Max Weber’s concept of legitimate authority rests on three principal pillars: tradition; legality; ideology. In this essay, I propose a fourth pillar – power, and show how it can be as important a source of legitimacy as tradition, legality, and ideology. In asserting that power itself can be politically legitimating, I do not imply that it is devoid of any support from the other three pillars.
New Zealand is a unique laboratory to observe republican dynamics and the direction of political change. In this regard, this essay provides an objective assessment of the notion of inevitability of a republic in New Zealand through analysing three variables of symbolic, economic and public in the republican deterministic argument.
If Hollywood is to be believed, the first half of the Twentieth-Century was characterised by traditional moral values and romantic ideals. The 1920s were full of happy maidens marrying their long lost loves who had all miraculously survived World War One. But in his book ‘The Twentieth-Century World, An International History’, William R. Keylor refers to the 1920s and an “era of illusion”. The following essay will explore this claim.
The United Nations have gained the chair of global moral arbiter in an essentially anarchic international society and will continue to be so in the foreseeable future.
Irrespective of the occasional incompatibilities of the UN with liberal values, and its criticism from realists, the organization has invariably represented a tremendous leap forward.
In the twenty-first century, slavery still exists in the world despite the widely accepted norm of respect for human rights. Why have some states within the United States been more successful in combatting child trafficking than others?
The 21st century has continued to promote multiculturalism, increased communications cross-border and a greater level of interdependence. The influence of regional institutions has meant that quasi-supranational institutions such as the European Union have been able to challenge the influence of globalisation particularly in the form of ‘New Regionalism’ which is taking shape in a far more multi-polar world order.
Throughout the war what Stalin wanted most from the Western Powers was their commitment to a second front, economic aid and their agreement to the restoration of Russia’s 1941 borders. Although his methods evolved, these objectives did not change.
On September 16, 2007, the issue of private military firms exploded out of the dry confines of academic debate and into the public consciousness as bright, bloody pictures blanketed the newspapers and television networks that had long ignored the subject. Seventeen Iraqis had been violently killed and more than twenty others wounded while they went about their business in Nisour Square, in the heart of Baghdad’s once fashionable Mansour District.
It is clear then that the Non Proliferation Treaty has enjoyed some success in curbing nuclear proliferation; most states have signed and abide by the rules of the NPT. The example of the A.Q Khan network as a non-state actor taking an active role in proliferation is a classic example of how the NPT is not effective at dealing with the problems the post cold war world faces.
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