Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 2002. Graduate Programme in Philosophy. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 240-266). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ82825.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Political Science, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 200-215).

Thesis (Ph. D. in Philosophy)--Vanderbilt University, Aug. 2007. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis looks at the problem of governance and statehood in Africa from an international law perspective. Adopting a comparative analytical research method, the thesis investigated the idea of statehood in traditional Africa and Europe, and highlighted conceptual differences. It traced the origin and nature of the post colonial African state to an oppressive and totalitarian colonial state; and the coalescence of international law with European civilization and reality. The argument is made that the international law framework on statehood and international solutions of intervention and democratization, are inadequate for dealing with the problems of statehood in Africa and its consequences such as state collapse. The thesis proposes the legitimization of the African post colonial state through a combination of a process of self determination and democratization. The pattern of self determination proposed seeks to give normative expression to an African state's reality by using the equilibrium of the peoples incorporation and disengagement from the state as an index for determining the role and relevance of the state. It is proposed that this index, in determining the ambits of the right to self determination of the constituent political units in a state, should entitle an African nation to a minimum of the right to self governance in a confederate system. In complimenting the foregoing legitimization process, the thesis proposes a democratic framework that is constructed on cultural foundations of endogenous democracy and development. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate

This thesis has been pre-occupied with four major interconnected projects. The first of these was a search for an understanding of the nature of the crisis of structural legitimacy that currently afflicts the fragmented post-colonial African state, an enquiry that examines the nature of the very phenomena that the law has sought to regulate. The second was to understand the nature, and social effects, of the various doctrinal attitudes historically exhibited by international law and institutions toward the phenomenon of "socio-cultural fragmentation within established states". In this respect, I have sought to understand the ways in which certain doctrines of international law and institutions have provided powerful arguments, justifications or excuses for those states that have deemed it necessary to attempt to forge coercively, both a sense of common citizenship, and an ethos of national coherence, among their various component sub-state groups. The third was to chart the ongoing normative and factual transformation of the traditional approaches that international law and institutions have adopted toward that problem, and thereby map the extent to which these institutions have taken advantage of such innovations, enabling them to actually contribute to the effort to prevent and/or reduce the incidence of internecine strife in specific African contexts. And the last was to recommend a way forward that is guided by the conclusions of the thesis: a way in which these institution-driven transformations can be encouraged and consolidated in the specific context of African states. For purposes of brevity and the imperative need for focus, these enquiries have been conducted in the specific but somewhat allegorical context of Africa. It is hoped, however, that even this largely Africa-specific analysis has contributed to the advancement of knowledge regarding the general question of the relationship among the doctrines of international law, the activities of multilateral institutions, and the management of the problems of socio-cultural fragmentation and internecine strife within established states. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate

Legitimacy is arguably one of the most salient concepts in the political science discipline, affecting all forms of political life. In this dissertation, I explore how legitimacy influences the behavior of state and non-state actors in violent and non-violent contested spaces in three separate cases. The first paper examines the mechanisms through which structural factors and micro-level conditions translate into civilian support for insurgents. While the literature has largely assumed that civilians are rational actors driven by interests, immediate utility calculations represent only one of the mechanisms through which civilian support can be reached. Evidence from the interviews I conducted during my fieldwork in Thailand demonstrate that weak insurgents who have limited capacity can still leverage shared ethnic identity to build support through trust and legitimacy. Building off these findings, I propose that utility, trust, and legitimacy constitute three mechanisms that exist along a continuum, with utility being purely interest-based driven, trust being a combination of interest and moral calculations, and legitimacy being rooted in moral obligation. The second paper identifies the various conditions that lead to ASEAN taking action in response to domestic crises within its member states. Through elite interviews with top ASEAN bureaucrats and diplomats, I first identify four conditions that motivate ASEAN action, two of which are tied to its internal legitimacy concerns, while the other two are derived from its desire to maintain external legitimacy in the eyes of the international community. Combing through thousands of official ASEAN documents, I then build an original dataset on ASEAN action and inaction, and run a qualitative comparative analysis to further determine how these conditions relate to each other. I find that ASEAN is ultimately more concerned with maintaining its internal legitimacy. The two pathways leading to the organization taking action are 1) when they have grounds to justify their action, and 2) when there is a threat of external interference and the member state does not feel like its domestic interests are being threatened. In the third paper, I rely on interviews, participation in two consultation processes, and both manual and automated text analysis to map out the causes and consequences of regime complexity in the Mekong subregion, where nine informal institutions and one treaty-based organization operate with similar member states and functional scopes. I find that the institutions including an external partner as a member state were established as vehicles to legitimate the external state’s influence in the region. These institutions therefore engage in competition with each other, which leads to functional repetition. Meanwhile, the Mekong-led institutions seek institutional legitimacy by establishing niche areas, and thus avoid competition with each other. However, the most effective way for an institution to gain legitimacy appears to be through the availability of large amounts of funding, as these financial considerations determine which institution the Mekong member states prioritize in their engagement.

No description available.

The overall aim of this thesis is to assess the legitimacy of constitutional laws and bills of rights within the framework of procedural epistemic democracy. The thesis is divided into three sections. In the first section, I discuss the relevance of an epistemic argument for democracy under the circumstances of politics: I provide an account of reasonable disagreement and explain how usual approaches to the authority of decision-making procedures fail to take it seriously. In the second part of the thesis, I provide an account of the epistemic features of democracy and of the requirements of democratic legitimacy. I develop a revised pragmatist argument for democracy which relies on three presumptive aims of decision-making: justice, sustainability and concord. In the third and last section, I first argue for the desirability of constitutionalism. I then explain why constitutionalism, as it is usually understood, is incompatible with my procedural epistemic account of democratic legitimacy. In the last chapter, I offer a two-pronged solution to the apparent incompatibility of constitutionalism and epistemic democracy. I first argue for the appropriateness of political constitutionalism, as opposed to legal constitutionalism, in understanding the relationship between rights and democracy. I then provide an account of rights protection and judicial review compatible with epistemic democratic legitimacy. Finally, I use the notion of pragmatic encroachment to explain how constitutional laws can achieve normative supremacy through the increased epistemic credentials of the procedure.

Orientador: Silvio César Camargo / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-20T02:03:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Silva_AristotelesdeAlmeida_M.pdf: 558834 bytes, checksum: cbcb3cd4c7df24059eed01ff66ad6e5f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Resumo: O objetivo desse trabalho é estudar a obra de Ernest Mandel O capitalismo tardio e Jürgen Habermas Problemas de legitimação no capitalismo tardio, onde analisam o capitalismo do pósguerra e sua crise. As transformações do capitalismo desde o fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial desencadearam uma importante discussão sobre a explicação marxista do desenvolvimento capitalista, de sua crise e sobre as condições para superação desta formação social. A discussão evidencia que a confrontação com a obra de Marx é oportuna não só porque permite entender quanto o capitalismo se transformou desde Marx, mas também para discutir se ela ainda consegue oferecer uma explicação relevante para se compreender as modificações estruturais contemporâneas. Nesse sentido, os autores se relacionam de maneira distinta com o legado marxiano. A obra de Mandel se mostra como um esforço para explicar o período segundo o instrumental teórico marxiano, mantendo o papel central da teoria do valor-trabalho e a crise como manifestação das contradições imanentes do capital. Já a obra de Habermas aponta para uma mudança de forma e lógica da crise, consequentemente apontando para a ineficácia da teoria do valor-trabalho aplicada aos dias atuais, o legado de Marx só continuaria a ser útil caso fosse reconstruído. Por fim, discutiremos as consequências dessas distintas explicações para os projetos de emancipação / Abstract: The purpose of this research is to study the work of Ernest Mandel's Late Capitalism and Jürgen Habermas Legitimation crisis, whose works examine the capitalism in postwar and its crisis. The transformations of capitalism since the end of Second World War caused an important discussion on the Marxist explanation of capitalist development and of its crisis, and the conditions to overcome this social formation. The discussion shows that the confrontation with Marx's work is timely not only because it allows us to understand how capitalism has turned since Marx, but also to discuss whether it still is able to offer a relevant explanation to understand the contemporary structural changes. In this sense, the authors relate differently with the Marxian legacy. Mandel's work appears as an effort to explain the period according to the concepts of Marxian theory, maintaining the central role of the labor theory of value and the crisis as a manifestation of the immanent contradictions of capital. Already the work of Habermas points to a change of form and logic of the crisis, thus pointing to the ineffectiveness of the labor theory of value applied to the present day, the legacy of Marx would still only be useful if it were rebuilt. Finally, we discuss the consequences of these different explanations for the projects of emancipation / Mestrado / Sociologia / Mestre em Sociologia

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2011. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Somalia continues to intrigue scholars and policy-makers around the world, due to the fact that it is enduring what few others have, total state collapse. Not only does the situation defy easy explanation, the degree of state failure is unprecedented. After more than two decades without a functioning central authority, Somalia is now the longest-running instance of state collapse in postcolonial history. While researching and understanding state weakness and state failure is critical, it is useless unless combined with devising ways to prevent state failure in the future. Somalia provides policy makers with a unique opportunity to study the consequences of state collapse. Understanding the complex dynamics of state weakness and state collapse could ultimately help save the lives of thousands of people on the African continent. This study focuses on the mechanisms of coping by analysing the actors who have stepped up to fill the political vacuum left behind by the collapsing state. The role played by both state and non-state actors will be explored throughout this study. As it is not possible to address every actor who has played a part in Somalia since the implosion of the state in 1991, only the three most important internal and external actors will be analysed. The role played by the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) will be discussed at length. The contributions made by neighbouring country Ethiopia, will also be investigated. Although the contributions and the impact of these external actors have in some instances led to undesired results, it does not change the fact that these actors attempted to fill the void in Somalia. Non-state actors positions within Somalia will also be examined in detailed. These actors include regional authorities, the role of Al-Shabaab, as well as the Islamic Courts Union. The study does not excuse the behaviour of these actors but rather discusses the rise of these organizations in light of the collapsing state and the position which they have taken up in Somalia to fill the political void. Lastly the role of the “Somali coast guards” also known as the Somali pirates, will be discussed.ipti / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Somalië bly die brandpunt van belangstelling vir geleerdes en beleidmakers dwarsoor die wêreld. Die hoofrede hiervoor is dat hierdie land ervaar het wat min ander lande het, naamlik algehele ineenstorting van die staat en bestuur. ‘n Maklike verduideliking of vereenvoudiging van die situasie is daar nie, want die ongeëwenaarde ineenstorting van stuktuur en staat, van Somalië is uniek. Twee dekades later is hierdie land nogsteeds sonder ‘n funksioneerende gesetelde staatsgesag. Hierdie tydperk is die langste voorbeeld van staatsineenstorting sonder herstel in post-koloniale geskiedenis. Navorsing en insig in elke staat se inherente swakhede en probleme help om mislukte bestuur te voorspel en te voorkom. Hierdie inligting moet korrek geimplimenteer en geinterpreteer word om krissise en mislukkings binne staatsbestel te verhoed. Somalië bied beleidmakers ‘n unieke geleentheid om die gevolge van totale staatsineenstorting te bestudeer en daaruit te leer. Net deur middel van begrip vir die komplekse dinamika van ‘n staat wat ineenstort en deur wanbestuur verswak word, sal daar uikoms vir duisende mense op hierdie vasteland kom. Sodoende sal ontelbare lewens in Afrika gered kan word. Hierdie studie analiseer die tegnieke van aanpassing, gebruik deur die rolspelers wat die politieke vakuum vul, wat deur die staatineenstorting nagelaat is. Die ondersoek fokus ook op die impak en effekte van beide interne en eksterne rolspelers. Aangesien dit onmoontlik is om die aandeel wat elke rolspeler sedert die ineenstorting van Somalië in 1991 gehad het te bestudeer, word net die drie belangrikste interne en eksterne rolspelers bespreek. Die Verenigde Nasies (VN), Afrika Unie (AU) en die buurland Ethiopië se bydraes sal ondersoek word. Alhoewel die bydraes en insette van hierdie eksterne rolspelers soms tot ongewenste resultate gelei het, bly die feit staan dat hulle probeer het om die leemtes in Somalië te vul. Ander belangrike rolspelers wat nie deel van die plaaslike regering is nie, sal ook in diepte bespreek word. Hierdie invloede binne Somalië sluit streeksowerhede in, asook die rol van Al Shabaab en die Islamitiese Howe Unie. Die studie verskoon nie die gedrag van die rolspelers nie, maar bespreek eerder die opkoms van hierdie organisasies. Dit word alles gesien in die lig van die ineenstorting van die staat en die posisie wat hulle in Somalië geneem het om mag te bekom en die politieke leemte te vul. Ten slotte word die omstrede rol van die "Somaliese kuswagte", anders bekend as Somaliese seerowers, bespreek.