Suchergebnisse

Since the crisis of 2007–2009, sovereignty, government and politics are on the agenda of social sciences and of international policy platforms, most recently in Davos. This is a departure from anti-statist, free-tradist visions of global market development in the 1980s and 1990s when sovereignty was simply associated with freedom of action of economic actors (most significantly, global corporations and banks) and governance simply referred to technical rules serving the ends of these actors posed in terms of dictates of the market. This paper points to societal dislocations (e.g. income discrepancies, unemployment) incumbent on global market development and to a time lag in which these made themselves felt in the developed and developing world. It argues that the developing world experienced the disillusionment with markets in the latter part of 1990s and early 2000s and sought solutions in effective governments, putting them in the service of reaping the benefits of global market expansion for individual regions. It meant non-liberal ways of governing markets, distancing from abstract formulations of individual rights, turning the 'rule of law' into living law deeply rooted in societal concerns not limited to commercial actors but including those of both blue-collar and white collar workers, of migrant populations, and women. At issue is an introduction of politics, of political agency and initiatives. The developed world rejected what is labeled as an 'autocratic turn'; and is lost for a solution to market woes, except for further measures to maximize gains by major commercial actors, as in the case of the Greek crisis.

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the problems which are involved in the interpretation of the character of West German politics. Its politics is at once coherent in composing a pattern and preserving a continuity of identity because it is focused upon a particular and traditional idea of political rule, the state; and incoherent as this idea is interpreted to support contrasting views about the proper scope of politicization and depoliticization in the context of different and changing conceptions of interest and need. One such incoherence is between theories which underpin the depoliticized character of the Bundesbank and theories which support party "penetration" of German public institutions. These theories are an interesting indication of how the opportunities and problems which are posed by politicization have been perceived in society and illuminate the standards with reference to which politicization is evaluated.The paper's conclusions are:(1) The idea of the state provides a political language which is flexible enough to encompass a variety of views. At the same time it provides a frame which lends some coherence to German politics and is not to be dismissed as rhetorical decoration. The state is constitutive of political activity.(2) Neither an individual theory of the state nor even the concept itself can offer more than a partial portrayal of German politics, of the complex mixture of normative and utilitarian considerations which enter into political calculation. Adoption of one or the other of these views has authoritarian implications and does not illuminate the political practice of the Federal Republic.