Democratic Consolidation Research Articles

Vote-buying, voting behavior and democratic consolidation in Nigeria

Vote-buying, voting behavior and democratic consolidation in Nigeria

Campaign Promises, Leadership Performance and Democratic Consolidation in Kwara State, 1999-2015: A Federation Unit in Nigeria

Campaign Promises, Leadership Performance and Democratic Consolidation in Kwara State, 1999-2015: A Federation Unit in Nigeria

Catalyzing Changes in a Hostile Ambience: Civil Society Organizations and Democratic Consolidation in Nigeria

Catalyzing Changes in a Hostile Ambience: Civil Society Organizations and Democratic Consolidation in Nigeria

Faces and implications of the legal framework on democratic consolidation in Tanzania

Faces and implications of the legal framework on democratic consolidation in Tanzania

Elections and Democratic Consolidation in Nigeria. An Appraisal of the 2019 General Elections

This article presents a detailed appraisal of the administration of the 2019 general elections with a special focus on polling station information, set up, the voting and counting process, conduct of security officials and declaration of results. Findings show an improvement in the conduct of elections and hence a deepening of democracy in Nigeria. These improvements include the use of card readers and greater participation by stakeholders including observer groups, CSOs and the media. Some of the challenges include disruptions occasioned by the postponement of the general elections, low voter turnouts, logistical challenges, late arrivals of materials and officials, the cumbersome voting process for uneducated and rural voters, weak capacity of ad-hoc staff, voter inducement, shortage of materials and personnel, and challenges with smart card readers. Others are lack of special provisions for people with disabilities, inadequate security in some cases, too many political parties listed on the ballot paper, high number of invalid votes, non-adherence to electoral guidelines, uneven distribution of voters and underage voting. Recommendations arising from the paper include reform of the Electoral Act to improve transparency and efficiency through the use of ICT tools, continuing voter education, capacity development for INEC/ad-hoc staff and security officials, improving elections logistics and smart card reader functionality. Similarly recommended are enhanced funding for INEC, ensuring strict adherence to guidelines, continuous civic and voter registration, adequate provision for people living with disabilities and effective security planning. Keywords : Elections administration, Electoral Management Body, Democracy, Governance, Nigeria DOI: 10.7176/DCS/12-1-03 Publication date: January 31 st 2022

Violence against women in politics as an unintended consequence of democratization

ABSTRACT Latin American countries have struggled to improve the quality of democracy after the transition from authoritarian regimes. Countries have adopted various measures, including gender quotas, to make democracies more inclusive. Despite impressive gains in terms of the number of women in electoral politics, the quotas have proved insufficient to level the playing field of politics and promote the representation of women’s interests. Women report being the victims of violence and harassment that has the goal of forcing them to resign or controlling their decisions as political actors. This article examines the case of Bolivia to show that violence and harassment against women in politics include both traditional forms of gender-based violence and “novel” ways to attack women facilitated by democratic reforms. The article also analyzes feminist resistance to violence against women in politics in the context of regional campaigns to end gender-based violence. The analysis shows that democratization efforts, including the adoption of symbolic gender equality measures, can have unintended effects that undermine women’s political participation and gender equality goals and represent a significant obstacle to the consolidation of democracy.

THE DYNAMICS OF DEMOCRATIZATION AND THE IMPLICATIONS ON THAILAND’S FOREIGN POLICY

As Thailand undergoes a long democratization process, significant barriers to the country’s consolidation of democracy include reserved domains and tutelary powers. While states are usually treated as homogenous units in understanding their behaviors in the international arena, the internal processes are important determinants of states’ actions. Therefore, the swings in the embeddedness of Thai reserved domains and tutelary powers can shape the domestic constraints that governmental actors face in foreign policy formulations. In this paper, the Thai democratization trajectory was investigated in a comparative study to trace the changes in the prevalence of reserved domains and tutelary powers in different periods. Then, through an exploration into Thailand’s foreign policy decisions that the country enacted towards the major powers and the neighboring countries in the Cold War and the post-Cold War periods, these foreign policy actions were scrutinized in connection to the dynamic of the decision-making apparatus of the time. The information was compiled through official papers, government statements, newspapers, and scholarly literature. The paper demonstrates that when tutelary powers and reserved domains are highly embedded in the policy-making structure, and conflicting standpoints on a foreign policy decision are presented, the outcomes of the policy-making process will lean towards the camp advocated by the non-democratic actors.

Hegemonie en mag: 'n Normatiewe besinning in die lig van 'n gevallestudie Hegemony and power: A normative reflection as elucidated by a case study

Hegemonie en mag: 'n Normatiewe besinning in die lig van 'n gevallestudie Hegemony and power: A normative reflection as elucidated by a case study

The National Anticorruption System in Mexico: Democracy and Efficient Governments 2016-2022

The origin of the State as a form of social organization was linked to democracy as a form of government; both analytical categories entail essential qualities in people such as equality and freedom, but with different characteristics, powers, and obligations. The Rule of Law can be an effective check on the exercise of state power; democracy, in turn, can be the most appropriate political system for the protection of fundamental rights. In the context of a deep inequality gap, Mexico lags in fighting corruption. Since the promulgation of the general law regulating the National Anticorruption System (NAS) in 2016 (Congreso de la Unión, 2017), efforts have been made to coordinate the work of Mexican authorities at all levels of government for the prevention, detection, and punishment of acts of corruption. Faced with social disenchantment with politics, democracy, and the weakening of state sovereignty, it is worth asking what is the relationship between the Rule of Law and democracy? What is the socio-political context on which the NAS emerges? How has it worked institutionally? And what have been its repercussions in the configuration of the Rule of Law? These questions are part of a national research agenda, but also of a global agenda in contemporary democracies. I attempt to contribute to the study of a complex relationship between the Rule of Law (as one of the dimensions of quality democracies), democracy (as a form of government in Mexico) and the fight against corruption in the country (as one of the indicators of the Rule of Law) based on the NAS, recently passed into law, and facing serious challenges to function with all its capacities and powers. This relationship between Rule of Law-Democracy-Controls of legality represents one of the biggest obstacles in the path to democratic consolidation.

Governance failure and youth unemployment levels in Nigeria

The Nigerian government has shied away from serving the youth's interests. At both the national and municipal levels, the powerful government officials who built vast patronage networks during the military era now use their political office to expand these networks and their fortunes dominate Nigerian politics. Nigeria's economic development and progress have suffered as a result of this. Nigeria's democratic consolidation efforts are hampered by persistent poverty, which is compounded by youth unemployment. A nation comprised of parasites, bandits, and beggars is doomed to fail. The youth's unemployment is related to an increase in sectarian criminality, terrorism, and violence. In addition, Nigeria's high youth unemployment level contributes to a high level of state insecurity, which leads to robberies, abductions, tribal tensions, arbitrary arrests, ethnoreligious conflicts, and other illicit activities in Nigeria. This article examines the relationship between governance failure and the youth unemployment level in Nigeria.

The sheep’s revolution: Paradox of democratic consolidation and environmental regulations in post-transition Nigeria

Over the last 20 years of uninterrupted democratic dispensation in Nigeria, the military regime has left the post-transition era with certain characteristics such as a low level of participation away from the center. While many have blamed the central authorities for the constantly increasing environmental threats, this study argues that the dwindling impact of civil society organizations (CSOs) on environmental regulation policies remains the missing link between policy formulation and implementation in Nigeria. This paper investigated the involvement of environmental CSOs within our democratic space, reflecting on the level of compliance with environmental regulation laws and the implications of this for environmental sustainability. This paper adopts both primary and secondary sources of information, and data were analyzed using a descriptive survey. The study reveals that the Nigerian government sees the CSOs as partners in ensuring environmental sustainability rather than deploying the CSOs as delivery agents to enforce environmental regulations and sustainability within the extractive and non-extractive contexts. This study concludes that, to tackle environmental degradation in Nigeria, much attention should be placed on environmental securitization advocacies through independent and effective environmental CSOs.

ELECTION MANAGEMENT AND NIGERIA’S QUEST FOR DEMOCRATIC CONSOLIDATION: ANALYSIS OF THE 2015 AND 2019 GENERAL ELECTIONS AND A PROSPECT FOR 2023 GENERAL ELECTIONS

The impact of election in any democratic setting remains a stronger pillar in which democracy is consolidated. The synergy between election and democracy is highly complementary. This notwithstanding, since Nigeria’s returned to political dispensation in 1999 after years of military autocratic regime, election management has been characterised with flaw and manipulations. Interestingly, the 2015 general elections marked a watershed in the annals of electoral administrations in Nigeria. The election was not only applauded by the domestic observers, interestingly, it also received positive remarks from notable international observers and monitors. Nevertheless, the momentum of positivism of Nigeria’s electioneering politics was drawn back with the dynamics of the 2019 general elections. In lieu of this, this study analyses the conduct of the 2015 and 2019 elections vis a vis democratic consolidation in Nigeria, and tried to outlined the prospects to a more credible election in 2023. The study embraces ‘Structural Functionalism’ as a theoretical underpinning. The study adopts qualitative method in its conceptual analysis. With an explicit analysis of the two important elections, the study infers that Nigeria’s electoral system is yet to attain the ‘huruhuru’. The paper suggests first, the implementation of the Iwu’s Committee Report of 2008. Secondly, a robust electoral body that enjoys cooperation of other relevant stakeholders in the administration of free and credible elections in Nigeria. Thirdly, the study also urges all players involved to respect the dictates of electoral laws and any violator (s) deserve stringent punishment to serve as deterrent.

Justice, political ethics, and democracy. Assessing two levels of government

Fiat iustitia ne pereat mundus, literally ‘Justice must be done so the world may not perish’. It is a famous Latin proverb that forms the basis of modern jurisprudence. Both in the original version, ’Fiat iustitia e pereat mundus’, implying, ‘Let justice be done, and even the world may perish’ – and in our adjusted version, justice must be at the basis of human society, at least in a democratic political system. However, what kind of justice is most congruent with today’s pluralist democracy? The one is grounded on ethical intersubjective a priori mediation or directly applied justice regardless of its consequences. How can today’s democracy and comprehensive doctrines be compatible with negotiating pluralism and gaining stability within Albania successfully? To answer the above questions, in this article, we will use John Rawls’ response, introduced in his 1993 book Political Liberalism. Furthermore, another goal of this article is to elucidate the Albanian politician’s ethics outlook. In this regard, a set of fundamental questions arise here. For example, why do our politicians act as they do? Is there e proper political way to act? To cope with these questions, we will analyze Max Weber’s essay Between Two Laws to grasp the current Leader’s type of ethics. Weber’s classification of the ethic of conviction and ethic of responsibility, and to what extent he prescribes each ethic to the ‘ideal politician’, will be at the heart of this line of reasoning The article proceeds into four key sections — the first deals with assessing the Leader’s political ethics in current Albania. The second section provides a parsimonious classification of the current state of Albania’s democracy; the third section offers a short analysis of the Socialist Party government, both central and local, whereas the last part provides a solution for democratic consolidation through the empowerment of the Constitution.

Siyasette Dinin Rolü: Bir Analitik Kategori Olarak Toplumsal Kamusal Alan

Within the realm of political theory, the existing republican and liberal theories of the public sphere have not been normatively and practically sufficient for Muslim-majority contexts. Few prominent scholars such as Jürgen Habermas have provided a revitalised approach to the discussions of religion in the public sphere, enabling an expansion of the artificial and controversial boundaries between the private and the public as well as the religious and the political. In his publications since the mid-2000s, Habermas has proposed the notions of ‘post-secularism,’ ‘religious tolerance,’ and the ‘modernization of religious consciousness’ and he significantly articulated new divisions for an ‘informal public sphere’ and an ‘institutional public sphere.’ In this article, I re-appropriate some of Habermas’ ideas to theorise about the analytically differentiated categories of social public sphere—a distinct form of a political public sphere where religious communal life is organised by civil society associations—and state public sphere—where the secular state controls the common institutional framework. The paper offers a more nuanced view of the relationship between religion and the public sphere as a way of reconciling political secularism and public religious presence that would help democratic consolidation in the Muslim world.

(2021) Volume 2, Issue 4 Cultural Implications of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC Authors: Dr. Unsa Jamshed Amar Jahangir Anbrin Khawaja Abstract: This study is an attempt to highlight the cultural implication of CPEC on Pak-China relations, how it will align two nations culturally, and what steps were taken by the governments of two states to bring the people closer.

(2021) Volume 2, Issue 4 Cultural Implications of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC Authors: Dr. Unsa Jamshed Amar Jahangir Anbrin Khawaja Abstract: This study is an attempt to highlight the cultural implication of CPEC on Pak-China relations, how it will align two nations culturally, and what steps were taken by the governments of two states to bring the people closer.

Trends of Power Devolution in South Asia: A Comparative Appraisal of Pakistan’s Local Government System under the Civil-Military Regimes

In the South Asian countries, the trends of power sharing, decentralization and power evolution have not only always remained a pertinent debate for the consolidation of democracy and good governance, but also static political systems due to their multiethnic realities, multilingual differences, multicultural diversification, and their authoritarian orientation in the respective countries. Historically, the transfer of power through the local system of government (LGS) was seen as an important tool to accelerate the transition to representative democracy on the subcontinent. However, it was largely aimed at creating a new political class that would support colonial rule and meet the political demands of the local population for power sharing within the boundaries of the colonial government structure. Due to their embedded interests, the colonial legacies in South Asian states offered non-representative state institutions such as the military enough space to influence the transformation process of democracy. The paper has two main objectives: (1) to explore the concepts of power devolution and their associative nomenclature; (2) to analysis of the political and administrative dimensions of decentralization to underpin the structure of decentralization in South Asia in general and Pakistan in particular. The results of the study are that the lack of the weakest local government system in the South Asian region in general, and in Pakistan in particular, is due to the colonial legacy of an ongoing controlled political mindset in the form of bureaucracy, frequent military coups, a lack of political will to develop a welfare state in Pakistan. It uses the qualitative research methods of phenomenology and correlation, which sheds light on the meaning of relative terms often used to explain delegation of authority for political and administrative purposes.

CIVIL-MILITARY CONCORDANCE IN PAKISTAN

Civil-military concordance is based on the harmony of interests and values between three important stakeholders, i.e., the political elite, armed forces, and citizens. When these stakeholders develop a harmonious appreciation of their roles and contributions to the nation with a shared understanding of the constitution, a healthy symbiosis of interests and values is engendered, imparting states' desired stability. There are examples of developing countries like Ghana, where weak democratic institutions resulted in frequent military interventions. However, the phenomenon declined after armed forces and civilians fostered a concordance based upon mutual respect, wherein armed forces participated in the defence of the state and nation-building tasks. This paper, therefore, deals with the employment of armed forces on military and non-military tasks, facilitating much-needed concordance in civil-military relations for democratic consolidation and improvement of armed forces’ performance on nation-building and crisis management. It discusses various civil-military concordance models and analyses the best-suited option for Pakistan. Rebecca Schiff’s Concordance Theory, a departure from western models of Huntington, Lasswell, and Finer, contains some elements of Morris Janowitz’s civil-military convergence theory and can be applied to Pakistan’s case. It also highlights the application of four indicators of concordance, i.e., recruitment method, the social composition of officers’ corps, military style, and political decision-making processes, to Pakistan, yielding important conclusions regarding improved civil-military relations.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA

Political economy concerns with how actual policies deviate from economic optimality. This study evaluates Indonesia’s progresses toward sustainable development goals (SDGs) from the political economy viewpoint. The authors discuss Indonesia’s Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) and critically analyse its COVID-19 pandemic control policy given the policy’s importance to SDG 3 (good health and well-being) and SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth). Indonesia chooses to opt-out strict public health restrictions because of the government’s preoccupation with economic growth, the large number of workers relying on daily income and its state of democratic consolidation. This results in Indonesia’s failure to control the pandemic and to avert economic recession. Indonesia correctly anticipates global vaccine nationalism and secures adequate vaccine supplies primarily from China. Vaccination becomes Indonesia’s key pandemic strategy. This study shows how indispensable partnerships (SDG 17) are for achieving SDGs, presenting the case of the Indonesian Forestry Certification Cooperation’s work in forest certification and sustainable forest management.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA

Political economy concerns with how actual policies deviate from economic optimality. This study evaluates Indonesia’s progresses toward sustainable development goals (SDGs) from the political economy viewpoint. The authors discuss Indonesia’s Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) and critically analyse its COVID-19 pandemic control policy given the policy’s importance to SDG 3 (good health and well-being) and SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth). Indonesia chooses to opt-out strict public health restrictions because of the government’s preoccupation with economic growth, the large number of workers relying on daily income and its state of democratic consolidation. This results in Indonesia’s failure to control the pandemic and to avert economic recession. Indonesia correctly anticipates global vaccine nationalism and secures adequate vaccine supplies primarily from China. Vaccination becomes Indonesia’s key pandemic strategy. This study shows how indispensable partnerships (SDG 17) are for achieving SDGs, presenting the case of the Indonesian Forestry Certification Cooperation’s work in forest certification and sustainable forest management.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA

Political economy concerns with how actual policies deviate from economic optimality. This study evaluates Indonesia’s progresses toward sustainable development goals (SDGs) from the political economy viewpoint. The authors discuss Indonesia’s Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) and critically analyse its COVID-19 pandemic control policy given the policy’s importance to SDG 3 (good health and well-being) and SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth). Indonesia chooses to opt-out strict public health restrictions because of the government’s preoccupation with economic growth, the large number of workers relying on daily income and its state of democratic consolidation. This results in Indonesia’s failure to control the pandemic and to avert economic recession. Indonesia correctly anticipates global vaccine nationalism and secures adequate vaccine supplies primarily from China. Vaccination becomes Indonesia’s key pandemic strategy. This study shows how indispensable partnerships (SDG 17) are for achieving SDGs, presenting the case of the Indonesian Forestry Certification Cooperation’s work in forest certification and sustainable forest management.