Name: Michael Gamkrelidze
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: gam1938@gmail.com
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Institution: Independent researcher
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Paper Title: Democracy as State of Social Boundaries: An Attempt of the Systemic Approach  
Abstract:
ABSTRACT: In social sciences democracy is usually considered as political method founded on universal adult suffrage with confidential voting and majority’s right to elect government. In this essay, in contrast, democracy is regarded and analyzed as a certain state of the human society – an open steady state system of the “third order”. Since the various states of society are not limited in number, an attempt has been made to distinguish among them a few basic categories – capitalism, socialism and democracy, to find their intrinsic features and express them in terms of highest abstraction, thus making them comparable and quantifiable, what in perspective сould make possible to handle social sciences as rigorously, as natural sciences. The core notion of this approach, based on Schopenhauer’s philosophy and L. Bertalanffy’s systems theory, is that of social boundary. Social change is considered as changes of the state of social boundaries and so are analyzed the historical facts and events. Key words are: discrete and continuous states of social system, social boundary.

Name: Mirza Sadaqat Huda
Section:
Professional Email: mirzahuda@ntu.edu.sg
Professional Status: Practitioner
Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Afternoon
Proposal Type: Paper
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Co-author info: Prof. Saleem Ali, University of Delaware
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Paper Title: Energy diplomacy in South Asia: Beyond the security paradigm in accessing the TAPI pipeline project
Abstract:
On the 13th of December 2015, the leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India officially inaugurated the TAPI pipeline, which is set to be the largest cross-country energy infrastructure project undertaken in South Asia with an expected completion date of 2019. The limited literature on TAPI has almost exclusively focused on security impediments to the pipeline from the perspective of the member countries of the project. This paper argues that the solution to these impediments is greatly constrained by a reductionist rather than a multistakeholder approach. Using a broader understanding of the concept of energy diplomacy, this paper argues that energy infrastructure such as the TAPI can be used to encourage interdependency by expanding the number of stakeholders beyond the member countries of the project. While including the interests of external countries and institutions may build consensus on political issues, identifying ways by which the interests of communities can be addressed may reduce the explicit emphasis on the physical security of the pipeline by including human security concerns within the project’s blueprint. The cumulative impact of such an approach may create a shift in the perception of energy projects from the purview of security, to one of inclusive cooperation.

Name: Shafakat Mirza
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: shafakathassan@yahoo.co.in
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Institution: Kashmir University
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Paper Title: Power-Knowledge-Morality triangle.
Abstract:
'Power is to politics what money is to economics' is a valid statement. When we are discussing politics we are basically talking about the relations of power. If we broaden politics to include all the things that Aristotle included in his definition or we narrow it to the colloquial use of the term, in both the cases politics is the process of deciphering power. In this paper, I wish to do the same but in a theoretical sense. What my paper and theory proposes is a way of looking at systems and relations of power from a prism which I term as Power – Knowledge – Morality Triangle, which basically demonstrates how the institutions of power from family right up to the superpowers use the systems of knowledge to create the sense of right and wrong, which we term as morality. This morality then works like a feedback mechanism strengthening the power structure, henceforth creating a vicious circle. In the process what is developed inside the triangle is what I call as the gravitational pull of the power system which makes it very difficult for people and societies to escape. The methodology that I have used is an extensive reading of literature from various fields of knowledge. I have substantiated my theory (besides other evidence) from the study of Anarchism and Feminism. I have analyzed the family structure as well as the schooling system. This will give the readers a deep insight into the theory. The conclusions that I draw are pretty evident from the theory itself – how structures of power use systems of knowledge to construct morality in order to strengthen the existing power structures. Besides, as a solution which comes out of this and not only gives us a comprehensive moral theory but also political solutions to innumerable issues is how we can change the prism by shifting the triangle as Knowledge-Morality-Power triangle which implies that instead of allowing the structures of power to use knowledge as a tool in shaping morality for their ends we start with rational knowledge itself as the guiding principle to shape morality which at times can justify a power structure to enforce it. Hence morality will not be constructed by power structures rather morality inspired by knowledge will give birth to the structures of power.

Name: Veena Soni
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: veenasony8@gmail.com
Professional Status: Assistant Professor
Institution: JAI NARAYAN VYAS UNIVERSITY JODHPUR (RAJ)
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
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Co-author info: INDIVIDUAL PAPER
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Paper Title:  The Political Economy of Capitalism
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Capitalism is often defined as an economic system where private actors are allowed to own and control the use of property in accord with their own interests, and where the invisible hand of the pricing mechanism coordinates supply and demand in markets in a way that is automatically in the best interests of society. Government, in this perspective, is often described as responsible for peace, justice, and tolerable taxes. This paper defines capitalism as a system of indirect governance for economic relationships, where all markets exist within institutional frameworks that are provided by political authorities, i.e. governments. In this second perspective capitalism is a three level system much like any organized sports. Markets occupy the first level, where the competition takes place; the institutional foundations that underpin those markets are the second; and the political authority that administers the system is the third. While markets do indeed coordinate supply and demand with the help of the invisible hand in a short term, quasi-static perspective, government coordinates the modernization of market frameworks in accord with changing circumstances, including changing perceptions of societal costs and benefits. In this broader perspective government has two distinct roles, one to administer the existing institutional frameworks, including the provision of infrastructure and the administration of laws and regulations, and the second to mobilize political power to bring about modernization of those frameworks as circumstances and/or societal priorities change. Thus, for a capitalist system to evolve in an effective developmental sense through time, it must have two hands and not one: an invisible hand that is implicit in the pricing mechanism and a visible hand that is explicitly managed by government through a legislature and a bureaucracy. Inevitably the visible hand has a strategy, no matter how implicit, short sighted or incoherent that strategy may be.

Name: Kumar Thangavelsamy
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: tkumar@xsrm.edu.in
Professional Status: Assistant Professor
Institution: Xavier University, Bhubaneswar, India
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title: Capital Vs. Digital Labour in the Information Age - A Marxist Analysis
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In the third millennium AD, humanity has reached the phase of the Post-Industrial Information age. This age is characterized by the ubiquitous usage of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) in all aspects of social reality. ICTs are not just a tool for automation of social production but are qualitatively different from other preceding technologies. It can be understood that ICTs are situated at the cutting edge of current global Capitalism. There is a danger that ICTs are enhancing capitalist consumerism by converting the 'Complete human being' into the 'Complete consumer'. In this information age, a paradoxical social reality characterized by Geography without distance, History without time, Value without weight and Transactions without cash seems to be unfolding. The current “Post-Fordist” mode of production is qualitatively different from the earlier Fordist mode of production. In this historical context it becomes imperative to understand the dialectical relation between capital and labour. Rather than the “factory” being the locus of struggle between capital and labour, since service sector and white-collar work have become important, the locus of struggle between capital and labour has in some sense shifted to the “office”. ICT based workers can currently be considered as a “Class-in-itself”, rather than a “Class-for-itself”. A large proportion of the global workforce are increasingly working for the same transnational corporations. So, it is possible to some extent to unify the global proletariat under the soul stirring Marxist slogan “Workers of the world unite”. ICT enabled ‘Telework’ changes the ‘Political economy of the home’, so that more surplus value can be extracted. ICTs have influenced the contestation of time between capital and labour that has been happening all through the history of capitalism. ‘Telework’ and flexible production have influenced workers powers of collective bargaining. There are new challenges in organizing workers in the gig economy. When the ontological roots of ICTs are situated within the neo-Marxist Habermasian framework of critical theory, its potential for human emancipation is understood. But on the contrary, there is also a danger that ICTs may end up as a tool to consolidate and strengthen the existing powers of the bourgeoisie. The Gramscian notion of hegemony and Althusser’s concept of ISA (Ideological State Apparatus) may be getting reinforced by ICTs for social reproduction of the capitalist relations of production. After engaging with such issues, this paper surmises that the nature of the relation between capital and labour in the post-industrial information age is qualitatively different from the earlier industrial age. But nevertheless, it concludes that the possibilities of labour getting into a more just relation with capital and in the process bring about a more equitable global social order still exists.

Name: Robert Whelan
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: rwhelan1@binghamton.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: SUNY Binghamton
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
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Paper Title: The Costs and Benefits of Prosecution: An Attempt to Justify the Costs of Amnesty to Human Security
Abstract:
Typically, given considerations of state security, a ‘principle of limited prosecutorial selection’ is adopted after large-scale conflicts have occurred. According to this principle prosecutions for violations of International Criminal Law should be limited to those in command positions while lower-level perpetrators are typically granted amnesty and incorporated into Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration practices. Though a legal measure, amnesties are granted to secure the political end of security by incentivising beneficiaries to cease hostilities. Justifying the forgoing of prosecutions to secure such political ends typically relies on an appeal to aggregation; overall the expected benefit of social stability to be achieved through the disarmament of perpetrators is understood to outweigh the expected costs. Beginning from the assumption that there are strong moral reasons to adopt a ‘human security’ focus in the design of post-conflict peacebuilding strategies, I will argue that the moral justification for adopting a ‘principle of limited selection’ fails when it relies upon an appeal to aggregation. Part of the concern is that the costs associated with the adoption of such principles will be unevenly distributed. Such costs range from the threats to individual security entailed by the risks of recidivism to the normative costs incurred when the state fails to uphold its obligations to address instances of injustice against its citizens. As these costs will be unequally shared, certain citizens can expect to individually bear costs that are greater than the gains any other citizen can individually expect to receive. Those who expect to be placed at a net-disadvantage can object that adopting a principle of limited prosecutorial selection morally wrongs them as it imposes unreasonable burdens on them in order to secure aggregate benefits. However, the attempt to increase prosecutions would generate excessive material and strategic costs, such as motivating belligerents to return to hostilities, that a fragile state will be ill-equipped to manage. From the state’s perspective such a strategy would only destabilize the society, forgoing the political benefits to be gained from reduced prosecutions. Therefore, there are clear tensions between the state’s interest in maintaining security and the normative and legal arguments of international actors, who claim that state sovereignty is predicated on the responsibility to protect individual citizens. As increased prosecutions are not viable it is necessary to provide a justification for why the principle of limited selection does not morally wrong those affected. To advance this argument I will draw on Thomas Scanlon’s contractualist moral theory, developed in What We Owe to Each Other (1998). On Scanlon’s account justifying a principle requires the associated costs to be justified to each individual that is expected to bear them and not simply to the aggregate of citizens. A principle can be considered justified when each person affected has no reasonable objection strong enough to favour an alternative principle. By adopting the contractualist account it is possible to ensure that peacebuilding strategies can be used to achieve political goals in a way that is consistent with the normative constraints entailed by a ‘human security’ focus.