Will Rio+20 just be a side show to the global scramble for resources or will it grasp the realities of the looming crisis and form a political agenda that can succeed?
Drug policy is a toxic issue for politicians, one that they usually want to avoid for fear of the political backlash. To highlight the dilemma between politics and policy in this field, drug policy expert Sanho Tree often quotes Jean-Claude Juncker on economic liberalisation: 'We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it'. In other words, calling for change often means political suicide.
Simon Martin, Sport Italia: the Italian Love Affair with Sport (I.B.Tauris £19.99) Jimmy Burns, La Roja: a Journey Through Spanish Football (Simon Schuster £14.99)
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The article analyzes the historical roots and the current nature of the constitutional crisis in Turkey. The Constitution of 1982 strongly reflects the authoritarian, statist, and tutelary mentality of its military founders. The Constitution established a number of tutelary institutions designed to check the powers of the elected agencies and to narrow down the space for civilian politics. Consequently, it has been the subject of strong criticisms since its adoption. There is also a general consensus that despite the 17 amendments it has gone through so far, it has not been possible to fully eliminate its authoritarian spirit. The article also deals with the constitutional crises of 2007 and 2008 over the election of the President of the Republic, and the annulment of the constitutional amendment of 2008 by the Constitutional Court. It concludes with an assessment of the constitutional amendments of 2010.
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
A wide debate about emergency politics in democracy is particularly welcome in a period in which long-lasting concern about security in the Western world is now coupled with an economic crisis whose effects are still not clear and whose development are unforeseeable. This new contribution, written by Bonnie Honig, is hence highly interesting as it tries to disclose the links between the normal democratic politics and the discretionary politics which occurs in emergency situations.
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
Most of the recently published books on the Kurdish problem in Turkey focus on the armed struggle and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Watts, however, offers a much-appreciated alternative approach. "Pro-Kurdish political parties" (p. xvii), or what she also calls "challenger parties" (p. 16), "have made themselves matter and... have impressed their ideas and agendas on reluctant and often repressive states" (p. x). "The central argument of this book is that... pro-Kurdish elected officials and party administrators engaged [as]... 'loudspeaker systems' for the transmission of highly contentious information politics that challenged the narratives of security, identity, and representation promoted by Turkish state institutions.... They [also] tried to construct a competing 'governmentality' and new collective Kurdish 'subject' in cities and towns in the southeast" (p. 13).