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citizens. By contrast, the spiritual technologies of the self explored here, we argue, are less amenable to such a critical reading. 212 Part III Being 5 Such mythmaking is of course a perennial feature of political communities (see Anderson (1983); Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983)). 6 These myths do have their origins in Native American culture, but the form in which activists know them originates in the ‘Rainbow Family’, an alternative social movement originating in the United States in the early 1970s, originally influenced by Native American traditions which were later
C 26 between primordialism and modernism. It distinguishes between levels of continuity and discontinuity and thus avoids the perception that they must be mutually exclusive. Continuity-in-discontinuity is supported by the view that there is no single ontology of the nation but rather that the nation is constituted at a number of levels of abstraction. At the most material, or locale, level it is possible to see a great deal of discontinuity, dislocation and change in the meanings given to the political community. Viewing national
been equalled by the Democrats in 1986. As far as the Contract is concerned, the evidence for its central importance to the subsequent electoral success is, at best, shaky. It is probable that the existence of the Contract helped the Republicans’ overall image, but awareness of the document appears to be limited outside of the political community. In polls taken at the time, 71 per cent of those questioned had never even heard of the Contract with America, and of those who had, only 7 per cent said it was more likely to make them vote Republican, and 5 per cent
express but hard to accomplish: to find a way of organizing our political community in a non-(or at least less) violent way. If Marx is correct in his famous assertion that philosophy represents “the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age,”30 it is the task of any emancipatory legal theory to provide for the theoretical articulation of the desires expressed by such movements. Notes 1 In this essay, I draw on arguments that I first presented in my book Kritik der Souveränität (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 2012); for a conceptualization of
interest aggregation, as does civic over state/Union competence, and social over empirical legitimacy. 208 Theory and reform in the European Union Finally, and whether or not further integration is to be pursued through ‘a Hayekian discovery procedure’ or through a ‘pre-thought-out blueprint’,36 the search for legitimate forms of collective governance in Europe is central to the construction of a political community founded on more active and inclusionary virtues of belonging such as civic self-reliance and institutionalised participation: a European res publica, that
pursuit of this, regimes embed themselves within local contexts of tribalism, history, religion and civic myths that shape politics in an attempt to survive. The development of political communities and the systems that regulate and order them are an essential part of closing off a community against an outside. The development of political structures is an essential part of this process, restricting the capacity of action but also giving meaning. As we have seen, amid a regional environment underpinned by shared memories and norms, the spatial exception is not
that the EDC project eventually failed in 1954, and with it the prospects for the establishment of a European Political Community. The key feature of the debate at the time was, in our view, the question of sovereignty, which brings in the British stance on the matter but, crucially, adds the issue of how to balance the national interests of big states with those of small(er) ones, preferably within a structured, institutionalised framework. The question of ‘efficiency versus accountability’, Institutional imperatives of system change 155 which reappeared later
feeling peculiar to a citizen of the world’, but rather ‘a protest against citizenship, a protest against membership of a political configuration as such’. The bond is not one between fellow members of a political community, national or international, but rather ‘a form of political solidarity opposed to the political qua a politics tied to the nation-state’.53 The suggestion, then, is that the grounds for human solidarity should not be based on some shared, basic, common humanity. Such an approach depersonalises and depoliticises, and operates in symbiosis with the
Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Science (Oxford). Brown, M. E. (1993), ‘Causes and implications of ethnic conflict’, in M. Brown (ed.), Ethnic Conflict and International Security (Princeton). Calhoun, C. (1993), ‘Nationalism and Ethnicity’, Annual Review of Sociology, 19, 227–228. Deutsch, K., S. Burrell, R. Kann, M. Lee, M. Lichterman, R. Lindgren, F. Loewenheim and R. Van Wagenen (1957), Political Community and the North Atlantic Area. International Organisation in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton). Katz, M. (1996), ‘Collapsed empires’, in C. A. Crocker
Northern Ireland the domination of all political life by the Protestant Unionists from 1921 to 1972 was the main source of discontent. A new system which simply restored majority Unionists rule would be unacceptable. Devolution, therefore, had to break the Unionist hegemony. The electoral system had to reflect the diversity of the political community in the province. It is too simplistic to think of it as a duopoly of Unionists and Nationalists. The two communities have their own internal divisions, largely along the lines of moderates and extremists. There is also a