Why does constitutionalism sustain itself as the primary language of politics in a postcolonial democracy like India? This dissertation answers this question by arguing that constitutionalism sustains itself as the primary language of politics for Indian democracy because of enduring anticolonial justifications for it that emerge from epistemically diverse worldviews in Indian society. In particular, this dissertation explores Islamic and anti-caste justifications for an anticolonial pluralist political conception of constitutionalism in India. In studying constitutionalism as an outcome of diverse anticolonial justifications for it, this dissertation demonstrates that the political conception of constitutionalism in India is not merely a continuation of liberal-imperial ideas of constitutionalism. Instead, popular justifications of constitutionalism in India, even in its current moment of crisis, have a genealogy that emerges from epistemically diverse anticolonial justifications of constitutionalism that took shape during constitutionalism's moment of creation in India. It makes this argument in three steps. First, by interrogating how liberal imperialism constructed the political domain in colonial India. Second, by exploring how anticolonialism critiqued this liberal imperial construction of the political domain and used these criticisms to justify a pluralist political conception for postcolonial constitutionalism. Third, by analyzing how these anticolonial justifications of constitutionalism are employed in postcolonial Indian democracy to maintain constitutionalism as the language of politics even when it faces a severe threat from Hindu majoritarianism. This dissertation demonstrates that anticolonial justifications of constitutionalism in India, which emerged from Islamic and anti-caste worldviews, remain relevant to the democratic discourse around constitutionalism and the political conception that it shapes for India by examining four significant justifications for constitutionalism in India. The first justification is captured by anticolonial worldmaking adopted by constitutionalism in India to acknowledge, forefront, and make legible to political life the background conditions for common life in India. This justification of worldmaking, which anticolonial thought regularly reflected on and brought to the fore of public life in India, includes (a) deeply ingrained dispositions about mutual coexistence that subconsciously shaped its participants for a millennium through the unfolding of overlapping geographical, linguistic, ethical and social worlds of diverse worldviews in India, and (b) agentic forms of participation, shaped by diverse groups in India coming into public spaces and employing constitutionally guaranteed political freedoms, to discursively construct the world that is India as one that is plural, progressive and enables self-respect despite being shaped by non-secular ideas. The second form of justification for constitutionalism in India lies in the use of non-secular conceptions of progress, where progress is not simply captured by a developmental conception but by the ethical modes of learning and knowledge-building through which constitutionalism enables diverse people to learn about others in the political community and develop a conception of fraternity. This dissertation shows how conceptions of fraternity that justify constitutionalism in India enable a non-secular conception of progress, pluralism, and self-respect in democracy in India. However, it also examines how a majoritarian conception of constitutional democracy threatens this conception of fraternity in India's postcolonial democracy. The third justification of constitutionalism emerges from endorsements for it that emerge from its capacity to enable self-respect, where diverse individuals who are shaped by the institutions and normative order established by constitutionalism demand that this order enable recognition, communication, association, and self-consciousness across the diverse groups that shape Indian society. Such a conception of self-respect, which derives its ideas from anticolonial conceptions of self-respect, is more expansive than conceptions of self-respect that emerge from Transatlantic liberalism because it reflects how colonialism shaped counter-concepts to self-respect across whole societies and worldviews, and not just as conditions that impact individuals alone. When this pluralist and emancipatory political conception of constitutionalism is threatened by other interpretations of constitutionalism by those in power, as it is by religious majoritarianism in its current moment of crisis, it is reaffirmed in sites of civil disobedience across India's postcolonial democracy where epistemically diverse interpretations of constitutionalism are not only respected but esteemed as justifications for constitutionalism in India. Such a form of participation in democratic politics through civil disobedience has led to a justificatory discourse around constitutionalism that draws on a pluralist conception of participation as the fourth justification of constitutionalism in India. These four interlinked justifications of constitutionalism in India have enabled a plural political conception of constitutionalism that survives in India, despite the threat to it from Hindu majoritarian politics. In exploring why justificatory discourse around constitutionalism enables democracy in India, this dissertation also develops an anticolonial u conception of justification as a form of making political principles legible to diverse peoples who were formerly colonized, as opposed to a strictly rational discourse of separating right from wrong in public reason that shapes democratic societies.

The main purpose of the dissertation is to describe how four Swedish newspapers construct ethical standpoints and what norms they prescribe. This is done through a characterization of the civil disobedience discourse, in particular the discourse about animal rights activism and militant vegans, around the turn of the millennium (1990-2004). Questions asked are how Swedish newspapers construct civil disobedience, what disobedience is supported and what is condemned, and if the newspapers recognize the complexity of ethical dilemmas and facilitate well-reasoned ethical standpoints. The material studied is gathered from Stockholm-based newspapers: Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Aftonbladet and Expressen. In total 1115 texts. The methods used are a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis, where the qualitative analysis is based on rhetorical analysis and narratology. The results show that there are mainly two overarching discourses. One supporting discourse, which is predominant in the representation of campaigns justified by economical issues, human rights, peace/anti-war movement and individual rights. One criminalising or demonising discourse, which is predominant in the constructions of militant vegans, the environmental movement and a campaign justified by democratic reasons in Sweden. In sum, the constructions are characterized by strong polarization, formalisation, ambivalence and a double standard of morality, which risk to circumscribe the understanding of moral dilemmas. The consequence is journalistic constructions where the ends justify the means when the end is a political correct, not defiant norm, or when the end is non political. The dissertation also argues that the concepts, specific words, journalists apply in their representation of social reality risk to set the limits for media representations, as well as for the public's understanding, of the social reality and moral dilemmas.

This thesis investigates if Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks constitute a valid form ofcivil disobedience online. For this purpose a multi-dimensional framework is established,drawing on Brownlee’s paradigm case and classical theory of civil disobedience. Threedifferent examples of DDoS attacks are then examined using this framework - the attacksfrom the Electronic Disturbance Theater in support of the Zapatista movement;Anonymous’ Operation Payback; Electrohippies’ attack against the World TradeOrganization. Following the framework, none of these DDoS attacks are able to constitute acivilly disobedient act online. The thesis then goes on and identifies four key issues, drawingon the results from the examples: The loss of 'individual presence', no inimitable feature ofDDoS attacks, impeding free speech and the danger of western imperialism. It concludes thatDDoS attacks cannot and should not be seen as a form of civil disobedience online. Thethesis further proposes that online actions, in order to be seen as civilly disobedient actsonline, need two additional features: An 'individual presence' of the protesters online tocompensate for the remoteness of cyberspace and an inimitable feature in order to berecognizable by society. Further research should investigate with this extended framework ifthere are valid forms of civil disobedience online.

Syftet med undersökningen är att genomföra en deskriptiv studie av två nätverk inom densvenska fredsrörelsen och deras arbete samt undersöka hur de förhåller sig till social rättvisa ochsocialt arbete. Den metod som använts är kvalitativ, och datainsamling har skett via kvalitativaintervjuer med fyra respondenter. Det framkommer i dessa intervjuer att respondenterna ärorganiserade i nätverk och en del av den Svenska fredsrörelsen. De använder sig ibland av civilolydnad i symboliskt syfte för att stimulera till dialog kring frågor som vapenexport ochavrustning. Respondenterna står i sitt arbete för jämlikhet, solidaritet och deltagande. Slutsatsersom dras i denna studie är att respondenternas arbete skulle kunna ses som en form avpåverkansarbete för icke nationsbunden solidaritet med utsatta människor, någonting som skullekunna inkluderas i socialt arbete. Respondenternas arbete skulle också, i en mycket vidbemärkelse, kunna ses som en form av socialt arbete i icke statlig regi. Delar av deras arbete ärdock olagligt och således inte förenligt med traditionellt socialt arbete i Sverige som det ser utidag. / The purpose of this essay is to accomplish a descriptive study of two networks in the Swedishpeace movement and their work together with a study of how they stand in relation to socialjustice and social work. The method used is qualitative and the collection of data has been donevia qualitative interviews with four responders. It comes through in these interviews that therespondents are organized in networks and a part of the Swedish peace movement. Theysometimes work with civil disobedience in a symbolic purpose to stimulate a dialogueconcerning questions such as weapon export and disarmament. The respondents stand in theirwork for equality, solidarity and participation. Conclusions of the thesis are that the work of ourrespondents could possibly be a form of advocacy work concerning non national boundsolidarity with vulnerable people, something which could be incorporated in social work. Therespondents work could also, in a broad sense, be seen as a form of non-governmental socialwork. Part of their work is illegal though and because of that not consistent with traditionalsocial work in Sweden as it is functioning today.

This dissertation studies conflict in a hierarchical international system, the British Empire. How did the British Empire respond to violent and nonviolent resistance within its colonies? I develop a theory explaining how and why an imperial metropole becomes involved in and grant concessions to its colonies. Unlike federal nation-states and looser relationship like in an international organization, modern European empires were characterized by selective engagement of the metropole with its peripheral colonies. This has important implications for understanding metropolitan response to peripheral resistance. In contrast to more recent work, I find that violence was more effective at coercing metropolitan concessions to the colonies in the British Empire than nonviolence. I argue that this occurred because violence overwhelmed the capabilities of local colonial governments, and violence commanded metropolitan attention and involvement. This theory is supported with a wide range of data, including yearly measures of anticolonial resistance, every colonial concession made by the British Empire after 1918, daily measures of metropolitan discussions of colonial issues from cabinet archives, and web-scraped casualty data from British death records. In addition, I present in-depth case studies of British responses to resistance in Cyprus and the Gold Coast, along with a conceptual schema of different types of resistance to understand strikes, riots, terrorism, and civil disobedience in a number of other British colonies. My findings show that the effectiveness of resistance is conditional on the political structure that it is embedded in and that hierarchy matters for understanding state responses to resistance.

No description available.

Ce mémoire sur les fondements de la désobéissance civile se divise en trois parties. Le premier chapitre concerne la définition de la désobéissance civile d’après l’analyse d’Hugo Adam Bedau. Le deuxième chapitre traite des origines historiques du concept à partir des textes de David Henry Thoreau et Léon Tolstoï jusqu’aux campagnes de Mohandas Gandhi et Martin Luther King. Le dernier chapitre porte sur la pratique de la désobéissance civile dans les régimes démocratiques selon John Rawls. L’objectif de ce mémoire est de démontrer que la désobéissance civile est conforme à la justice malgré son caractère illégal, qu’elle a été bénéfique historiquement à l’évolution des mentalités et qu’elle est nécessaire en démocratie. / This study regarding the foundation of civil disobedience is divided in three parts. The first chapter concerns the definition of civil disobedience by Hugo Adam Bedau. The second chapter deals with the historical origins of the concept from the writings of David Henry Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy to the campaigns of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The last chapter focus on the practice of civil disobedience in democratic regimes according to John Rawls. The purpose of this study is to prove that civil disobedience is true to justice despite being illegal, that it has been historically beneficial in the evolution of mentalities and that it is essential to democracy.

From 1988 to 1994, the Carmanah and Walbran valleys on southern Vancouver Island emerged from obscurity to inspire international newspaper headlines, ecotage, and election platforms, and figure in British Columbia’s Commission on Resources and the Environment (CORE), the genesis of the current provincial land-use status quo. With Canada’s tallest tree, first marbled murrelet nest, and proximity to Victoria, the area’s old-growth forests became the site of a touchstone conflict in BC’s War in the Woods (ca. 1980-1995), one which resulted in Carmanah and the Upper Walbran and Lower Walbran becoming designated as Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park in 1995. The Central Walbran remains open to logging, which as recently as 2016 has incited backwoods blockades not dissimilar to those from July and August 1991, the climax of my narrative. This thesis explores how and why the Walbran land-use resolution disappointed Victoria-based environmentalists, Cowichan Lake forest workers, the Nuu-chah-nulth, and the nation-state of Qwa-Ba-Diwa, and why the fate of the watershed remains subject to debate. Analyzing the roots of BC’s wood “exploitation axis” helps contextualize why Carmanah Walbran campaigns in Cowichan Lake and Victoria failed to produce satisfactory outcomes despite significant compromises from provincial governments after much deliberation. In short, dissidence failed to engender land-use consensus because forest capitalism and its co-constitutive partner, colonialism, have since the nineteenth century crafted policy based on a conception of the world rooted in forestry-based development, a durable ontological construct against which other imaginaries of nature have had to compete. The Tree Farm Licence system brought the International Woodworkers of America into a Gomperist bargain with companies and the state after World War II, and contributed to decades of overharvesting, overoptimistic regrowth projections, and corporatization which culminated in falldown and forest community crisis before environmentalists began to shape the public discourse regarding nature in the late 1980s. A fundamental inability to produce a satisfactory vision of sustainable forestry and a narrow state narrow response—wilderness parks—to broad, diverse environmentalist demands allowed nature to remain envisioned as a store of raw material for industrial forestry. This thesis additionally seeks to problematize environmentalists’ “wilderness” narratives to elaborate how green knowledge production can act as discursive violence. Our “natures” are more than workplaces, sites for recreation, or pristine ecosystems. They are environments within which to find and make meaning. Or perhaps more accurately, nature is a symbol with which to construct narratives; narratives which, in Carmanah Walbran, often left little room for work in the woods. Environmentalists’ depictions of unpeopled nature advanced their wilderness-preservation cause at the expense of marginalizing Nuu-chah-nulth land claims, loggers’ paycheques, and ecocentric worldviews based on holistic conceptions of interconnectedness and/or radical dissent against the forest industrial complex. In short, the Carmanah Walbran War in the Woods added 16,365 hectares of new parkland, contributed (along with log exports) to the 2001 closure of the Youbou mill, the last at Cowichan Lake, and ensured that an isolated gravel road still ends at a bridge to nowhere. / Graduate / 2020-09-12

Though ultimately seeking more just law, civil disobedience still entails the breaching of a law. For this reason, most theories hold that people who practice civil disobedience must be willing to accept the legal consequences of their actions. On the other hand, a nation that is truly committed to justice will recognize that its constitution and legal order may in some ways fall short of perfect justice. In this thesis, I defend Rawls’s theory of civil disobedience as unique in its capacity for justification and even government toleration. Appealing to a shared conception of justice, Rawlsian civil disobedients are able to ground their actions in the same principles to which the state is committed. I argue that Rawls’s shared conception of justice is further substantiated when read in the light of his later theory of the overlapping consensus of comprehensive doctrines. I ultimately conclude that civil disobedience construed in the Rawlsian sense ought to receive some degree of toleration by the state, and particularly by constitutional states which maintain a formal commitment to justice in the protection of rights and intentional design of government institutions.

本論文題旨為：德渥金論公民違抗。公民違抗概念的存在與政治哲學同時並起 而大興於二十世紀，包括甘地以之倡議印度獨立，乃至於六○年代的美國用以爭取黑人民權、女權、反越戰、校園反叛等等，如今更是民主國家中人民意見表達、抗議之常見方式。在違抗政府的意義界定上，公民違抗與流血革命不同，其特質為（廣義的）非暴力（non-violence），目的並非推翻政府，而是人民基於良心、基於正義，同時也基於對政策、法律的不同意見，迫使政府改變其法律、政策。 然而，公民違抗不僅是一項政治與社會實踐。對本論文的中心關懷而言，更重要的是，公民違抗產生的原因與背景是什麼？它背後所代表的意義又是什麼？ 筆者認為，儘管公民違抗作為一政治、社會實踐，在實踐過程中充滿變化與挑戰，然而就理論思考而言，公民違抗不啻為探究與反省民主理論之最佳對象。要之，公民違抗為人民自發性的行動，旨在違抗政府政策、法律等政令；然而在基礎意義上，以民主作為立國基礎之國家，政治是向人民開放的，即，民主國家中的人民具有參與政治的權利與權力──公民違抗的出現使得這項民主定義被凸顯出來而被重新檢視：人民被迫以違法抗議的方式作為意見表達的出口，必然在政治參與的理論與實踐上出現難以跨越的橫溝與歧異。據此，審視公民違抗的實踐之於政治理論，有其時代意義與重要性。 本論文共分五章，分別簡述如下： 第一章為導論，分為兩節。第一節為問題脈絡，主要就現實社會的觀察提出思考與反省：政治的本質是什麼？公民違抗與政治的關係又是什麼？第二節為研究進路，說明本文以德渥金的權利理論作為探查公民違抗及其背後所代表意旨的角度。公民違抗本質上強調與爭取人民權利，而德渥金權利理論正是取眼於人民權利保障，本論文寄望在兩者之間，取得理論與實踐之調諧與平衡。 第二章旨在回溯公民違抗議題的發展，主要分為三節。第一節以蘇格拉底、金恩等人所從事之違抗事例說明，對公民違抗者而言：惡法非法；因而面對不義的法律，人民不僅不應遵守，更應起身違抗，使生命更為正義。第二節藉由德渥金與梭羅等人之眼進一步指出，違抗不義的法律之於人民正義生活的必要性，以及政府面對基於正義而違抗法律的人民時，應以寬容的態度對應之。第三節則是兼顧羅爾斯與鄂蘭的見解，指出公民違抗雖出自於人民的正義感與良心，但最終應立基於人民對公共議題的關懷與共識；同時，藉由「公民違抗的憲政地位為何？」與「寬容、以政治方式處理公民違抗的意義為何？」等提問向契約理論開放。 第三章藉由古典契約論與當代契約論之比較，指出契約論中的同意理論才是憲政理論的重心，而公民違抗相關於憲政體制，應取眼於同意理論中保障人民權利的視角，作為公民違抗立論的基礎。本章共分為三節，第一節回溯古典契約論者霍布斯、洛克等人對自然狀態的看法，並指出同意概念與自然權利是契約理論的思考核心。第二節接續前節對古典契約論的回顧，指出盧梭最初提出公共意志的真意，並檢討同意理論的實踐問題，包括多數決原則、代議政治等所產生的弊病。筆者認為，同意中的明示（express consent）之於政治同意並不構成基礎性的問題；問題在於默許（tacit consent）。包括洛克、盧梭甚至更早的蘇格拉底都認為，居住是作為對國家、政治權威與制度的一種同意，是一種默許。問題在於，這種默許方式對於國家╱政治權威正當性的肯認基礎過於薄弱，而這正是公民違抗在契約理論中、在憲政層次上存在的必要地位：公民違抗作為一種不同意的表示，在違抗法律、政策並要求改變的同時，也間接反證了違抗對象存在的正當性。第三節旨在說明，當代契約論者羅爾斯的正義理論著重「人們將同意什麼樣的政治制度」，而忽略了「人們憑藉著什麼而得以同意、以及為什麼不同意」這個面向。同時，德渥金也指出，假定的契約不是契約──契約論者要保障的正是人民同意所憑藉的「權利概念」，並進入第四章討論公民違抗與德渥金的權利理論。 第四章鋪陳公民違抗與德渥金權利理論的關係，共分三節。第一節鋪陳德渥金權利理論的法學基礎，指出在德渥金權利理論中，以原則（principle）為論旨中心：在法學理論上，權利理論以「法律的發展相應於道德的發展」恰恰與法實證主義相對舉。第二節指出，在德渥金的權利理論中，公民違抗的行動理據證立在「個人有權反對國家」這項命題上。簡言之，當前民主制度以多數決原則作為解決公共爭議的方式，卻凸顯出少數在數量上的弱勢；而在多數的集結經常以利益作為考量的情況上，「個人反對國家」的強意義權利更能對比出利益多數之於政策制定的不公義。第三節討論平等權利與公民違抗。德渥金的權利理論最終以平等作為自由的基礎，其中德渥金的自由主義式平等觀更異於一般：作為平等的個人而受到平等對待的權利。德渥金指出，作為平等的個人所受到的平等對待權利是一種平等的關心與尊重的權利；政府在政策的制定與抉擇上，不能只考慮效益主義齊頭式的平等觀，而必須考量作為少數的弱勢：在利益與機會等的分配上，應該有一種被容許的不平等分配方式，供政府做出整體的決定。要之，公民違抗作為一種政治參與的方式，事實上是一種消極的抗議表達；與其等到人民對於政治現狀、政策法律達到無可忍受的地步，不如在政府施政的同時，便多著眼於人民權利的注重與人民平等地位的關懷，作為一積極意義的政治思考，對於促進人民生活更能有進取性的助益。第五章為結論，主要分兩部份。第一部份總結本論文的研究所得：公民違抗終究只是一種手段，真正的目的仍舊在於使人民獲得公平、正義、良善的生活。第二部份回顧現實：除了台灣近日在政治作為上體現德渥金所言：「公平之路存在於寬容之中」之外，鄰近的菲律賓總統下台事件道出公民違抗的積極面「主權在民」，而當前世界各地反全球化的抗議浪潮更顯示，人民的抗議對象已經從過去在政治上所面對的國家，轉而成隱藏在國家背後的經濟統合體系。德渥金的自由主義式平等觀作為一種資源與福利的分配正義，對本論文的研究題旨而言儘管是一項限制，然而卻在新時代的挑戰中成為新問題的可能進路：過去人們在政治上爭自由與平等，如今人們可能因為經濟問題陷入另一層次的不自由與不平等。據此，德渥金的自由主義式平等觀有更進一步研析的重要性，本文囿於題旨與篇幅限制，僅將此問題向未來開放。