Political Science

The concept of 'practice' is offering a new approach to questions in public policy, especially those dealing with the process dimension of the political. But what exactly are practices? The first part of this paper focuses on the appropriate size or dimension of a political practice: What kind or range of events should be considered as the basic entity of analysis? The second part of the paper presents empirical illustrations from two research projects on committee decision making. These illustrations serve to exemplify the applicability of the concept of 'political practice' to public policy.

The idea of a 'chain of legitimation' is a central thought in German constitutional theory. However, the conception of a chain of legitimacy does not appear to be sufficient to justify transnational democracy. Starting from this diagnosis, the paper introduces an alternative conception of transnational legitimacy. In this conception, the layer of legitimacy provided by the chain of legitimation is complemented by a layer of legitimacy that is provided by political practices at the micro-level of the political process. Our conception of transnational legitimacy - which is based on a twofold concept of normativity that distinguishes between an explicit and an implicit dimension of normativity - presents a deeper understanding of where to locate the normative forces at play within the political process. The aim of the paper is to show that at the transnational level, democratic legitimacy can only emerge if the long and abstract legitimation chains are normatively backed by pol...

ABSTRACT If one understands political decisions as normatively binding, the question arises as to how bindingness in this sense is produced. Political decisions are not only binding for the citizens concerned. First of all, mutual bindingness has to be achieved between the political agents involved. This paper aims to present a process-oriented analysis of the normative forces at work in political face-to-face decision interactions. In this context, we introduce a two-dimensional conception of political normativity. The dimension of implicit, in-process normativity complements the dimension of explicit, rule-following normativity. The second part of the paper provides an empirical illustration of a typical political practice of decision-making, taken from an analysis of actual committee meetings. This illustration serves to exemplify the processual character and the dynamics as well as the internal power relations of bindingness-production.

Statebuilding is the declared objective of international donors in many African contexts and elsewhere. Uganda, where a civil war ended 20 years ago, can serve as a showcase in order to see what the outcome of internationalised post-war policies is. Analysing the dynamics around the state's armed forces and the problems of taxation, this article argues that the outcome is not statebuilding but the internationalisation of rule. This constellation, nowadays euphemistically called ‘global governance’, may show the future of other current post-war interventions.

Since the end of the Cold War, the vocabulary of politics has changed. The violent decay of Yugoslavia, the separatist movements in Ethiopia, and the small wars in the Philippines indicate that an era of ethnic conflicts has replaced the former East‐West rivalry. Since the outbreak of violent conflicts in the former Soviet Union, the phrase “ethnic conflict” has ruled the titles of newspapers and magazines and has even found its way into the discourse of political science. “Ethnic nationalism,” mere “nationalism,” even such linguistic monsters as “ethno‐nationalism” have recently become central concerns. The emergence of so many violent clashes between ethnic groups in the last few years has perplexed the public, and even social scientists have had difficulty explaining nationalism and ethnic conflict.In trying to explain these conflicts, some authors point to cultural differences. In 1993, Samuel P. Huntington proclaimed the beginning of an era of clashes between cultural entities. But explaining these conflicts in terms of cultural differences is not quite satisfactory. Or, as the Austrian political scientist Alber F. Reiterer asks: “What is a cultural difference? Is it that the Slovenians sing ‘Gori, gori na planina’ while the Carinthia‐Germans sing a slightly different melody ‘In die Berg bin i gern'?” And, more important, are such differences sufficient causes for violence?Obviously they are not. The phrase “ethnic conflict” does not shed much light on the origins and causes of these wars. It cannot explain the case of Somalia; in the most ethnically homogeneous country on the African continent, a war broke out and could not even be ended by international intervention. As I shall argue, “cultural” differences, although often seen as the underlying structural causes of social conflicts, are not the root causes of contemporary wars. An analysis of three examples elucidates this claim: the ongoing war in Liberia, the conflict in the Casamance, and the so‐called Tuareg conflict.