HUMR4501-07

Political responses I: Theory

Nils Butenschøn

Two lectures

• Political responses I: Theory.

Concepts and approaches

• Political responses II: Theory.

The ‘citizenship approach’ and international human rights law.

Two major questions

(A) The political system: How does it deal with diversity?

(B) What are the consequences in terms of the respect for and the protection and fulfillment of human rights?

• Framework of analysis: A citizenship approach.

WHY-questions

• Why does diversity appear as a problem in some political systems, but not in other systems? Why do political systems (governments) deal with diversity in different ways?

HOW-questions

• How can insights into these questions help us understand the nature of ethnic conflicts that we observe; both what they seem to have in common, and what distinguish them as unique historical phenomena.

• How can we on this basis be helped in suggesting strategies for solving the kinds of problems that are caused by diversity?

Diversity

• Situations where an existing political order is challenged by its own socio-cultural fragmentation.

Ethnicity and ethnic groups

• Ethnicity as consciousness; a subjective phenomenon.

• Ethnic groups as objective phenomenon.

• How do the subjective and objective phenomenon impinge on each other?

A comparative approach

• Can you mention a country where there are significant political tensions between segments of the population that speaks different languages? –Or between groups that have different religious affiliations? And then mention cases where you have (objectively) the same kind of differences, but not the same political tensions associated with those differences?

Political significance

• Socio-cultural differences are only having a political significance if they are expressed as subjective ethnicity (a necessary condition), and if such identities are politicized or challenge the existing political order (a sufficient condition).

Question:

• What is it, in the final analysis, that creates conflicts between groups in a society?

Another question:

• How can a political order be established that on the one hand respects the integrity and rights of individuals and groups (a ‘just society’) and on the other facilitates political stability?

The citizenship approach

• The study of the contractual relationship (in the broadest possible meaning of contractual) between the state and the inhabitants under its jurisdiction.

• Under what conditions are such relationships created, how are rights and obligations codified and perceived by the parties, what are the modalities for changing the terms, and what instruments of retribution are available to the parties in case of conflict?

The politics of citizenship

• “The politics of citizenship” in a given country is taken here to be an analytical gateway to insight into the dynamics of regime formation in that country and its raison d’etat, its state-idea.

A cross-diciplinary approach

• Legal and social science approaches

• The power of citizenship: The right to have rights

• A great empirical variety hidden behind formal state sovereignty

T. H. Marshall’s typology

• Civil citizenship

• Political citizenship

• Social citizenship