Nicaragua: The Construction of a Patrimonial and Repressive Regime

The origins of social trust have been much discussed in recent years. This attention is understandable, as social trust is perceived to be a mechanism for overcoming the pri mary social problem highlighted by rational choice theory: how actors without mutual trust logically would choose a suboptimal solution (the prisoner's dilemma problem). Social trust is thus believed to be very important in solving collective problems, mak ing democracy work, and generating economic growth.1 In brief, everyone agrees that social trust is nice to have. However, its origins, creation, and in some countries erosion are up for discussion. Table 1 shows the empirical results of the World Values Surveys (WVS) conducted in the beginning (1990-1993) and the end (1999-2001) of the 1990s. As argued by Inglehart, economic development and religion have a huge impact. Therefore, this study is limited to the rich capitalist countries that share Christianity as a common cultural background.2 Furthermore, the countries will be categorized accord ing to Esping-Andersen's renowned distinction among liberal (Anglo-Saxon), conserva tive (continental European), and social democratic (Scandinavian) welfare regimes.3 The standard question for social trust (also labeled interpersonal or horizontal trust) has been used: Generally speaking, would you say that people can be or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?. Table 1 reveals two major puzzles. The first is the striking level of horizontal trust in the social democratic regimes. In 1990 the share responding that most people can be trusted averaged 61 percent in these countries. In the nine conservative regimes, the average was 31 percent, whereas the average was 48 percent in the four liberal regimes. The distinctiveness of the social democratic regimes is even more remarkable in the lat est wave, where the average was 63 percent in the social democratic regimes as com pared to 29 percent in the conservative regimes and 38 percent in the liberal regimes. Regime patterns are not clearly present. At first sight, the distinction between conserva tive and liberal regimes does not appear to be of much relevance. However, one can not deny that the countries that Esping-Andersen grouped as social democratic welfare regimes distinguish themselves. The second, rather striking finding is that the dramatic erosion of social trust appears only in the countries Esping-Andersen labeled liberal welfare state regimes. The

The spate of free competitive parliamentary elections held during the systemic 1989-91 transformation in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, GDR, Hungary, Poland, and Romania accomplished several different ends. The first such elections introduced a new democratic political order, legitimated a new constitutional order, and founded a democratic structure for multi-party system building, The second (or third) parliamentary elections held in 1992-96 stimulated the party-making process and consolidated a new party system as well as contributed to the formation of a parliamentary majority for government stability. Electoral systems differed from country to country and, as in Romania and Poland, from election to election. The first fully free parliamentary elections in Poland (1989) and Romania (1990) as well as the first, and only free election in the GDR were fair and proportional being in compliance with the requirements of “foundation” elections. Subsequent elections in Romania and Poland were held under more rigorous electoral rules to prevent further excessive fragmentation of party politics. In Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia more rigorous electoral rules, using proportional representation with a threshold of 4 or 5 percent, contributed from the beginning to the formation of a parliamentary majority, leading to government stability. Since 1993 there has been a trend toward reducing fragmentation of party politics in post-communist central and southeastern Europe.

Democratization in the Middle EastTurkey-How Far from Consolidation? Ergun Özbudun (bio) On 24 December 1995, Turkey held free and competitive elections for its 550-member, one-chamber parliament, the Grand National Assembly. Turnout was high. Five parties surpassed the 10 percent threshold needed to qualify for seats in parliament. The three biggest vote-getters were the Islamic-oriented Refah (Welfare) Party, with 21.4 percent and 158 seats, the center-right Motherland Party, with 19.7 percent and 133 seats, and the center-right True Path Party, with 19.2 percent and 135 seats. Intent on preventing Refah from forming a government, leaders of Motherland and True Path began intense negotiations. At the end of February 1996, after two months of talks, they announced the formation of a minority coalition government with the support of the Democratic Left Party (14.6 percent and 75 seats). While the December 1995 balloting was the twelfth consecutive open election that Turkey has held over the last 45 years, the period since 1960 has also witnessed three military interruptions of the democratic process. Each time the military intervened—in 1960, 1971, and 1980—democracy was restored relatively quickly and smoothly, suggesting that the soldiers’ intention on each occasion was a “moderating coup” rather than the creation of a lasting bureaucratic-authoritarian regime. Today, democratic discourses seem to be dominant, and there is little fear of an authoritarian regression. Yet few analysts would call Turkey a stable or consolidated democracy. The continuing elusiveness of consolidation, despite nearly half a century of multiparty politics, indicates a certain malaise and makes Turkey an interesting case for comparative purposes. What are the factors that may help or harm [End Page 123] Turkey’s prospects for democratic consolidation, and what light can recent theoretical and comparative reflection shed on them? The interests of political scientists are naturally conditioned by the political environment in which they live. Thus during the “second reverse wave of democratization” (roughly from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s), they focused on the crises and breakdowns then besetting democratic regimes. 1 With the advent of the “third wave” of democratization (from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s), interest shifted to authoritarian breakdowns and transitions to democracy. 2 The focus now in the 1990s is clearly on the consolidation of democratic regimes; the trendy topic of the following decade is likely to be the “persistence” or “quality” of democracy, unless a third “reverse wave” comes along to command scholarly attention. Democratic consolidation, to borrow Adam Przeworski’s apt description, means that democracy “becomes the only game in town, when no one can imagine acting outside the democratic institutions, when all the losers want to do is to try again within the same institutions under which they have just lost.” 3 The concept of democratic consolidation admits both “maximalist” and “minimalist” understandings. The maximalist view emphasizes the embrace of democratic values by most citizens after a long socialization process, while the minimalist view stresses the mere absence of significant challenges to the legiti-macy of democratic institutions—particularly the prevalence of free and competitive elections. 4 Both approaches have problems. If the maximalist approach is carried to the extreme, no democratic regime can be considered truly consolidated. Nor does it square with historical realities, because “in no known case does there appear to have been a majority of democrats before the advent of political democracy.” 5 The minimalist approach, on the other hand, runs the risk of “electoralism,” or equating democratic consolidation simply with the holding of regular, competitive elections. Even a minimal procedural notion of democratic consolidation must include more—the superiority of democratically elected civilian authorities over nonelected (e.g., military) officials, for instance, as well as broad respect and effective guarantees for the basic civil liberties of all citizens. As defined above, consolidation seems similar to political institutionalization (meaning a situation in which the formal and informal rules of the regime are widely understood and accepted, and thus heavily influence the behavior of the major political actors). This similarity, however, holds only to the extent that the institutionalized patterns of behavior are truly democratic. If they are not—for example, if...

With sporadic exceptions, political scientists concentrate upon supposedly free and competitive elections while they loftily ignore those in which one candidate gains 99 per cent of the votes. The approach which justifies this bias in research is well known. On the one hand, holding free and competitive elections is accepted as a sign of pluralist democracy;1 on the other hand, political science conceives itself as being primarily concerned with multi-party systems and with competitive elections. Postulating that one-party elections or other types of state-manipulated ballots are necessarily rigged leads to their being denied any significance. This removes the political scientist’s obligation to examine how rigged these elections really are, or to consider the implications of electoral politics so dissimilar from the liberal democratic model.

Elections are common but choice is rare. Only a handful of states dispense with elections altogether but only a quarter hold competitive free elections (Taylor and Jodice, 1983, citing 1979 data). Most contests are either a one-horse race or a competition in which only one horse is given a clear run. Although elections without choice are important in their own right they also provide an instructive comparison with competitive elections. This is a matter of similarities as well as differences. By considering the functions common to competitive and non-competitive elections, a deeper understanding emerges of the role played by the electoral process in Western democracies.

The paper has evaluated the relation between the free, fair and credible election and democratic governance in Bangladesh. The paper is a descriptive and qualitative in nature and mainly based on secondary literature. For doing this study, conceptual clarification has been done first and identified few elements of free, fair and credible elections. Then, how far these elements have been ensured in Bangladeshi elections has been evaluated by analyzing all the national elections held since independence. Apart from these, major factors and challenges of holding a free, fair and credible election in Bangladesh have been examined Major findings of this study are: Since the independence of Bangladesh, 10 national elections held in various regimes. 4 out of 10 national elections have been found free, fair and credible which have been conducted by the non-party caretaker government. Rests of the elections are not out of controversy and full of manipulation held under elected government. The present AL government is elected by the 10th parliamentary election under incumbent (AL) government, but a major opposition allies (20 parties) lead by BNP boycotted this election and 154 of the total 300 seats being uncontested. As a result, AL again came to the power without a competitive election and most of the national and International election observers including media world consider this election as unfair and the government is suffering from lack of legitimacy which creates political pressure for another interim election and need a permanent solution.

This study aims to critically examine the transformation of political culture in the Philippines since the fall of the authoritarian regime of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. The fall of Marcos, marked by the peaceful People Power Revolution, signaled the beginning of a transition toward a more open and participatory democratic system. However, the central question posed in this study is to what extent the political culture in the Philippines has truly undergone substantial change following this transition. This study employs a qualitative approach using the literature review method to analyze and examine various secondary sources such as books, academic journals, research institute reports, mass media, and official government documents, as well as to identify the patterns of political culture that have developed from the post-Marcos era to the administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The research analyzes the political dynamics of the Philippines after Marcos, focusing on changes in values, norms, and political practices within both society and the political elite. The findings show that although the Philippines has made significant progress in institutional aspects—such as relatively free elections, press freedom, and the strengthening of democratic institutions—traditional political culture continues to exert strong influence. This is evident in the persistence of political dynasties, clientelism, and vote-buying practices, particularly in local elections. Despite reforms, political power remains concentrated in elite families, and voter engagement is often shaped more by personal loyalty than by policy orientation.. The study concludes that the transformation of political culture in the Philippines after Marcos has yet to reach the depth necessary to support a mature and sustainable democracy.

The theoretical literature on government repression has mostly taken a choice theoretic perspective, wherein either the protest group optimally chooses a protest tactic in response to government behavior or the government optimally chooses a repression strategy. This approach is insufficient for capturing the strategic nature of protest and repression. The theoretical shortcomings of this approach are reflected in contradictory empirical findings on the effects of repression on dissent. The article develops an extensive strategic game between the government and an opposition group that allows one to identify the conditions for successful deterrence or protest. Introducing incomplete information and a third-party threat additionally produces equilibria with repression and escalating violence. The model produces novel testable hypotheses that shed new light on the effect of repression on dissent, the likelihood of violence, and the possibility of a coup. Implications for the domestic democratic peace and “murder in the middle” hypothesis are drawn.

N MODERN WESTERN DEMOCRACIES, political parties play a focal role in the mobilization of political power. The legitimacy of government by consent is fundamental to the political ideology of these nations, and the party, whose function is to mobilize and aggregate consent, has arisen as a social institution demanded by this ideology. Drawing sustenance from a secular system of rewards and deprivations, parties become the most effective instrument for using the established means of producing legitimate consent, the free and competitive election, to structure the power relations within the political system. The efforts of other social institutions with political intent must, in modern democracy, at one point or another, take account of the party system in achieving their aims. However, in the majority of the political systems presently existing in the world, party does not play such a central role in the political process. Rather, parties exist as an alternative to other means of mobilizing political power. The conditions under which this alternative is effective within political systems which have historically utilized other techniques of mobilizing power is by no means clear. The particular function of political parties within such political systems is also uncertain.

In late 20th century, the East Asian region joined the world-wide democratic trend of ‘the third wave.’ Once formidable authoritarian regimes were dismantled and gave way to democratization. The trend began in the Philippines in 1986 and it was followed by South Korea and Taiwan both in 1987. Thailand joined the club in 1992 and Indonesia did the same a couple of years before the new millennium. In those countries, new democratic constitutions were written. With the new constitutions, freedom of political participation was bestowed upon ordinary citizens, civil organizations, political parties, and so on. Free and fair elections have been regularly held since then and the elections, reflecting the hopes of ordinary citizens, installed new civilian political leadership. Not all democratic transitions and consolidations in those countries, however, were without crisis. Despite free and competitive elections and political participation guaranteed by constitutions and by the laws related to elections and political parties, the marches towards further democracy in those countries often look unstable and confusing. The instability was partly due to a sudden explosion of political demands, which had been suppressed for a long time under authoritarian rule. The plethora of political demands could not be smoothly aggregated and articulated in the new born democratic political systems. If the instability of a newly democratized political system continues, then it may endanger the sustainability of a new democracy causing reversal of democracy or return to authoritarianism. Korea, after democratization, has been plagued by various political crises too. The economic crisis in 1997 was a grave test for Korean democracy. With the economic crisis, Korea, for the first time, experienced a peaceful change of political power. Korea’s march towards democracy was thereafter relatively smooth despite minor political scandals. In spring 2004, Korea suddenly plunged into a political crisis when President Roh Moo-Hyun faced impeachment proceedings. This crisis brought about a serious division not only among politicians, but also among ordinary citizens. Also, hot debates on the constitution, on political leadership and civil society were incurred. The presidential impeachment was the first in Korea’s history. It, however, became an important turning point of democratic progress when political leaders and civil society successfully managed and overcame the crisis. This study will first analyze democratic transition and consolidation and secondly analyze the causes of and responses to the political crisis caused by the impeachment of the president through examining the following questions. The main questions of this study are as follows: How did the democratic transition and consolidation in Korea occur? What was the nature of political crisis in Korea after democratization? What was the main reason of the crisis? What sort of problems did the political leadership and civil society have? How did Korea respond to the crisis and overcome the crisis of presidential impeachment? What implications does this process from the beginning to the end of the crisis have for Korean democracy after democratization? Particularly, this study focuses on the political leadership and the political behavior of civil society in the process of democratic transition and consolidation. With these

The article contains an analysis of regional and municipal elections in the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic. The authors investigate the dynamics of the reform of the electoral system and the electoral policy of Russia. They shows that evolution of the Russian political system and federative relations influences the appearance of the electoral space in the state. The return of direct elections of heads of constituent entities of the Russian Federation in 2012 and the liberalization of electoral legislation bring elements of competition and uncertainty in elections of various levels in the regions. The article determined criteria for the level of competition in elections of different levels. On the example of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic the election of the head of the subject, the local regional legislative assembly Il Tumen, the election of heads and deputies of municipalities are analyzed. The authors also determine the degree of their competition.

In contrast to the previous contribution, this paper tackles the issue of transparency and social media with a more national perspective. By looking at French deputies posts on Facebook and Twitter, but also by directly inquiring how French citizens assess the issue of political transparency on social media, this analysis aims at providing new insights into the issue as to whether the presence of politicians on social media can affect power relations between citizens and politicians. The underlying rationale is to find out whether this form of transparency ultimately enhances representative democracy. Over the last decades transparency has often been depicted as the ultimate remedy for various political, economic and societal problems. Stiglitz (1999; 2000; 2002) outlines the significance of transparency for averting market failures and enhancing public financing. Similarly, Lindstedt and Naurin (2010) investigate the capacity of transparency to reduce corruption and achieve fairer and more efficient governance, while Schultz and Kenneth (1998) analyse how better means of communication and transparency can diminish risks of war and international conflicts. Recent cases and scandals have added fuel to debates about transparency. The Luxleaks affair revealed the need for more transparency with regard to existing tax schemes for multinational companies (Gotev, 2015). The opacity of the TTIP negotiations has made experts and citizens suspicious regarding the content of this trading agreement and signal the risk of lowering safety standards and endangering customers’ safety. If we turn to the realm of politics, we quickly notice that the relationship between transparency and democracy has provoked intense and convoluted debates. Is transparency of governments a necessary feature of democratic regimes? Or, is transparency a political key for better governance? In his succinct definition of democracy, Schumpeter (1942) did not yet consider transparency as an inherent and essential characteristic of democratic regimes. Democracy, he argues, is only determined by the electoral competition and free elections. By contrast, Dahl (1971) - with his famous concept of Poliarchy – places transparency at the core of the democratic framework. As he claims, a democratic regime is not only a regime in which electors have the right to freely vote for their future representatives and governments, it is also a system that allows its citizens to be fully informed - by different and independent sources of information - before they cast their ballot. This implies a free and transparent flow of information.

In the wake of President Trump’s acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial, the United States will need to hold a presidential election in unprecedented circumstances. Never before has an incumbent president run for reelection after the opposing party in Congress has declared that the fairness of the election cannot be “assured” as long as the incumbent is permitted on the ballot. This uniquely acute challenge to holding an election that the public will accept as valid follows other stresses to electoral legitimacy unseen before 2016. The Russian attack on the election that year caused Americans to question their capacity to hold free and fair elections in a way that Americans had not questioned previously. Given these challenges, this essay tackles the basic concept of what it means for the outcome of an election to be valid. It turns out that, because of the way American history has unfolded, this basic concept is contested now although it had been settled previously. Current circumstances require renewing a shared conception of electoral validity. Otherwise, participants in electoral competition — winners and losers alike — cannot know whether or not the result qualifies as authentically democratic. Accordingly, after reviewing the history that has led to the present difficulties, this essay offers a renewed conception of electoral validity and both explains the theoretical basis for this renewed conception and then applies it to some of the most salient threats to electoral validity that are foreseeable in this year’s and future elections. In brief, the proposed standard of electoral validity distinguishes sharply between (1) direct attacks on the electoral process that negate voter choice and (2) indirect attacks that improperly manipulate voter choice. Direct attacks undermine electoral validity, whereas indirect attacks do not. It is essential, however, that the category of direct attacks encompasses the disenfranchisement of eligible voters, which prevents them from casting a ballot, as well as the falsification of votes reported in the tallies of counted ballots.

Overview The regulation of the internal affairs of political par ties varies between electoral and legal cultures, finding different balances between party auto nomy and freedom of association, and other regu latory goals such as transparency, account-ability and in ternal democracy.1 This chapter seeks to con tribute to the broad debate about the degree to which regulation of the internal affairs of political parties is justified. Its specifictopic is whether public funding - and its adminis-trative concomitant, party registration - legitimates such regulation. My argument is ʼno’. Public funding, also known as state aid, state subsidy or state subvention, is no justification for regulating party affairs, except aspects of their finan cial account ability. This is not an abstentionist position. Regulation of party affairs may be entirely justified, despite its effect on freedom of associ-ation. But such regulation must be a response to particular concerns in par ticu lar jurisdictions, such as the degree of power that par ties wield, or the level of cor-ruption or ossification in the party system. Explicit appeals to the fact of public funding do not justify treating par ties as quasi-public entities and hence susceptible to regulation. Such an instinct appeals to a tendency for taxpayers to resent public funding. It draws on the language of share- holding, as if there were rights which taxpayers and the state may acquire in return for their ‘investment’ in par ties (Johns 2001: 291). It risks eliding party auto nomy as an im port ant prin ciple. Similarly, the tendency of regu lators to ‘juridify’ civic entities when they as sume a tan gible legal form is a form of regu latory slippage. In the case of pol- itics, this may occur when par ties move from being mere civic asso ci ations engaged in the elect oral sphere, to being formally ‘re gis tered’ to contest elec- tions. Registration is merely an administrative pro cess, useful to streamline systems of public funding and ballot labelling, and to minimise confusion between party names. Yet the act of registration forms a ‘peg’ on which regu- lators feel freer to hang regulation than would be the case if the party remained an unincorp or ated asso ci ation, its form not captured by law. My ultimate claim is that public funding and party regulation should harmo- nise around a shared goal, namely the pro mo tion of diverse, robust and fair elect oral com peti tion. Understood that way, party auto nomy and freedom of asso ci ation ought not be sacrificed because of public funding. On the contrary, the law’s fundamental inter est in its dealings with par ties, whether through public funding or direct regulation of them, is in maximising elect oral com peti- tion, to promote elect oral choice and repres enta tion. Viewed against the goal of com petit ive elections, whether par ties follow one or more models of in ternal demo cracy or, conversely, are in ternally hierarchical or even elitist and discriminatory, becomes a second- order issue. The law’s main inter est in par ties’ in ternal affairs is to require sufficient transparency so that electors and potential members alike can take any concerns they have about par- ties’ in ternal machinations into account in their de cisions about who to vote for or associate with. Of course, in practice not all public funding regimes promote the goal of greater elect oral com peti tion.2 Sometimes public funding achieves something of the reverse, helping entrench the make- up of the existing party system. In any event, the underlying structure of the voting system and its level of proportional- ity typically have a greater impact on com peti tion than funding mech an isms. But the answer to any anti- competitive effects thereby created is to revisit the mech- anics of the public funding or voting systems, rather than to unneces sar ily regu- late par ties’ in ternal affairs.

What does it take for ordinary citizens to risk everything to protest living under a repressive government? What takes them beyond the brink, to the “boiling point”? In his graphic novel 100°C, celebrated webtoon and comics artist Choi Kyu-sok sheds a light on these questions by examining the lives of one family caught up in the great social unrest that developed under Chun Doo-hwan’s regime and culminated in the June 1987 Uprising. Crucial to understanding the events of the summer of 1987 is the recognition of both the political context and the dynamics of the nationwide effort that included students, office workers, and religious and labor groups—all of whom came together to demand a new constitution and free elections. Choi’s is a measured yet powerful representation of a pivotal moment in Korean history, when individuals questioned the status quo, when parents joined their children to express their grievances and agitate for democratic reforms, when an entire nation chose to move in a new direction.