Jonathan White
Biographic Data
| ID | 3580864 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jonathan White |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jonathan |
| FAMILY NAME | White |
| SIGNATURE | WHITE J |
| AFFILIATIONS | London School of Economics and Political Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4668-698X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 77 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 499 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 76 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Time and the Neo-Monarchist Turn
One of the classical arguments against democracy concerns its supposed short-termism. Early-modern political thought contrasted the pitfalls of elected authority, whose timebound character was seen to invite inconstancy, instability and plunder, with the merits of indefinite rule on the model of kingship. Such reasoning has seen two revivals in recent years, first in a neo-liberal form as an argument for technocracy (see independent central banki…
Between Extremes: Seeking the Political Center in the Civil War North
Commentary on Jens Beckert's “Where Have All the Futures Gone?”
The crisis of long-termism: Time and independence in the European Union
Transition: Revisiting a Troubled Concept in the Age of Climate Change
This article examines the concept of transition as it is employed in climate-change discourse, drawing lessons from earlier usage in the context of post-communist change. Approaching the green transition as both an analytical and a political concept, the article explores the intentions to which it responds, the assumptions that come with it and the extent to which these are well founded. As the article argues, the concept of transition carries an…
The Future as a Democratic Resource
Beliefs about the future shape attitudes, experiences, and priorities in the present. This article explores the relationship between democracy and the expected world to come. As it argues, visions of the future are an important resource for democratic politics, putting the present in critical perspective, aiding in the formation of a collective agent, and consolidating commitment in adversity. Indirectly, they contribute also to the legitimacy of…
WhatsApp Government: On Technology, Legitimacy, and the Performance of Roles
Mobile instant messaging is widely used in governing circles today. This article considers the implications for political legitimacy, examining how far the technology encourages those in authority to act consistently with the obligations that come with their roles. It looks at several recent political scandals in which officeholders are alleged to have transgressed public norms with their use of instant messaging. It goes on to argue that the con…
Looking Back, Looking Forward: A Personal Reflection
This article contains a personal reflection of experiences in terrorism research over the past few decades. It begins by discussing early academic struggles to recognize the legitimacy of terrorism research, especially in the field of criminal justice. This is followed by a selective description of events where the author correctly predicted events as well as those where he was blindsided by surprises. It closes with an appeal to both the academy…
Technocratic myopia: On the pitfalls of depoliticising the future
That democratic authorities are systematically focused on short-term considerations is a charge often made. This 'democratic myopia' thesis typically becomes the basis for advocating the empowerment of technocratic institutions, for example in economic policy. Much less examined is what one may call the technocratic myopia thesis - the possibility that technocratic institutions have their own distinctive drivers of short-termism. This article pre…
Constitutionalizing the EU in an Age of Emergencies
Over the last decade especially, European authorities have successively invoked exceptional measures in the name of exceptional circumstances. This improvised mode of emergency response raises problems for EU legitimacy. After a brief analysis of the core patterns, the article examines the scope for reform. It considers the case for pre‐emptively strengthening the EU's emergency powers in the form of an ‘emergency constitution’. It goes on to arg…
Rule of Law (Rechtsstaat) and Social Order
Amongst the early Ordoliberals’ basic intuitions was the need to insulate political authority from mass politics and ideology. On this was founded their idea of the Rechtstaat as a regime of rules intended to constrain executive power. The chapter explores the relationship between Ordoliberalism’s anti-ideological orientation and efforts to design an order minimising the scope for discretionary intervention. It goes on to ask if the project was s…
The Civil War Letters of Dr. Daniel Garrison Brinton, Surgeon in Charge at the US Army General Hospital in Quincy
DANIEL GARRISON BRINTON was an important medical figure in the nineteenth century. Born in 1837 in Chester County, Pennsylvania—on a farm that had been in his family since 1684—he graduated from Yale in 1858 and Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1860 before traveling to Europe in 1861 to study at Paris and Heidelberg. Upon returning to the United States, he entered the Union Army in August 1862, becoming surgeon-in-chief of the First D…
Reduction in and out of context
This article investigates reduced language in academic textchat. Previous work has suggested that frequency and context play a role in whether items can be reduced. It is demonstrated that students reduce more depending on the pedagogical set-up of the course, in that more reduction took place when the teacher-less pre-seminars came early in the course. Also, it was clear that high frequency items are more subject to reduction. When the topic is …
Europe and the transnational politics of emergency
This piece outlines the concept of emergency politics as it may be applied to EU politics, distinguishing it from more familiar terms such as crisis management. We define emergency politics as a mode of politics in which actions departing from convention are rationalised as necessary responses to exceptional and urgent threats. Arguably, the many crises affecting the EU in the recent past have made this mode increasingly salient. To capture its v…
The de-institutionalisation of power beyond the state
The making of modern authority centred on efforts to formalise and de-personalise power, and transnational orders such as the European Union have often been viewed as an extension of that project. As this article argues, recent developments tell a different story. More than a decade of crisis politics has seen institutions subordinated to and reshaped by individuals and the networks they form. Locating these tendencies in a wider historical conte…
Opposing Lincoln: Clement L. Vallandigham, Presidential Power, and the Legal Battle over Dissent in Wartime by Thomas C. Mackey
Reviewed by: Opposing Lincoln: Clement L. Vallandigham, Presidential Power, and the Legal Battle over Dissent in Wartime by Thomas C. Mackey Jonathan W. White (bio) Opposing Lincoln: Clement L. Vallandigham, Presidential Power, and the Legal Battle over Dissent in Wartime. By Thomas C. Mackey. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2020. Pp. 200. Cloth, $55.00; paper, $24.95.) In his masterful study of party politics in the Civil War era, The Uni…
Emergency Politics After Globalization
Exceptional times call for exceptional measures—this formula is all too familiar in the domestic setting. Governments have often played loose with their state's constitution in the name of warding off an urgent threat. But after decades of increasing interconnectedness and emerging transnational governance, today one sees new forms of emergency politics that are cross-border in range. From the European Union to the World Health Organization, from…
Circadian Justice
This article gives an empirically-grounded analysis of the normative problems arising in connection with sleep. It takes as its point of departure three tendencies visible to varying degrees in present-day societies: the shortening of sleep, its irregularisation, and its desynchronisation. The article observes their capacity to generate injustice, identifying in particular how they produce social and political inequalities. Minorities arise chara…
What Kind of Electoral System Sustains a Politics of Firm Commitments
In an age of grand coalitions, and widespread dissatisfaction with them, it is clear that one of the major challenges for contemporary parties is to pursue power without sacrificing the principles by which they define themselves. This points to one of the most important yet neglected criteria by which to assess an electoral system: its capacity to sustain principled partisanship. This paper makes a case for the distinctiveness of this criterion a…
The Politics of Judging: The Civil War Letters of William D. Shipman
Research Article| April 01 2020 The Politics of Judging: The Civil War Letters of William D. Shipman Jonathan W. White; Jonathan W. White Jonathan W. White is associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University and the author or editor of ten books about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, including Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). Search for oth…
Paul D. Escott. Rethinking the Civil War Era: Directions for Research
Throughout his career, Paul D. Escott has established himself as one of the foremost historians of the U.S. South during the Civil War era. His books have offered provocative interpretations of important subjects, such as the nature of Confederate nationalism and President Abraham Lincoln’s policies for dealing with slavery. In this new volume, Rethinking the Civil War Era: Directions for Research, Escott reflects on the meaning of the Civil War …
Do you get us? A multi-experiment, meta-analytic test of the effect of felt understanding in intergroup relations
Europeanizing ideologies
This article explores the relationship between ideology, the state and the transnational as it bears on European integration. Though typically studied in national contexts, ideologies and their clash have been Europe-wide since their emergence. As I argue, the European Union (EU) can be understood both as the continuation of these long-standing cross-border dynamics, and as the attempt to supersede them. Contemporary developments renew this diale…
Response: The Democratic Case for Partisanship
Politics of Last Resort: Governing by Emergency in the European Union
Prominent in the EU’s recent transformations has been the tendency to advance extraordinary measures in the name of crisis response. From emergency lending to macro-economics, border management to Brexit, policies are pursued unconventionally and as measures of last resort. This book investigates the nature, rise, and implications of this politics of emergency as it appears in the transnational setting. As the author argues, recourse to this meth…
Emergency Europe
At the level of general principle, representative democracy is appealed to by the EU institutions and member states alike. Yet in today's Europe it risks being marginalised amidst the actions and rhetoric of emergency — a norm to be waived in a state of exception, leaving decisions of lasting consequence shielded from public debate. A German constitutional theorist once famously defined as sovereign the one who has the power to declare the state …
On Partisan Political Justification
Political justification figures prominently in contemporary political theory, notably in models of deliberative democracy. This article articulates and defends the essential role of partisanship in this process. Four dimensions of justification are examined in detail: the constituency to which political justifications are offered, the circumstances in which they are developed, the ways in which they are made inclusive, and the ways in which they …
Thinking generations
Often, and increasingly, social and political life is narrated using the concept of generation. This article looks at contemporary expressions of 'generationalism' in British public life. It identifies the salient themes which emerge, links these to the social and political contexts in which these ideas are produced, and examines the points where they are vulnerable to critique. Bridging science and normativity, the generational view offers a con…
Europe and the transnational politics of emergency
This piece outlines the concept of emergency politics as it may be applied to EU politics, distinguishing it from more familiar terms such as crisis management. We define emergency politics as a mode of politics in which actions departing from convention are rationalised as necessary responses to exceptional and urgent threats. Arguably, the many crises affecting the EU in the recent past have made this mode increasingly salient. To capture its v…
Rethinking the Modern Prince: Partisanship and the Democratic Ethos
This article lays out and defends the role of political parties in cultivating a democratic ethos among citizens. It argues that citizens' commitment to the democratic idea of self-rule requires positive conviction of the worth of collective political agency, and suggests that this conviction draws on three main sources, characterised as normative, motivational and executive. The article shows theoretically why parties are able to cultivate all t…
Transnational partisanship: Idea and practice
That parties might successfully organize transnationally is an idea often met with scepticism. This article argues that while certain favourable conditions are indeed absent in the transnational domain, this implies not that partisanship is impossible but that it is likely to be marked by certain traits. Specifically, it will tend to be episodic, structured as a low-density network and delocalized in its ideational content. These tendencies affec…
The Politics of Peoplehood
Contemporary political theory has made the question of the “people” a topic of sustained analysis. This article identifies two broad approaches taken—norm-based and contestation-based—and, noting some problems left outstanding, goes on to advance a complementary account centred on partisan practice. It suggests the definition of “the people” is closely bound up in the analysis of political conflict, and that partisans engaged in such conflict pla…
Europe and the Common
Significant attention has been given to the necessary conditions for a viable and legitimate European polity. Drawing on traditions in political philosophy, a central strand of this debate has concerned what must be common to a set of people such that they may be ruled through the same institutions, with various types of collective bond proposed as possible bases for political community. The argument of this article is that many such approaches, …
Europe in the Political Imagination
Perceptions of the EU tend to be studied by examining responses to targeted opinion polls. This paper looks instead at how citizens draw Europe into a wider discussion of politics and political problems. Based on a series of group discussions with taxi‐drivers in Britain, Germany and the Czech Republic, it examines the motifs speakers use to explain the origins of problems, the assumptions they make about their susceptibility to address, and how,…
Constitutionalizing the EU in an Age of Emergencies
Over the last decade especially, European authorities have successively invoked exceptional measures in the name of exceptional circumstances. This improvised mode of emergency response raises problems for EU legitimacy. After a brief analysis of the core patterns, the article examines the scope for reform. It considers the case for pre‐emptively strengthening the EU's emergency powers in the form of an ‘emergency constitution’. It goes on to arg…
Left and Right as political resources
This article examines the political categories of 'Left' and 'Right', in particular as they are evoked and instrumentalized by political actors in the democratic process. Drawing on some of the insights of positioning theory, it shows how 'Left' and 'Right' are discursive resources deployed, contested and resisted in political exchange. The article looks in depth at some of the political uses to which Left–Right talk may be put, discussing in par…
Thematization and Collective Positioning in Everyday Political Talk
This piece outlines some of the findings of an exploratory research project into popular forms of identification in the contemporary European context and their implications for projects of transnational integration such as the European Union. Drawing on a series of group interviews conducted with taxi-drivers in Britain, Germany and the Czech Republic, it looks at how political problems are articulated in discussion, how speakers position themsel…
Authority after Emergency Rule
In the context of economic crisis, E urope has witnessed a spate of extraordinary political measures pressed by executive discretion. This article examines what emergency rule of this kind implies for the possibility of normal rule thereafter. Political decision‐makers face the challenge of drawing a line under the crisis so that the unconventional measures used to handle it do not compromise the polity's norms in lasting fashion. Based on an ana…
Technocratic myopia: On the pitfalls of depoliticising the future
That democratic authorities are systematically focused on short-term considerations is a charge often made. This 'democratic myopia' thesis typically becomes the basis for advocating the empowerment of technocratic institutions, for example in economic policy. Much less examined is what one may call the technocratic myopia thesis - the possibility that technocratic institutions have their own distinctive drivers of short-termism. This article pre…
Emergency Politics After Globalization
Exceptional times call for exceptional measures—this formula is all too familiar in the domestic setting. Governments have often played loose with their state's constitution in the name of warding off an urgent threat. But after decades of increasing interconnectedness and emerging transnational governance, today one sees new forms of emergency politics that are cross-border in range. From the European Union to the World Health Organization, from…
The de-institutionalisation of power beyond the state
The making of modern authority centred on efforts to formalise and de-personalise power, and transnational orders such as the European Union have often been viewed as an extension of that project. As this article argues, recent developments tell a different story. More than a decade of crisis politics has seen institutions subordinated to and reshaped by individuals and the networks they form. Locating these tendencies in a wider historical conte…
Europeanizing ideologies
This article explores the relationship between ideology, the state and the transnational as it bears on European integration. Though typically studied in national contexts, ideologies and their clash have been Europe-wide since their emergence. As I argue, the European Union (EU) can be understood both as the continuation of these long-standing cross-border dynamics, and as the attempt to supersede them. Contemporary developments renew this diale…
European integration by daylight
Principled disobedience in the EU
The article examines how the contestation of policy in the European Union increasingly depends on a willingness to break rules. It develops an account of what a politics of disobedience in this context may look like, the kinds of political agent that can lead it, and the normative basis on which to distinguish it from illegitimate forms of extra-legality.
The Party in Time
Trends of falling membership and support spell a time of crisis for political parties, possibly of transformation. Dilemmas of principle arise: should partisans revise their normative commitments in whatever way garners new supporters, or would that be to sell their party’s soul? This article investigates this as a problem of intergenerational obligation, examining what consideration (if any) partisans owe their party’s past and future. It seeks …
Left and Right in the economic crisis
Two decades after the Cold War, the political traditions of Left and Right were widely deemed to have fossilized. Many saw them as unable to express vital alternatives, and only distantly related to contemporary political life. This article examines how far this remains true in the light of more recent upheavals. It looks at the key divisions of opinion to have emerged from the economic crisis that broke in 2008, identifying important differences…
The Social Theory of Mass Politics
This paper argues the study of mass politics is currently weakened by its separation from debates in social theory. A preliminary attempt at reconnection is made. The implications of an interpretative turn in social theorizing are explored, and the interpretative perspectives of mentalism, intersubjectivism, textualism, and practice theory examined in detail, in particular regarding how they and their equivalents in political study differ on unit…
Climate change and the generational timescape
The problems raised by global warming are widely discussed in terms of their implications for future generations. Underlying this generational scheme, and buttressed by its use, are certain ideas of time and of the relationship between the present and future. This article seeks to illuminate and critically examine these ideas. After a brief survey of the emergence of generational thinking in green thought, it looks at the defining features of thi…
Political Eschatology: A Theology of Antigovernment Extremism
This article explores apocalyptic theology in four American extremist religions: Christian Identity; Nordic Christianity and Odinism; violent, "freewheeling" fundamentalism; and Creatorism. It is argued that violent eschatology interacts with criminology in the sense that politicized religions produce criminal behavior and, at times, terrorism. A brief history of the relationship between religion and racist violence is presented as well as an ana…
The Future as a Democratic Resource
Beliefs about the future shape attitudes, experiences, and priorities in the present. This article explores the relationship between democracy and the expected world to come. As it argues, visions of the future are an important resource for democratic politics, putting the present in critical perspective, aiding in the formation of a collective agent, and consolidating commitment in adversity. Indirectly, they contribute also to the legitimacy of…
The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham: The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. 5: January 1794 to December 1797: January 1794 to December 1797
Political Eschatology: A Theology of Antigovernment Extremism
This article explores apocalyptic theology in four American extremist religions: Christian Identity; Nordic Christianity and Odinism; violent, "freewheeling" fundamentalism; and Creatorism. It is argued that violent eschatology interacts with criminology in the sense that politicized religions produce criminal behavior and, at times, terrorism. A brief history of the relationship between religion and racist violence is presented as well as an ana…
Report on Acis Conference, ‘The Importance of Italy’, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, September 2001
Italian programmes can now be taken in fteen of Australia's thirty-nine universities-a contraction from their offer in twenty-six universities in 1990. In order to promote collaboration among Italianists and Italian scholars in both Australia and New Zealand, the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies (ACIS) was established in 2000, under a management representing seven universities. ACIS’ work includes the organization of conferences (the next …
The “Slow but Sure Poyson”: The Representation of Gin and Its Drinkers, 1736–1751
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Citizens and soldiers: Party competition and the debate in Pennsylvania over permitting soldiers to vote, 1861–64
Political historians of the Civil War era frequently downplay the role of the Democratic Party. Studies of the Democrats in wartime often describe the loyal opposition as able to do little more than react to the policies of the Republicans in power. This has been particularly true regarding the debate over whether or not soldiers should be allowed to vote. Most historians assume that Republicans supported permitting soldiers to vote because it wa…
A World of Goods? The ‘Consumption Turn’ and Eighteenth-Century British History
Italian Cultural Lineages
The Social Theory of Mass Politics
This paper argues the study of mass politics is currently weakened by its separation from debates in social theory. A preliminary attempt at reconnection is made. The implications of an interpretative turn in social theorizing are explored, and the interpretative perspectives of mentalism, intersubjectivism, textualism, and practice theory examined in detail, in particular regarding how they and their equivalents in political study differ on unit…
Thematization and Collective Positioning in Everyday Political Talk
This piece outlines some of the findings of an exploratory research project into popular forms of identification in the contemporary European context and their implications for projects of transnational integration such as the European Union. Drawing on a series of group interviews conducted with taxi-drivers in Britain, Germany and the Czech Republic, it looks at how political problems are articulated in discussion, how speakers position themsel…
Pain and Degradation in Georgian London: Life in the Marshalsea Prison
The Marshalsea Prison in Southwark was London’s most important prison for poor debtors in the eighteenth century. In 1729 it came under parliamentary scrutiny by James Oglethorpe’s Gaols Committee which revealed a scandalous abuse of power involving the deliberate starvation of prisoners, torture, even murder. The prison’s deputy keeper, William Acton, stood trial on four charges of murder but was acquitted on each; there seems to have been polit…
Responding to Norm Indeterminacy outside the Nation-State Frame
I examine responses to norm indeterminacy in the transnational context, focusing on regional integration in post-War Europe. I argue that the development of the European Union has been facilitated by the use of a legitimizing device whereby policy decisions at a European level are cast as beyond the scope of reasonable political disagreement and therefore distinct from the conditions which make democracy a desirable political form at the national…
European integration by daylight
Europe and the Common
Significant attention has been given to the necessary conditions for a viable and legitimate European polity. Drawing on traditions in political philosophy, a central strand of this debate has concerned what must be common to a set of people such that they may be ruled through the same institutions, with various types of collective bond proposed as possible bases for political community. The argument of this article is that many such approaches, …
Rethinking the Modern Prince: Partisanship and the Democratic Ethos
This article lays out and defends the role of political parties in cultivating a democratic ethos among citizens. It argues that citizens' commitment to the democratic idea of self-rule requires positive conviction of the worth of collective political agency, and suggests that this conviction draws on three main sources, characterised as normative, motivational and executive. The article shows theoretically why parties are able to cultivate all t…
Europe in the Political Imagination
Perceptions of the EU tend to be studied by examining responses to targeted opinion polls. This paper looks instead at how citizens draw Europe into a wider discussion of politics and political problems. Based on a series of group discussions with taxi‐drivers in Britain, Germany and the Czech Republic, it examines the motifs speakers use to explain the origins of problems, the assumptions they make about their susceptibility to address, and how,…
The politics of other citizens
In all kinds of political action, citizens are confronted with the performances of other citizens. An important guide to political behaviour is therefore likely to be the assumptions people make concerning how others can be expected to behave. This article explores common sense ideas about other citizens as potential political participants, drawing on a series of group interviews conducted with taxi-drivers in Britain, Germany and the Czech Repub…
Declaring
European Stories: Intellectual Debates on Europe in National Contexts
Left and Right as political resources
This article examines the political categories of 'Left' and 'Right', in particular as they are evoked and instrumentalized by political actors in the democratic process. Drawing on some of the insights of positioning theory, it shows how 'Left' and 'Right' are discursive resources deployed, contested and resisted in political exchange. The article looks in depth at some of the political uses to which Left–Right talk may be put, discussing in par…
On Partisan Political Justification
Political justification figures prominently in contemporary political theory, notably in models of deliberative democracy. This article articulates and defends the essential role of partisanship in this process. Four dimensions of justification are examined in detail: the constituency to which political justifications are offered, the circumstances in which they are developed, the ways in which they are made inclusive, and the ways in which they …
The Union War
Journal Article The Union War Get access The Union War. By Gary W. Gallagher. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011. 215 pp. $27.95, ISBN978-0-674-04562-0.) Jonathan W. White Jonathan W. White Christopher Newport University Newport News, Virginia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 98, Issue 4, March 2012, Pages 1159–1160, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jar553 Published…
Community, transnationalism, and the Left-Right metaphor
The imagery of Left and Right has been a common way to conceive democratic politics in modern Europe, and commentators have suggested it be extended to the European Union. This article examines the normative implications and plausibility of European politics being cast in these terms. It focuses on the challenges of rendering political division recognizable and acceptable at a transnational level, of evoking its continuities of structure, and of …
The Music of Herbert Howells
The first large-scale study of the music of Herbert Howells, prodigiously gifted musician and favourite student of the notoriously hard-to-please Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. Herbert Howells (1892-1983) was a prodigiously gifted musician and the favourite student of the notoriously hard-to-please Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. Throughout his long life, he was one of the country's most prominent composers, writing extensively in all genres excep…
Left and Right in the economic crisis
Two decades after the Cold War, the political traditions of Left and Right were widely deemed to have fossilized. Many saw them as unable to express vital alternatives, and only distantly related to contemporary political life. This article examines how far this remains true in the light of more recent upheavals. It looks at the key divisions of opinion to have emerged from the economic crisis that broke in 2008, identifying important differences…
Thinking generations
Often, and increasingly, social and political life is narrated using the concept of generation. This article looks at contemporary expressions of 'generationalism' in British public life. It identifies the salient themes which emerge, links these to the social and political contexts in which these ideas are produced, and examines the points where they are vulnerable to critique. Bridging science and normativity, the generational view offers a con…
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