Martin Leet

From the Sublime to the Subliminal: Fear, Awe and Wonder in International Politics

Key events in international politics, such as terrorist attacks, can be characterised as sublime: our minds clash with phenomena that supersede our cognitive abilities, triggering a range of powerful emotions, such as pain, fear and awe. Encounters with the sublime allow us an important glimpse into the contingent and often manipulative nature of representation. For centuries, philosophers have sought to learn from these experiences, but in political practice the ensuing insights are all too quickly suppressed and forgotten. The prevailing tendency is to react to the elements of fear and awe by reimposing control and order. We emphasise an alternative reaction to the sublime, one that explores new moral and political opportunities in the face of disorientation. But we also stress that we do not need to be dislocated by dramatic events to begin to wonder about the world. Moving from the sublime to the subliminal, we explore how it is possible to acquire the same type of insight into questions of representation and contingency by engaging more everyday practices of politics.

Labour and Citizenship: The Development of Welfare State Regimes

This paper is concerned with the political determinants of the significantly different rates of welfare expenditure which characterise advanced capitalist countries. The research concentrates on the connections between the organization and mobilization of a key political actor pursing social wage benefits - the labour movement and different levels across nations of welfare provision, including expenditure on health, social security consumption expenditure and social security transfers. The paper uses disaggregated, pooled time series data on welfare provision in 15 OECD countries, 1974-1988, to test the association between more comprehensive welfare state regimes and state structures that facilitate the intervention of organized labour movements in the policy process. This paper is concerned with the political determinants of the significantly different rates of welfare expenditure which characterise advanced capitalist countries. The analysis which we present focuses on a number of specific social policy components including expenditure on health, social security consumption expenditure and social security transfers. Such an analysis permits a more detailed assessment of the extent to which conscious political commitments within different countries have resulted in very different welfare state regimes. Through the 1980s, for example, five of the OECD countries allocated in excess of 30% of GDP to social expenditure while five others spent less than 20%.

Labour movements and welfare states: A reconsideration of how trade unions influence social change

While it is commonly accepted that the organisation and mobilisation of labour movements has been critical to the development and nature of welfare states across the OECD, considerable uncertainty remains as to the specific mechan isms and means by which labour movements secure social wage benefits. Emphasis in the evaluation of labour politics can be placed on the role of left and labour party control over government, on the effect of union movement strength as measured by union density rates or on the influence of union confederal involvement in policy-making. These party mobilisation, union density and political unionism theses are tested using pooled time-series cross- sectional data drawn from 15 OECD countries. The results indicate that while union involvement in economic policy-making and union movement strength are conducive to higher levels of welfare expenditure, the presence of left parties per se has no apparent effect on welfare effort.

Between consensus and deconstruction

Dialogue has become one of the most central and intensely debated issues in political and moral philosophy. The implications that these debates have for our understanding of gender and identity are particularly important, though they are neither clear nor uncontested. Feminist scholars have, indeed, been rather ambivalent about the role and nature of dialogue. Dialogue is generally seen as a crucial element of an emancipatory approach, for it can provide women with a voice and thus create the preconditions for engendering a more just social and political order. But many feminist scholars are, at the same time, sceptical about how prevailing approaches to dialogue are conceptualised. They are particularly worried about framing dialogue as an effort to reach a global consensus, for many previous modern attempts to establish universal norms have been based on explicit but linguistically masked value systems that define the male as norm and the female as deviant. To understand the importance of these linkages between dialogue, identity and gender it is necessary to take a step back and consider how dialogue became such a central philosophical issue in the first place. The history of philosophy is sometimes divided into three general periods: the ontological, the subjectivist, and the linguistic. The ancient philosophies and world religions provided comprehensive accounts of the cosmos in which humans were situated; modern philosophy was born with the ‘discovery’ of subjectivity by thinkers such as Descartes and Kant; while present-day philosophy is defined by ‘the linguistic turn’, a recognition that language practices set out what we can know about ourselves and the world. As with all such categorisations, this one is contentious, and closer examination of individual theorists and traditions reveals a complexity that confounds the threefold division. It does, however, help us understand why dialogue has become such a dominant concept in contemporary political theory.

Democracy and the Individual

The main question informing this paper is whether it is possible to extend democracy beyond its liberal forms. The paper reflects upon this question with regard to its implications for the individual. For the radicalization of democracy implies a need for self-transformation, if the everyday egoism of contemporary citizens is not to thwart reasonable discussion and participation. Theorists such as Richard Rorty argue that the philosophical resources required to guide such self-transformation can be made available only by sacrificing the political freedom and cultural diversity liberalism has been able to precariously establish. Other theorists insist that the thresholds of pluralism and tolerance that existing liberal democracies are struggling to maintain actually require an extension of democracy. The paper evaluates two different theoretical strategies that aim to identify potentials for democratization without falling prey to the dilemma identified by Rorty: a ‘ deliberative’ strategy explicated with reference to Jürgen Habermas and an ‘existential’ approach represented here by William Connolly.

Democracry and the Individual

The main question informing this paper is whether it is possible to extend democracy beyond its liberal forms. The paper reflects upon this question with regard to its implications for the individual. For the radicalization of democracy implies a need for self-transformation, if the everyday egoism of contemporary citizens is not to thwart reasonable discussion and participation. Theorists such as Richard Rorty argue that the philosophical resources required to guide such self-transformation can be made available only by sacrificing the political freedom and cultural diversity liberalism has been able to precariously establish. Other theorists insist that the thresholds of pluralism and tolerance that existing liberal democracies are struggling to maintain actually require an extension of democracy. The paper evaluates two different theoretical strategies that aim to identify potentials for democratization without falling prey to the dilemma identified by Rorty: a ‘ deliberative’ strategy explicated with reference to Jürgen Habermas and an ‘existential’ approach represented here by William Connolly.

Democracy and the individual: Deliberative and existential negotiations

The main question informing this paper is whether it is possible to extend democracy beyond its liberal forms. The paper reflects upon this question with regard to its implications for the individual. For the radicalization of democracy implies a need for self-transformation, if the everyday egoism of contemporary citizens is not to thwart reasonable discussion and participation. Theorists such as Richard Rorty argue that the philosophical resources required to guide such self-transformation can be made available only by sacrificing the political freedom and cultural diversity liberalism has been able to precariously establish. Other theorists insist that the thresholds of pluralism and tolerance that existing liberal democracies are struggling to maintain actually require an extension of democracy. The paper evaluates two different theoretical strategies that aim to identify potentials for democratization without falling prey to the dilemma identified by Rorty: a ‘ deliberative’ strategy explicated with reference to Jürgen Habermas and an ‘existential’ approach represented here by William Connolly.

Aftereffects of knowledge: Dogmatic retreats and sceptical adventures

Abstract A distinction between nature and culture is usually thought to be a condition of possibility of criticism. The idea is that, in comparison to natural laws, norms and conventions are merely relative and, therefore, susceptible to criticism and change. This paper contests this view and argues that critical practice is still possible, and even more productive, when nature and culture are seen to be continuous with one another. A general contrast is developed between ‘dogmatic’ and ‘sceptical’ modes of criticism. The suggestion is that theorists as diverse as Jürgen Habermas and Judith Butler adopt the dogmatic approach. An alternative, sceptical critical mode is elaborated in connection with Nietzsche and the ancient sceptics. This sceptical approach is based upon an identity between nature and culture, and has affinities with the aesthetic emphasis of some contemporary political theory.