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Defending In Defence of Politics Today
Author(s) -
SMITH STEVEN B.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
the political quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.373
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1467-923X
pISSN - 0032-3179
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-923x.2012.02414.x
Subject(s) - politics , sovereignty , political science , state (computer science) , law , political economy , globalization , variety (cybernetics) , sovereign state , national state , sociology , algorithm , artificial intelligence , computer science
What are the threats to politics fifty years after the publication of Bernard Crick's classic In Defence of Politics ? The chief danger lies in the forces of globalisation and the eclipse of the national state as the locus of political life. It is the hope of many in both Europe and the US that we might replace the basic structure of the sovereign state with a variety of postnational forms of organisation such as the UN or the EU. What are the forces behind these developments? Are we entering a world beyond politics increasingly administered by international law courts and tribunals no longer responsible to their national electorates? The possibility cannot be ruled out, but such a world, I suggest, would no longer be a political world.