Populism in Europe - an Overview

Populism as such is not new in the dictionaries of political and cultural sciences. The history of humankind is relatively rich in people and movements trying to convince people that simple and simplifying answers on complex questions may work. But in the last five or so years, there is a resurgence of populism across continents, societies and traditional political cleavages. As Brexit, the current U.S. dministration and many other events demonstrate, populism is shaping and influencing the political processes in Europe and far beyond. Against this background, the Center for Global Politics (www.global-politics.org) of Freie Universität Berlin organized a roundtable event for the annual convention of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) which took place last fall (2017) in Chicago. The topic of this event was "Populism in Eastern Europe". The idea was to analyze empirical examples of populism in Eastern Europe and beyond, to discuss with the attending audience definitorial questions, possible reasons for the populist success, advantages and limits of comparing populism in different contexts, and to highlight the possibilities to make a broader comparison of the phenomena cross-regionally. The following CGP working paper is a follow-up result of the roundtable initiative. Some of the roundtable participants decided present their updated papers to a broader (not only) academic public. We hope that the research endeavors evolving around the topic of populism will prosper in the upcoming years. and we hope that this CGP working paper can contribute to this evolving discussion. This introduction offers reflections on causes of populism; about its core messages; about the forms of populist agitation; about the effects of populism, and about its future. Certain dimensions of the current debate on populism are particularly interesting because they are not (yet) as inflationary as other features of populism. These dimensions will be presented below, before we move on with four studies on the more concrete dimensions of populist policies and trends in (mostly) Eastern Europe

Neither Trumps nor Interests: Rights, Pluralism, and the Recovery of Constitutional Judgment

This Article develops a novel framework for the adjudication of rights in an age of partisan and societal polarization. In so doing, it defends judicial review in a divided polity on new grounds. The Article makes two broad interventions. First, the Article cautions against recent calls to shift rights adjudication in the United States from Dworkinian categoricalism toward proportionality analysis. Such calls correctly identify how categoricalism, by embracing the absolute nature of rights as “trumps,” pits citizens harshly against one another. The problem, however, is that proportionality’s proponents fail to see how it imposes a rights absolutism of its own. Proportionality reduces pluralism in rights adjudication to the degree of justified infringement of a right whose normative content is otherwise held to be unchanging. This trades constitutional hermeneutics for a far narrower, more impoverished view of the judicial role and the purpose of rights adjudication: a view of goal-oriented, technical policy refinement that offers citizens no resources to better comprehend the disagreements over public values that divide them. To demonstrate the stakes of this criticism, I draw on comparative constitutional scholarship concerning the limitations of European jurisprudence that employs proportionality analysis—and examine how such limitations align neatly with criticisms leveled at American categoricalism in various areas of US constitutional law. Second, the Article offers an alternative. American constitutional theory requires a novel guiding light, which I term “narrative doctrinalism.” On this model, judicial review aims not merely to constrain democracy (categoricalism) or justify governance (proportionality) but instead to make possible a distinctive quality of democratic judgment. Set in a narrative frame, rights are neither trumps nor pragmatic interests to be balanced in proportion, but nodal commitments made in time. Their scope of application is not unlimited; but neither is their meaning timeless. Rights have pasts and futures that demand historically-grounded interpretation, which judges are uniquely well-positioned to provide. The Article develops narrative doctrinalism’s normative and methodological insights in detail. It then applies them to a salient case from a recent Supreme Court term: Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a case whose resolution continues to guide—for good or ill—how the Court disposes of analogous conflicts among rights regimes in other areas of law

Legal methods for resolving apparent conflicts between fundamental rights

The subject of this thesis are apparent conflicts between fundamental rights, which represent one of the most important problems contemporary legal systems are faced with. More specifically, this thesis presents and analyses different legal methods that have been suggested as answers to the problem. Contemporary constitutions usually contain provisions protecting certain fundamental rights, such as the right to life, the right to privacy, the right to freedom of expression, personality rights, the right to health, etc. The problem can arise when two (or more) provisions protecting fundamental rights are relevant to the specific situation. The question can then arise: should the behaviour be permitted or prohibited? Judges may then be faced with the situation of having to decide the case without any explicit or clear guidance on how to decide the case. In such situations, lex superior, lex posterior and lex specialis are usually inapplicable, because the provisions regulating fundamental rights are usually on the same hierarchical level, were enacted at the same time and no general – special relationship can be established between them. The problem is further complicated by the fact that the norms expressing fundamental rights are generally understood as legal principles, supposedly different from legal rules. These cases are commonly referred to and known in the literature as hard cases. In order to decide such cases and solve the problem we are faced with various legal methods have been proposed. These methods represent possible answers to the problem of the resolution of the apparent conflicts between fundamental rights. The term “apparent” is used, since there is a debate regarding the existence of “real” conflicts between fundamental rights. The objective of the thesis is to provide an answer to the research question: What are the legal methods of resolving apparent conflicts between fundamental rights and what are their merits in comparison to each other? In order to answer the research question, different legal methods that have been suggested as an answer to the problem of apparent conflicts between fundamental rights are presented, analysed and compared. In this way, the thesis aims to contribute to the understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the different legal methods that have been proposed to solve the problem. To achieve this, the thesis is divided into three main chapters, each of which presents and analyses different legal methods on apparent conflicts between fundamental rights. In Chapter I and Chapter II, the main legal method proposed to resolve apparent conflicts between fundamental rights – judicial balancing – is presented and analysed. In Chapter III, alternative, non-balancing legal methods for resolving apparent conflicts between fundamental rights are presented and analysed. Chapter I presents and analyses Alexyan theory of judicial balancing, developed by Robert Alexy and further refined by his disciples Jan-Reinard Sieckmann, Martin Borowski and Matthias Klatt. Chapter II presents and analyses approaches from Aharon Barak, Manuel Atienza, José Juan Moreso, Riccardo Guastini and Susan Lynn Hurley. In Chapter III, alternative, non-balancing legal methods for resolving apparent conflicts between fundamental rights are presented and analysed. The authors whose approaches are analysed and presented in this chapter are, in this order: Ronald Dworkin, Luigi Ferrajoli, Juan Antonio García Amado, Lorenzo Zucca and Ruth Chang

Visual surveillance and direct action protest in the City of London

Due to its workings as a global financial nexus, activists critical of capitalism have used the City of London to stage a number of large-scale direct actions since the 1983-84 Stop the City protests. By examining protest at this renowned site of intensified observation, I argue, we can learn a great deal about what surveillance processes do in practice. To develop its argument, this thesis offers a detailed examination of visual surveillance and counter surveillance practice over four protests: the J18 (1999); the G20 Meltdown (2009); Climate Camp in the City (2009); and Occupy LSX (2011). Based on empirical, qualitative research through archival work, interviews, and video documentation stored at the MayDay Rooms, this thesis demonstrates how City and Met police used visual surveillance to disrupt, re-frame and further criminalise dissent. Over the course of these four protests the police learnt new ways to suppress what they termed ‘extreme’ protest. Conversely, activists developed choreographed, embodied movements and alternative technologies to counter new public order procedures and police surveillance. Politically driven artists, performers and technologists were at the vanguard of these new protest formations, early internet livestreaming and pioneering technical innovations that challenged existing surveillant structures. Yet, as this thesis articulates, over the course of these protests many activists’ inventions were slowly subsumed into proprietary online frameworks, which embed surveillance by default. This thesis uses insights from Marx and Marxist inspired theorists to describe how this method of surveillance and subsumption took place. While police formations informed by this history are increasingly being taken up nationally and internationally, it is vital to understand how state security forces and corporate observers have dealt with ‘extreme’ protests in the City

UNDERSTANDING MORAL PRINCIPLES: JONATHAN DANCY, IRIS MURDOCH, AND PARTICULARISM

There is a paradox about moral principles like ‘You ought to keep your promises.’ They seem to express universal truths that tell us what to do, but exceptional situations arise in which it seems we should not do what they tell us. Generalists like R. M. Hare resolve this paradox by arguing that accurately specified moral principles do not have exceptions, and we can use them to syllogistically derive correct judgments about actions. Particularists like Jonathan Dancy resolve the paradox by arguing that, because there can be exceptions to any moral principle, moral principles actually are false. At best they are “reminders” or “dispensable crutches.” I argue that although Dancy’s particularism undermines generalism, it fails to capture the true normative status of moral principles. Consequently, there is a lacuna in particularism: it does not provide an adequate understanding of how moral values are related or how moral principles are action-guiding. I trace the failures of particularism, as well as generalism, to an assumption both share about generality—an assumption that tethers them to an unduly narrow conception of moral principles. After rejecting this assumption, I draw on Iris Murdoch’s notion of vision and its perfection to develop an ideal-based account of generality. According to this account, moral thought includes reflection on substantive ideals, the content of which is partly expressed in ordinary moral principles. I argue there are two forms of generality moral principles can exhibit, which generalists and particularists alike should embrace. The first is characteristic of fundamental principles like those in Murdoch’s and Aristotle’s views. The second is exhibited in principles that help give content to moral ideals. My account (unlike particularism) allows that principles have a normative, action-guiding role, but (unlike generalism) it does not construe principles as bases for syllogistic derivations about what to do. I discuss examples of both moral exemplars and rehabilitated criminal offenders to demonstrate that principled reflection is crucial to perfecting agency. In doing this, I show how the paradox about moral principles can give way to an understanding of moral principles that captures the role they play in ordinary moral reflection

Anonymous: Polemics and Non-identity

The hacktivist collective Anonymous has been known to follow nonhierarchical, amorphous and sometimes contradictory strategies for online activism. This may weaken their potential to become a populist movement, as out-group members may find Anonymous’s politics obscure and out of reach. Anonymous’s communiqués compensate for this by enabling direct communication with the public. But as a critical discourse analysis finds, the communicative strategies employed deviate from logics of difference and non-identity. They express rigid beliefs, even at times under the banner of universal truth. However, these findings do not suggest Anonymous inevitably embraces identity. By adopting a Deleuzian concept of minor politics, this thesis proposes that Anonymous’s texts are strategic appropriations of molar identities, emphasizing how the minor never fully exists outside the molar. Rather, the minor is always a movement within or across immanent molar configurations. The tensions and contradictions within Anonymous are thus exemplary of a minor political struggle

Can we be particularists about environmental ethics? : assessing the theory of moral particularism and its practical application in applied environmental ethics.

Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.Moral judgments have tended to be made through the application of certain moral principles and it seems we think we need principles in order to make sound moral judgments. However, the theory of moral particularism, as put forward by Jonathan Dancy (2004), calls this into question and challenges the traditional principled approaches to moral reasoning. This challenge naturally began a debate between those who adhere to principled accounts of moral rationality, and those who advocate a particularist approach. The aim of this thesis is thus to assess the theory of moral particularism as recently put forward by Jonathan Dancy. In pursuing this project I initially set up a survey of the field of environmental ethics within which to explore traditional approaches to applied ethics. This survey suggests that applied ethical problems have traditionally been solved using various principled approaches and if we are inclined to take the particularist challenge seriously, this suggests a philosophical conundrum. On the one hand, increasingly important and pressing applied environmental ethical concerns suggest there is a practical need for ethical principles, whilst on the other hand, the particularist claim is that we do not need principles in order to make sound moral judgments. The survey of environmental ethics then establishes the first side of the philosophical conundrum. I then move to explore the second side of the conundrum; the theory of moral particularism, looking at why the challenge it presents to traditional principled approaches needs to be taken seriously. I then move to explore theoretical challenges to moral particularism; this is done to establish the current state of the theoretical debate between the particularist and the generalist. I conclude from this that the theoretical debate between the two has currently reached a stalemate; it is, at present, simply not clear which account is correct. As the main goal of this study is to evaluate particularism, this apparent stalemate led me to explore certain practical challenges to particularist theory as a means of advancing the debate. As particularism is a theory that challenges our traditional conception of how to make moral judgments, there will be important implications for applied ethics if particularism turns out to be correct, and 1 thus finally apply particularism to a practical environmental problem in order to assess the validity of practical challenges to particularism. In order to do this, a particularist ethic is applied to the question of whether or not to allow mining in Kakadu National Park in Australia. This provides a means of seeing what an applied particularist ethic could look like, as well as providing something of an answer to the practical challenge to particularism and achieving the goal of evaluating it within the applied context of environmental ethics

Reconsidering the Charter and Election Boundaries

This article argues for a judicial interpretation of the right to vote under s.3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that places more emphasis upon ihe principle of the equal power of every vote- one person, one vote --than maybe suggested by the Supreme Court of Canada\u27s decision in Reference re: Electoral Boundaries Commission Act. This becomes an issue of particular importance when a government is suspected of engaging in gerrymandering. Gerrymandering involves enhancing expected electoral support by ensuring that fewer votes will be needed to elect representatives in ridingspredictedto support the government. Any concessions governments may wish to make to the principle of the equality of every vote should be justified in the context of Charter s. 1 or s. 15(2). These sections represent important exceptions to the particular theory of rights that provides the clearest rationale for many of the provisions in the Charter, including the right to vote