Liberal Democracy Research Articles

The arsenal of democracy? An examination of political regime types’ success in the global sporting arms race following the collapse of the iron curtain

ABSTRACT Over the years, international elite sport has developed into an ‘arms race’ with the success of national elite sport systems becoming a symbol of regime superiority. During the Cold War, the Eastern and Western Blocs battled for success in various sports disciplines. The former nations were dominating in terms of medals, symbolising the force of the socialist autocratic system. However, because of the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Western liberal democracies had the opportunity to gain more strength. In this paper, we aim to test whether this has happened by analysing the association between political regime type and international sporting success at the Winter and Summer Olympic Games in the post-Cold War Period. We do this by deploying data on the political regime types to a set of regression models, finding that democratic nations have taken over the international sporting arms race at the Summer Olympic Games. For the Winter Games, our results indicate that less democratic countries (anocracies) are in the lead. Our results add to existing research by suggesting that political regime type still matters to international sporting success. Implications for stakeholders, sports managers, and politicians are that they must decide to what extent they want to be part of this game in the coming years.

Masculinities in Immigration Detention Centres

A great tool to grow an empire, detention camps have been historically used and abused as a subordination tactic by all of the most powerful empires, most notably by Germany’s Nazi Regime in the Second World War. Commonly thought to have been born and died in history, they are a mostly forgotten piece of the past. Many would be shocked to discover that there is a secret world of institutions that disregard international human rights law in order to prioritize their national goals, where refugees, asylum seekers and migrants are the primary victims. Systems for migrancy and immigration detention have emerged in the wake of globalization, seeking asylum from conflicts, natural disasters or financial insecurity, or simply searching for better economic opportunities, education or reunion with family. Multicultural liberal democracies use detention centres to enforce their racialized and gendered penal power and establish a national hierarchy where poor, young men of colour are the most marginalized. This paper critically examines the victimization of male refugees, asylum seekers and migrants by neo-colonial masculinities in Canadian, American and British immigration detention centres and how these experiences create offenders through the victim-offender overlap.

Place-based resentment in an egalitarian welfare state

A divide between people in rural areas and in cities contributes to the current wave of populist backlash and the realignment of party systems across Western democracies. Does place-based resentment also exist and influence vote choice in an egalitarian welfare state, and if so, what is its basis? Building on the literature of place resentment and social identities, we examine place-based resentment in the Norwegian context. Employing original survey data, we measure rural-urban resentment by comparing the difference in an individual's in-group and out-group sentiment. We find that rural voters are more resentful of urbanites. Despite extensive redistributive public policies, a sense of unfair resource distribution spurs greater rural resentment than a cultural grievance. In response to current debates in the American and West European scholarship, our findings illustrate that rural resentment can develop in contexts where rural voters are not economically marginalized. Rural resentment also explains voting for the center-left agrarian party. Our work demonstrates the importance of place-based social identities in explaining rural political backlash in advanced democracies. Moreover, rural backlash does not always strengthen the populist right.

Job insecurity and vote for radical parties: A four-country study

Job insecurity is a pervasive phenomenon whose effects on support for different parties have attracted increasing attention in the literature. A growing body of research has assessed the relationship between job insecurity and the success of radical parties in Western democracies, but results are still inconclusive due to the complex nature of this independent variable. This article contributes new evidence to the current debates on this topic by analyzing how both objective labour market status and perceived job insecurity are associated with the vote for radical right and radical left parties. Our findings, based on four original surveys conducted in France, Germany, Greece and Spain, suggest that perceived job insecurity is generally associated with greater support for the radical left, but not for the radical right. In contrast, we find the relationship between objective labour market status and support for radical parties to be more ambiguous (and, in most cases, statistically non-significant).

The economic and cultural dimensions of unequal policy representation

Many scholars have argued that policymaking in Western democracies is biased toward high-income citizens, thereby violating fundamental ideals of political equality. However, studies have paid less attention to other potential sources of unequal representation besides income. In this study, we compare the role of income with that of education. Using an original data set of policy changes and public preferences spanning 43 countries, we find that both produce unequal policy representation. We also find some support for the hypothesis that income and education provide distinct advantages and primarily affect economic and socio-cultural policy, respectively. At the same time, educational inequalities are larger and more robust, producing a bias toward cosmopolitan socio-cultural policy. These findings underline the importance of separating the economic and cultural sources of unequal representation. In addition, they reinforce the role of education as a key dividing line in the politics of established democracies.

Does Collectivism Make a Difference? A Comparative Test of Common Ingroup Strategies to Reduce Affective Polarization

Abstract Common national identity appeals have been identified as one of the most promising strategies to reduce affective political polarization. However, research on this is concentrated in highly individualistic Western democracies. Because much of the global population lives in more collectivist societies, it is important to conduct comparative tests to see if common national identity appeals operate similarly when considering the increasingly global problem of polarization. In this study, we investigate how the individualism–collectivism dimension of culture interacts with national identity salience as a polarization reduction strategy. Survey experiments were conducted in South Korea and the US. We find that priming national identity increases national pride much more in collectivist societies, but that the depolarizing effect of our national identity prime was only indirect and limited.

Germany’s Strategic Activity in the Sahel and the Problem of Sovereignty for Regional States: The Case of Mali

Using Mali as an example of a geostrategically important African state, the article explores the extent to which Germany’s political and military steps contributed or did not contribute to the sovereignty of the state that was trying to overcome the instability. Taking into account the ambiguous issue of the completeness of the sovereignty of Germany itself, the author analyzes the FRG’s fundamental ability to transfer its experience in this field to other states. In the second half of the 2010s, the scope and effectiveness of German efforts to stabilize the situation in Mali were insufficient. Germany, especially in the first stages of the settlement (from 2013 to 2015), did not make a noticeable contribution to peacemaking and peacekeeping activities. The use of the Bundeswehr in the field became noticeable only from 2016–2018; however, it did not lead to the necessary results. By the mid-2010s, Germany had already begun to take an active part in the security sector reform in Mali. However, the qualitative and quantitative parameters of the newly trained personnel of the Malian army were insufficient to ensure peace and security in the country. Having accepted the functions of one of the main external participants in the settlement, Germany did not accompany this with the necessary efforts. In addition, Germany was not ready to ensure efficiently the nationalization of the settlement, that is, to transfer control over the process to those internal forces that were capable of leading the country to peace. The incomplete resolution of the armed conflict and its degradation since the end of the 2010s have manifested the regress of Mali’s gaining sovereignty. Therefore, the Malian militaries, since 2020‒2021, have been trying to realize another scenario without the built-in participation of Western democracies. The paper explores the perception by the new Malian powers of the German military presence in the country.

Good international citizenship and the protection of internally displaced persons: examining Kenya’s law and policy

ABSTRACT Good international citizenship is traditionally associated with the practices of Western democracies but is also increasingly relevant to non-Western states that seek to promote human rights on the basis of sovereignty and non-interference. Such approach has important implications for how non-Western states devise their own national laws and policies. To examine such implications, this article analyses Kenya’s framework for protecting Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Kenya’s standing as good international citizen has facilitated the formation of a comprehensive national IDP framework that has allowed Kenya to emerge as a leading state in the protection of the right not to be arbitrarily displaced. Despite such progress, the consolidation of Kenya’s IDP framework also depends upon effective implementation and commitment to regional conventions.

Reconceptualizing Journalists as a Fractured Interpretive Community: Updating the Journalistic Interpretive Community Framework for the 21st Century

Taking a discursive approach, this study applies the concept of metajournalistic discourse to the study of press freedom debates in a postcolonial context stretching from 1993 to 2023 between the Zimbabwean public and private press. Based on a textual analysis of press freedom debates, combined with interviews with various news media stakeholders held between December 2022 and January 2023 in Harare, the study finds support for the previous argument that the idea of journalistic interpretive communities does not really hold under contested contexts beyond liberal Western democracies. The study extends this idea by reconceptualizing journalistic communities beyond liberal Western democracies as fractured interpretive communities. The study further argues that rising polarization and epistemic contests under liberal Western democracies now threaten journalistic interpretive communities as previously understood. This is especially so for those journalists who operate under a contested and polarized news media and political environment, without a single dominant national ideology.

Engagement in the digital age: Understanding “what works” for participatory technologies in environmental decision-making

Effective engagement is crucial for enhancing environmental decision-making processes, fostering more sustainable and equitable outcomes. However, the success of engagement is highly variable and context-dependent. While theoretical frameworks have been developed to explain outcome variance in engagement in environmental decision-making, they have not yet been tested in digital contexts, leaving their applicability to digital engagement processes unclear. More broadly, there are unanswered questions about the effectiveness of digital tools in achieving the goals of engagement, which have become increasingly pertinent amidst growing concerns about the potential of digital technologies for exacerbating exclusions, ethical issues, and systematically undermining democratic progress. This paper addresses this evidence gap by presenting findings from interviews with practitioners in UK public, private, and third sector organisations. Our results provide empirical insights into the technical, ethical, and inclusivity debates surrounding digital tools and their effectiveness in promoting accessible engagement, high-quality social interaction, place-based decision-making, and more trustworthy and credible outcomes. Our findings indicate that while current engagement theories are applicable to digital environments, the key explanatory factors acquire new dimensions in digital compared to in-person contexts. Drawing on the findings, this study contributes novel insights to expand current theory for explaining “what works” in engagement in environmental decisions, enhancing its relevance and applicability in the digital age. The paper concludes with evidence-led recommendations for environmental practitioners to improve engagement processes in digital and remote settings.

Public Opinions on Freedom of Speech and Prohibited Hate Speech against Islam and Muslims

This article scrutinizes the public debate in Sweden that followed the heated riots that took place with the burning of the Quran that were conduct by Rasmus Paludan in spring 2022. The Easter holiday in 2022, that coincided with Ramadan, served as the backdrop for the Danish-Swedish provoker Rasmus Paludan. Our study is based on a close reading of 71 public opinion articles that were published during April and May 2022, i.e., just after the so-called Easter riots. We argue that the discussion that followed Paludan’s public rallies in Sweden unfolds a dilemma between on the one hand freedom of speech and freedom of religion on the other. By deploying a critical discourse analyses this study helps us to notice the discursive orders that regulated the debate but more over toward what new interdiscursive patterns it was moving. The overall results indicates that the riots are mainly viewed as a result of a failed multicultural policy in which Islam is talked about as an obstacle for liberal democracy and thus freedom of speech. For example, material reasons, poverty, unemployment, racism is largely left out of the debate.

Justice for the Marginalized in a Constitutional Democracy

Justice for the Marginalized in a Constitutional Democracy

A Critical Review on Composition of the Constitutional Court of Korea

The composition of the Constitutional Court is a crucial aspect for the realization of constitutionalism. While the Constitutional Court has been praised for its significant contributions to the establishment of constitutional democracy in Korea, there have been criticisms regarding the composition of the Court in both its institutional structure and operational practices. The Constitutional Court of Korea consists of nine justices. Although these nine justices are formally appointed by the President of Korea, three are elected by the National Assembly, and three are designated by the Chief of the Supreme Court. This means that the President, the majority of the National Assembly, and even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court can each choose three justices on their own without any consent or approval from other branches. This raises concerns about the lack of democratic legitimacy, judicial independence and the expertise of the Constitutional Court. Additionally, there are constitutional issues such as the relatively short term of office, the reappointment, the absence of a specified term for the Chief Justice, and the potential for prolonged vacancies of seats.

Understanding preferences for descriptive political representation among citizens with immigrant background

Today, citizens with an immigrant background make up a large minority in many western democracies. However, we still know little about how this growing group of citizens wants to be represented politically, often due to a simple lack of data. This study overcomes this obstacle by using Facebook ad campaigns to target Swedish citizens with immigrant background directly. In a series of experiments the study shows important similarities between native Swedes and citizens of immigrant origin, with both groups emphasizing substantive representation. The study also reveals substantial heterogeneity within the immigrant group: respondents show no preference for being represented by another immigrant in general. Only a shared immigrant background elicits a positive response, thus cautioning against treating “immigrant background” as a homogenous category. The results also highlight an understudied source of discrimination where respondents with immigrant background show a strong negative reaction against immigrants from certain countries.

Mirroring societal shifts: revisiting the ethno-racial, ethno-religious, and ideological foundations of Guyana’s party system

ABSTRACT While scholars have relied on societal cleavages to explain the origins and evolution of party systems in Western democracies, drawing that link in Latin America and the Caribbean has been more challenging. Guyana is an exception to the norm. Its party system has aligned ethnically since independence in the 1960s. The People’s National Congress mostly appeals to the Afro-Guyanese, and the People’s Progressive Party largely draws support from the Indo-Guyanese. However, in recent decades, the country has experienced relevant demographic shifts that force a reconsideration of the predominance of ethno-racial traits as fuelling inter-party competition. We use the AmericasBarometer to examine the individual-level ethno-racial, ethno-religious, and ideological correlates of partisanship from 2010 to 2016. The results indicate that ethno-racial divisions have lost salience as ethno-religious features have become a more prevalent source of partisan attachments. We conclude that the correlates of partisanship in Guyana mirror its broader socio-demographic transformation.

A genealogy of politics: Vindicatory, pragmatic, and realist

AbstractIn Western democracies, people harbor feelings of disgust or hatred for politics. Populists and technocrats even seemingly question the value of politics. Populists cry that they are not politicians and that politics is necessarily corrupt. From the opposite side, technocrats view politics as a pointless constraint on enacting the obviously right policies. Are Western democracies facing a rejection of politics? And is politics worth defending? This paper offers a vindicatory genealogy of politics, vindicating the need human beings have for this practice and clarifying the extent of its contemporary rejections. To achieve these contributions, the paper connects the literatures on pragmatic genealogy and on political realism, revealing how they can complement each other. Following pragmatic genealogy, the practice of politics is vindicated, because it meets an inevitable functional need for collectively binding decision‐making. However, and importantly, political realism allows us to see that the functional mechanisms through which politics fulfills this need vary contextually and thus require careful empirical scrutiny. The paper thus dispels confusion about seeming rejections of politics by clarifying what is unavoidable, and what is revisable about politics.

From Liberal Democracy to Illiberal Populist Autocracy: Possible Reasons for Hungary’s Autocratization

AbstractThe paper looks for the main reasons of how was the Hungarian government of the Fidesz Party lead by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán able to within 13 years undermine the independent checks on their power so that it could convert what had looked like a stable but imperfect democracy into an autocracy? After listing the most obvious reasons the paper looks particularly at, how much is the way of a mostly elite-driven democratic transition using the tools of ‚legal constitutionalism‘and ‚undemocratic liberalism‘without real historical traditions of a liberal democratic constitutional culture and with the regionally determined value system is to blame. This also leads to the question, how to allocate the responsibility for the backsliding between the elites and the citizens, influenced and often manipulated by the leaders.

The construction of the normative persuasion of social and environmental reporting regulation

Purpose This study aims to understand why some social and environmental reporting (SER) regulations are more successful than others in modifying collective corporate reporting behaviour and expectations. More specifically, it presents a qualitative and historically informed exploration of the construction of the enabling conditions for corporate adoption of SER regulation in a national context. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on insights from structuration theory and the sociological approach to legal studies, the authors examined the normative persuasion of the first regulation in Spain requiring firms to disclose social and environmental information in a stand-alone report: Article 39 of the Spanish Sustainable Economy Law. The case study is based primarily on 38 semi-structured interviews with relevant actors involved in this SER regulation from 2008 to 2014. Other sources such as legal and policy documents, historical documents, books, press reports and field notes from attendance at technical meetings related to the phenomenon under study help inform and complement the analysis of the interviews. Findings The analysis reveals that the agency of regulators, regulatees and other relevant actors involved in the SER regulation led to the law becoming a dead letter. However, only by examining the structural circumstances, shaped by history and socio-economic context, can the authors understand how the normative persuasion of law is constructed or undermined. Research limitations/implications The study underscores the importance of the national context in developing corporate social responsibility (CSR) regulation and the crucial role of history. The results of this research also suggest that significant progress towards a more transformative CSR regulation cannot be achieved without the support of enabling structures/ Practical implications Recent SER regulations (European Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and IFRS sustainability standards, to mention those that are gaining most traction) may not achieve sufficient compliance if those responsible for drafting them do not ensure that the conditions for the emergence of regulatory persuasion are met. Regulators must therefore have a profound understanding of how these conditions are constructed as part of a historical process inextricably linked to the social structures of the environment in which the law is to be applied. Social implications The study reveals the changing landscape of corporate social responsibility, where scientists, academics, NGO activists and civil society organisations struggle to gain some agency in a field populated by actors, such as trade unions or employers, who were constitutive of Western industrial liberal democracies. Originality/value This study presents an in-depth and historically grounded analysis of the dynamics involved in creating the conditions that lead to successful SER legislation in a national context.

Between Appeasement and Accommodation: Kōmeitō's Policy Influence under Second Abe Administration

Abstract This study examines the Kōmeitō's strategies for policy influence within the coalition framework with its coalition partner, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) during the period of Second Abe Administration (2012–2020). As a junior coalition partner, Kōmeitō faces unity–distinctiveness dilemma, where it must accommodate policy demands of the senior partner while appeasing its core support base, Sōka Gakkai. This article argues that the junior partner's strategies for policy influence are determined by two factors: overlap/distinctiveness of policy inclinations and the positive/negative issue associations measured by the level of involvement in decision-making, i.e. portfolio allocation. Three cases are analyzed to elucidate the diversity of Kōmeitō's policy influence, the strategies of which range from corrective moderation, to nudging, to threats, all utilized to maintain a balance between reinforcing “distinctiveness” from the senior partner and consolidating coalition coherence to sustain competence within the coalition framework.

Rawls, Humanity and the Concept of Expression

Abstract In this article I present two possible interpretations of Rawls’s assertion in A Theory of Justice that human beings have a desire to express their nature as free and rational. My reading hinges on different accounts of the Kantian conception of the person and of the Aristotelian principle and its companion effect. According to the first interpretation, this desire is a kind of natural predisposition inherent in all persons irrespective of the society in which they live. It has a universal and ahistorical aspect. The second interpretation sees our free and rational nature as an ideal that we strive to fulfill. This ideal appeals only to citizens of modern liberal democracies and entails a more qualified universalism. I argue that there is strong textual support for both interpretations but the second one is more consistent with the methodological framework of justice as fairness.