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Greenland’s residents and Ice Sheet are both exposed to pronounced Arctic warming. Although Greenland is a hub for climate science, the climate perceptions of Greenland’s predominantly Indigenous population remained unstudied through the past decade of multi-national climate opinion polls. Conducting two original nationally representative surveys, here we show that Greenlanders are more likely than residents of top oil-producing Arctic countries to perceive that climate change is happening, and about twice as likely to have personally experienced its effects. However, half are unaware that climate change is human-caused, and those who are most affected appear to be least aware. An Inuit cultural dimension, indicated by the intertwined social ecological factors of Indigenous identity, subsistence occupation, village community scale and no post-elementary education, proves to be the main positive predictor of climate change experience but also the strongest negative predictor of awareness of human-caused climate change. Despite Greenland’s centrality to climate research, we uncover a widespread gap between the scientific consensus and coastal Kalaallit views of climate change, particularly among the country’s youth, fishers, and hunters. This science-society gulf has immediate and prospective implications for local climate adaptation, climate science communication and knowledge exchange between generations, institutions, and communities.

This article compares the ideas of Amílcar Cabral and Amartya Sen on capability, freedom, resistance and political change, thereby revealing the importance of radical realism in political thought and development studies. Sen’s path-breaking work has been transformative for multiple disciplines, not least development. Yet, reading Sen alongside the ideas of one of Africa’s most successful anti-colonial political leaders is revelatory: it provides the basis for the argument that radical realism is most valuable if it is action-guiding, comparative and about context-specific change. This involves a distinction between realistic political theory and realism in political thought where only the latter demands utopian thinking. What follows from this regarding democracy, impartiality and justice? In answering this with reference to some social movements, the article then defends the political potential of conflict, partisan positions, resistance and political change directed towards overcoming domination.

In the first of a series of interviews conducted by members of Theoria’s editorial board with provocative political theorists and thinkers, Professor Lawrence Hamilton talks to Professor John Dunn in an exclusive interview at King’s College, Cambridge, held on the 28 March 2019.

It is common to assume that it makes sense to begin from a supposedly monistic African ethics upon which an African political theory can be built. I demur. In this chapter I therefore work in the opposite direction. I begin from real conditions on the ground and propose institutional changes to empower powerless citizens and residents to confront the constant threat of domination by economic and political elites and associated forms of domination that arise out of poverty, inequality and oligarchy. This requires us to jettison a widely held idea regarding justice in politics: that it is about distributive justice justified by impartiality and public reason. We must abandon this view as it has eviscerated the concept of justice and our understanding of politics. After defending this claim, I submit that a more realist approach is necessary to speak to real politics. This is especially pressing in Africa where politics fails to enable citizens to overcome domination. As I shall argue, one possible way of re-orienting this politics would be to focus on needs, power relations and political judgement. A politics of this kind would begin with contextual diagnoses of needs, judgements and institutions. Given current conditions, this would require partisan institutions of representation that institutionalize class (and other) conflict, thereby safeguarding liberty. These partisan institutions, I argue, would enable ordinary citizens and residents to participate more actively in the identification and evaluation of their needs by enhancing both representation and participation. They would give political representatives greater autonomy in the process of identifying and evaluating existing needs and interests; and empower citizens and residents meaningfully to control, critique and veto the decisions of their representatives.

In this article I propose a different founding view of liberty to help reinvent representative democracy: freedom as power through representation. I argue that representation and associated relations of power can be assessed contextually in terms of whether they enable or disable domination and enhance judgment in politics. I submit that freedom obtains if and only if the existing forms of representation manage power relations to minimize domination in the determination of needs and interests. I end by proposing a set of institutional changes for reinventing representative democracy in line with my account of freedom as power through representation. These include ideas around district assemblies, a revitalized consiliar system, an updated tribunate of the plebs, and constitutional revision. I thereby suggest that my account of liberty in Freedom Is Power would underpin a more robust, critical view of representative democracy.

In this article I show how and why Freedom Is Power (FIP) is a work concerned with the decolonizing context of South Africa and the Global South, and what follows from this. I argue that the ongoing process of decolonization, that is, real liberation and empowerment, requires a realist view of freedom as power through representation. I focus on the idea of the republic and democratic institutions; and the question of how to bring about national and global political change. I thereby clarify what is distinct about and necessary for the decolonizing democratic republic and highlight why FIP is both an act of resistance and reconstruction.

In this article I argue that resistance and radical democracy can be used to the good of representative democracy. I submit that resistance is about the popular power – the freedom as power – to create better institutions. I argue that the conflict and resistance that is at the core of radical democracy enables freedom and democracy and resists domination best if it is institutionalized. This counterintuitive claim is substantiated by an argument for freedom as power through representation and how the power to resist is linked to at least four domains of freedom. This builds on the work of Machiavelli, Marx and Foucault, amongst others, and insights drawn from resistance struggles across the globe. I end by proposing institutional changes to representative democracy that, I suggest, would allow us to conceive of democracy as both a form of government and a constantly destabilizing transgressive practice.

The Ohio short histories of Africa series is a great idea. It offers concise, nicely laid-out, small books written by leading scholars. The four volumes I discuss in this article are part of a stro...

In this article, I discuss the nature of political theory by reference to the nature and study of politics and the centrality of language and practical concepts therein. I then paint a realistic picture of the state of political theory in South Africa, which while bleak provides some hope. Although political theory has for some time been the poor cousin in the extended family of political studies in South Africa, this may be changing. My main contribution is to show how central political theory is to political studies in particular and political understanding in general. I end the article with a discussion of the various ways in which political theory is vital for the health of democratic South Africa, with particular focus on the following five pivotal concerns: coercive authority; non-alignment; realism; contextual critique; utopianism and imagination. If taken more seriously, it may help to improve the political judgement of both political representatives and ordinary citizens and thus enhance South Af...

I elicit some of Foucault’s insights to provide a more realistic picture than is the norm in social and political theory of how best to identify and overcome domination. Foucault’s vision is realized best, I argue, by combining his account with two related conceptions of domination based on human needs and realistic accounts of politics that focus on agency, power and interests. I defend a genealogical, inter-subjective account of how the determination of needs and interests forms the basis of ascertaining, on a continuum, the extent to which relations of power generate states of domination. To that end I propose institutional changes that would empower citizens in positive and negative ways: power over legislation in district assemblies and via veto and repeal; real control over representatives through various means; and decennial constitutional plebiscites.

The OTC derivatives market is increasingly the policy focus of lawmakers in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. The objective and details of reaching the goals of transparency and regulatory reform continue to prove elusive, however, and the various legislative efforts to date leave many questions unanswered and conceivably conflict with one another. It will be important that the political need to provide a timely response to concerns about transparency and counterparty credit risk be balanced against the need to face head-on the complications that will necessarily be involved in the responsible redesign of a complex and global OTC derivatives market. This article examines proposed legislative and regulatory developments as well as OTC derivatives industry efforts that are likewise afoot, along with associated issues including proposed central clearing requirements; the definition of a standardized derivative; possible margin and capital requirements; reporting, record-keeping, and business conduct standards; preventing manipulation, fraud, and other market abuses; the respective regulatory authorities of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC); and other regulatory issues particular to credit default swaps.

Contrary to most newly independent colonies which borrowed extensively in order to fuel economic growth and development, the post‐apartheid South African government pursued a different path. With the advent of democracy in 1994 they chose to stabilize the economy and reduce public debt via the adoption of an austere fiscal programme. We argue that the choice was made in order to gain greater policy independence from creditors and portray an image of sound fiscal management to potential international investors. The consequences of the decision were, however, quite the opposite. The South African government’s austere and prudent response to debt made its bonds more attractive. It has therefore become more, not less, dependent on the constraints of creditors, albeit international creditors, and so more subject to investor scrutiny and sentiment. And, yet, as a result of the fact that in South Africa the interests of domestic creditors do not enjoy formal, political representation, South Africa still lacks cr...

This paper argues that the poor delivery on land reform in post-apartheid South Africa is best explained through a close analysis of the form and content of the constitution of 1996. Within this progressive legal document lies the possibility for radical land reform but also that which currently hamstrings the process. The South African constitution is self-defeating with regard to land reform because it conceives of the goals and means of land reform in the same conceptual language as is currently used to secure the private ownership of land—the language of inalienable rights. The article explains how and why this hinders the process of land reform and shows why rights-based constitutions in general are self-defeating. It ends by suggesting in outline the framework for a new conceptual language for politics and for constitutions based on a conception of human needs and an alternative (needs-based) constitution.

One of the more intractable questions in the history of political thought is still around today: how can humans collectively control and enhance the development and satisfaction of their needs? This is a question about the nature of contemporary needs, about which and whose needs are developed and satisfied, and about the extant evaluative control over the generation of needs. That is, it is a question about the mechanisms and institutions that constitute and legitimize the generation, interpretation and satisfaction of needs, in particular, states and markets. And it is also a question about the possibilities and means of transforming these mechanisms and institutions. In this paper, I suggest conceptual means of thinking about the different parts of the question and their relation to democratic sovereignty. The suggestions are based on an account of human need that overcomes the current framework of rights and (utilitarian) preferences tempered by paternalist attention to state-defined human needs. The account of human need is not plucked from thin air. At least in embryonic form, it is in evidence in the history, philosophy and practice of politics and economics. But this is a history, philosophy and practice of two opposing conceptual triads: rights, preferences and cosmopolitan democracy versus needs, markets and real democratic