, and its definition is being largely shaped by governments in developed countries as they respond to immigration (174).
• In the 1970s and 1980s, the majority of refugee crises were south-south movements, with people fleeing from one developing nation to another developing nation. The influence of the developed world was limited to NGOs and aid programs, who had a vested interested in portraying a helpless and sympathetic image of refugees (175).
• The label of 'refugee' has been complicated largely because refugees are now arriving in large numbers in Europe, forcing national governments and other actors to shape their own definitions of 'refugee', and because the reasons for migration are now more complex, including both asylum-seekers and economic migrants (175).
• Although the use of the word has been greatly expanded in the past few decades, the original meaning of 'refugee' stems from the Geneva Convention, used to refer to people fleeing wide-spread and violent repression. The actual nature of conflict, which is confused and disorganized, makes this definition hard to apply, as many flee without being persecuted. The actual definition of 'refugee', therefore, depends on the connotations of the term (176-177).
• Because the connotations surround the definition of 'refugee' are so linked to the idea of violent mass conflict, those claiming refugee status during peacetime struggle to convince asylum countries that they are 'real' refugees. For example, those seeking political asylum from imprisonment in Iraq or Zaire struggled to be accepted as 'real' refugees in the absence of civil war (178).
• Other characteristics also can make refugees seem less genuine, largely because they conflict with accepted normative perceptions of refugees, like retaining contact with relatives back home and sending remittances (179).
• This issue of determining the 'real-ness' of refugees has become such an issue in European countries that the government vocabulary has changed from discussions of 'refugees' to those of 'asylum seekers', the new label for those considered truly genuine (181, 184).
• Part of the difficult of defining 'refugee' comes from the existence of conflicting understanding of 'refugee-ness' by Europeans and asylum-seekers. Often economic migrants from Africa consider their poverty and oppressive political situation evidence of refugee status, despite this not fitting European requisites for asylum (178).
• Since the 1990s, there was been large increase in the scale of migration from the developing world to Europe, including both increased numbers of refugees and many more economic migrants. This has increasingly politicized the issue of migration in Europe, causing a public backlash against all forms of foreign immigration and increased conflict over the precise meaning of 'refugee' (179-180).
• One of the ways that European countries, and the Antipodes, have dealt with the increasing unpopularity of immigration was been through establishing processing centers abroad or in distant areas, which keep refugees and possible refugees separate from the general population. This also makes their status easier to deny since they are already under government control (182).
• A number of European countries have discussed rewriting the articles of the Geneva Convention on refugees, arguing that the current document is easily exploited by 'fake' refugees, making it more difficult to protect the 'real' refugees that the Geneva Convention was meant to protect (182).
• Significantly, the politicization of the term 'refugee' has led governments to turn from the general meaning of the world to a more bureaucratic and pedantic definition of precise circumstances, allowing applicants to be more easily be denied refugee status because the meaning of 'refugee' is now much more limited (184-185).
• The Global War on Terror since 2001 has provided further pressure on immigration from muslim-majority countries, as there is a low-key fear of Islamic terror being spread through the movement of refugees, a perception which goes alongside stereotypes of refugees as violent or criminal (185).
• Despite refugee status being invented for the purpose of allowing more people to claim fundamental human rights, it has been transformed in the past decade into an increasingly politicized and bureaucratic label, whose definition is used to specifically exclude certain persons from claiming those rights (188).

Zhirkov, Kirill. "Nativist but not alienated: A comparative perspective on the radical right vote in Western Europe". Party Politics, Vol.20, No.2 (2014): 286-296.

Zhirkov, Kirill. "Nativist but not alienated: A comparative perspective on the radical right vote in Western Europe". Party Politics, Vol.20, No.2 (2014): 286-296.

• Radical right parties both cause change and are changed by entry into mainstream politics and inclusion in coalitions. The parties themselves tend to moderate their positions and adapt to common expectations of political behavior, while other right-wing parties tend to be emboldened by radical right parties and adopt more radical policies (286).
• This finding runs counter to common scholarly assumptions that radical right parties are outside 'normal' politics, while in reality these parties compete with moderate right-wing parties, often influencing each others' positions (287).
• The author defines 'radical right parties' as political movement which advocate a major transformation of the current order, while still supporting the basic tenants of liberal democracy -- a trait which distinguishes them from the anti-democratic 'extreme right' (286).
• The author tests a number of hypotheses regarding the radical right, comparing their voter base with the voter base of other political parties and with a pool of non-voters. The author predicts that radical right voters will strong oppose immigration, have low political trust and low levels of satisfaction with politics, be socially alienated and distrustful, unlikely to protest, intolerant of homosexuality, and opposed to redistributive economic policies (287-289).
• A regression analysis determined that while radical right voters are more likely to oppose immigration, have low political trust, and oppose redistributive economics than either other voter bases or non-voters, they are actually more satisfied with politics, unlikely to be distrustful or socially alienated, and no more likely to oppose protest or homosexuality than other voters (291-292).
• The group most commonly associated with the stereotypes of the radical right voter was actually the non-voting population, which tended to be younger, uneducated, poor, opposed to immigration, socially alienated, distrustful, and intolerant of homosexuality (294).
• Analysis shows that radical right voters are disproportionately male. They also tend to be older, uneducated and working class, although these trends are less pronounced than the gender gap (293).
• Radical right parties are driven primarily by nationalism, focused through both anti-immigrant attitudes and opposition to globalization. They tend to support a conservative economic and social order, that of welfare capitalism and ethnic homogeneity in Western European, which they perceive as being threatened (294).
• "Radical right voters’ opposition to mainstream politics is motivated by ideological considerations rather than by simple inability to fit the postmodern society" (294).

Zeng, Jinghan. "Does Europe matter? The role of Europe in Chinese narratives of 'One Belt One Road' and 'New Type of Great Power Relations”. Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 55, No. 5 (2017): 1162-1176.

Zeng, Jinghan. "Does Europe matter? The role of Europe in Chinese narratives of 'One Belt One Road' and 'New Type of Great Power Relations”. Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 55, No. 5 (2017): 1162-1176.

• Since President Xi Jinping came to power in China, the country has developed a newly robust international presence. Two crucial elements of this new Chinese foreign policy have been the 'one belt one road' policy and the concept of a 'new type of great power relations' (1162). This has also seen a more assertive foreign policy, especially over maritime disputes in the East China and South China Seas (1164).
• The Xi government has also made efforts to great elite control of Chinese politics, using anti-corruption campaigns to put men loyal to President Xi in key positions, and restore government legitimacy by making the Communist Party more political and ideological (1163-1164).
• The foreign policy concepts of 'new type of great power relations' and 'one belt one road' have failed to articulate specific strategic vision from China since they have been expanded under the Xi government to include such large concepts, Chinese relations with all major countries and all Chinese infrastructure investments, respectively, that they have become largely meaningless (1173).
• Europe is only of a marginal importance to China and the EU only plays a peripheral role in Chinese foreign policy, including these new foreign policy projects. Moreover, interest in Europe is likely to continue to decrease as China becomes more involved in the rest of the world (1162-1163).
• Contrary to scholars who suggest that EU-China relations are valuable and form an engagement independent from America, China does not value these relations and views them as peripheral or as a part of its relations with the USA. This lack of interest in Europe is underpinned by a belief that the EU, and Europe as a whole, fails to act as a coherent actor independent of US interests (1163, 1172-1173).
• Europe used to be a major factor in Chinese foreign policy thinking during the 1990s. In its attempt to recover from the geopolitical catastrophe of the collapse of the USSR and the 1989 Democracy Wall protests, the government of Jiang Zemin sought to stabilize China by forming stronger bonds with multiple poles of power, foremost being Russia and Europe (1164).
• The importance of Europe began to decline during the government of Hu Jintao, who sought to expand China's scope of international relations by engaging with more developing countries. This meant that it spent less energy thinking about major powers, like Europe. The role of Europe really diminished following the 2008 Financial Crisis, when it simultaneously become apparent how power and independent China was and how weak and ineffective the EU government was (1164-1165).
• During the 1990s and early 2000s, Chinese policymakers tended to overestimate Europe's political and financial clout. A number of events, particularly the 2008 financial crisis and the failure of a combined German-French effort to revoke an arms embargo in China in 2004, exposed the weakness of European institutions and led to a sudden decline in China's opinion of the EU (1165).
• China takes advantage of disagreement within the EU to serve its own interests. China has used the promise of its economic power or the threat of limiting access to prevent the EU from developing a common position on Chinese human rights issues or Tibet (1165).
• Under President Xi, China has become less committed to the idea of a multipolar world order and more accepting of the supremacy of the United States. Whereas China's rejection of the G2 system under the Hu government was in clear support of a multipolar world, events like the 2014 Ukrainian crisis have reduced President Xi's confidence in Russia and the EU as actors to the degree that China has partially accepted a bipolar world order (1165-1166).
• The use of the phrase a 'new type of great power relations' by Xi Jinping partially refers to this greater focus on bilateral relations with the USA. It also recognizes the potential for some sort of G2 excluding Russia and the EU (1167-1168).
• Some Chinese policymakers and strategists, particularly those focused on European countries, have suggested considering both the EU and the USA to be fellow great powers, but the general consensus is that only the US is a great power (1168).
• The term a 'new type of great power relations' was first originated during the Jiang government to describe a new foreign policy outlook towards the US and Europe, but its meaning has changed significantly under President Xi and the latter years of President Hu. It now refers specifically to US-China relations and a professed desire to avoid the great power tensions predicted by realist IR theory (1166-1167).
• The phrase 'new type of great power relations' is a direct response to the realist IR theory claim that a rising great power will always conflict with the ruling great power. This phrase rejects that assumption and proposes a peaceful cooperation between the US and China (1166-1167).
• This 'new type' is based on mutual trust, a lack of confrontation, and win-win cooperation. These terms are all vaguely defined, giving China a lot of wiggle-room in actual foreign policy behavior (1167).
• Chinese perceptions of what countries are great powers have changed drastically since the rise of the BRICS and the narrative of non-Western powers. Whereas Europe and Western great powers were central to Chinese foreign policy thought under Jiang Zemin, they now play less of a role than many BRICS nations. In surveys, less than 10% of Chinese considered the EU a great power, and only 2% of surveyed research papers used the term to describe the EU, a lower rating than Japan, India, Pakistan, or Russia (1168).
• The idea of a 'Silk Road Economic Belt' was first mentioned by Xi Jinping during a state visit to Kazakhstan in September 2013, and reiterated during an October visit to Indonesia. Although often compared to grand American initiatives like the Marshall Plan or TPP, the One Belt-One Road is an example of economic diplomacy in China's periphery (1169-1170).
• As a plan mainly concerned with China's periphery, Europe was excluded entirely from early discussions of One Belt-One Road. In early 2014, the concept of One Belt-One Road was extended to include some options on the edges of Europe, as indicated by statements by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Zhang Yesui (1170). In 2014 and 2015, the range of One Belt-One Road was gradually extended to cover parts of both Europe and Africa (1171).
• Even then, these discussions of Europe referred only to some parts of Europe, indicating individual European countries. There was no indication that China thought the EU as a whole would be involved in One Belt-One Road (1170-1171).
• In early 2015, during a state visit to the UK, Xi Jinping announced that the UK could participate in One Belt-One Road, claiming that all countries could participate. This is a new concept of the One Belt-One Road to cover all Chinese-funded projects to promote trade and investment. Europe plays no special role in this conception, as the same opportunities are open to all countries (1171-1172).

Zakaria, Fareed. "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy". Foreign Affairs, Vol.76, No.6 (1997): 22-43.

Zakaria, Fareed. "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy". Foreign Affairs, Vol.76, No.6 (1997): 22-43.

• "American diplomat Richard Holbrooke pondered a problem on the eve of the September 1996 elections in Bosnia, [...] 'Suppose the election was declared free and fair,' he said, and those elected are 'racists, fascists, separatists, who are publicly opposed to [peace and reintegration]. That is the dilemma.' (22).
• Whereas the rise of democracy in the West has coincided with the rise of liberalism, resulting in the condition of liberal democracy, the same is not true in other parts of the world. Liberalism and democracy are fundamentally different traits, and liberalism is rare in new democracies (22-23).
• These countries which have flawed election cycles and restrictions on civil society are not less democratic than other states, but they are significantly less liberal. These new illiberal democracies lack civil liberties, but still manage to reflect the popular will in their politics (23).
• "If a country holds competitive, multiparty elections, we call it democratic. When public participation in politics is increased, for example through the enfranchisement of women, it is seen as more democratic. Of course elections must be open and fair, and this requires some protections for freedom of speech and assembly. But to [...] label a country democratic only if it guarantees a comprehensive catalog of social, political, economic, and religious rights turns the word democracy into a badge of honor rather than a descriptive category" (25).
• Although almost all Western states since 1945 have been liberal democracies, the two characteristics can exist separately as either illiberal democracies or liberal autocracies. Illiberal democracies are found throughout the developing world, where individual rights are severely restricted, but competitive and multiparty elections still take place. Liberal autocracies historically dominated Western Europe prior to the 20th Century, where individual rights were protected, but suffrage was severely restricted or non-existent (26-27).
• The path of Western states towards democracy appears to be historically unique, representing a gradual extension of liberal rights with increased suffrage, until liberal autocracies transformed into constitutional and then democratic systems. These transformations do not necessarily occur in other countries, as democratic Latin American countries have not liberalized and liberal East Asian countries have not democratized (27-28).
• The most powerful historical predictor of liberal democracies appears to be some form of constitutionalism, as existed in the British and American systems during their periods of liberal autocracy. The clear liberal framework of basic rights in constitutional systems appears to lend itself well to preserving liberalism during democratization (29).
• There is an essential tension between liberalism and democracy, because the core element of liberalism is the restriction of government power, while democracy is about the use of government power for the benefit of the majority. Democracy will try to remove the restrictions on power created through undemocratic liberalism (30).
• This process often occurs through vertical usurpation, where government figures, either the parliament or the executive, claiming direct representation of the popular will, supposedly allowing them to act legitimately without constitutional restraint because of their democratic mandate (30).
• Horizontal usurpation occurs where government institutions erode the autonomy of sub-national structures, claiming to represent a more pure and legitimate form of democratic mandate than those institutions. This is the most common form, with many countries restricting the freedom of universities or local government (30-31).
• Strong governments capable of enforcing order, though often demanded by both domestic and foreign audiences in the developing world, are not good predecessors to liberal democracy. In fact, liberal democracies tend to emerge from deeply pluralist and divided societies, such as the United States or India (32-33).
• Many prominent liberal institutions, like the IMF or World Bank, promote liberalizing reforms regardless of government structure, empowering illiberal governments to restrict civil liberties to ensure successful privatization. This restriction of civil liberties, although used to advance liberal goals, ultimately results in illiberalism. Actual liberalism needs to be promoted through consistent application of the rule of law and respect for personal and property rights (33-34).
• Western politicians often make the mistaken assumption that democracy will led to peace and ethnic harmony; neither of these traits is actually related to harmony. Democracy can actually intensify ethnic divides and spark conflict, as it did in many parts of the former Eastern Bloc. Substantial historical evidence also demonstrates that democracies may be conflict prone, again because democratization makes issues like war and ethnicity politically salient in ways autocracies may not (35-36).
• The author contests that even democratic peace theory does not actually make any claims that democratization will result in peace. The 'democracy' that Emmanuel Kant describes is actually republicanism, which he defines as a liberal system, not a democratic one. Therefore, it might be plausible that all liberal states should be peaceful, but certainly not illiberal democracies (36-38).
• The American political system is impressive not for its democracy, but a distinct lack of democratic framework for a liberal democracy, reflecting its origins as a liberal autocracy. The many liberal and anti-democratic elements of the American system, like an unelected Senate and Supreme Court, and severe restrictions on presidential power, made it a successful system than other illiberal countries should consider adopting (39).
• The author argues that democracy is not the most important quality in government, which is instead liberalism and the preservation of its associated rule of law and personal rights. American foreign policy should focus much less on promoting democracy and much more on promoting liberalism, which ultimately guarantees better conditions for life (40-41).
• Actually non-democratic states are increasingly uncommon, as almost all countries adopt some form of democracy. The issues for progressing human society come increasingly from illiberal democracies, making the problem one of global illiberalism, not global democracy (42).
• This trend towards illiberal democracy poses two dangers. The first is that democratic governments will not be adequately sanctioned for committing human rights abuses. The second is that abuses in illiberal democracies may undermine global belief in democratic norms, creating a growing population willing to reject democracy (42-43).

Zahl, Paul F. M., Daniel M. Bell, and Brian Stiltner. "Drones: Is it Wrong to Kill by Remote Control?". Christianity Today, 28 October 2011.

Zahl, Paul F. M., Daniel M. Bell, and Brian Stiltner. "Drones: Is it Wrong to Kill by Remote Control?". Christianity Today, 28 October 2011.

This article features three responses to the question, 'is it wrong to kill by remote control'. For the purposes of distinguishing between them, Mr. Zahl's responses will be marked in purple, Mr. Bell's responses will be green, and Mr. Stiltner's responses will be orange. 

• The use of predator drones to kill America's enemy is creating hatred of America in foreign countries and will eventually bring God's judgment to bear upon us. 
• It allows CIA and Air Force pilots to ignore the human costs of their actions in a way that they have to if they look the enemy soldier in the eye. It thus removes a chance for humanity and love to soften men's hearts. 
• The use of drones emasculates the enemy by denying them a chance to have a fair fight. In societies that place extreme value on honor, slights like this generate support for terrorists.

• There is nothing intrinsically wrong with killing from a distance, as Christianity does not demand that murder only take place in personal combat. There is nothing more immoral about killing with drones than about killing with knives. 
• The challenge posed by drones is that they make killing and warfare easier. This is a bad thing because it means wars are more likely to be conducted out of vice and sin. These military innovations mean we must be even more vigilant about having our military policy directed by Christian moral principles and virtues. 

• There is not anything inherently immoral about using drones, but they have been used too freely and out of order with the requirements of just war. They are used too freely and generate a significant number of civilian casualties because of the carelessness with which they are used. 
• The Obama administration has partially responded to these complaints in 2010, decreasing the number of missions and using more precise munitions for air strikes. 
• All drones must be controlled and operated by the Department of Defense so that their use is totally compliant with just war, military rules of engagement, and international law. 

Young, Iris Marion. "Feminist Reactions to the Contemporary Security Regime". Hypatia, Vol.18, No.1 (2003): 223-231.

Young, Iris Marion. "Feminist Reactions to the Contemporary Security Regime". Hypatia, Vol.18, No.1 (2003): 223-231.

• The construction of masculinity is associated with selfishness, domination, exclusion, and protection. The author chooses to focus on the association of protection with the masculine identity, wherein the protection that a man provides should be rewarded with obedience by those -- mainly women -- under his protection (224).
• The author suggests that the origin of patriarchy may lie in the relationship that forms between almost exclusively male protector and mainly female protected considering the male physical ability to provide security in a prehistoric world along Hobbesian logic (224).
• A security regime -- defined here as the relationship between the state, those it protects, and those it defends from -- contains two components: an external aspect of providing security from opposing states, and an internal aspect of providing security for civilians from other civilians who may seek to harm the state through criminalized acts (225).
• The relationship between the state and its officials, and the public under a security regime is that of the masculine protector and the feminine protected. The state provides security and in return expects the respect and obedience of the public (225, 226-227).
• The author endorses the analogy of the security regime as a 'protection racket' used by Dr. Rae Peterson, wherein a system of rules and policies punishes protected persons, specifically women, for rejecting the protection offered by the state. The same pattern exists in national security, where 'bad' citizens who reject security policy are punished (228).
• The author argues that the patriarchal relationship between state and citizen under the security regime is bad for a democratic society and undermines the autonomy of citizens (229).
• Colonialism and patriarchy serve to legitimate themselves by claiming to save either actual women or feminized 'barbarians', a trend that has become common again in American public discourse following war in Afghanistan. The intent behind this is benign, but it places the foreign women in a subordinate positions and denies them agency (230-231).
• The author claims that the 'crusader' mindset to free women is still anti-feminist, meaning that concern about the wellbeing of women cannot be the only qualification of feminism, it must instead be dedicated to viewing all people are equal and self-supporting citizens without enforcing power dynamics (231).

Yar, Majid. "Hannah Arendt’s ‘two theories’ of political judgment". Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol.26, No.2 (2000): 1-27.

Yar, Majid. "Hannah Arendt’s ‘two theories’ of political judgment". Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol.26, No.2 (2000): 1-27.

• In the period of post-modern academics, the issue of human capacity for judgement has reemerged as a central epistemological question in the humanities and legal theory (1-2). The author asserts that looking at the two definitions of political judgement can lend some insight into this issue (2).
• The lack of direct sources from Arendt on these specific issues makes any full representation of her views impossible, but the author believes that enough work survives that a rough theory of her views of judgement can be pieced together and withstand criticism (2-3).
• Arendt's political philosophy focuses on politics being a field essentially based upon action and political action as a fundamental part of the human experience. She also observes a dangerous trend in modern Western politics of subordinating this natural focus on politics and action, to thought and appearances; placing the results, especially the fame, resulting from political action as a goal, rather than politics being a goal unto itself (3).
• In her philosophy, Arendt defines 'labour' as all activity which is necessary for biological needs. Labour does not produce anything of permanence, and because of labour is most animal and least 'human' activity which humans perform. For Arendt, the position of a laborer is slavery to basic needs (4), and the continued presence of 'labour' in capitalist society has prevented the 'higher politics' practiced by Greek aristocracy in city-states (5).
• In Arendt's philosophy, 'work' is defined as the class of activities which are not for natural purposes and serve to create an artificial world. They are at least semi-permanent, physical, can exist independent of their creators, and serve to create a clear distinction between humans and animals -- e.g., walls, buildings, laws. Work creates the public spaces and institutions which are needed for politics to exist (5).
• To Arendt, the existence of 'work' as a subset of activities is also imperiled by industrial capitalism, as the traits of public-ness and permanency which characterize 'work' are no longer valued. Instead capitalism attempts to promote the traits of abundance and consumption, which feed into 'labour' rather than 'work' (6).
• Occupying the apex of possible human actions and represented the fullest degree of human freedom and fulfillment is the quality of 'action' (6), which Arendt defines as a public activity untaken as a goal in its own right, not for any result stemming from its performance. The ability of action is that to freely come together with others and begin an entirely new project, voice an entirely new idea, or make a decision with public consequences (7).
• Importantly, despite being a goal unto itself, action must be a public act performed in public. No activity in private, however connected to political thought or seemingly self-satisfying, can be considered an 'action' (8). 
• This means that 'action' requires a public space and a common body politic to exist, both things which, according to Arendt, require freedom from 'labour' and the common basis of public spaces and laws created through 'work' (9).
• "Action is distinguished by its freedom from necessity, including that of prior causes and of mere instrumentality for intended ends. Whereas work as fabrication is undertaken so as to produce something that endures beyond the execution, action is not. Action is its own end and so produces nothing that outlasts it" (10).
• Arendt's categorization of 'action' as public and discursive connects it to the concept of judgement. When we engage in action, such as public speech, we are places ideas into the public sphere to be heard and judged. Similarly, when we inhabit the public sphere and witness the actions of others, we are judging them (9).
• For Arendt these judgements are a necessary part of political action. Unlike some philosophers, like Plato or Gandhi, who believe that the goal of politics is establishing truth, Arendt holds that politics is a goal unto itself and thus should generate evaluations and opinions, not 'truths' (9).
• The formation of these opinion is a necessary consequence of political action, and can only be formed by exposure to political action (10). The exchange and development of these opinions is the essence and the 'goal' of politics and the high of human fulfillment (11).
• Arendt's 'first' theory of political judgement concerns actors within a political community (11), with the goal of political judgement to be convincing and thus raise the opinion of one's character in the eyes of those witness to the performance of that political action (13).
• This theory depends on an extremely creative and almost definitely incorrect interpretation of Kant and Aristotle. It is incredible confusing and fucked-up how she mixed up and changed concepts, but essentially she equates Aristotle's concept of insight with a Kantian belief in a 'common will', with both being gained by engagement in public political action and public discourse (11-12).
• Arendt's 'second' theory of political judgement concerns spectators to political actions, where the goal of judgement becomes establishing a consensus and increasing the potential for action by exchanging opinions and judging the actions previously expressed (11-13). For Arendt, this exchange of public action also allows for the organization of opinion that can be directed towards the expression of power through collective action (13).
• Philosophy has an interesting position within Arendt's worldview, as it is simultaneously reviled as allowing thought to dominate action, but at the same time provides employment to Arendt and gives her a position to stand apart from practical engagement in life and observe trends in modern society (14).
• It ends up playing a significant role in Arendt's theory of judgement, because only those people not participating in political action can be observers and thus make judgements. This essentially means that philosophers are some of the few people capable of making valid and impartial judgements (18).
• When asked to observe the Eichmann trial and bare witness to the monstrosity of human deeds, Arendt comments on the inadequacy of past judgements to deal with the act of judgement, because humans will always find a way to engage in new actions too honorable or horrendous to be judged on past experience. Arendt posits that in these cases where all preconceptions about humanity have been shattered, it is necessary to depend solely on an innate human ability to judge novel actions, without reference to general moral principles or past experiences (15).
• Arendt partially takes this opinion about proper judgement from Kant, although she ignores most of the contexts and specificities of his work, and focuses on Kant's concept of 'common sense' being a necessary part of all human judgements and providing a common basis between all judgements (16). Arendt expands on this concept by demanding that any judgement must engage common sense by imagining and theoretically engaging with all other potential viewpoints, thus arriving at a publicly acceptable judgement (17).
• This abstraction from the personal, subjective exercise of common sense to a larger thought exercise using 'common sense' opinions likely to be held by many individuals, is necessary to guarantee the requisite impartiality and disinterestedness for political or moral judgement (17).
• Because the political actor is directly engaged in his action, they cannot be unbiased or disinterested, and thus cannot become an impartial or valid judgement of the action performed (17).
• This means that valid judgement on the political and moral merits of an action can only come from the position of the spectator, because only they have the proper position and impartiality to judge. Moreover, the position of the spectator makes them impartial by definition and thus natural judges (17).
• Dr. Yar discusses the influence of Hannah Arendt's tutors and mentors, Drs. Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin, one her work and her theory of judgement from page 19 to page 20.
• A very common criticisms of Arendt's work is that she relies very heavily on the historic distinction in Ancient Greece between the "oiko", or private residence, and "polis", or public space, to define politics. By using this narrow and historically specific definition, Arendt ignores many potentially political acts in society and economics because they depend on 'labour' or are made in private (21).
• Arendt also constantly misinterprets key philosophers, especially Kant. The main issues result from her literally reading of Kant's works, despite his constant use of metaphor. A key example is the difference between their definitions of common sense dialogues:
• "Kant asserts that the sensus communis operates by taking cognizance of others’ standpoints, by ‘as it were’ comparing one’s judgment ‘with human reason in general’; it is a ‘way of thinking’ in abstracto [...] . However, Arendt (mis)takes this ‘broadened thinking’ to denote an actual dialogue with real others" (21).
• "So, in Arendt’s writings we are confronted with two species of judgment, those of the actor and the spectator. They seem, Janus-like, to look in opposite directions: one to the future that it seeks to secure, the other to a past that it yearns to redeem. One takes an interest in the affairs and aspirations of humans, the other eschews such interests that it might see better, understanding more. One can only operate in intercourse with others, while the other shuns its fellows and instead ‘goes visiting’ in the imagination. [...] The two would seem wholly incompatible, an antinomy that cannot be resolved. For if the spectator judges as an actor, he/she loses the standpoint which grants him breadth of vision; and if the actor judges as a spectator, he/she forsakes the capacity to be in the world with others as an agent" (22-23).

Yadav, Yogendra. "Electoral Politics in the Time of Change: India's Third Electoral System, 1989-99". Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.34, No.35 (1999): 2393-2399.

Yadav, Yogendra. "Electoral Politics in the Time of Change: India's Third Electoral System, 1989-99". Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.34, No.35 (1999): 2393-2399.

• The author argues that India democracy during the 1980s and 1990s has been so volatile because the tensions between the political equality of democracy and social and economic inequalities of Indian society. In previous decades, social and economic elites were powerful enough to exert political power, but now these tensions are playing out in politics (2393).
• India has experienced three different electoral systems, in the sense of political orders, since independence, with the most recent beginning in 1989. The first system lasted from 1952 to 1967, and was defined by the domination of the Indian National Congress in uncompetitive elections against a divided, regional opposition. Voters generally mobilized as a jati rather than individuals by local elites (2393-2394).
• The second election system lasted from 1971 to 1989. It was defined by the end of Congress hegemony resulting from the greater political mobilization of middle classes and the lower castes during the late 1960s. While the electoral system is still defined by alliance with or opposition to Congress, elections are now competitive (2394).
• The third electoral system began in 1989 with the defeat of Congress. The Janata Dal party, led by Vishwanath Pratap Singh, managed to successfully challenge and defeat Congress. The 1989 election marks a demographic turning point for the increased political mobilization of Muslims and dalits in politics. It also sees the Indian political system fracture along the lines of 'Mandal, Mandir, and Market', referring to the simultaneously events of the expansion of reservations following the recommendations of the Mandal Commission, the politicization of religion, and the first round of economic liberalization (2394). 
• The key characteristic of the third electoral system is the end of Congress as the dominant feature in elections. Previous elections were between Congress or an anti-Congress bloc, now there are multiple distinct political parties for voters to choose between (2395).
• Despite early political isolation for its extreme position on the Ayodhya temple, the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] has managed to forage alliances with other parties during the 1990s and expand outside of its previous geographic base of the northern Hindi Belt and demographic base of urban Brahmins. At the end of the 1990s, it is the primary opposition to Congress (2395).
• The other parties in the third Indian electoral system are regional and state-based, but often take unique ideological stances which could potentially appeal to national electorates (2395).
• Although use of the first-past-the-post system of voting in India has not resulted in a two-party system at the national level, it has essentially resulted in multiple two party systems at the state level. Although many parties exist in the Lok Sabha, voters in each distinct still have a limited choice between a small number of viable parties (2396).
• There are other related issues with Indian democracy, especially the similarity of Congress and the BJP on many important policy issues. The similarity of the BJP and Congress policies, combined with the effective exclusion of many small political parties from agenda-setting means that the ability of voters to select policies important to them is still limited (2399).
• Incumbent government and representatives in India during the 1980s and 1990s rarely got reelected. The majority of state governments were thrown out after their term, as were half of all representatives in the Lok Sabha. This trend has been declining in the 1990s, but is still pronounced (2396).
• The third electoral system is marked by the increased political activity of the lower castes, particularly the dalits, who are now more likely to vote than educated upper castes. This change is partially because many dalits, especially in northern India, only gained the practical ability to vote during the 1990s. Turnout among adivasi and women has also jumped during the 1990s (2397).
• The demographic composition of politicians really began to change in the 1990s, with the decade seeing the first dalit MPs elected in multiple states. However, while dalits have benefitted from these changes, the proportion of Muslim and female MPs remains largely unchanged (2396-2397).
• As a result of increased dalit political participation, issues of caste are now being discussed in Indian politics, especially within the framework of issues of social justice. Many of the political parties built to appeal to these social justice concerns, however, did not develop economic policies, effectively isolating dalit politics from the major economic decisions on liberalization and globalization, which are still mainly made by elite parties (2397-2398).
• Caste politics have existed since the formation of Indian democracy in the 1950s, yet the third electoral system marks a change from previous politicization of caste. Under the first and second systems, parties appealed to specific jati as national voting blocs. In the third system, parties target different castes in different states, appealing to upper castes in one states and dalits in another. This system has prevented a national political movement forming from the lower castes (2398).
• Prior to the 1990s, state boundaries were not politically important. During the first electoral system, they were irrelevant, and during the second system, they were absorbed within a larger north-south divide. Since the 1990s, states have become the primary locus of Indian political life and identity (2399).

Ya'u, Y. Z. "The New Imperialism & Africa in the Global Electronic Village". Review of African Political Economy, Vol.31, No.99 (2004): 11-29.

Ya'u, Y. Z. "The New Imperialism & Africa in the Global Electronic Village". Review of African Political Economy, Vol.31, No.99 (2004): 11-29.

• Africa is too poorly positions in terms of information technology to benefit from globalization in communications, which instead leaves Africa in a structural deficit within the knowledge economy, making it dependent on the outside world for technology and expertise in a rapidly advancing world (12).
• John Tomlinson defines 'globalization' in his 1996 article as: "a rapidly developing process of complex interconnections between societies, cultures, institutions and individuals worldwide. It is a social process which involves a compression of time and space, shrinking distances through a dramatic reduction in the time taken - either physically or representationally - to cross them, so making the world seem smaller and in a certain sense bringing human beings 'closer' to one another" (12).
• As an economic process, globalization is also linked to increased liberalization, particularly in the realm of international trade. In this process, the role of the state retreats through privatization, becoming concentrated at creating the environmental conditions for private sector-led growth. This economic element of globalization is market-driven, not state-driven, drastically reducing the role of democracy in development (13).
• Communications technologies are an element of this economic globalization, particularly benefit transnational companies through improved communications and the incredible ease of transferring capital internationally. Although communications technologies benefits everyone, it disproportionately benefits multinational corporations (13).
• Many different competing forms of globalization exist, but the dominant form of market orthodoxy globalization, expressed in domestic politics as neoliberalism, certainly depends on communications technologies and disproportionately benefits person, corporations, and countries which are well-connected (14).
• Africa is severely undeveloped in terms of standard information technologies, with only 2% of the world's computers, despite making up for 13% of the global population (14). The distribution of landlines and personal computers is also skewed by the severe overrepresentation of South Africa, which single-handedly accounts for half of all computers in Africa (15).
• Africa also faces severe skills shortages in areas needed for developing information technology. Computers require basic literacy to operate, and technicians to repair, maintain, and install systems. Africa has a literacy rate of under 60% and just over 2% of the population are technical graduates; poor conditions for the expansion of information technology (15-16).
• Existing internet infrastructure in Africa is also poor, and its use is much more expensive than in other areas of the world. Africa also lacks production facilities for the necessary equipment, making it dependent on foreign sources for the material to upgrade its expensive and slow internet capabilities (16).
• The general global trend in information technology is towards market-driving globalization and the privatization of state communications monopolies. Promoters say that privatization will develop the sector through capital inflows, while detractors warn that privatization sells off communications assets just as they become valuable and will make communication technology less accessible to the poor (17-18).
• The organization of the GATS agreement in the WTO has major implications for the development of information technology in Africa, since IT is among the sectors open to competition from the West under the agreement. TRIPS agreements also prevent African companies from copying the technological innovations that would allow them to compete in IT services with the developed world, trapping Africa in a structurally dependent position (18).
• The structural disadvantage of African companies in IT services comes at the same time that privatization is actively encouraged by the global zeitgeist, meaning that African companies are usually unable to purchase or operate the state assets being sold off, not allowing African businesses to profit from privatization (19).
• The current push of information technology development is towards greater privatization, meaning that development will expand in profitable areas, with good infrastructure and high populations, but will not improve in areas already under-serviced by information technology (24).
• The solution to this issue of developing information and communication technologies in under-developed regions like Africa is increasing public investment, like East Asia and America did. Privatization should be resisted, and resources within the continent should be pooled to make up for private investment (25-26).

Wollheim, Richard. "John Stuart Mill and the Limits of State Action". Social Research, Vol.40, No.1 (1973): 1-30.

Wollheim, Richard. "John Stuart Mill and the Limits of State Action". Social Research, Vol.40, No.1 (1973): 1-30.

• Mill originally wrote his seminal text, On Liberty, to engage with and counter a common belief during his time period that once the arbitrary and hereditary power of monarchs was abolished, there was no need to further restrict the exercise of state power -- which was now democratic. Mill obviously disagreed and in his response developed a framework for issues of state action in all systems of democratic government (1-2).
• A common criticism towards Mill's harm principle is the difficulty of finding or defining a self-regarding action, for any matter of importance does have an affect on others. If confirmed, such a critique would mandate that only the most trivial actions, like how to brush one's teeth, would performed freely. All other actions could be restricted, in an obvious subversion of Mill's attempt to promote liberty (3-4).
• The author references a paper by Dr. J. Rees in answer of this issue, arguing that since Mill obvious did not mean for his theory to be interpreted that way, he must instead by making a distinction between actions which primarily affect other's interests and those actions which primarily affect our own interests (4-5). This distinction is elaborated as the infringement of 'interests', where an action is only other-regarding if it affects the core interests of others (5).
• Although the author congratulates Dr. Rees on the work done, Dr. Wollheim disagrees with the proposed solution on two counts: the vague definition of 'interests' leaves that category as societally defined, meaning that it will vary between societies and could exclude rights which Mill considers core (7); the theory here is inconsistent with the Utilitarian principles upon which Mill claims to have based his work, because it leaves the definition of 'interests' up to culture rather than calculations of utility (8). 
• The author proposes that the category of 'self-regarding actions' ought to include both actions which by their triviality have literally not effect on others, and those actions which only have an effect on others because others judge them to be right or wrong (8).
• The example demonstrating this second category, which appears in Mill, is that having a party on a Sunday is a self-regarding action. Although it does affect people who believe the Sabbath to be holy, it only affects them because of their moral beliefs, making it self-regarding (9).
• This definition of the term solves one of the objections raised to Dr. Rees's work, because it allows for a consistent definition of the actions across societies and does not depend on cultural definition of terms (10).
• Dr. Wollheim recognizes that his theory is not necessarily or clearly in conformity with Utilitarianism, because it proclaims a broad rule for all cases on what activities can be regulated, not paying heed to pain or pleasure calculations. The author then goes on to explain several possible lines of defense for his theory (10).
• The author suggests that it could be argued, from a Millian perspective, that Utilitarianism only regards physical pain as appropriate restriction on actions, therefore disregarding any offense or emotion pain caused. However, this interpretation does not mesh with Mill status as a philosopher, and the author rejects it (11).
• A stronger path of argumentation is that if the belief that an act is sinful is wrong -- the belief that action X is sinful is a false belief -- then the person being harmed is harmed only by their false beliefs, not the action. Since we cannot determine the true morality of most actions, this has to be the working assumption; meaning that no self-regarding action can be denied on Utilitarian principles (13, 20).
• A possible exception to this rule are actions which produce instant and natural revulsion and disgust -- such as the public consumption of spoiled food -- which are not based on the beliefs of other and therefore might merit a different balance of harm to pleasure (13).
• Another possible objection to this view is that just because beliefs are false does not make the pain from their violation any less real. The author suggests that Mill would have responded that since it benefits society overall to progress towards true beliefs through experimentation, this is a price that false believers must pay (14).
• Within Mill's theory, the author draws a distinction between 'moral beliefs' and 'preferences'. Dr. Wollheim defines the former as beliefs regarding one's own action, whereas preferences are opinions about the morality of other's action. Whereas the former are important, the later need to be controlled by the methods which Mill suggests (16).
• Within the framework of Utilitarianism, the only moral actions directed at others must be based on the concept of improving overall happiness, meaning that 'preferences' made without reference to happiness cannot be accepted as moral or acceptable reasons for state intervention (17).
• Using this criteria for determining the merits of beliefs, most of the cases for moralist intervention are countered. There are however, some cases where the person believes they are doing the right thing without firm evidence. The author claims that Mill would value freedom as a default, allowing something to remain unrestricted until it is proved harmful with solid evidence (18).
• A full explanation of the argument had in this article in defense of Mill can be found on page 19.
• Mill further takes down the idea from the essay by Dr. Rees, that there is any distinction between 'interest' in Mill's usage and the common term. A large amount of textual evidence is provided to demonstrate that 'interest' does not connote any special meaning distinct from other effects (23-24).
• In another text, Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being, Mill makes claims which far extent the range of action that humans should be allowed beyond the restrictions of Utilitarianism advanced in On Liberty (28). However, this text deals with a separate case from Utilitarianism. Whereas Mill believes that Utilitarianism can only be useful in a developed society under certain conditions, his text on individualism provides a guide for a pre-Utilitarian morality (29).

Wolinetz, Steven. "Beyond the Catch-All Party: Approaches to the Study of Parties and Party Organization in Contemporary Democracies". In Political Parties: Old Concepts and New Challenges, edited by Richard Gunther, Jose Ramon, and Juan Litz. 136-164, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Wolinetz, Steven. "Beyond the Catch-All Party: Approaches to the Study of Parties and Party Organization in Contemporary Democracies". In Political Parties: Old Concepts and New Challenges, edited by Richard Gunther, Jose Ramon, and Juan Litz. 136-164, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

• The literature working on classifying party systems is often from the 1950s, and does not fully encompass the range of forms that contemporary political parties can take. It both fails to account for political parties in new democracies and new political movements in older democracies, like the rise of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia in Italy (137).
• One of the sources of this issue is that scholarship has overwhelmingly focused on Western European political parties, sometimes looking at America, Canadian, or Australian examples. This has left the literature skewed towards a number of distinctly Western European ideological divides and issues, leaving it less suited to classify or analyse political parties in other parts of the world (138).
• The distinction between 'cadre' parties and 'mass' parties derives from Maurice Duverger, who established the distinction in his 1954 book, 'Political Parties'. Cadre parties are loosely structured parties driven by elites with limited presence outside of legislation, while Mass parties have highly developed structures outside of government that encompass many voters (140).
• This dichotomy was useful for observing the differences between the establishment parties of the middle and upper classes and the 'upstart' parties, like the Socialists, who needed to organize before elections, in post-war France, but it is not particularly useful for contemporary parties, which blend elements of both ideal types (141).
• Some scholars have attempted to update the division by differentiating between elite-centered parties and mass membership parties, which do not pay attention to number of members, but to the degree to which party policy is determined by elites or the party base (143-144).
• The salience of this dichotomy has been particularly damaged by the decline in party membership over years, especially the decline in active membership. Even parties with expansive structures, Mass parties, struggle to maintain active participation, and function in a similar manner to Cadre parties (141).
• Although the distinction made by this dichotomy has uses, "Not included are [...] the presence or absence of multiple centres of power, [...] or the ways in which parties assemble resources, conduct election campaigns, or present themselves to the public. Any of these could provide a basis for differentiating political parties" (145).
• The idea of a 'Catch-all party' was developed by Otto Kirchheimer in 1966, explaining that Mass parties would gradually abandon their ideology and instead focus on running campaigns and emphasizing strong leadership. The logic was that such an ideologically bland approach would be so electorally successful that it would force other parties to adopt the strategy (145-146).
• The term 'Catch-all party' remains poorly defined, with it potentially referring to any political party without strong connection to voters, that focus on leaders, that is tied to interest groups, or opportunistic and ideologically ambiguous parties (146).
• The ideal type of the 'Cartel party' was developed by Robert Katz and Peter Mair in a 1995 article. It exists in the same political situation as ideologically vague Catch-all parties, but only comes into existence as a result of state subsidization of party funds. It does not desire strong electoral success, and only exists to extract state resources and exert pressure on issues of importance to major backers (148).
• Distinguishing which political parties in a given system as Cartel parties is extremely difficult, and they are often identical to Catch-all parties in form and organization. This severely weakens their use as an analytical tool (149).
• The author proposes a new categorization of political parties into three categories: policy-seeking parties, vote-seeking parties, and office-seeking parties. Political parties in these categories try to ensure their policies are past, secure votes in election, or achieve the patronage benefits of public office, respectively (149).
• Rather than placing political parties into firm categories, the author proposes a triangular continuum of party goals, where a party's position on that continuum depends on how highly it prioritizing votes, policies, or public office (150).
• There essentially cannot exist a pure form of any of the three party categories, as votes as necessary to both other party goals, and parties need some policy platform to win elections. Instead, telling towards which side of the triangle a party is located requires analysis of their organizational structure, its platform, and its history (153-154).
• One of the major problems with contemporary model of political party classification is that by adjusting to more recent political developments, they fail to distinguish between modern parties. Theories of Catch-all parties and Cartel parties imply that nearly all Western European political parties fit this model, hobbling the analytical usefulness of these terms (159).

Wisor, Scott. "Against Shallow Ponds: an Argument against Singer's Approach to Global Poverty". Journal of Global Ethics, Vol.7, No.1 (2011): 19-32.

Wisor, Scott. "Against Shallow Ponds: an Argument against Singer's Approach to Global Poverty". Journal of Global Ethics, Vol.7, No.1 (2011): 19-32.

• In presenting a moral argument for helping to allieviate extreme poverty, Peter Singer utilizes the example of a man saving a drowning child from a shallow pond. The allegory goes that since something very bad can be accomplished with little cost to one's self, it is immoral to not act (20).
• The allegory of the drowning child is not compatible with the realities of foreign aid because it implies only a single agent, the man watching the child. In reality, the global poor are capable actors, constantly attempting to improve their lot in life and making smart financial decisions. Using this allegory ignores the agency of the global poor (21).
• The allegory also fails because it does not provide context for the drowning. Poverty, and especially famine, always have unique proximate causes which require addressing. The drowning child allegory does not provide for these different contexts of poverty (21-22).
• There are no institutions in the allegory, although institutional arrangements nationally and internationally are responsible for the scope of global poverty and responses to it. Moreover, there are usually active attempts to reform institutions which may potentially be undermined by foreign aid (22-23).
• The real world is extremely complex, and foreign aid is also a complex and difficult process. The shallow pond allegory addresses none of this complexity, and therefore does not apply well to the real world (23).
• The kind of approaches to global poverty inspired by the shallow pond allegory are harmful because they are oversimplified and reductionist. It advocates towards only the easiest varifiable options, against other programs like human rights (24). It encourages a Western 'savior' complex which ignores the agency of the developing world and the role of the wealthy West in causing that extreme poverty (24-25). It implies that very little knowledge or expertise is required to help the poor, while in reality this is a specialist job (25-27). It sidelines political solutions to poverty and depoliticizes the issue (27). The actual distribution of resources, even among different charities, is not addressed nor is the problem of scarce resources split between deserving populations (27-28).
• Considering all of these negative responses, the author recommends that the shallow pond allegory be abandoned, and a new line of reason in defense of allieviating global poverty be created without all of these negative implications (28).

Wilson, Robin. "The Politics of Contemporary Ethno-nationalist Conflicts". Nations and Nationalism, Vol.7, No.3 (2001): 365-384.

Wilson, Robin. "The Politics of Contemporary Ethno-nationalist Conflicts". Nations and Nationalism, Vol.7, No.3 (2001): 365-384.

• "Ethno-nationalism is profoundly different. The fault lines it draws are principally vertical, not horizontal. Its counterpart is not the state [...] not other citizens but an enemy-image of the latter, collectively conceived. The intensity of ethno-nationalist antagonism is proportionate not to any social inequality the client constituency suffers relative to a comparator/competitor group but rather to the sense of difference erected between them" (367).
• Ethno-nationalist conflicts are zero-sum games based on domination, meaning that democratization and moderation do not come easily or naturally to the conflicts. These conflict tend to ignore dialogue and civil society, and are generally geared towards violence (367).
• Currently the only solutions to ethno-nationalist violence are political institutionalization that lower, but does not decimate, violence -- as in Ireland -- international mandates over territories -- like Bosnia and Herzegovina -- or military occupation by overwhelming force -- as in Kosovo (367). 
• "In many parts of the world people are being successfully mobilised to defend themselves against real or perceived threats from other groups, whose culture they are encouraged to view as irredeemably alien to their own -- The emphasis is seldom on the importance of converting `them' to `our' point of view. What is stressed is the urgency of defending and strengthening `our' community or way of life against `their' aggression or interference or excessive influence" (368).
• Many observers, from both Marxist and Liberal traditions, explain ethno-nationalism as a 'old' ideology that will die out under new forces of global Communism, class conflict, multiculturalism, or other modernities. This is blatantly false (368).
• Intra-state conflicts are not based on 'ancient hatreds' between ethnicities, but between groups galvanized by modern ideologies. This ethnic conflict is primarily triggered by weakened states, whose lack of protection drives people into the arms of other ethno-nationalist security guarantors (369).
• In this situation, the 'ancient tensions' become a self-referential myth than ethno-nationalist groups use to mobilize support for their movement, by expressing current securities onto a mythic past. This in turn makes the conflict seem organic, natural, or unstoppable (369).
• "Scientists of the mind agree in Us and Them: the Psychology of Ethnonationalism, the Committee of International Relations of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry concluded that `Ethnicity has no existence apart from interethnic relations" (370).
• The emergence of semi-autonomous regions within Europe, which seem to contain cultural and linguistic rights without undermining state sovereignty, challenges the dominant narrative of violent separatist ethno-nationalism (371-373).
• Organizations such as the UN, NATO, and ICC are taking larger roles in providing services in weak states and resolving conflicts in areas where states do not clearly have a right of sovereignty. The author expects that the role of these organizations will expand in the future (374).
• The rights of ethnic minority within states were first institutionalized in the UN through the 1992 UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to National, Religious and Ethnic Minorities. This was also reflected in a similar 1995 resolution by the Council of Europe (375).
• In Europe, the main actor enforcing these ideals has been the OSCE, which delegates a chief on issues of national minorities as of 1992, following a failure to prevent the Yugoslav and Chechen wars. This framework stresses dialogue and individual complaints, not allowing collectives to control the voice of an entire community (375-376).
• Dr. Arend Lijphart has suggested that ethnic or political conflict between two polarized communities forced to reside within the same geographic area can be resolved through 'consocialization', wherein political settlements are created to force cooperation through institutions like mutual vetos, grand coalitions, and mutual autonomy (378-379).
• This concept has come under attack since the 1980s, as the 'success stories' of consocialization in Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland have all come apart at the seams: separatism has overtaken Netherlandish politics, while Austrian political compromise has broken down in the face of resurgent Austro-fascism (379).
• Further criticism has been pilled on Dr. Lijphart for using entirely primordialist concepts of ethnicity, and ignoring the role that politics plays in creating ethnic groups. While consocialization might make sense between defined and unchangeable groups, in real life these divisions encourage corruption and sharpen and institutionalize ethnic divides, thereby making conflicts more difficult to solve (379-380).
• "I have sought to outline what could be described as a broadly `progressive' strategy for addressing today's ethno-nationalist conflicts. [...] the reconceptualisation of sovereignty away from winner-takes-all assumptions, the entrenchment of minority (but not 'group') rights, and the freeing up of identity choices" (380).
• "Elements of the international community [...] have begun to evolve a new paradigm, in which the international scene is occupied by a differentiated range of sub- and supra- as well as state actors, in which the latter no longer have hard and opaque boundaries. It is best conceived as a web of interrelationships between overlapping nodal points, the constraints being international human-rights conventions, international legal jurisdiction (including ad hoc tribunals and the International Criminal Court), and, ultimately, the threat of collective military action for humanitarian purposes" (381).

Williams, Michael. "Why Ideas Matter in International Relations: Hans Morgenthau, Classical Realism, and the Moral Construction of Power Politics". International Organization, Vol.58, No.4 (2004): 633-665.

Williams, Michael. "Why Ideas Matter in International Relations: Hans Morgenthau, Classical Realism, and the Moral Construction of Power Politics". International Organization, Vol.58, No.4 (2004): 633-665.

• The narrow definition of 'politics' in classical realist IR theory, in which politics is reduced to only power relations between states, is usually believed to have developed due to the intense military focus of the period immediately after WWII as well as a general depression about human nature (636).
• Hans Morgenthau defines politics as "interest defined in terms of power", but qualifies this statement with the caveat that 'interest' and 'power' change depending on time periods and perspective, since different things are considered 'power' or 'interest' by different states at different times (638).
• Despite the complexity of Dr. Morgenthau's actual position on 'power' and 'interest' in IR, his famous quote has been reduced by many in the realist school of IR to materialism -- which defines power only in terms of wealth or military strength -- or to instrumentalism, where power becomes a self-fulfilling end rather than the means of pursuing interests (639-640).
• The idea of 'ideal types' in the philosophy of Max Weber has had a deep influence on the scholarship of Dr. Morgenthau, who adopted this logic as a way of separating politics from other spheres of life. He defined politics as all action motivated by accumulation of power, separate from the distinct ideal types dealing with wealthy or morality (642).
• The use of Dr. Weber's distinct 'ideal types' of social spheres is likely the biggest weakness in Dr. Morgenthau's theories of politics and IR. The distinct spheres he establishes for politics, economics, and legality do not accurately represent reality, and thus may produce mistaken or inaccurate theories (653).
• This stress of national power takes place within the context of Nietzschean philosophy which recognizes that there are no absolute moral standards and that therefore all value judgments by nations are inherently political. The differences between these values is thus inconsequential, and power becomes the only common interest of nations (642-644).
• Dr. Morgenthau's justification for the separation of politics from other spheres of activity is that politics is the only sphere which deal with contested ideals and values. According to Dr. Morgenthau, trade is not political, because it deals with common values, not the conflict of worldviews. Politics is therefore defined by conflict (644).
• Dr. Morgenthau's definition of politics as defined by power was created during his time in the Weimar Republic, and responds to contemporary claims that violence is inherent and constituative of politics by Karl Schmitt and Georges Sorel (646-647). The difference is Dr. Morgenthau's definition is that he limits the definition of 'politics' as the sphere of non-violence contestation over values, arguing that when violence becomes the means of settling disputes over values, it stops being political and starts being part of the 'military sphere' (648-649).
• Although normally discussed in international relations, Dr. Morgenthau also believed that the balance of power operated on the domestic level. To Dr. Morgenthau, the domestic balance of power is not necessarily between distinct actors by a balance between the political sphere and other spheres of life, like the social, legal, or economic spheres. A proper domestic balance of power thus creates limits on the sphere of politics (650).
• Dr. Morgenthau believed that the social roots of fascism stemmed from the increased atomization and secularization of Western society, resulting in a loss of perceived power on the individual level and prompting people to seek out collective power, often in the form of a totalitarian state (650-651).
• Fascism was such a violent and destructive ideology because it reduced almost all spheres of life to the politics. By making economics, laws, religion, and personal life aspects of politics, it destroyed any limits on political possibility, allowing horrible things to happen, limited only by material conditions (651).
• Contrariwise, Dr. Morgenthau believed that the collapse of liberalism internationally in the 1930s was a result of its failure to generate an independent political sphere. Instead, it allowed essentially political decisions to be overrun by economic or legal concerns. This generated an environment of self-interest which was also unable to change rapidly enough to placate its discontents (652).
• Dr. Morgenthau's instance on the importance of a limited, but distinct, political sphere led him to be deeply pessimistic about the future of politics. Of particular concern was the supplanting of political with economic issues in national politics and a general transformation of politics and IR from a political field to a scientific or technical field (653).
• Looking at Dr. Morgenthau's conceptions of politics can provide important insight into flaws with the contemporary trend of scientific claims about politics. The arguments of many politics and IR scholars that creating categories for political inquiry enforces group identities, thus constituting politics, is dangerously close to claims of Karl Schmitt that all politics is about establishing and reinforcing in-groups and out-groups (655-656).
• The main issue with contemporary political scientists and IR scholars is that they refuse to engage in politics. The environment in which Dr. Morgenthau produced his research was deeply charged with political violence based on strategies of actively categorizing ideas and persons into acceptable and unacceptable, creating a moral necessity to engage in politics using gained knowledge. Contemporary scholars have lost this political motivation (657).
• This side of Dr. Morgenthau's theory of politics -- the importance of theory in providing political answers -- engages well with contemporary discussions in social constructivism. It argues that not all political constructs are of equal value, and that theorists have an obligation to assist in resisting destructive ideas, not idly stand as neutral observers (658).
• The author urges IR scholars in the realist school to really engage with classical realists like Hans Morgenthau, rather than dismissing them. The author also critiques the drive for rationalism and parsimony in the neoliberal and neorealist schools, instead calling for a recognition of the central role of politics in IR, and the political potential of IR research (660).

Williams, Michael. "The Discipline of the Democratic Peace: Kant, Liberalism and the Social Construction of Security Communities". European Journal of International Relations, Vol.7, No.4 (2001): 525-553.

Williams, Michael. "The Discipline of the Democratic Peace: Kant, Liberalism and the Social Construction of Security Communities". European Journal of International Relations, Vol.7, No.4 (2001): 525-553.

• If the 'democratic peace' theory is true, that liberal democracies will never go to war with each other, then there must exist a mechanism by which liberal democracies recognize other liberal democracies (527). This process is subjective to the state's definition of liberal democracy rather than an empirical standard (528).
• When interacting in the international arena, leaders in liberal democracies are likely to references their values as justification for foreign policy actions. Therefore, liberal democratic states identify each other through similarities in the norms of governance (528-529).
• The idea that liberal democracies are readily identifiable in terms of values and cultural norms raises more difficult questions, like which similarities matter. Why can states look over parliamentary-presidential differences, socialist-capitalist differences, and massive cultural divides? (529).
• Dr. Ido Oren suggests that the definition of liberal democracy is constantly in flux, as changing domestic and international conditions change a state's perception of similarity. In particular, Dr. Oren claims that the dominant conception of liberal democracy comes from a hegemonic power within the world system, like the USA (529-530).
• A key element of the process by which liberal states recognize each other is through common bonds of recognition and identity. First a state would identify other states which self-identify as liberal democracies. Then mutual acceptance by these states of the demands and power relations of that moral supremacy create a common identity upon which recognition and common security are built (538).
• The philosophy of Immanuel Kant, whose work is one of the main foundations of liberal theory, outlines three different kinds of respect: reverence-respect, teleological respect, and liberal respect.
• Reverence-respect involves an individual respected because their actions embody a higher moral law, regardless of the connection of those actions to actual laws. Respecting vigilante justice is an example of reverence-respect (533).
• Teleological respect is a basic level of respect given to those individuals recognized as human by their potential to act in accordance with moral laws. Conception of another's moral character is based off of teleological respect, represented by the difference between their action and potential (533-534).
• Liberal respect is a respect for negative forms of freedom regardless of an individual's moral character. It is the right to be left alone in one's own affairs, regardless of immorality, and represents a tolerance for different lifestyles (534). 
• Kant recognizes that the idea of virtue, embodied in the higher moral laws, is subjective and constructed. The criteria for different kinds of respect are therefore based on subjective definitions of virtue. The levels of respect defined in terms of virtue also constitute power relations between individuals (535).
• The tolerance expressed by liberal moral communities is limited, as based primarily on teleological respect and liberal respect of difference. This prevents a moral community from becoming exclusive, but it does imply varying levels of respect for different individuals and a power dynamic whereby non-interference is not a right but a privilege of liberal mercy (536).
• "Non-liberal communities are thus always subject to being branded as irresponsible threats, to being excluded from liberal relations of community and respect, and potentially to being subject to coercion by liberals if their forms of life are deemed a threat to liberal structures" (536).
• Even if they are not compelled to change, non-liberal states outside of a 'pacific federation' of liberal democracies are still viewed as potential threats to the liberal order by their existential contravention of liberal morality and virtue. Therefore, they are always at risk of being upgraded from potential threat to active threat (536).
• The impulse to join a liberal community and encourage moral behavior is not entirely intellectual, but also contains components of self-interest and emotion. The collective identity which reinforces a moral community is bolstered by the moral actions of others, as reflection upon those actions confirms one's own self-image of morality and induces pride (540).
• Conversely, the immorality or illiberalism of other state provides the background for a reinforcement of both vigilance of liberal norms and reinforced community based on contempt for the outside world of illiberalism (541-542).
• The philosophy of liberalism emerged largely in contrast and opposition to the irrational and immoral system of absolutist monarchy which preceded it. Likewise, liberal communities of states are built on 'others' constructed as immoral and irrational. For the contemporary liberal order based around NATO, these others are the violence of WWII and the barbarian expansionism of of the Warsaw Pact (540-541).
• The strength of the influence that liberal communities exert is based on their ability to both include and exclude states simultaneously. By technically allowing membership to all states, they create expectations of certain behavioral norms. When those norms are violated, punishments are enacted in a way that places the blame on offending state for breaking the rules of a 'universal' community (542, 545).
• The construction of liberal communities as both moral and secure, combined with the power relations between those communities and the outside, leads to some troubling behaviors of liberal democracies. Their moral sense of morality leads to broad caricatures of the 'other' as evil, as well as extending the implications of democratic peace to assume that the existence of non-liberal states raises the specter of war (544).

Whiteley, Paul. "Forecasting Seats from Votes in British General Elections". The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol.7, No.2 (2005): 165-173.

Whiteley, Paul. "Forecasting Seats from Votes in British General Elections". The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol.7, No.2 (2005): 165-173.

• There is a source mine of other voting predictions in British general elections available on page 165.
• Winning a general election in Britain does not mean winning a majority or plurality of votes, but instead means winning a plurality of seats in the House of Commons. A majority vote does not always translate into majority representation (166).
• In 1909, a predictive measure of votes to seats named the Cube Rule, or MacMahon's Law, was developed in predicts the following proportions of seats based on general votes:
• "The law, briefly, states that the proportion of seats won by the victorious party varies as the cube of the proportion of votes cast for the party over the country as a whole" (166).
• The Cube Rule worked well in the 1950 general elections, but has failed to deal with strong regional biases -- like those in the American South during the 1944 congressional election -- and cannot incorporate multiple parties (167).
• In 1968 through 1969, work was done to modify the Cube Rule so that it could be applied to multiparty systems, like that of Canada. They concluded that the seat share equals the votes for the party divided by the sum of all votes for that party within a predefined parameter (167).
• The author proposes the application of the Theil Formula to the British general elections, using elections from 1945 to 2001 as the given dataset. The formula predicts that the portion of seats [S] will equal the seat share of the previous election times the party's vote [P] share times a given error, all relating to preset parameters (168).
• The results of this formula applied to the given dataset are given from page 168 to page 170.
• The formula was tested on the results of the 2001 British general election and has mostly accurate, with the most differentiation coming from the Liberal Democrats. All deviations in seats gained, however, were not found to be statistically significant (171).
• The author makes a prediction about the seat percentages in the upcoming 2005 general election, predicting a strong Labour victory (171).
• This prediction came extremely close to the actual recording votes and seating, including the Labour government.

White, James. "State Growth and Popular Protest in Tokugawa Japan". The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol.14, No.1 (1988): 1-25.

White, James. "State Growth and Popular Protest in Tokugawa Japan". The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol.14, No.1 (1988): 1-25.

• The author argues that the majority of texts which evaluate the strength and success of the Tokugawa government in Japan are wrong in assessing its success on social and economic control, because these were never the explicit goals of the Tokugawa government. Instead, the political control of the regime should be measured, defined as the state's monopoly on legitimate force across Japan (1).
• Dr. White argues that from its inception as a fairly weak state in the 17th Century, the Tokugawa state grew in power and established a monopoly on the use of force and a centralized government which laid the foundation for the modern Japan of the Meiji period (2).
• The power of the central government grew during the Tokugawa period, but it remained dependent on the authority of the daimyo for administration. The hallmarks of rational-bureaucratic state administration, like national treasury separate judicial branches, and a police force, remained absent throughout the period (3).
• The author contests that the lack of centralized bureaucratic organs in the Tokugawa state did not prevent it from being powerful and absolutist, because the daimyo could not fight each other, the daimyo were subject to the military force of the Tokugawa, and the use of coercion by the daimyo on their subjects was limited by the Tokugawa state (4).
• In assessing the absolutism of the Tokugawa state, the author believes that it was an absolute monarchy on par with contemporary European states. This situation arose not out of an impressive centralization of the Tokugawa state, but a reflection that no 'absolutist' state ever actually centralized power to the degree claimed (6).
• Around the end of the 1500s, the divided states of Japan began processes of centralization later continued by the Tokugawa government. They disarmed the peasantry, destroyed a number of lordly fortifications, conducted land surveys, burdened the samurai class with administrative responsibilities, subjugated urban populations, and corralled religious authority (10).
• The Tokugawa state never moved beyond the centralization imagined during the period of early state formation in the 17th Century. Although largely seen as a failure by historians, it actually reflects the isolation of Japan from the military threats which prompted absolutist European states to continue the process of centralization. Without these exogenous pressures, the Tokugawa state had achieved its goals of peace and stability and did not require further centralization (10-11).
• The Tokugawa state did, however, decline as economic and military power declined relative to other actors. Inflation caused imperial revenues to diminish, while monopolists lost out to increasingly wealthy and powerful entrepreneurs. The Tokugawa lost of the support of the daimyo for reforms and were unable to impose their will on local groups (11-12).
• The establishment of the Tokugawa state in 1608 ended the threat posed to the Emperor by an armed military force in the countryside, as ownership of land revenue and military power were decisively severed. The samurai were salaried and had their land holdings removed, while the peasantry were tied to their land and disarmed. Only the diamyo had military power in the provinces (13).
• The absence of peasant uprisings during this period in Japanese history demonstrates the control that the Tokugawa exercised over peasant life, as military force could not be effectively mobilized to voice concerns (13).
• Like the absolutism of European states, the Tokugawa state attempted to remove religious organizations as alternative nodes of power. During the 1500s and 1600s, hundreds of Buddhist temples were destroyed and thousands of priests killed, almost on the genocidal scale of the massacre of tens of thousands of Japanese Catholics in 1637 (14).
• The centralization of the Tokugawa state was characterized by the subordination of religious groups to state, the establishment of a national system of market control and coinage, and the control of the regional nobility. In this last case, the daimyo had to reside in Edo every other year and required imperial permission to marry (15).
• The Tokugawa extended this state power through actual means to prevent it from being merely symbolic. The Tokugawa proved themselves capable to legislating and enforcing food transfers during famine, spying on daimyo, and even removing daimyo from power in cases of gross negligence (15-16).
• Daimyo also had to participate in a system of national taxation, although this was more decentralized than other areas during the time. The Emperor expected daimyo to maintain roads and canal systems on their own, with only a few national systems, like the coastal defenses or extraordinary measures (16).
• The rights of peasants to protest the system was restricted throughout the 1600s, from a position of relative freedom to ignore obligations should they feel wronged by their lord to a more restricted regime that absolutely prohibited protest. The channels of appeal became more restricted and punishments for violation more severe (19).
• In light of decreased state power and a diminished tax base due to inflation in the 18th Century, peasant revolts became more common and the Tokugawa enacted more restrictive measures. In 1769, firearms were used to disperse protesters and in 1770 a system of informants was created to identify troublemakers (19-20).
• Despite the nominal restrictions of Tokugawa power against the daimyo, in times of crisis, the Tokugawa were able to effectively wield authority throughout their domains. This included both the power to level taxes and, in the aftermath of revolt, to assume direct control over the administration and judiciary proceedings of large areas (21).

Wendt, Alexander. "Constructing International Politics". International Security, Vol.20, No.1 (1995): 71-81.

Wendt, Alexander. "Constructing International Politics". International Security, Vol.20, No.1 (1995): 71-81.

• This article is in a large part written as a response to a book by prominent Realist scholar Dr. John Mearsheimer, in which he makes several claims about Constructivism and Critical Theory which Dr. Wendt disagrees with.
• A source mine for key scholars and pieces on various elements of critical theory, including feminism, post-modernism, constructivism, and Neo-Marxism, is available on page 71.
• What connects the disparate fields of critical theory is a belief that world politics is socially constructed. This means that the basic structures of politics have a social rather than material basis, and that these social constructs shape the identities and interests of actors (71-72).
• Constructivism shares all five of the 'realist' assumptions created by Dr. John Mearsheimer: that international politics is anarchic, states have offensive capability, cannot be sure about the intentions of other states, wish to prolong their survival, and behave as rational actors (72).
• Constructivists also share two other characteristics with the Realist school. Both groups focus on politics at the state-level, and both are committed to analyzing structural factors influencing behavior (72).
• The primary distinction between Realism and Constructivism as schools of thought is that Realism assumes that political structures emerge from material realities like geography or levels of technology, whereas Constructivism assumes that structures are primarily socially constructed (73).
• Social structures are defined by shared expectations, knowledge, and understanding of a scenario. The ideas between communities construct the relationships between the communities, meaning the difference between a security community and a security dilemma is a social construction of trust (73).
• Constructivism also claims that material factors -- like mineral wealth or weaponry -- is only meaningful inside of its social context. In this way, 5 North Korean nuclear weapons pose a larger threat than 500 British nuclear weapons, because the 'threat' and meaning of the weapons is socially constructed within our understanding of politics (73).
• Social structures are imbedded in practices of international relations between states. These are recorded in patterns of behavior and institutional practice, which then affect the way international relations occurs (74).
• All fields of critical theory at the time of publication agree on objectivity in ontology, meaning that even though some structures are socially constructed, they still exist. Schools do diverge, however, on epistemology, with post-modernists claimed that objective reality cannot be known because the observer is immersed in social constructs (75).
• The creation of social constructs is partially enforced by agency and partially by structure. How agents -- states -- behave affects the social structure in which they interact by changing the expectations of other states. In turn, the range of agency and the reactions to states are determined by the structure in which an action takes place, primarily through the historical expectations of other states (77).
• The author claims that Realism cannot provide a compelling counter-argument to this assertion. From the author's description, Realism should dictate that states always behave the same given equal material situations, which they clearly do not (78). 
• Unfortunately, understanding that politics and international relations are dictated by social constructs does not mean that these patterns can necessarily be changed. While policy-makers do have a moral responsibility to destroy harmful patterns of political behavior if they can, this is not always a possibility -- As it would not be in a world of realpolitik (80).
• Neorealism and realpolitik are self-fulfilling prophesies, because states behaving on realpolitik assumptions create an atmosphere of distrust and conflict requiring the application of realpolitik. The only way out of the anarchic and dangerous world of Neorealism is the rejection of policies based on those assumptions (80-81).