Political Science

Since the end of World War II, the ‘West’ has enjoyed economic and ideological dominance in the international arena due to institutions built around favorable multilateral agreements. This position has allowed the ‘West’ to craft an international system rooted within the individualistic norms of democracy and capitalism. However, the BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa] – a global unit of states with increasing economic power – views this international system as unfair. Accordingly, these states have increased their cooperation to advocate for a developmental-multipolar world order. But what implications does this shared interest by the BRICS have on the existing global human rights regime? Will these countries’ strong emphasis on the “right to development” undermine prevailing human rights norms? Could the BRICS challenge the current norms regime with an alternative one focused on development? Concentrating on the existing labor regime, I will examine how China, the self-proclaimed leader of the developing states, employs the “right to development” as a means of circumventing fundamental labor rights in Chinese-owned companies in Africa. In the end, I seek to determine whether the BRICS’ newfound economic power and cooperation will allow these states to promote an alternative norms regime that exists concurrently with the prevailing one.

One of the core issues facing China and India today is the access to energy resources and raw materials for the sustenance of their rapid economic growth. To this degree, China has invested in establishing the Gwadar Port in Pakistan – intended to give China access to the Indian Ocean and Central Asia – and India in the Chabahar Port in Iran – intended to connect India also with Afghanistan and Central Asia. This paper argues that while the rapid economic growth and development of China and India intuitively suggests that institutions like the BRICS will increase cooperation, such rapid growth in fact forces these states to compete for access to new markets, energy resources, and raw materials. This rat race to the energy abundant region of Central Asia is a new element of competition that is becoming increasingly embedded within the decades old Sino-Indian geopolitical rivalry.

The lived experience of being a foreigner is unique from what one may experience in their home culture or society. Acknowledging this "experience of foreignness" is key to one's overall well-being and experience abroad. Given this, I put forth a triumvirate of three interdependent metaphors -- the mirror, the microscope, and the map -- to better understand this lived experience of foreignness. Each of these metaphors focuses on different realizations of the self that can occur when living as a foreigner. These metaphors are not to be perceived as stages experienced sequentially,
but rather different manifestations of how the experience of foreignness influences the self.

This essay focuses on the works of two contemporary democratic thinkers, Jacques Rancière and Antonio Negri, who are commonly considered to be “theorists of the event” and frequently cited side by side. In this essay, I challenge this categorization by highlighting significant differences between these two theorists’ seemingly similar accounts. My argument is that Rancière and Negri have developed their radically different conceptions of democratic action in response to two political questions, which first confronted them in the aftermath of May 1968: What is the role of intellectuals in emancipatory struggles? And who is the subject of revolutionary politics?

In 2013, Gezi Park housed perhaps the most significant democratic
protest of the Turkish Republic’s history. The Gezi protests have
drawn the attention of many democratic theorists since then. What
is surprising about these theorists’ commentaries on Gezi is that in
none of them is it possible to find an account of political practices
that enabled actors with such different interests and worldviews to act
in concert during this moment of popular action. This article argues
that to attend fully to the unique features of events such as Gezi, we
need to develop an alternative conceptualization of democratic action
that brings to light such mediatory political practices. To develop that
alternative, I turn to Aristotle and creatively appropriate his notion of
“political friendship.” Interpreted as an ethico-political notion, which
refers to a set of mediating practices, political friendship becomes a
rich conceptual resource that lays bare the dynamics of democratic
popular action.

My study began with the claim that no political regime can be truly democratic until policing becomes so. Despite the recent spread of democratic regimes in the world, episodes of police violence and authoritarian practices of policing continue thriving and undermining democracy. The democratization of policing requires democratizing the use of discretionary power which occurs in the gaps and glitches of the law. My study characterizes police power as a type of governing power, at once executive, judicial, and quasi-legislative.
It is my contention that narratives, stories, and tropes make a crucial difference in forms of exercising police discretion. By drawing on both theory and empirical data, I identify narrative elements informing practices of policing. To use discretion democratically is to interpret interstices and glitches of the law in an inclusive manner that draws on egalitarian beliefs. The comparative analysis of police narratives drawn from over 70 tape-recorded interviews with police officers from Argentina, Uruguay, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and the United States gives empirical support to my argument. The analysis of interviews serves to map police narratives in different contexts. Certain narratives seem to reproduce globally. My study stresses the specificity of the political and governing aspects involved in policing.
Police power needs to be studied by students of democratization. I question representations of the rule of law that inspire most views on policing in political science, and propose to recuperate a classical understanding of the law that incorporates discretionary judgment. At the heart of my argument lies the concept of police discretion, which I understand as theoretically rooted in the notion of sovereign power and regulated through legitimizing narratives. Engaging in a critical dialogue with the work of Aristotle, Foucault, and Agamben, I approach policing as a capillary form of state sovereignty and the most literal expression of governance. Narratives inform the action of those who police us. They provide the raw material for the exercise of discretionary judgment. My study combines the review of canonical and postmodern works in political theory with a comparative empirical approach to examine narratives on policing and police discretion.

Las prácticas policiales definen una instancia de gobierno directo de
las personas que cualifica el alcance de las políticas y la calidad democrá-
tica de las instituciones estatales. En base a entrevistas a policías en Argentina y en Uruguay, este artículo identifica un dispositivo de gobierno que a través de procesos discrecionales y hermenéuticos clasifica a los individuos en categorías a ser alternativamente incluidas y excluidas de la ciudadanía, regulando así el acceso a y la extensión del régimen político.

"This study of police governance draws on over ninety interviews conducted with Argentine police officers. In Argentina, a rising fear of crime has led to the politics of Seguridad, a concept that amalgamates personal safety with state security. As a new governing rationale, Seguridad is strengthening forms of police intervention that weaken the democracy. As they target crime, the police have the power to deny rights, deciding whether an individual is a citizen or a criminal suspect – the latter often being attributed to members of vulnerable groups.

This study brings together key issues of governance that involve the police, democracy, and the quality of citizenship. It sheds light on how the police act as gatekeepers of citizenship and administrators of rights and law. Here, the rhetoric of Seguridad is seen as an ideological framework that masks inequality and unites “good” citizens.

Seguridad shows how police practices should be part of our understanding of regimes and will appeal to anyone concerned with security forces, as well as researchers in democratic theory and Latin American politics."