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Geography and politics: Sample politics articles
anarchism
Greek anarkhos 'without ruler'
Political belief that society should have no government, laws, police, or other authority, but should be a free association of all its members. It does not mean 'without order'; most theories of anarchism imply an order of a very strict and symmetrical kind, but they believe that such order can be achieved by cooperation. Anarchism must not be confused with nihilism (a purely negative and destructive activity directed against society); anarchism is essentially a pacifist movement.
Religious anarchism, claimed by many anarchists to be shown in the early organization of the Christian church, has found expression in the social philosophy of the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy and the Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi. The growth of political anarchism may be traced through the British Romantic writers William Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley to the 1848 revolutionaries Pierre Joseph Proudhon in France and the Russian Mikhail Bakunin, who had a strong following in Europe.
The theory of anarchism is expressed for example in the works of the Russian revolutionary Peter Kropotkin. Perhaps the most influential anarchist of the 20th century has been the US linguist Noam Chomsky.
Anarchist philosophy
Because anarchists believe that the ills and crimes of society result largely, if not wholly, from repressive political and social institutions, the apparatus of the state cannot, for them, be employed as a means of maintaining order. Accordingly great emphasis is placed on education as a means of ensuring sociable behaviour. Anarchists commonly also champion small social groupings where the pressure of community opinion can be more effective in ensuring non-destructive behaviour.
Despite the emphasis placed on education and the optimism about human nature under non-repressive conditions, there is a strong irrationalist strain in the anarchist tradition. The extreme amorality of Max Stirner's The Ego and His Own represents the first example of this, and there are others throughout the 19th century.
Anarchist-type outbreaks occurred throughout the Middle Ages and were inspired by those strands of Christian thought which could be read as emphasizing the importance of community and sanctioning some kind of antinomianism. Some examples of modern anarchism in action seem to spring from socially similar roots. Support for anarchism is strongest in areas where a rural village community tradition survives, for example in Catalonia in the Spanish Civil War, and in the Ukraine under Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War. A second social context in which anarchism has flourished is within the factories of industrializing countries. In this context it is usually known as anarcho-syndicalism, and aims at the devolution of decision-making to the factory level.
Anarchist thinkers
Intellectually, anarchism has received many justifications of different forms. The extreme libertarianism of William Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), in which he advocates the individual application of the standard of utility to our own actions as the only morally defensible constraint on people's actions, is sometimes held to be the first of modern anarchist writings, although the question of his influence on subsequent thinkers is problematical. More influential historically were the libertarian socialists, of whom Pierre Proudhon is the most celebrated. His most famous work is What is Property? in which he equated property with theft. He asserted that in a perfect society order would be maintained by the reasonable self-control of the free individual.
Since this time perhaps the greatest anarchist was Mikhail Bakunin. In addition to writing many uncompromising works, including the atheistic God and the State, he is chiefly remembered for his prolonged struggle in the International with the followers of Karl Marx. From this struggle Marx emerged victorious, but Bakunin had a large following, especially in the Latin countries. It has been suggested that Marx's theory of the withering away of the state under communism was developed primarily to take the wind out of the sails of his anarchist opponents.
Anarchism has numbered among its supporters many men of considerable erudition. Prince Peter Kropotkin and Enrico Malatesta made England their home, and the former wrote many scholarly works on nihilism, notably the Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1899). The return to the simplicity of the primitive Christians advocated by Count Leo Tolstoy has given rise to the term Tolstoian anarchy.
'Propaganda by deed', which was repudiated by some anarchists, was expressed in violent attacks made upon rulers and sometimes indiscriminately on the better-off members of society. Britain's immunity from the worst of such attacks has been attributed to the fact that no exceptional laws have been directed against anarchists. Among rulers to perish at the hands of anarchists were President Carnot of France in 1894; Empress Elizabeth of Austria in 1898; King Umberto of Italy in 1900; and President McKinley of the USA in 1901.
More recently, the Russian-born Emma Goldman and the German-born Rudolf Rocker were also internationally influential anarchist activists. At the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, the anarchists played a crucial role, but were later betrayed by the communists.
Modern anarchism
Serious and responsible anarchist writing continues to explore the possibilities of gaining a piecemeal liberalization of various aspects of our social and political life. The resurgence of anarchist thinking at this level was one of the major features of post-war intellectual life in the West; its influence can be seen in the various 'liberation' movements, such as women's, gay, and prisoners'. Modern anarchist writers include Herbert Reade and Paul Goodman. Later anarchists have also embraced environmental issues; the US writer and activist Murray Bookchin (1921– ) was in the 1950s the first to incorporate ecology in his view of a free, non-hierarchical society.
From the 1960s there have been outbreaks of politically-motivated violence popularly identified with anarchism. The worldwide student unrest of May 1968 included some extreme and avowed irrationalists. Some believed that the only way of protesting against the highly-structured, modern, social world was to commit acts of pure and spontaneous contingency, unstructured by any of the 'reasons' which the social context might provide for even revolutionary action. In the UK anarchist action included the bombings and shootings carried out by the Angry Brigade 1968–71, and in the 1980s actions directed towards peace and animal-rights issues, as well as demonstrations against large financial and business corporations.
balance of power
In politics, the theory that the best way of ensuring international order is to have power so distributed among states that no single state is able to achieve a dominant position. The term, which may also refer more simply to the actual distribution of power, is one of the most enduring concepts in international relations. Since the development of nuclear weapons, it has been asserted that the balance of power has been replaced by a 'balance of terror'.
In diplomatic relations the principle of the balance of power has operated from the earliest times, for example in the leagues of the Greek city states; the maze of wars and alliance of the Italian republics; or the attempt of Wolsey and Henry VIII to make England the balancing power in Europe in the early 16th century.
The 17th and 18th centuries
In the 17th and 18th centuries the balance of power was recognized as a definite formula of diplomacy. It was the guiding principle of William of Orange in his lifelong struggle against Louis XIV. It also explains the tangled diplomacy and constant wars of the 18th century, culminating in the coalition of all the powers against Napoleon. George Canning's famous remark 'I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old' in regard to his recognition of the newly independent former Spanish colonies in South America illustrates the vitality of the theory.
World War I
The years before World War I confirmed the balance of power as a principle of modern European policy. The Triple Alliance was countered by the Dual Alliance between France and Russia with Great Britain left its 'splendid isolation' in order to maintain the
equilibrium threatened by the increase of German power and the weakness of Russia.
Between the wars
The creation in 1918 of the League of Nations was an attempt, in the words of H H Asquith, to form 'a community of power' to replace the balance of power. In conjunction with the League of Nations experiment, greater emphasis was placed on arbitration. In the 1930s, however, Britain and France tended to abandon the principle of the balance of power in favour of the appeasement of the
fascist dictatorships in Germany and Italy.
After 1945
Since 1945 also there has again been emphasis on international arbitration and the United Nations as the means of settling disputes between nations. On the other hand the theory of the nuclear deterrent has much in common with balance-of-power politics, and the influence of the UK was aimed at creating a preponderance of power in favour of the Western as against the communist bloc.
With the collapse of the Soviet empire in Europe in 1989–90 the possession of nuclear weapons as a means of maintaining a balance of power between East and West became largely irrelevant. However, the emergence of China as a super-state meant that the threat had not entirely disappeared. A balance of power in economic, rather than military, terms is a likely development.
Democratic Party
Older of the two main political parties of the USA, founded in 1792. It tends to be the party of the working person, as opposed to the Republicans, the party of big business, but the divisions between the two are not clear cut. Its stronghold since the Civil War has traditionally been industrial urban centres and the southern states, but conservative southern Democrats were largely supportive of Republican positions in the 1980s and helped elect President Reagan. Bill Clinton became the first Democrat president for 13 years in 1993. The party lost control of both chambers of Congress to the Republicans in November 1994, and increasing numbers of southern Democrat politicians later defected. However, in November 1996 Clinton became the first Democrat president since F D Roosevelt to be elected for a second term, winning 31 states, chiefly in the northeast and west. Al Gore, who was vice president under Clinton, lost the 2000 presidential election to Republican George Bush, Jr.
Originally called Democratic Republicans, the party was founded by Thomas Jefferson to defend the rights of the individual states against the centralizing policy of the Federalists. Democrat government during 1828–60 straddled the demands of various conflicting factions, including states' rights, the issue of Westward expansion, and abolitionism. Slavery eventually emerged as the key issue, dividing the party. The Democrats controlled all the southern states that seceded from the Union in 1860–61. In the 20th century, under the presidencies of Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F Kennedy, Lyndon B Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, the party has adopted more liberal social-reform policies than the Republicans.
From the 1930s, the Democratic Party pursued a number of policies that captured the hearts and minds of the US public, as well as making a significant contribution to their lives. They included Roosevelt's New Deal and Kennedy's New Frontier which was implemented by Lyndon Johnson. The New Deal aimed at pulling the country out of the 1930s depression and putting it back to work, whereas the Great Society programme – encompassing the Economic Opportunity Act, the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Medicare and
Voting Rights Act (1965), and the Housing, Higher Education, and Equal Opportunities acts – sought to make the USA a better place for the ordinary, often disadvantaged, citizen.
The Democratic Party has never been a homogenous unit and in the early 1990s it comprised at least five significant factions: the southern conservative rump, the Conservative Democratic Forum (CDF); the northern liberals, moderate on military matters but interventionist on economic and social issues; the radical liberals of the Midwest agricultural states; the Trumanite 'Defense Democrats', liberal on economic and social matters but military hawks; and the non-Congressional fringe, led by Jesse Jackson and seeking a 'rainbow' coalition of African Americans, Hispanics, feminists, students, peace campaigners, and southern liberals.
Bill Clinton led a reformist 'New Democrat' wing of the party, centred around the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which is fiscally conservative, but liberal on social issues.
Early history
The Democrat Party's roots lie in Thomas Jefferson's anti-Federalist party of the late 1700s, later known as 'Democratic-Republicans' or 'Jacksonians', and finally adopting the name 'Democratic Party' in 1840. By 1816 Jefferson's Federalists had expanded to become a recognizable political party, calling themselves Democratic-Republicans. They held various regional interests, including a concern for communication and transportation links to the frontier, adequate military protection from American Indians, the annexation of Florida from Spain and of Canada from Britain, as well as an interest in increased federal militia. They favoured easy credit, and state banking to a central national bank.
After losing the presidential contest in 1824, their leader, the popular frontiersman Andrew Jackson, gained the support of New York state senator Martin Van Buren. This produced an alliance between frontiersmen and Eastern city organizations that
strengthened the party's appeal. Georgia senator William H Crawford's followers added further solidity to the party's base. Jackson won the 1828 presidential election and reinforced his new coalition. In government, however, he was immediately faced with the problem of pleasing many different factions. These included western demands for internal improvements; northeastern opposition to large federal expenditure; northeastern demands for a protective tariff combined with southern demands for tariff reduction; and a vigilant strain of southern separatism that claimed that states had the right to nullify national law.
Despite these pressures, Jackson was able to unite his party with a presidential veto of the national bank's petition to recharter in 1832. Suspicious of all banks, owing to his own bankruptcy in earlier life, Jackson's tough-mindedness regarding the national bank's legitimacy was so popular that it won him a second term. However, the issue of states' rights continued to undermine his presidency.
Senator John C Calhoun's followers threatened to organize in order to resist federal tariffs in South Carolina, claiming they had the potential right to nullify such tariffs. Jackson responded by declaring the federal government sovereign and indivisible, and denied that any state could refuse to obey the law or choose to leave the Union. This dramatic showdown alienated separatist-minded southern Democrats. At the same time southern Democrats were losing patience with the party over the issue of slavery. The Democrats splintered as Westward expansion raised the question of incorporating new territories as either free or slave states.
Attempting to maintain stability, the Democrat government began to bend to the demands of regional interests. Van Buren's administration 1836–40 agreed to a Calhoun-sponsored resolution that a state could make its own decision over slavery, and the Polk administration 1844–48 conceded to annexationists by acquiring Oregon from the British and launching a war against Mexico to win new lands.
Slavery, however, proved more insoluble and persistent a problem. The Democrats were careful in their choice of presidential candidate and won the White House in 1852 with Franklin Pierce, known for his ability to compromise. Pierce managed to steer an ambiguous non-controversial course on slavery, but his successor James Buchanan caused outrage when he supported a proslavery constitution for the Kansas territory. The 1860 Democratic National Convention in Charleston witnessed embittered factional fighting as a result, and the Democrats lost the 1860 presidential election to the Republican Abraham Lincoln.
The party remained divided throughout the American Civil War. Mistrustful of the War Democrat Andrew Johnson, who became president following Lincoln's assassination, they became a minority party, focused on the problems of postwar inflation and agricultural depression.
ethnic cleansing
The forced expulsion of one ethnic group by another to create a homogenous population, for example, of more than 2 million Muslims by Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992–95. The term has also been used to describe the killing of Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi in 1994, and for earlier mass exiles, as far back as the book of Exodus.
To further their aim of creating a Greater Serbia, Bosnian Serb forces compelled thousands of non-Serbs, Croats, and Muslims to
abandon their homes, allowing Serb families from other parts of the former Yugoslavia to occupy them. Wholesale slaughter and other human-rights violations were also allegedly used to implement this policy, which created nearly 700,000 refugees. Croatian troops adopted an ethnic-cleansing policy in Krajina 1995, forcing as many as 150,000 Croatian Serbs to flee their homes after a successful government offensive to retake the region; widespread human-rights violations were reported.
Similar tactics were used by the Nazis against the Jews in World War II. More peaceful ethnic cleansing continued in 1996 after implementation of the Dayton Peace Accord as separate Muslim Croat and Serb statelets were formed in Bosnia.
Other examples of ethnic cleansing include the compulsory exchange in 1923 of populations between Greece and Turkey under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne, which involved more than 500,000 people; and the separation of 8 million Germans from parts of Eastern Europe, such as Poland, after World War II.
gay rights movement
Political activity by homosexuals in pursuit of equal rights and an end to discrimination. Strongly active since the 1960s, the gay rights movement also seeks to educate the public about gay issues, promote tolerance of gay relationships and lifestyles, and
encourage pride and solidarity among homosexuals.
Local organizations began working for gay rights during the 1950s. These early groups, often calling themselves homophile organizations, tried to defend the rights of gays through organized protests, lawsuits, and local politics. The dramatic growth of the movement, however, is largely attributed to the Stonewall riots of 1969. These began after a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City. For the first time gay patrons strongly resisted the raid, and the subsequent riots inspired gay communities to mobilize in other parts of North America, as well as in Europe and Australia. The appearance of the AIDS virus in the early 1980s produced a new wave of hostility towards homosexuals but also put them in the forefront of formulating an effective response to the epidemic and raising the public's awareness of its dangers.
Opposition
Many opponents of gay rights believe that homosexual acts and lifestyles are morally wrong. They believe that homosexuality is a life choice rather than an inherent trait, and therefore deny that gays should have equal rights and protection as heterosexuals.
Legislation
In 1961, Illinois became the first state to abolish laws prohibiting homosexual acts. Since 1970, several areas in the USA and Canada have passed laws prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals in employment and housing. In 1986, however, the US Supreme Court ruled in Bowers v. Hardwick that states are entitled to enact laws forbidding private homosexual acts. Although these laws are rarely enforced, gay leaders saw the decision as a means to legitimize discrimination against gays. Ten years later, in 1996, the US Supreme Court ruled in Romer v. Evans that states may not ban laws that protect homosexuals against discrimination, a victory for gay rights. In 2000, Vermont became the first state to pass a law that grants same-sex couples the same legal rights as married couples in the state. In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex marriages. Despite many legislative advances for the gay rights movement, many discriminatory laws are still in place in the USA. Anti-sodomy laws still exist in several states, and homosexuals are restricted in a variety of areas, such as adoption and military service. No US state allows same-sex marriages.
plebiscite
Latin plebiscitium 'ordinance, decree'
Referendum or direct vote by all the electors of a country or district on a specific question. Since the 18th century plebiscites have been employed on many occasions to decide to what country a particular area should belong; for example, in Upper Silesia and elsewhere after World War I, and in the Saar in 1935.
The term fell into disuse during the 1930s, after the widespread abuse by the Nazis in Germany to legitimize their regime.
In Roman history, a plebiscite was a law enacted by the plebs in their comitia tributa or concilia plebis on the rogation of a tribune. Originally these resolutions needed confirmation by the Senate, but later they came to be binding on the whole people.
In modern politics a plebiscite is an expression of popular opinion obtained by vote from all the electors of the state. It tends to be used of decisions over which state a population should owe allegiance to. Plebiscites were employed by the League of
Nations under a section of the Treaty of Versailles to decide the national destiny of areas which were involved in peculiar difficulties.
In 1935 a plebiscite took place in the Saar district to discover the wishes of the inhabitants regarding their nationality, and it resulted overwhelmingly in favour of German as against French nationality. In 1955 a referendum rejected a Franco-German agreement for 'Europeanization' of the Saar (later it was agreed that the Saar should return to Germany, and it did in 1957). In 1939 the Soviet government held a plebiscite in the eastern provinces of Poland, in order that the inhabitants might actually or apparently decide on the question of annexation.
Scottish Parliament
Devolved legislative (law-making) body of Scotland. It comprises 129 members and was created by the November 1998 Scotland Act, which was passed following the Scottish electorate's overwhelming approval of government proposals in a referendum on devolution
held on 11 September 1997. The first elections to the Parliament were held on 6 May 1999 and the Parliament opened on 1 July 1999.
Members are elected for four-year terms through a 'semi-proportional' electoral system. Seventy-three members are returned on a first-past-the-post basis from single-member constituencies, comprising Scotland's existing Westminster constituencies, with an extra seat created through dividing the Orkney and Shetland constituency into two. An additional 56 members are selected on a
proportional basis from party lists based on Scotland's eight European Parliament constituencies.
The Parliament has devolved law-making powers in all areas except defence, foreign affairs, the constitution, social security, company regulation, economic management, and taxation. It also has the authority to vary the basic rate of income tax in Scotland by up to 3 pence in the pound to supplement a block grant (£14.9 billion for 2000–01) to supersede the former Scottish Office budget. A First Minister (equivalent to a Scottish prime minister), with a main office in St Andrew's House, is drawn from the majority grouping within the parliament, and relevant ministers sit with their UK government counterparts at negotiating meetings in Brussels whenever Scottish interests are affected.
The parliament's temporary base is the Church of Scotland General Assembly Hall and City of Edinburgh Council buildings, at the Mound and on George IV Bridge, in Edinburgh. A permanent home is being built on the Royal Mile, next to Holyrood House, designed by
a team led by the Spanish architect Enric Miralles, with completion planned for the end of 2002. The construction project has been faced by problems of spiralling costs (estimated in 2000 at more than £190 million) and slippage in the timetable.
Labour's leader, Donald Dewar, was elected the country's first minister in May 1999. Of the Scottish Parliament's 129 MSPs elected in May 1999, 48 were women, leaving only Sweden and Denmark with more women members of parliament. The Scottish Labour Party, which won 56 of the seats, formed a coalition government, with the Scottish Liberal Democrats (17 seats), whose leader, Jim Wallace, became deputy first minister. The pro-independence Scottish Nationalist Party, with 35 seats, were the main opposition party, while the Conservatives won 18 seats. Following Dewar's sudden death, in October 2000, from heart failure, Labour's Henry McLeish was elected the new first minister. McLeish resigned in November 2001 over accusations of financial incompetence, and was succeeded by Labour's Jack McConnell.
Tiananmen Square
Chinese 'Square of Heavenly Peace'
Paved open space in central Beijing (Peking), China, the largest public square in the world (area 0.4 sq km/0.14 sq mi). On 3–4 June 1989 more than 1,000 unarmed protesters were killed by government troops in a massacre that crushed China's emerging pro-democracy movement.
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators had occupied the square from early May, calling for political reform and the resignation of the communist leadership. They were led by students, 3,000 of whom staged a hunger strike in the square. The massacre that followed was sanctioned by the old guard of leaders, including Deng Xiaoping.
Tenth anniversary of the massacre
China prepared for the tenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square killings by blocking access to some Internet sites and closing some foreign television channels. In an unprecedented legal action, an underground network of families who lost relatives in the massacre submitted evidence to a Chinese court demanding a criminal investigation into the role played by troops and officials. While the action's chances of success in Peking were slim, the organization would pledge simultaneously to champion it in the international courts.
While security forces on the Chinese mainland ensured there would be no mass gathering to commemorate the Tiananmen anniversary, officials in Hong Kong did nothing to stop the traditional rally marking the event. The Hong Kong government was committed to introducing antisubversion legislation, but it was proceeding with caution because of the backlash such laws would provoke.
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