political-scientists-from-the-united-kingdom

"...there are smaller media houses in Africa that are more alternative. They can determine their own agenda and for example do local stories and are closer to the news. But they are often constrained by money."

"We have to remember that many media houses in Africa inherited their journalist training programs from colonial rulers. And a lot of the press in several West-African countries do tend to be dependent on CNN, Reuters or BBC."

"Action on climate change has the potential to bring people together across towns, cities, societies and countries as we are all impacted by the ongoing environmental crisis. Solutions lie in collective action."

"One could say that reporting about famine and NGOs helping African people is a good thing, but there is a negative side of how humanitarian disasters are often portrayed: African people are always in need, they are dependent of the white, industrial society. I think this is ultimately harmful to Africa."

"My interest in history was sparked by introduction to the transatlantic slave trade as a 12-year-old child in an East London comprehensive secondary school in which the National Front were prevalent in the local area."

"I was one of the few African children in a white dominated school taught history by a white male tutor in the late 70s."

"The Brookes ship, built in 1780-81 in Liverpool and co-owned by Liverpudlian Joseph Brooks, is the famous illustrated ship of 454 enslaved Africans, that most British school children are likely to have seen in history books."

"...what lives did these African people have before they were packed like sardines aboard this ship? Did they survive? To say that such an image unsettled me is an understatement."

"I started with African Studies as my first degree and on account of my interest in the history of the African diaspora studied and taught both African and Caribbean history."

"If I had to select one, it would be the life of the Mozambican freedom fighter, Josina Machel because I think we need to retrieve from historical obscurity lesser known historical figures who contributed to transforming society"

"It is very easy to point fingers at historical figures such as Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Siad Barre, Mobutu, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Margaret Thatcher, Sani Abacha and many other unsavoury figures that carried out anti-people policies, dictatorship, genocide and authoritarian rule across the globe."

"I think it’s important for people to grasp that historical figures required systems and structures and specifically other people to be complicit in the operation of such policies and to buy into the societal vision they promoted. Such figures could not act alone."

"...if we are to understand historical leaders, we must also interrogate the values, the socio-economic and political processes they help to engender that required sections of society, state and government to concede to dictatorship, genocide and the implementation of anti-people policies."

"I find deeply troubling the repeal of the Roe V Wade anti-abortion legislation in many conservative US states in a country that purports to be the “the land of the free”, alongside attempts in this country to curb the right to protest that has long been fought for."

"The Police Crime, Sentencing & Court Act 2022 is being pushed through and it seems the police will have powers to shut down protest in anticipation that such protests will inevitably be disruptive. Yet, the police no longer seems to have the confidence of many people on account of the recent alarming findings of Baroness Casey report into Metropolitan police."

"It is deeply inspiring that young people around the world, such as the Ugandan, Vanessa Nakate, are taking up the cause of climate change, as it is their future that will be affected."

"I think it’s difficult for mainstream media to take on this role because they are committed to making a profit. Often advertisers dictate the agenda. And there’s another constraint. The mainstream media have to entertain their audiences and run stories that will interest them. Sometimes they are influenced by whether a story will have a human interest angle. That is also a reason why there are so many stories of misery or famine: they will interest readers"

"I think alternative media presents different analysis from a different and progressive ideological standpoint, They often try and go beyond the superficial analysis of the West and give a wider contextual, historical background. They try to inform the readers why things are the way they are in Africa."

"Corruption wherever it is – in the West or in Africa – is contemptible and unethical. But when we look at corruption in Africa there are often Western multi-national companies involved. They are complicit in the corruption of African dictators, businessmen or leaders. But Westerners and reporters of the West very rarely ask themselves: “How comes that Western banks are accomplices of dictators in Africa?”"

"I am very selective in what I watch on TV as there is so much rubbish to act as a new societal opium."

"Perhaps it is with nostalgia that human beings look back in history as there is certainly a romanticisation of certain aspects of the past that erases the ugly deeds of human beings."

"I think the 1960s of the national liberation struggles in Africa and Asia were an inspiring decade that I find particularly exciting. There was so much optimism, excitement and promise during this time in which the mass of humanity were challenging empire, colonialism and seeking to forge new nation states that sought to meet the aspirations of ordinary people in terms of employment, education, health needs and to take control of their economies."

"As there is a current bandwagon of “decolonizing” everything i.e. the curriculum, the archive, museums etc, and using “decoloniality” and “decolonisation” as synonyms, I think it’s important to clarify what one means by these terms, in addition to how decolonisation is done?"

"I don’t think I’ve seen anything as impressive as the gigantic Cambodian Hindu/Budhist temple called Angor Wat that sprawls for 162.6 hectares. It’s beautiful, yet parts of it are deeply eery. I think it’s impressive due to the fact that it was constructed in the 12th century and took 28 years to build. In a part of the temple complex there is a mesmerizing tree that has some of its roots organically clinging onto parts of the temple. I found it unsettling and strange. The entire temple and that tree are certainly worth seeing. A one day’s visit does not do it justice."

"Another inspiring development around the globe is Afro-Columbian woman Francia Marquez, who was elected as Vice President in Columbia in August 2022. Similar to President Obama’s election to office in 2008, her election to office was a significant historical moment for people of African descent, known as Afro-Latinx in the region."

"It is no accident that the system of economic competition leads steadily to centralization within the economic field itself; while in the state, centralization has been accompanied by the recognition of the need for decentralization and the practical establishment of it."

"Reaction has been waiting yearningly for this message, for someone to smite democracy hip and thigh. It eases the conscience; approves the feeling that nothing need be done; attacks bureaucracy; says the planner is a scoundrel; and saves taxes! It is no surprise to students of politics, though it is to Hayek, that such a doctrine has been so widely acclaimed."

"Government is the instrument for the exchange of one kind of benefit among persons and groups for others; the exchange of some freedoms for others. Government results from the demand for rights by persons and groups; they can be free of government as soon as they reduce their demand for rights and benefits. In the present state of science and technology, and given the tradition of a high standard of living, this cannot happen."

"Most human beings like enjoyment without employment. Most human beings like the services of government while they clamor for local government and self-government. This is the paradox of human nature: to want the fruits of centralization while keeping local and personal and state rights that militate against the benefits of large-scale organization."

"If the champions of an economic and political delusion were its only victims, we could with a little charity leave them to their rude awakening. But in democratic countries delusions may become public policies, supported by power, and hungry for domination even at the cost of subverting democracy."

"No one intends to "plan" or "collectivize" or "socialize" all economic activities, but many do wish to administer solid remedies to an admittedly defective order. Hayek allows no refuge, however, to the moderate person. He does not let you be moderate: it spoils his theory!"

"Professor Hayek's history is not history. Especially before the nineteenth century, but quite plentifully since the sixteenth century, legislation has more and more replaced the growth of custom as the regulator of morals in society in every sphere. Let Professor Hayek read the history of the English Poor Law, for example, from 1535 onwards. Hayek should remember that even the status of the Churches was and is in both the United States and Great Britain regulated by statute or constitution. In every field of individual and social life legislation embodies morals : marriage, divorce, duty to family, religion, property, theft, libel, slander, contract, business — the list is never-ending. This legislation does not come out of the blue, produced without careful reflection and weighing of choices. Hayek must know that."

"Hayek's unscrupulous travesty of the democratic process of securing legislation (for that is the first basis of any government plan) culminates in his general contempt for the democratic notion altogether."

"Hayek cannot see how, in a planned state, groups can settle their differences over the course to be followed when, the state is to undertake various business projects. He pretends that in this case it is necessary to leave it to "the discretion of the judge or authority in question" to decide what is "fair and reasonable." This again is hypothetical. The solution depends on how the law of the plan is constructed, and the ability and state of mind of the negotiators in parliament, in the courts, and in regulatory bodies such as the Tariff Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are solving problems and building up important experience. But principally it depends on nationwide debate conducted over the course of years, assisted by the sifted results of scientific research and experience. The plan, such as it is, emerges from the majority; and only that emerges from the majority which the majority can thereafter operate. That is the answer to Hayekian obscurantism."

"Hayek's assumption is that political power is neither limited in scope, restricted in authority, responsible in operation, nor co-operative and decentralized in execution. This assumption is stupid."

"To get competition among firms with large capital — how is that possible? Only by setting up competitors who have interesting ideas and good projects and yet may not accumulate the necessary capital before they die. This means that to maintain competition the government planner for free-for-all competition must provide or guarantee credit to would-be competitors. To anybody? If he does not take anybody but chooses his particular people, it would set up a rising howl throughout the land; while if he did not choose among them, there would be a great many failures, and charlatans would run the government into bad debts. If he selected the creditors, by what criterion would he choose? It would have to be a guess that they were good competitive material in some particular line of business. And here Hayek's own planner would have to make distinctions between persons jar particular objects — which he said was against natural law. It is to such absurdity that the insensate attachment to unmitigated bigotry is bound to lead."

"Hitler was not a socialist. He was a nationalist and a racialist; and in Mein Kampf himself tells how he designed to use social services and equality for the purpose of the Reich for conquest of the world. The purposes of socialism — equality, prosperity, charity, and international peace — were not the aims of Hitler. He detested all of them. It is irrelevant altogether to quote to us, as Hayek does, a number of obscure economic professors who may have impressed him when he was a student, men who said they were socialists but who characteristically derided Great Britain because she was a nation of merchants, while Germany was a nation of heroes! The writings he refers to were written in the course of World War I and were war polemics."

"On grounds of history; on grounds of logic; on grounds of the misuse of terms; of the abuse of authorities; of the neglect of verified information; of the use of the most infantile fallacy known to logic, viz. post hoc, ergo propter hoc — Hayek's attempt to identify socialism and planning and dictatorship and totalitarianism is not only a failure, it is a snare."

"Karl Marx and Hayek have this in common: both believe in systems, not in men; both are fatalists; both are callous; both hold that the state is and should be the product and auxiliary of economic values, and that historically the state was a committee of the economically successful for the mastery of society. Even as Karl Marx believed that when the economic problem was settled the state would wither away, so Hayek believes that the economic problem is now settled and the state ought to vanish except to assist continued competition."

"I agree neither with Marx nor with Hayek. Even when society has become, as Lenin said, one vast office and factory with everybody governing the processes there in operation, there must still be government, for the economic impetus in man is not productive of spontaneous harmony or the continuance of competition without tears. Nor is man without other, deeper society-shaping needs such as justice, humanity, and equality; these can crash the economy, and these can be subverted or not helped by the economy."

"Men have no freedom worth mentioning when they have no possibility of exercising their faculties and energy as they feel they must. Freedom in this dynamic sense cannot come to men, in all the abundance potential in our time, unless they collectively manage a large proportion of the social resources and economic equipment. The present economic waste by mismanagement is enormous; it is nothing but lost or unexploited strength; it constitutes a loss of freedom to many."

"A great deal of politics is debate about what the limits of politics are, how they are determined and whether those limits can and should be altered through politics. To call something limited implies that it is restricted and inadequate, and should be overcome. But to many critics of contemporary politics, it is our failure to respect either natural or social or epistemic limits which is the cause of our present problems."

"Sceptical and realist assessments of the limits of politics are an essential part of the craft of politics. But they also have their limits, since if taken too far they fuel the kind of apathy and disengagement from politics with which we are too familiar. On any historical assessment, the achievement of some form of limited democracy in so many countries today is an extraordinary one, even if much more fragile and less certain than we would wish. Many sceptics and realists today think it is transient, but their reasons are often different. Sceptics think that democracy can never work, while realists point to the structures which prevent the ideals of democracy from ever being achieved in practice. All this is part of the mood of disaffection with politics of all kinds, and the spread of cynicism and detachment, expressed in falling participation in elections, and the collapse of trust in politics and politicians – the mood that Nothing Works. Such a mood, fostered by parts of the media, narrows the limits of politics, because it is corrosive of the idea of a public realm, and of citizenship. Politics comes to be regarded as a corrupt and self-seeking activity. If such attitudes become widespread, then the capacity of politics to affect change also shrinks. Its limits contract."

"Suppose you want to design the best company on earth to work for. What would it be like? For three years we’ve been investigating this question by asking hundreds of executives in surveys and in seminars all over the world to describe their ideal organization. This mission arose from our research into the relationship between authenticity and effective leadership. Simply put, people will not follow a leader they feel is inauthentic. But the executives we questioned made it clear that to be authentic, they needed to work for an authentic organization."

"Our work on leadership encouraged people to “be themselves, more, with skill.” This message has resonated well. But one response has been that people will act authentically when they find themselves in authentic organizations. So our new book answers the question, “what would an authentic organization look like?” We have identified six DREAMS dimensions here:"

"For us, an authentic organization is one in which you can be your best self, you can identify with the organizational purpose, you can understand and trust it. These are the qualities that came through from interviews with individuals working in organizations around the world."

"A company's culture is often buried so deeply inside rituals, assumptions, attitudes, and values that it becomes transparent to an organization's members only when, for some reason, it changes."

"Small businessmen and entrepreneurs came firmly back in fashion when this book was first published in 1980. As the Western economies moved into recession, many governments, particularly Mrs Thatcher’s administration, looked to the entrepreneurial spirit of the small businessman to rejuvenate and revitalise Western society."

"Highly engaged employees are, on average, 50% more likely to exceed expectations that the least-engaged workers. And companies with highly engaged people outperform firms with the most disengaged folks- by 54% in employee retention, by 89% in customer satisfaction, and by fourfold in revenue growth."

"In recent decades, new voices have appeared on the contemporary Islamic intellectual map, vying for a place with the now hugely influential Salafi approach to Islam, generally characteristic of Islamism, and that of its traditionalist opponents. These are the voices of new Muslim intellectuals which, taken together, capture an emerging trend in Muslim interpretation."