CSP Analytic Themes

Citizenship, Social Groupings and Civil Society examines the relationship between the state, the creation of public policy and the roles played by citizens and civil society in developing and responding to state initiatives. It concerns the formation and contestation of political legitimacy and hegemony, and deals specifically with issues such as public ethics, liberal democracy and alternative approaches to social and political formation. It raises questions about the capacity for dominant understandings of the status of citizenship and rights against the state to address substantial concerns about welfare, economic and social dependency, justice towards groups, and state protection. It investigates power and social change in developed and developing societies, as well as in newer forms of transnational civil associations and communities.

States and Regimes explores the asymmetries present in global and regional power, the effects of the policies of developed states on the citizens of the developing world, as well as the transnational and international economic and political architecture. Although much of international debate presupposes the unexamined existence of states as loci of authority and power, recognition of the vulnerability of states to military occupation, civil war and non-state international actions challenges that understanding, evidenced by the growing recognition of the phenomenon of “failed states”. Social, political and economic relations between developed and developing states are often mediated through transnational regimes of law, finance, economics and politics, so the study of bilateral, regional and multilateral relations and initiatives is crucial to understanding how states and non-state actors exercise power and the effects of those decisions on citizens.

Political Communities and Conflict explores the complex roots of violent conflict, the social and political consequences of war and conflict, and the efforts made by political communities to resolve their differences through negotiation and other means. This research theme explores conflicts between and within states, resistance and challenges to centralised power, and the social effects of violent conflict such as war or civil war on communities. It also explores how popular consent for war is formed within communities and how communities then cope with grief and loss.

Public Policy and Public Reason explores both the emergence of challenges to existing scientific paradigms from new technologies that enable new kinds of intervention into biological, cultural and social processes, as well as the difficulty ‘ethical pluralism’ presents for the very notion of the ‘public interest’. This theme draws on social and political theory and applied ethics to address questions concerning the legitimacy of state regulation in areas of significant social and cultural conflict.

Last reviewed: 13 May, 2008