The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (3 page)

(1903–69)
German philosopher, leading figure of the
Frankfurt School
and exponent of Marxist Critical Theory. Although famous for his philosophical writings he also published widely on music and aesthetics. His main philosophical works were,
Dialectic of Enlightenment
(1947), which he co-wrote with Max Horkheimer ;
Minima Moralia
, (1951); and
Negative Dialectics
(1966). In
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Adorno elaborated on the work of both Walter Benjamin and Friedrich Pollock . Benjamin was disenchanted with the Marxist faith in historical progress while Pollock was asserting that intervention in the economy had dissipated socialism as an alternative to authoritarian or democratic forms of state capitalism. Such arguments led Adorno to see capital's domination as permeating the whole of society. Control and manipulation of the masses took place through a standardized ‘culture industry’ which negated individuality and freedom. Such an ideological stranglehold led Adorno to conclude that working-class resistance was all but extinguished.
Minima Moralia
marked his rejection of Hegelian Marxism with his assertion that ‘the whole is the false’ in contradistinction to
Hegel's
claim that ‘the true is the whole’. This was reasserted in
Negative Dialectics
where he argued that the dialectic did not reach a unity between universal and particular as Hegel had thought. Rather, it led to a non-identity where universality is in the ascendant over particularity. This argument, coupled with his observation that philosophy lives on only because the moment to realize it was missed, encapsulates the pessimism of Adorno's thought within the Marxist tradition. In empirical work, Adorno was also associated with the development of the concept of the
Authoritarian Personality
. See also
reification
.
IF 

 
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Term coined by S. E.
Finer
in his edited book
Adversary Politics and Electoral Reform
(1975) for the British parliamentary system, which he characterized as ‘a stand-up fight between two adversaries for the favour of the lookers-on’. He argued that the Labour and Conservative parties had become locked into sterile confrontation of extremisms, which might be broken by electoral reform, to which he was a recent convert. Supporters of the adversary politics hypothesis point to the debasement of parliamentary debate and Question Time; opponents variously argue that the adversaries were not adversarial on everything (for instance, in their common opposition to electoral reform) and that adversary politics was a temporary pathology.

 
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Policy designed to correct past practices of discrimination against racial minorities, women, the disabled, and other historically disadvantaged groups. The advocates of affirmative action programmes argue that it is not sufficient to pass legislation aimed at eliminating discrimination in education, employment, and other areas of human activity. Such legislation where it was successful could help eliminate discrimination in the long run, but more drastic measures were required if progress, at an acceptable pace, was to occur in the short term.
In the United States in 1970, for instance, more blacks than ever were going into higher education, yet it remained the case that while blacks made up nearly 12 per cent of the population only 2.2 per cent of doctors and 2.8 per cent of medical students were black. Statistics such as these appeared to justify admissions procedures used in the 1970s by the medical school of University of California at Davis. Under these arrangements 16 out of 100 places were reserved for minority students, mainly blacks, Chicanos, and Asian-Americans. Allen Bakke , a white applicant who achieved far better test scores than minority students who were admitted, was denied admission. Bakke challenged the legitimacy of this decision in the courts and eventually the matter was addressed by the United States Supreme Court.
In a confusing judgment the Court said that the use of quotas violated the
Fourteenth Amendment
to the Constitution and directed that Bakke should be admitted. At the same time the justices said that it was constitutionally acceptable for race to be taken into account in making admissions decisions—affirmative action, in other words, was constitutional.
Affirmative action nevertheless continues to be intensely controversial in the United States. Opponents of such policies insist that they undermine one of the most cherished values of American political culture, the commitment to equality of opportunity. Affirmative action is also condemned for standing in the way of meritocracy—a society where success in life is based on merit rather than birth, class, race, or some other spurious criterion. Critics argue further that affirmative action is ultimately destructive of the goal of eliminating discrimination—that it creates discrimination itself, a reverse discrimination where white males such as Bakke , for example, are denied opportunities for no other reason than their race and sex.
DM 

 
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Following a military coup in April 1978, the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan took power. The party was riven by sectarian disputes and, in December 1979, the Soviet Union intervened in support of Babrak Karmal who was installed as president. Military conflict ensued between the Afghan army and opposition mujahedeen forces, who were themselves factionalized. The Soviet Union became involved, committing thousands of troops to action. This failed, however, to secure stability for the new communist regime and security beyond the area around the capital, Kabul, was never established.

 
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On 7 October 2001, the United States of America commenced air strikes against targets in Afghanistan associated with the ruling Taliban movement, and Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network which the Taliban had nurtured. Prompted by al-Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon Building in Washington DC on 11 September 2001, these strikes resulted in the collapse of the Taliban movement, the routing of al-Qaeda forces, and the occupation of the Afghan capital Kabul by anti-Taliban ‘United Front’ forces on 13 November 2001.
The outbreak of this conflict was actually the culmination of years of turbulence in Afghanistan, involving the progressive breakdown of the Afghan state in the period following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, and the promotion by neighbouring countries, especially Pakistan, of surrogate forces after the collapse of communist rule in April 1992. The last such force was the Taliban movement, a mixture of radical Muslim students, former communists, and opportunistic members of the Pushtun ethnic group, which took shape in late 1994 and with backing from Bin Laden and Pakistan managed to seize Kabul in September 1996. This did not put an end to conflict: the forces of the ‘Islamic State of Afghanistan’, despite their displacement from Kabul, retained control of the north east of Afghanistan, and continued to occupy Afghanistan's seat in the United Nations General Assembly. The armed forces of the Islamic State, led by former Defence Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud , formed the core of the ‘United Front’. However, the USA did not make any effort to cultivate these forces, despite al-Qaeda attacks in August 1998 on US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, preferring instead to seek to use the Taliban's patron Pakistan as an intermediary to secure the handover of Bin Laden for trial.
On 9 September 2001, Massoud was assassinated by two al-Qaeda operatives posing as journalists. His death, however, did not lead to the fragmentation of his forces, which to Pakistan's consternation became principal partners in the US campaign to obliterate al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The overthrow of the Taliban was accomplished with relative ease, for Pakistan, under intense US pressure, was obliged to abandon its backing for the movement, at which point the Taliban's lack of legitimacy left it with little in the way of concrete support, either normative or prudential. Precision air attacks using B-52 bombers, AC-130 gunships, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and 2000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions shattered Taliban morale. Cities across the north of Afghanistan fell to the United Front in a cascade from 9–13 November, and on 7 December, the Taliban abandoned their last stronghold, Kandahar, and their leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar , went into hiding. While mopping-up operations, directed mainly at pockets of Arab and Pakistani extremists, continued into 2002, on 22 December 2001, a new ‘Afghan Interim Administration’, chaired by Hamed Karzai , was sworn into office in Kabul with the support of the United Nations and the international community, marking the end of the Taliban interlude.
WM