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"Original versions: English and Arabic, Geneva and Ramallah, 2007"--T.p. verso.
This book states that the political systems of China, Vietnam, Cuba and other socialist countries are showing distinct maturity and ability to deal effectively with challenges – the most recent being the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to understand how they have developed their structures, it is time to return to the roots of the Marxist tradition and re-examine the question of socialist governance. It was Friedrich Engels (and less so Marx) who laid out some of the theoretical foundations for socialist governance. On the basis of extensive research in 1870s and 1880s, Engels developed his analysis of the nature of hitherto existing states as a ‘separated public power’; the role of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its exercise of power; the actual meaning of the ‘withering away of the state’, which would be one of the very last outcomes of socialist construction; and the nature of socialist governance itself. On this matter, he proposed a de-politicised public power that would stand in the midst of society and focus on managing the processes of production for the sake of the true interests of society.
This book assesses the legal and practical independence of the Palestinian Constitutional Court since the coup in July 2007 that brought the Fatah regime to power in the West Bank. It argues that the Court has failed to perform its fundamental function, namely upholding the Basic Law in the face of authoritarian actions by that regime, and that it is highly unlikely to resolve this problem while the state of emergency continues. This book offers a case study on how constitutional courts in authoritarian regimes fail to fulfil, and even obstruct, the promises of rights protections contained in constitutional texts. Moreover, it provides the first English-language study that covers the entire collection of judgments and interpretations issued by that Court until the first amendment of its law in October 2017, and thus can be considered one of the most authoritative studies on a court in an authoritarian Arab regime.