Challenge Of Democracy Research Articles

Egypt’s Path to Transition: Democratic Challenges behind the Constitution Reform Process

This article will focus on the constitutional and legal developments that have taken place in Egypt since February 11, 2011, the date Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down, to show that behind technical and theoretical issues lay fundamental political challenges. It will start with a general chronological analysis of the developments, before focusing on the debate around the sequence of institutional events, and on the criticisms addressed to the army. It will conclude with an analysis of the major challenges that the country will face in drafting a new constitution.

Revolutionary Blind-Spots: The Politics of Electoral System Choice and the Egyptian Transition

The Egyptian revolution has swept away the Mubarak dynasty, it has begun dismantling an elaborate state security apparatus, and it has enacted constitutional reforms that put the country on the way to a democratic form of government. What have received little attention, however, are the electoral laws that will govern the new democratic order. Like many democratizing countries, Egypt has experienced elections under authoritarianism. Although this provides some advantages, the experience also holds many pitfalls, as the existing electoral system bares the mark of the previous regime, designed with many safeguards to help preserve the power of pre-democratic elites. An electoral system with a great deal of malapportionment, heavily gerrymandered electoral districts, and biased quotas provides the foundation for elections in post-revolutionary Egypt. Though these issues may be a part of normal politics in established democracies, in the context of an emerging democracy they can be a powerful counterrevolutionary force helping to strengthen pre-democratic elites vis-à-vis new democratic challengers.

Occupy Wall Street's Democratic Challenge

Occupy Wall Street's Democratic Challenge John Buell (bio) Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has some lessons to teach us, not the least of which is the shear unpredictability of political events. With the European economy under the spell of the most dismal practitioners of the dismal science, the US Congress equally obsessed with deficits and austerity for the poor, and the Obama Administration's hard pivot to jobs both long overdue and hardly audible, it seemed that progressives had little to hope for. In the face of these trends OWS has brought at least some prospect of positive political change. Features that in the eyes of the corporate media are weaknesses may well turn out to be enduring strengths of the movement. Not surprisingly, some segments of the corporate media resorted to a familiar trope when characterizing the initial stages of the movement as a mob. It seems that any organization without a clearly designated leader and fixed principles must be an unruly and self-destructive mass. Pacific University political scientist Jules Boykoff calls our attention to this gem: "Right-wing columnist Rich Lowry offered an extreme caricature of the attack-dog punditocracy when he wrote, "The left's tea party is a juvenile rabble, a woolly-headed horde," a band of "stereotypically aging hippies and young kids who could have just left a Phish concert." Notice what gets lost: actual ideas." http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/12-1 Corporate critics of course should know whereof they speak. It would be hard to imagine more destructive mob behavior than the sub prime mortgage market and the shadowy derivatives world that enabled and in turn was fuelled by such toxic monstrosities as CDOs and CDSs. Unlike the corporate finance mob, OWS insists on transparency and openness of deliberation, a voice for anyone. Not only is such radical democracy a check upon arbitrary power, it is also an occasion for ordinary citizens to develop a clearer sense of who they are and to explore and clarify new grievances. Fordham University sociologist Heather Gautney put it this way in a Washington Post op ed. (October 11): "This is not just a charming mess. We are all leaders represents a real praxis, and it has a real history. In the 1960s and 70s, feminists convened consciousness-raising meetings aimed at politicizing the various forms of women's oppression that were occurring in private. Women in the ranks were tired of being excluded from the inner circles of leadership where the issues and demands were being decided. And, they were sick of the generalized hypocrisy regarding gender roles. For this reason, feminist consciousness-raising eschewed formal leadership because each woman's experience and opinion had to be valued equally. The personal was the political." http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/11-12 Whether consciously or not, OWS seems to have learned some valuable lessons from earlier movements. The corporate media accuse it of a lack of clear focus and cite the absence of specific demands as a debilitating weakness. Yet all the Occupy movements are clearly focused on one central concern, the vast imbalance in both political and economic power. Like the World Social Forum, occupiers are addressing neo liberalism in its US manifestations. But as with the World Social Forum, activists cannot help birth a new world through one issue or set of demands, certainly not ones of tax or finance policy alone. OWS seems to understand that it cannot redress the vast inequality in our economic and political lives by ducking or excluding the controversial social issues that have often dogged the left. The late 19th century Populist movement initially embraced goals for more ambitious than elimination of the gold standard, but the movement's more radical thrust lost out to a politics of race baiting that saw some of Populism's loudest voices become strident advocates of Jim Crow. (See C Vann Woodward's classic discussion of this theme in The Strange Career of Jim Crow.) The politics of immigration today plays a central role in shaping our economic agenda. OWS now seems open to all who will join and one hopes that this will curb the urge among...

The Legislature and the Challenge of Corruption in Africa: The Nigerian Case

The paper investigated the power and role of the legislature in resolving political corruption as one 0f the challenges facing democratization project in Nigeria. The paper revealed that contrary to the opinion that national legislature declining in terms of the roles they perform in democracies, the National Assembly in Nigeria is central t0 the resolution of the challenge posed by political corruption to Nigeria’s democracy and development. The national assembly through its exercise of investigative powers and establishment of some legal instruments was able to expose sonic corrupt practices between 1999 and 2008. Due to the identified Limitations regarding its performance of this function. the paper argued that the effectiveness of the legislature in the resolution of democratic challenges hinges on the performance of this functions according to the rules and norms of democracy and the resolution of its internal crisis, The paper posited that democracy can flourish in Nigeria and Africa if the capacity of legislatures at all levels could he strengthened to address critical issues relating to constitutionalism, corruption, poverty and the national question, check the excesses of the executive, and collaborate with the judiciary to avert the consequences 0f “democracy by court order”, as well as empower and work with the civil society. By implication at more pro-active National assembly that is ready to set the priorities right as well as resolve its internal crisis democratically. is critically needed in Nigeria.

Debatter og reguleringer af muslimske tørklæde – populisme og symboler

The article illustrates how the Muslim headscarf has become a symbol of a struggle about liberal principles and values connected with democracy, gender and equality and how it is used by populist forces as symbolic politics in order to promote a more restrictive immigration- and integration policy. In addition, it shows how key actors have employed democracy and gender equality as arguments both for and against the right to wear headscarves. Taking the point of departure in the headscarf debate the authors argue that it has become a normative democratic challenge to accommodate the diversity of cultural and religious minorities and develop a multidimensional equality politics, which integrates principles of ethnic equality with gender equality.

Paradigms of public law: transnational constitutional values and democratic challenges

Paradigms of public law: transnational constitutional values and democratic challenges

Trouble in Central America: Guatemala on the Brink

Abstract: Thirteen years after the signing of peace, Guatemalan democracy remains tentative and fragile. Formal democratic procedures are observed, formally democratic institutions are in place and levels of social organization and political participation have substantially increased. Yet these advances barely conceal a state captive to organized crime, a poorly representative and responsive political party system and a fragmented civil society in which the marginalized indigenous population struggles to make its voice heard. The democratic challenges reflect a polity and a society in which exclusionary patterns and structures of power prevail and in which the ethnic and class divisions that fueled 36 years of armed conflict remain perilously close to the surface.

Ethnic Mobilization in the Former Yugoslavia as a Kind of Structural Setting and Framing

AbstractThe author claims that strategies of ethnic mobilization have deep roots in the politics of ex-Yugoslav nations, and that these roots are closely related to the response of the Western Balkans, especially Serbian political elites, to the challenges of democratization and modernization. The author develops this notion in two basic sections, outlining the ontology and history, and psychological background of the ethnic mobilization. Beyond the larger historical perspective, which will be reviewed, the very source of current ethno-mobilization processes lies in the deep opposition of Serbian political elites to the loose federal Yugoslav Constitution of 1974 that initiated various political strategies of ethno-mobilization's undermining and neglect. The author understands the term 'ethnic mobilization' to have three layers of meaning, the first being most rudimentary: an orderly and phased procedure aimed at ethnic crystallization or homogenization of Serb people. The second layer encompasses the underlying framing narrative of the reinterpretation of certain social events or conflicts within a particular interpretative frame or 'code.' The third meaning is, in a very important sense, demobilization, namely, the competing elites had to be demobilized, neutralized, or marginalized, and were usually described as ethnic 'traitors,' or 'those who sold to the interests of the enemy, or of the West.' Based on ideas of Latinka Perović and Dubravka Stojanović, the author traces the roots of the ethnopolitics back to the Russian anti-modernist movement of 'narodnichestvo.' This anti-Western and deeply anti-democratic strategy of political power lies at the heart of violent conflicts in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia/Kosovo, and even Macedonia. And, in the author's view, it remains the key obstacle to a post-war democratic transition for these countries. Strategies of ethnic mobilization remain, up to the present day, the driving force of power structures in these countries.

Shifting Scales of Education Politics in a Vernacular of Disruption and Dislocation

Article comments on contributions to an issue of Educational Policy that focuses on glocal politics of education in multiple national and international arenas. Commentary offered considers the ways in which the set of articles in this issue of EP require readers to take scalar leaps across the semiotic landscape of the local into the global.The problematic of scale that undergirds considerations of the glocal is explored. Discussed are the contributions of the set of articles to highlighting the disruption and dislocation associated with contemporary examples of glocal phenomena in education politics. The possibility that `things fall apart’ under conditions of glocalization is contrasted with the hopefulness engendered by stances of vernacular cosmopolitanism. Implications for further research on the shifting scales of education politics discussed in the article focus on questions framing the democratic challenges of technological glocalization.

Systemic Regulators’ Accountability to Parliaments: Advantages for Stability of Global Financial Markets

This response to the 2009 UK White Paper on ‘Reforming Financial Markets’ argues for stronger democratic oversight of regulators and for regulatory diversity in order to reduce ‘market herding’ and the consequent systemic risks. In the context of hitherto weak democratic accountability and political challenges, international networking of regulators and those they regulate has resulted in convergence of regulatory thinking and standards - creating groupthink, common ‘blind spots’ and systemic vulnerability. The antidote, regulatory diversity, would correspond to the strategy of re-politicisation of financial market regulation, and democratic steering of regulatory agencies, displacing the currently dominant notion of financial market regulation as a purely technical, expert, ‘insider’ discourse. If it is too much of a paradox for policy-makers and market participants that international cooperation in pursuit of global stability must include making space for some regulatory diversity, then we may expect re-plays of recent stressful events.

The blowback of repression and the dynamics of North African radicalization

The narrative of the historic struggle against colonialism is subject to a high degree of political manipulation in North Africa. Myths, memories and symbols based on the struggle against colonial oppression, whether ‘true’ or not, provide a latent and continually relevant context for understanding and interpreting contemporary events. For both recent North African immigrants, and second, third and fourth generation immigrants to Europe, contemporary injustices and violence, whether perpetrated in Europe or in the Maghreb, are being understood in this historical colonial context. For some, these myths, memories and symbols may be the reason why they join a peaceful, democratic group to lobby for democracy and political transparency. For a minority of North Africans, these symbols of the past are invoked to justify a jihadist challenge to North African regimes and the West. Based on extensive interviews with North African activists and community leaders, this article will show how the collective memory of the abuse of power by the state, both during and after the colonial era, has created a latent mistrust of the West, especially of France. Political repression in North Africa since independence has created a rupture between what was expected from independence and the realities of political life, and North Africans often ascribe this disappointment to the inherently French character of the regimes which were in power during the 1950s and 1960s. North Africans also believe that this is reflected in the continuing active intervention on the part of the West to support these illiberal regimes in the face of democratic and popular challenges. The subsequent senses of injustice and disappointment, relating to the use and abuse of state power, continues to shape North African political mobilization and, worryingly, has created a latent basis for radicalization among North Africans living and working in Europe.

Democracy and (Western) Tradition(s): Rehabilitating F. S. C. Northrop To Face Contemporary Democratic Challenges

Democracy and (Western) Tradition(s): Rehabilitating F. S. C. Northrop To Face Contemporary Democratic Challenges

Democracy, Action, and the Internet After 9/11

This study examines the role of the Internet in challenging the state after 9/11. Drawing on interview data with members of the Internet-based group MoveOn.org and participant observation data collected at MoveOn events, the authors argue that the Internet provides citizens an opportunity to lodge democratic challenges against the state during hostile political climates. There are at least three features of the Internet that make it a useful tool for challengers after political shocks such as 9/11: (a) it provides a free space for challengers to form oppositional points of view away from dominant groups; (b) it allows individuals to participate anonymously and, thus, buffers challengers from the high costs of activism; and (c) it moves challenges from the virtual to the real world by engaging citizens in intermediary forms of activism. In short, the Internet engages individuals in a broader range of activities—and this has important implications for democratic processes.

The Multilevel Parliamentary Field: a framework for theorizing representative democracy in the EU

This article introduces the concept of the ‘Multilevel Parliamentary Field’ as a means for analysing the structure of democratic representation in the European Union (EU). This concept is warranted for several reasons. First, the multilevel configuration that makes up the EU contains two channels of democratic representation: one directly through the European Parliament, the other indirectly through the national parliaments and governments. These two channels are likely to persist side by side; hence, both the European and the national parliaments can claim to represent ‘the people’ in EU decision-making. Second, this structure of representation is in many respects without precedent; it does not fit established concepts of democratic representation derived from the nation-state or from international relations, such as a federal two-channel system or a parliamentary network. Third, the representative bodies in the EU are interlinked, also across levels. Up until now, no proper conceptual apparatus has been devised that can capture the distinctive traits of this EU multilevel representative system, and help to assess its democratic quality. The concept of the Multilevel Parliamentary Field fills both these tasks. It serves as a heuristic device to integrate the empirical analysis of the different forms of democratic representation in the EU’s multilevel system, and it provides new angles for analysing the democratic challenges that this system faces.

Book Review: Edging Towards BioUtopia: a New Politics of Reordering Life and the Democratic Challenge

Book Review: Edging Towards BioUtopia: a New Politics of Reordering Life and the Democratic Challenge

Edging Towards BioUtopia-A New Politics of Reordering Life and the Democratic Challenge by Richard Hindmarsh

Edging Towards BioUtopia-A New Politics of Reordering Life and the Democratic Challenge by Richard Hindmarsh

The Maturing Concept of E-Democracy: From E-Voting and Online Consultations to Democratic Value Out of Jumbled Online Chatter

ABSTRACT Early literature on e-democracy was dominated by euphoric claims about the benefits of e-voting (digital direct democracy) or continuous online citizen consultations (digital representative democracy). High expectations have gradually been replaced with more genuine approaches that aim to break with the dichotomy of traditional notions of direct and representative democracy. The ensuing question relates to the adequate design of information and communication technology (ICT) applications to foster such visions. This article contributes to this search and discusses issues concerning the adequate institutional framework. Recently, so-called Web 2.0 applications, such as social networking and Wikipedia, have proven that it is possible for millions of users to collectively create meaningful content online. While these recent developments are not necessarily labeled e-democracy in the literature, this article argues that they and related applications have the potential to fulfill the promise of breaking with the longstanding democratic trade-off between group size (direct mass voting on predefined issues) and depth of argument (deliberation and discourse in a small group). Complementary information-structuring techniques are at hand to facilitate large-scale deliberations and the negotiation of interests between members of a group. This article presents three of these techniques in more depth: weighted preference voting, argument visualization, and the Semantic Web initiative. Notwithstanding these developments, the maturing concept of e-democracy still faces serious challenges. Questions remain in political and computer science disciplines that ask about adequate institutional frameworks, the omnipresent democratic challenges of equal access and free participation, and the appropriate technological design.

The European Democratic Challenge: The Forging of a Supranational Volonté Générale

AbstractThis article explores in a systematic manner the different components of the democratic legitimacy of the Union from the standpoint of deliberative democratic theory. Contrary to standard accounts, it is claimed that the democratic deficit must be disaggregated, given that the Union has not only several shortcomings, but also some democratic surpluses. On the one hand, the Union was created to tackle the democratic deficit of nation states, and has been partially successful in mending the mismatch between the scope of application of their legal systems and the geographical reach of the consequences of legal decisions. Moreover, the European legal order is based on a synthetic constitutional law, which reflects the common constitutional traditions of the Member States, which lend democratic legitimacy to the whole European legal order. On the other hand, the lack of a democratically written and ratified constitution is a central part of the democratic challenge of the Union. But equally important is the structural bias in favour of certain material legal results, which stems from the interplay of the division of competences and the plurality of law‐making procedures.

Secularism in Context: The Relations between the Greek State and the Church of Greece in Crisis

AbstractThe present article addresses the question of secularism in Greece. It discusses the prevalent modernist and civilisationist explanations of the recent crisis in state-church relations in Greece. Based on the idea that there is neither a single route to, nor a single pattern of, modernity and secularism, the article argues that the entanglement between state and church in modern Greece does not necessarily indicate either incomplete modernity or incomplete secularism. The paper emphasises both the structural weakness of the Orthodox Church in the modern Greek state and the secularisation of the church's ideology as core dimensions of the particular pattern of secularism in this country. The recent crisis is interpreted as a result of the twofold challenge of democratisation and globalisation that this historically grown pattern of secularism is facing over the last decades. Further, the article seeks to demonstrate that the nationalist stance of the Church of Greece should not be seen as persistent blind traditionalism and anti-modernism.

Politics in C Minor: The CDU/CSU between Germany and Europe since the Secular Sixties

AbstractIn 1962, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) faced an uncertain future. The governing party within the Federal Republic of Germany since the state's founding in 1949 (along with its Bavarian partner, the Christian Social Union, known collectively as the CDU/CSU or Union), the CDU had endured a bruising election campaign through the summer of 1961. The combination of a dynamic young Social Democratic challenger, Willy Brandt, and the building of the Berlin Wall had exposed frustration with the leadership style of octogenarian Chancellor and CDU Chair Konrad Adenauer, and cost the Union its absolute majority in the Bundestag. Electoral disappointment was followed by protracted coalition negotiations with the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), which nearly doubled its vote totals by promising voters a coalition “with the Union but without Adenauer.” The coalition negotiations dragged on well into late autumn and exposed internal divisions. Adenauer, the only chancellor the Federal Republic had ever known, had been forced to agree to retire before 1965 to allow his successor to prepare for the next campaign.