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There are some conflicting arguments for the categorization of different variables considered to be important democratic components. On the one side there are those who are advocates for a distinction of a political order and a democratic political order where components such as rule of law resides in the political order. The other side argues that the substantive side has such a large effect on democracy that especially the variable of rule of law should be counted as a democratic political variable. The theoretical idea is that a primary political order is separate and enables the establishment of a democratic political order. What this study seeks to do is to analyze the effects of the two distinctions to determine if a separation of the two is the best option or if they should be merged into one singular distinction or dimension. The primary method for conducting the study is statistical analysis with quantitative data and the aim is to make a generalizable result and conclusion.

Disagreement over the nature of religion in China - a civilization that has long confounded the vocabulary of religious and secular - is nothing new. With an imperial institution that eclipsed confessional structures, and bound Heaven and Earth in ritual cosmology, China was what John Lagerwey called a “religious state.” When native notions of religion were forced into European-derived categories, the result was either a clash of interests, particularly with Christian missionaries, or dreadful mistranslations, such as the still pervasive idea of “emperor worship.” Religion in the twentieth century was been punctuated by periods of intense persecution, but the more longstanding policy of the People’s Republic has been to allow organized religion to exist, and even thrive, albeit at the cost of being coopted or transformed into a museum piece, its teaching is reduced to moral platitudes. The ideological wave under Xi Jinping is something new. Combining nationalism, personal advancement, economic welfare, and an unprecedented level of surveillance of public and virtual spaces, this wave has made the state more ideologically pervasive than it has been in half a century. It has tamed the independent charitable organizations that grew up over the previous decade, but even this is just a symptom of the larger reorientation of ideology to public spaces to become what I call the “Chinese secular.”

In the first half of the 17th century, three major Buddhist governments that combined a twofold religious and political structure under a Buddhist ruler were established in the Tibetan cultural area (hereafter: Joint Twofold System of Governance).1 In 1625/26,2 Bhutan was united under the rule of a charismatic Tibetan Buddhist master, Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyel (1594– ca. 1651; hereafter: Zhabdrung); Tibet and Sikkim followed, both in 1642 – although with significant differences in their respective institutionalisation. The Bhutanese government as a constitutional monarchy with a Buddhist king is the only one among the three still in existence today. Bhutan’s transformation into a modern society along the lines of this Joint Twofold System of Governance under the conditions of non-colonialisation but with crucial and intense encounters of its societal elites with Western and Asian forms of modernity and secularity represents, therefore, a unique case in point.

This article aims to analyse the relationship between state and religion (in this case, Islam) in political and legal developments in Indonesia from colonial times to the present, and to determine the model of Indonesian secularity within the multiple secularities approach. The legal and political developments relating to the relationship between the state and Islam in Indonesia are understood to be the products of societal debate as well as instruments for solving particular societal problems, guided by certain guiding ideas1 that shape Indonesian secularity. The paper first describes Indonesia’s evolving socio-political conditions, noting in particular the emergence of two distinct groups: Islamic groups calling for Islam to be made the foundation of the Indonesian state and for Islamic law to be enforced for Muslims in Indonesia, and nationalist groups that support the idea of a secular nation-state based on Pancasila, a set of five founding principles. In the second part, the paper outlines the development of Pancasila as a national agreement and state ideology. The third part analyses the state’s legal policy on Islamic law. The fourth part analyses the relationship between the character of the contemporaneous regime and its attitude towards the aspirations of Islamic law. The fifth part analyses some state laws in Indonesia that relate to Islamic law in order to establish whether they constitute a legalisation of Islamic law and to what end the laws were created. The sixth part determines the model of Indonesian secularity based on the societal problems to be solved by the legal and political developments and the guiding ideas referred to. The final part defines the general boundaries between the state and Islam.

This study aims to examine how the emergence of modern warfare are challenging International Humanitarian Law when it comes to the protection of civilians in armed conflict. Thereby gaining a better understanding of how modern warfare is putting civilians at risk and how International Humanitarian Law is being challenged by the development of warfare. This study is a multidisciplinary study of Peace and Conflict Studies and International Law, which gives a rare perspective on civilian’s position in modern warfare. Thereby this study is not only showing the legal challenges in armed conflict but also bringing in the perspective of civilian’s position in modern warfare. This study will make use of three case studies: urban warfare, non-state actors and the use of drones in armed conflict. This study concludes that the challenges which International Humanitarian Law meets in modern warfare, is related to the need of clarifications but also a need for a greater enforcement and respect of the law by all parties of the conflict, both state and non-state actors. Lastly, there is a need for strengthening the inclusion of non-state actors in international law and strengthen International Humanitarian Law to meet the challenges of modern warfare to protect the civilians.

Iran’s constitutional revolution of 1906 is arguably the most significant turn toward the secular in its modern history.1 I start this investigation by making a conceptual distinction between secularism and secularity.2 Here, secularism is defined as the ideologically-driven separation of religion and state according to an agenda, a blueprint, a model, that could be indigenously, or externally informed and is achieved with the assistance of the modern state and explicit political motivations. Secularity, on the other hand, is expressed in terms of a non-ideological separation that comes about unintentionally. In some accounts, this separation may take on evolutionary connotations in terms of the natural separation of functions as a result of the growing complexity of a natural organism or social system. What I have in mind here is a separation of functions that is agent-driven but the secularity that emerges is both unintentional and unideological.

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[pt] O presente trabalho discute a polêmica visão de Hannah Arendt relativa ao papel ocupado pela dimensão social no processo político contemporâneo. Arendt insurge-se contra a corrente articulação entre o social e o político, que instrumentaliza a prática política reduzindo-a a uma atividade secundária e, consequentemente, alienante. Essa visão de Arendt encontra fortes contrapontos em diversos pensadores da filosofia política que serão aqui tratados, com destaque para Jürgen Habermas e Seyla Benhabib. Para uma adequada compreensão da polêmica, três pontos são de fundamental importância: o conceito de distinção no pensamento de Arendt; sua teoria de ação política (oriunda da práxis aristotélica); e, finalmente, sua concepção de modernidade. / [en] The present dissertation discusses the Hannah Arendt s polemic vision of the role of social dimension in the current political process. Arendt claims that the ongoing way to articulate these two dimensions, leads to an instrumentalization of the political sphere which reduces it to a secondary role and therefore increases the process of alienation. This vision meets strong reactions by several scholars, who will be discussed herein, highlighting Jurgen Habermas and Seyla Benhabib. For a proper understanding of the subject, three issues are of paramount importance: the concept of distinction in Arendt s thinking; Arendt s theory of political action (from Aristotelian praxis); and the Arendt s idea of modernity.

Ce travail questionne dans quelle mesure et par quels processus la nécessité dans laquelle sont les acteurs s’opposant à un projet d’aménagement de devoir argumenter leur refus peut participer incidemment à la diffusion de valeurs, de croyances et de principes caractéristiques du militantisme environnementaliste. Poursuivant une ligne d’analyse simmelienne, cette thèse rapproche les dimensions interactionnistes et cognitives des conflits d’aménagement pour saisir comment les propriétés de l’argumentation et de l’engagement de groupe peuvent progressivement conduire des acteurs initialement engagés à s’opposer à un projet d’aménagement en raison de motivations personnelles à assumer et à promouvoir des contenus environnementalistes, défendus pour eux-mêmes et au delà du conflit d’aménagement initial. Nous proposons un modèle analytique du rôle de l’argumentation dans le développement du militantisme environnementaliste dans la situation où des individus forment un groupe pour s’opposer à un projet d’aménagement sur la base d’un argumentaire commun. Ce modèle est forgé à partir du versant simmelien des travaux de Bernard Groethuysen et Mikhaïl Bakhtine. Le cadre empirique de cette étude est celui des conflits nés de l’aménagement d’une centrale hydroélectrique à Saint-Chamas (Bouches-du-Rhône) qui fait de l’étang de Berre le point de chute d’une des plus importantes chaînes hydroélectriques de France. Lors de ces conflits, la progression de l’argumentation et les interactions qui l’accompagnent rendent possible l’extension de la mobilisation à des thématiques environnementales diverses et à la défense de nouveaux écosystèmes. / This work questions how far and by what processes the constraint made to the social actors who are opposing an industrial or urban development project to argue their refusal can incidentally contribute to the dissemination of the values, beliefs and principals of the environmentalist activism. Following a simmelian analysis perspective, this work makes converge the interactionist and cognitive dimensions of the planning conflicts. By this way we aim to understand how the properties of arguments and group commitments may gradually lead actors initially engaged to oppose a development project due to personal reasons to assume and promote environmentalist contents defended for themselves and beyond the initial development conflict. We propose an analytical model of the role of argumentation in the development of environmentalist activism when individuals decide to constitute a group in order to oppose a development project by means of a common argumentation. This model is made from the simmelian aspects of the works of Bernard Groethuysen and Mikhail Bakhtin.The field study of this work is consituted by the conflicts arising from the construction of a hydroelectric power station at Saint-Chamas (Bouches-du-Rhône) which converted the Berre lagoon into the point fall of one of the leading french hydroelectric chains. During these conflicts, the progression of argumentation and the interactions involved in the argument process allow the expansion of the mobilization to various environmental issues and the defense of new ecosystems.