Claudio Amitrano’s Post

🎈 It's publication day for my new article on the Politics of Disruption during the Home Rule crisis! I'm also quite pleased that if anyone ever cites it, it will be as 'Shut Up! Sit Down!', like a mardy hokey cokey. As well as tracing extra-parliamentary political engagement, the article ponders where we look for political culture and how we move nineteenth-century political history forward as a field. Published in Parliamentary History, the article was Proxime Accessit in the journal's Essay Prize for early career researchers. https://lnkd.in/ehqMT6j3

Problematizing Modern Democracy in the United States: An ‘Insurrection of Subjugated Knowledges’ in the Wake of the 2020 Presidential Election - PDF: https://lnkd.in/gqjRsTUA Since Donald Trump’s presidency and the diverse efforts to undermine the transfer of power after the 2020 election, the risks of extreme polarization and democratic backsliding in the United States (US) have been highlighted in the literature. Yet the epistemic dimension of these developments remains underresearched. Embedded in a genealogical Foucauldian governmentality/counter-conduct approach, this contribution addresses the puzzle of how election denialism and related (violent) anti-system activity are being rationalized, legitimized, and anchored in political subjectivities as efforts to ‘protect’ American democracy. This perspective allows to inquire into liberalism’s authoritarian potential that can be mobilized through different forms of counter-conduct. The study analytically disentangles these forms based on their prime targets, modes of operation, and the forms of knowledge they rely on. Focusing on the swing state of Arizona, the empirical analysis furthermore highlights the role of the subnational level in interlinking counter-conduct and (autocratizing) governmental practices in a federal system. Conceptually, the study renders visible a profound struggle over the epistemic foundations of the current liberal constitutional and political order that clearly transcends the issue of the 2020 election, Donald Trump, and even the context of the United States. Indeed, similar patterns of subjectivation and counter-conduct can also be detected for example in Germany. Moreover, this paper expands the scope of the concept of counter-conduct to study radical right-wing contestations and related questions of epistemic (in)justice. It thereby seeks to encourage debate on how political science can address the pluralization and polarization of contents, standards, and forms of knowledge as they become relevant to democratic backsliding. #Democracy #Backsliding #USA #subjugatedknowledges #insurrection #RadicalRightWing #polarization #ElectionDenialism #authoritarianpopulism

The exhaustion of grand political narratives and the inability to project a desirable future create new political dynamics, marked by identity politics and fragmented narratives, challenging the traditional democratic process. The two grand political narratives (conservative and social-democratic) that have underpinned liberal democracies are exhausted, leading to voter volatility, abstention, extremism, and the fragmentation of traditional political parties.

Blair and Clinton: The Third Way Dossier by Johnny Vedmore This is how British and American politicians deserted their left-wing political leanings to implement a new centre-ground political ideology. The “Third Way” politics, which both Clinton and Blair adopted into the Democratic Party and the Labour Party respectively, saw the suppression of the left and right wings and began to synthesise the two nations into a singular ideological pole of far-west Globalism. https://lnkd.in/eZ3Hk3UY

My latest column from #Newsmax on how world politics is shifting from #fanaticism to #pragmatism

Today’s politics reflect one of the most polarized ideological landscapes in our nation’s history. How did we get here? On our blog, read an excerpt from PARTISAN NATION by Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler:

My 1-cent view on the current American politics!

In this new article of mine, I discuss the challenge and danger faced by (classical) liberal democracy from unlimited majoritarian democracy (which is usually a “cover” for “social democracy,” the goal of which is ever greater political paternalism and control). In the current political election cycle, both major political parties are merely variations on the political paternalistic theme due to the shared idea that there should be few (or no) limits on what governments may do as long as its presented as “the will of the people.” This stands in stark contrast to the classical liberal ideal of constitutionally limited government as the means of constraining democratic majorities from abridging fundamental individual rights to life, liberty, private property and freedom of association and voluntary exchange.  Especially since the outcomes of the free market offer a “pluralistic democracy” of many different preferences and wants all satisfied at the same time, rather than a politically imposed majoritarian “choice” on all. https://lnkd.in/eREGaUGS

Understanding the ‘social contract’ theory, which forms the foundation of democracy/government, can change our perspective on politics. It is the idea that a government derives its power from the consent of the governed. https://lnkd.in/gS6hmUrq