Uriel Abulof
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 188916 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Uriel Abulof |
| NOMBRES | Uriel |
| APELLIDO | Abulof |
| FIRMA | ABULOF U |
| AFILIACIONES | Tel Aviv University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5926-732X |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 32 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 131 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 32 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2008 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2023 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Cosmic Political Theory
Modern political thought arrived on the heels of two revolutionary realizations: We are not at the center of the universe (Copernicus), which was not created for us (Darwin). How might political theory respond to a third revolutionary realization, that we are not alone, that other creatures, sentient and highly intelligent, share our vast universe? We explore answers through a dialogue between two political theorists, a human and an alien. Rather…
The pandemic politics of existential anxiety
We all know we will die, but not when and how. Can private death awareness become public, and what happens when it does? This mixed-method research on the Covid-19 crisis reveals how pandemic politics cultivates and uses mass existential anxiety. Analyzing global discourse across vast corpora, we reveal an exceptional rise in global ‘mortality salience’ (awareness of death), and trace the socio-political dynamics feeding it. Comparing governmenta…
Taming self-determination
The right of peoples to self-determination lies at the heart of the modern quest for statehood. This century-old principle warrants a world of true nation-states, where national boundaries make state borders, not the other way around. I argue, however, that the concept of ‘self-determination’ has been effectively (ab)used to foil, rather than foster, its original goal, and explain why and how this paradox transpired. In theory, self-determination…
Response to Arjun Chowdhury’s review of The Mortality and Morality of Nations
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Nationalism as legitimation
Walker Connor is seemingly both a primordialist and a modernist: Nations emanate from basic human sentiments but emerged in late modernity. Is this not an aberration, a contradiction both conceptual and causal? Connor, a champion of academic clarity, obviously thought not, and he was right. What accounts for Connor's unique take on nationalism, and why, for many, does it still seem odd? The answer to both quandaries, I argue, lies in Connor's own…
Communication, Legitimation and Morality in Modern Politics
Unpacking public justification
This brief response to Greenfeld's caveat submits that public justification is not omnipresent, but can extend, and has extended, beyond the modern, liberal West. Subscribing to a thin, rather than thick, conceptualization of public justification, we chart the contested contours of public justification, and urge scholars of this emergent field to clarify their own take before advancing pertinent theories and case studies. We briefly expound the n…
Introduction
Introducing the special issue, this introduction sketches a broad frame for studying public justification. Addressing the relevance of studying this phenomenon, we contend that justificatory processes are very much at the core today’s politics. Defining the concept inclusively, we highlight the relevance of communicative agency and, at the same time, the salience of communicative contexts that enable this agency. Casting our net widely, we show h…
Conscientious politics and Israel’s moral dilemmas
This paper introduces 'conscientious politics', discusses their features and shows their resonance in the case of Israel. I define conscientious politics as politics informed by moral deliberations about legitimacy, and locate them in the larger matrix of conscience. In the balance between passion and persuasion, conscientious politics provide time and invite venues for deliberation on the social contract, challenging rulers' convenience and soci…
Introduction
Be Yourself! How Am I Not myself
Mirage or Vision
What is binationalism, what sets it apart, and can it help resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict? This paper crystallizes the concept of binationalism and shows how it challenges prevalent principles and practices. I distinguish binationalism from dual citizenship and civic-ethnic amalgams, and analyse its normative narrative. Typically, the nation proclaims ‘this land belongs to us’ and ‘we belong to the land.’ With binationalism, two ethnic …
Democracy for the rescue—of dictators? The role of regime type in civil war interventions
Intrastate conflicts, long eclipsing interstate conflicts, are often internationalized. This paper examines internationalized intrastate conflicts through the types of both the intervening and the embattled regimes. Do democracies, more or less than autocracies, support autocratic governments in their fights against rebels? This paper tests three hypotheses: (1) democracies support autocrats fighting rebels less than autocracies do. (2) Democraci…
Zionism and its discontents
We the peoples? The strange demise of self-determination
The self-determination of peoples is a fundamental legitimating principle of the international system; it justifies the system’s very existence. Through a vast diachronic corpus and pertinent data sets, this article nevertheless reveals a puzzling decline in the public discourse on, and practice of, self-determination over the last 50 years. I identify and assess four structural explanations for this decline: “lexical change” (replacing self-dete…
Public political thought
The study of political legitimacy is divided between prescriptive and descriptive approaches. Political philosophy regards legitimacy asprincipled justification, sociology regards legitimacy aspublic support. However, all people can, and occasionally do engage in morally reasoning their political life. This paper thus submits that in studying socio-politicallegitimation- the legitimacy-making process - the philosophicaloughtand the sociologicalis…
The Mortality and Morality of Nations
Standing at the edge of life's abyss, we seek meaningful order. We commonly find this 'symbolic immortality' in religion, civilization, state and nation. What happens, however, when the nation itself appears mortal? The Mortality and Morality of Nations seeks to answer this question, theoretically and empirically. It argues that mortality makes morality, and right makes might; the nation's sense of a looming abyss informs its quest for a higher m…
Conclusion
Anniversary years invite reflection, and 2015 provides such an occasion. It marks not only two centuries since the ratification of the Final Acts of the Congress of Vienna, but also 70 years since
The Confused Compass
Self-determination, a prime justificatory principle of the international society, has become a confused, and confusing, compass. At the heart of this confusion, I argue, lies the tacit submersion of self-determination in state-determination. In principle, self-determination entails the ‘moral double helix' of duality (personal right to align with a people, and the people’s right to determine their politics) and mutuality (the right is as much the…
Can’t buy me legitimacy’
Divine Service? Judaism and Israel's Armed Forces
In Divine Service? Stuart Cohen collects, updates, and appends some of his key articles to present a rigorous analysis of Judaism's modern return to arms. A leading expert on the subject, Cohen emp
The people want(s) to bring down the regime
When and what is the nation, and nationalism, and when have both emerged in theArab world? I suggest new ways of approaching these questions, and new answers. Revisiting the ‘dating debate’,Ipropose distinguishing between negative nationalism (rejecting foreign rule) and positive nationalism (holding ‘the people’ as the source of legitimacy), the latter distinctively modern, the former not. Empirically,Iexamine these theoretical propositions in l…
The malpractice of "rationality" in international relations
This article investigates the misuse of "rationality" in academic and political discourses, focusing on the Iranian nuclear project. The concept of rationality is ubiquitous; scholars, pundits, and practitioners turn to it, sometimes unwittingly, to describe, explain, and predict. When concerning concrete security and foreign policies, however, this praxis borders on malpractice: rationality-based descriptions are largely either false or unfalsif…
Revisiting Iran’s nuclear rationales
National ethics in ethnic conflicts
Ethnic conflicts often involve a delegitimation of the rival ethnic community and its national aspirations. This, I suggest, can impel the community in question to legitimate its politics through ethical principles, which in turn may affect its policies. An abiding non-recognition of the ethnonational movement from within and without may engender ethical transformation and policy reorientation. Empirically, I trace the emergence, evolvement and p…
Small Peoples
This exploratory paper attempts to extend the boundaries of research on the "smallness" of polities. It introduces the concept of "small peoples," a term coined by Czech author Milan Kundera to denote communities that lack a "sense of an eternal past and future." The paper posits "small peoples" as ethnic communities characterized by prolonged and deep-rooted uncertainty regarding their own existence. I argue that in modern times, "small peoples"…
Normative concepts analysis
How should we study the language of political legitimation? Incipient scholarship increasingly seeks to bridge the conceptual schism between the sociological is and the philosophical ought in the study of legitimacy, looking at public legitimating discourses to uncover the actual social attitudes toward prescriptive principles. And while this research agenda has recently gained traction, its methodology remains opaque. This paper suggests that no…
Public political thought
The study of political legitimacy is divided between prescriptive and descriptive approaches. Political philosophy regards legitimacy asprincipled justification, sociology regards legitimacy aspublic support. However, all people can, and occasionally do engage in morally reasoning their political life. This paper thus submits that in studying socio-politicallegitimation- the legitimacy-making process - the philosophicaloughtand the sociologicalis…
Can’t buy me legitimacy’
Deep Securitization and Israel's 'Demographic Demon
Securitization theory's core contention—the social construction of security as a “speech–act”—is perceptive and productive, yet insufficiently attentive to societies engulfed in profound existential uncertainty about their own survival. Such societies are immersed in what I call “deep securitization,” whereby widespread public discourses explicitly frame threats as probable, protracted, and endangering the very existence of the nation/state. Unde…
The people want(s) to bring down the regime
When and what is the nation, and nationalism, and when have both emerged in theArab world? I suggest new ways of approaching these questions, and new answers. Revisiting the ‘dating debate’,Ipropose distinguishing between negative nationalism (rejecting foreign rule) and positive nationalism (holding ‘the people’ as the source of legitimacy), the latter distinctively modern, the former not. Empirically,Iexamine these theoretical propositions in l…
Introduction
Introducing the special issue, this introduction sketches a broad frame for studying public justification. Addressing the relevance of studying this phenomenon, we contend that justificatory processes are very much at the core today’s politics. Defining the concept inclusively, we highlight the relevance of communicative agency and, at the same time, the salience of communicative contexts that enable this agency. Casting our net widely, we show h…
The Confused Compass
Self-determination, a prime justificatory principle of the international society, has become a confused, and confusing, compass. At the heart of this confusion, I argue, lies the tacit submersion of self-determination in state-determination. In principle, self-determination entails the ‘moral double helix' of duality (personal right to align with a people, and the people’s right to determine their politics) and mutuality (the right is as much the…
National ethics in ethnic conflicts
Ethnic conflicts often involve a delegitimation of the rival ethnic community and its national aspirations. This, I suggest, can impel the community in question to legitimate its politics through ethical principles, which in turn may affect its policies. An abiding non-recognition of the ethnonational movement from within and without may engender ethical transformation and policy reorientation. Empirically, I trace the emergence, evolvement and p…
The Roles of Religion in National Legitimation
Why and how do nations turn to religion to justify claims for statehood? This article addresses this question in both theory and practice, showing that religion plays multiple legitimating roles that shift dynamically according to the success they yield for national movements. I posit four legitimating models: (1) nationalism instead of religion ('secular nationalism'), (2) nationalism as a religion ('civil religion'), (3) religion as a resource …
Revisiting Iran’s nuclear rationales
The pandemic politics of existential anxiety
We all know we will die, but not when and how. Can private death awareness become public, and what happens when it does? This mixed-method research on the Covid-19 crisis reveals how pandemic politics cultivates and uses mass existential anxiety. Analyzing global discourse across vast corpora, we reveal an exceptional rise in global ‘mortality salience’ (awareness of death), and trace the socio-political dynamics feeding it. Comparing governmenta…
Democracy for the rescue—of dictators? The role of regime type in civil war interventions
Intrastate conflicts, long eclipsing interstate conflicts, are often internationalized. This paper examines internationalized intrastate conflicts through the types of both the intervening and the embattled regimes. Do democracies, more or less than autocracies, support autocratic governments in their fights against rebels? This paper tests three hypotheses: (1) democracies support autocrats fighting rebels less than autocracies do. (2) Democraci…
Unpacking public justification
This brief response to Greenfeld's caveat submits that public justification is not omnipresent, but can extend, and has extended, beyond the modern, liberal West. Subscribing to a thin, rather than thick, conceptualization of public justification, we chart the contested contours of public justification, and urge scholars of this emergent field to clarify their own take before advancing pertinent theories and case studies. We briefly expound the n…
We the peoples? The strange demise of self-determination
The self-determination of peoples is a fundamental legitimating principle of the international system; it justifies the system’s very existence. Through a vast diachronic corpus and pertinent data sets, this article nevertheless reveals a puzzling decline in the public discourse on, and practice of, self-determination over the last 50 years. I identify and assess four structural explanations for this decline: “lexical change” (replacing self-dete…
Nuclear Diversion Theory and Legitimacy Crisis
Can an insecure regime use nuclear diversion to address its eroding domestic legitimacy? This article argues that facing a domestic legitimacy crisis, a regime might opt to “rally round the nuclear flag” to survive. Theoretically, I argue that, compared with conventional diversion, nuclear diversion is less susceptible to structural restraints, has a unique symbolic value that could aid in coping with an acute legitimacy crisis, and spans a host …
Taming self-determination
The right of peoples to self-determination lies at the heart of the modern quest for statehood. This century-old principle warrants a world of true nation-states, where national boundaries make state borders, not the other way around. I argue, however, that the concept of ‘self-determination’ has been effectively (ab)used to foil, rather than foster, its original goal, and explain why and how this paradox transpired. In theory, self-determination…
Nationalism as legitimation
Walker Connor is seemingly both a primordialist and a modernist: Nations emanate from basic human sentiments but emerged in late modernity. Is this not an aberration, a contradiction both conceptual and causal? Connor, a champion of academic clarity, obviously thought not, and he was right. What accounts for Connor's unique take on nationalism, and why, for many, does it still seem odd? The answer to both quandaries, I argue, lies in Connor's own…
Conscientious politics and Israel’s moral dilemmas
This paper introduces 'conscientious politics', discusses their features and shows their resonance in the case of Israel. I define conscientious politics as politics informed by moral deliberations about legitimacy, and locate them in the larger matrix of conscience. In the balance between passion and persuasion, conscientious politics provide time and invite venues for deliberation on the social contract, challenging rulers' convenience and soci…
Mirage or Vision
What is binationalism, what sets it apart, and can it help resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict? This paper crystallizes the concept of binationalism and shows how it challenges prevalent principles and practices. I distinguish binationalism from dual citizenship and civic-ethnic amalgams, and analyse its normative narrative. Typically, the nation proclaims ‘this land belongs to us’ and ‘we belong to the land.’ With binationalism, two ethnic …
The malpractice of "rationality" in international relations
This article investigates the misuse of "rationality" in academic and political discourses, focusing on the Iranian nuclear project. The concept of rationality is ubiquitous; scholars, pundits, and practitioners turn to it, sometimes unwittingly, to describe, explain, and predict. When concerning concrete security and foreign policies, however, this praxis borders on malpractice: rationality-based descriptions are largely either false or unfalsif…
Back to the Future
Israeli Arabs' "future vision" documents are an ethical-political manifesto, contextualized in academic discourse and informed by socio-historical parallels. Hence, this article examines their political ethics in a comparative perspective, by referencing the case of Israeli Arabs along with two other distinct intra-state conflicts: the strife between Anglophones and Francophones in Canada and the struggle between Macedonians and Albanians in Mace…
Small Peoples
This exploratory paper attempts to extend the boundaries of research on the "smallness" of polities. It introduces the concept of "small peoples," a term coined by Czech author Milan Kundera to denote communities that lack a "sense of an eternal past and future." The paper posits "small peoples" as ethnic communities characterized by prolonged and deep-rooted uncertainty regarding their own existence. I argue that in modern times, "small peoples"…
Land, Blood and Ballots
Few contemporary students of international relations would disagree that globalization challenges traditional state sovereignty. Many, in fact, embrace the assertion as their research premise, attempting to gauge the scope of the change, trace its dynamics and decipher its causes. Given global migration, the separation of voting rights and residential citizenship provides a unique lens onto this change. Bauböck (2005:683) notes that the “dual res…
Nuclear Diversion Theory and Legitimacy Crisis
Can an insecure regime use nuclear diversion to address its eroding domestic legitimacy? This article argues that facing a domestic legitimacy crisis, a regime might opt to “rally round the nuclear flag” to survive. Theoretically, I argue that, compared with conventional diversion, nuclear diversion is less susceptible to structural restraints, has a unique symbolic value that could aid in coping with an acute legitimacy crisis, and spans a host …
Normative concepts analysis
How should we study the language of political legitimation? Incipient scholarship increasingly seeks to bridge the conceptual schism between the sociological is and the philosophical ought in the study of legitimacy, looking at public legitimating discourses to uncover the actual social attitudes toward prescriptive principles. And while this research agenda has recently gained traction, its methodology remains opaque. This paper suggests that no…
Revisiting Iran’s nuclear rationales
National ethics in ethnic conflicts
Ethnic conflicts often involve a delegitimation of the rival ethnic community and its national aspirations. This, I suggest, can impel the community in question to legitimate its politics through ethical principles, which in turn may affect its policies. An abiding non-recognition of the ethnonational movement from within and without may engender ethical transformation and policy reorientation. Empirically, I trace the emergence, evolvement and p…
The Roles of Religion in National Legitimation
Why and how do nations turn to religion to justify claims for statehood? This article addresses this question in both theory and practice, showing that religion plays multiple legitimating roles that shift dynamically according to the success they yield for national movements. I posit four legitimating models: (1) nationalism instead of religion ('secular nationalism'), (2) nationalism as a religion ('civil religion'), (3) religion as a resource …
Deep Securitization and Israel's 'Demographic Demon
Securitization theory's core contention—the social construction of security as a “speech–act”—is perceptive and productive, yet insufficiently attentive to societies engulfed in profound existential uncertainty about their own survival. Such societies are immersed in what I call “deep securitization,” whereby widespread public discourses explicitly frame threats as probable, protracted, and endangering the very existence of the nation/state. Unde…
The Mortality and Morality of Nations
Standing at the edge of life's abyss, we seek meaningful order. We commonly find this 'symbolic immortality' in religion, civilization, state and nation. What happens, however, when the nation itself appears mortal? The Mortality and Morality of Nations seeks to answer this question, theoretically and empirically. It argues that mortality makes morality, and right makes might; the nation's sense of a looming abyss informs its quest for a higher m…
Conclusion
Anniversary years invite reflection, and 2015 provides such an occasion. It marks not only two centuries since the ratification of the Final Acts of the Congress of Vienna, but also 70 years since
The Confused Compass
Self-determination, a prime justificatory principle of the international society, has become a confused, and confusing, compass. At the heart of this confusion, I argue, lies the tacit submersion of self-determination in state-determination. In principle, self-determination entails the ‘moral double helix' of duality (personal right to align with a people, and the people’s right to determine their politics) and mutuality (the right is as much the…
Can’t buy me legitimacy’
Divine Service? Judaism and Israel's Armed Forces
In Divine Service? Stuart Cohen collects, updates, and appends some of his key articles to present a rigorous analysis of Judaism's modern return to arms. A leading expert on the subject, Cohen emp
The people want(s) to bring down the regime
When and what is the nation, and nationalism, and when have both emerged in theArab world? I suggest new ways of approaching these questions, and new answers. Revisiting the ‘dating debate’,Ipropose distinguishing between negative nationalism (rejecting foreign rule) and positive nationalism (holding ‘the people’ as the source of legitimacy), the latter distinctively modern, the former not. Empirically,Iexamine these theoretical propositions in l…
The malpractice of "rationality" in international relations
This article investigates the misuse of "rationality" in academic and political discourses, focusing on the Iranian nuclear project. The concept of rationality is ubiquitous; scholars, pundits, and practitioners turn to it, sometimes unwittingly, to describe, explain, and predict. When concerning concrete security and foreign policies, however, this praxis borders on malpractice: rationality-based descriptions are largely either false or unfalsif…
Mirage or Vision
What is binationalism, what sets it apart, and can it help resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict? This paper crystallizes the concept of binationalism and shows how it challenges prevalent principles and practices. I distinguish binationalism from dual citizenship and civic-ethnic amalgams, and analyse its normative narrative. Typically, the nation proclaims ‘this land belongs to us’ and ‘we belong to the land.’ With binationalism, two ethnic …
Democracy for the rescue—of dictators? The role of regime type in civil war interventions
Intrastate conflicts, long eclipsing interstate conflicts, are often internationalized. This paper examines internationalized intrastate conflicts through the types of both the intervening and the embattled regimes. Do democracies, more or less than autocracies, support autocratic governments in their fights against rebels? This paper tests three hypotheses: (1) democracies support autocrats fighting rebels less than autocracies do. (2) Democraci…
Zionism and its discontents
We the peoples? The strange demise of self-determination
The self-determination of peoples is a fundamental legitimating principle of the international system; it justifies the system’s very existence. Through a vast diachronic corpus and pertinent data sets, this article nevertheless reveals a puzzling decline in the public discourse on, and practice of, self-determination over the last 50 years. I identify and assess four structural explanations for this decline: “lexical change” (replacing self-dete…
Public political thought
The study of political legitimacy is divided between prescriptive and descriptive approaches. Political philosophy regards legitimacy asprincipled justification, sociology regards legitimacy aspublic support. However, all people can, and occasionally do engage in morally reasoning their political life. This paper thus submits that in studying socio-politicallegitimation- the legitimacy-making process - the philosophicaloughtand the sociologicalis…
Communication, Legitimation and Morality in Modern Politics
Unpacking public justification
This brief response to Greenfeld's caveat submits that public justification is not omnipresent, but can extend, and has extended, beyond the modern, liberal West. Subscribing to a thin, rather than thick, conceptualization of public justification, we chart the contested contours of public justification, and urge scholars of this emergent field to clarify their own take before advancing pertinent theories and case studies. We briefly expound the n…
Introduction
Introducing the special issue, this introduction sketches a broad frame for studying public justification. Addressing the relevance of studying this phenomenon, we contend that justificatory processes are very much at the core today’s politics. Defining the concept inclusively, we highlight the relevance of communicative agency and, at the same time, the salience of communicative contexts that enable this agency. Casting our net widely, we show h…
Conscientious politics and Israel’s moral dilemmas
This paper introduces 'conscientious politics', discusses their features and shows their resonance in the case of Israel. I define conscientious politics as politics informed by moral deliberations about legitimacy, and locate them in the larger matrix of conscience. In the balance between passion and persuasion, conscientious politics provide time and invite venues for deliberation on the social contract, challenging rulers' convenience and soci…
Political science (31 obras) · Law (28 obras) · Sociology (28 obras) · Law (22 obras) · Politics (22 obras) · Philosophy (16 obras) · Political economy (14 obras) · Epistemology (12 obras) · Philosophy (11 obras) · Legitimacy (9 obras)