Democratic Change Research Articles

A DEMOCRACIA PARTICIPATIVA NA VENEZUELA DA ERA CHÁVEZ E A QUESTÃO DOS CONSELHOS COMUNAIS E DAS COMUNAS

This article deals with the democratic changes implemented by the government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. We have directed our gaze on the project and protagonist democracy, focusing our analysis on the communal councils and the communes. We have used as sources speeches, government plans, the country's legislation, in addition to the recent historiography about the subject. We believe that despite the limitations and mistakes, the Chavez’s government has promoted great changes in the political culture of the country by providing direct and active political participation of population groups through the institutions of participatory democracy.

State Capacity, Incumbent Turnover and Democratic Change in Authoritarian Elections

Under what conditions do elections lead to democratization or conversely, sustain authoritarianism? State capacity may be a crucial intervening variable affecting the democratizing power of elections in authoritarian regimes. In regimes with limited state capacity, manipulating elections, co-opting elites, and repressing opposition is more difficult than in regimes with more extensive state capacity, rendering turnover in elections more likely in weak states. Yet, while increasing the chances of turnover, if the new incumbent has limited capacity to deliver public services and make policy changes after coming to power, democratic change is unlikely to be sustainable. Hence, state capacity may be a double-edged sword. This paper tests these expectations using Varieties of Democracy data for 460 elections in 110 authoritarian regimes from 1974 to 2012, and finds that state capacity is negatively associated with incumbent turnover but positively associated with democratic change after incumbent turnover in electoral authoritarian regimes.

Strong states, weak elections? How state capacity in authoritarian regimes conditions the democratizing power of elections

State capacity may be a crucial factor conditioning the democratizing power of elections in authoritarian regimes. This paper develops a two-phase theory considers the different effects of state capacity on turnover in elections and democratic change after elections. In regimes with limited state capacity, manipulating elections and repressing opposition is more difficult than in regimes with extensive state capacity, rendering turnover in elections more likely in weak states. However, if the new incumbent has limited capacity to deliver public services and make policy changes after coming to power, sustainable democratic change is unlikely. Hence, state capacity is hypothesized to have a negative effect on turnover, but a positive effect on democratic change. These hypotheses are confirmed in a sample of 460 elections in 110 authoritarian regimes taking place in the period 1974 to 2012 using the Varieties of Democracy dataset. The findings suggest a need to revisit strong-state-first theories of democratization.

Dynamics in the Notions of Sexuality Among Three Generations of Bulgarian Muslims

Based on ethnographic research in a Muslim town in Bulgaria, this study provides a comparative analysis, exploring the modernization of sex and sexuality within three generations of Pomaks (Slavic Muslims). Although the modernization of sexuality was “postponed” by the repression against Muslims in Bulgaria during communism known as “Rebirth process”, the results from the study show that the detraditionalization of sexuality is not a rapid and recent process and that different (hidden) forms of sexual/intimate interaction have existed long before the democratic changes after 1989. The liberalization of the sexual attitudes after 1989 was strongly intensified by the opening of a high school in the community, the development of the local economy, and the influence of media. The emerging non-traditional models of sexual behavior and attitudes are initiated primarily by women with higher education within the context of women rights and independence. However, the modernization is not a homogeneous linear process but is rather adapted to the local customs and expectations and depends greatly on the educational status of women. Paying particular attention to the women’s sexuality, this study analyzes the processes of detraditionalization of sexuality in comparison to another Muslim community in Bulgaria known for its re-traditionalization in terms of gender and sexuality because of the influence of Arabic organizations. The results suggest that the ethnic isolation and the following need for ethnic identification of Pomaks has intensified two opposite tendencies regarding sexual attitudes in two similar communities.

Institutional stepping stones for democracy: how and why multipartyism enhances democratic change

ABSTRACT Scholars of electoral authoritarianism and comparative institutions have emphasized how authoritarian regimes implement multiparty elections to stabilize authoritarian rule and diffuse political opposition. Consequently, the literature has advised against the notion that multiparty elections constitute a general lever for democratization. This article presents evidence in support of a more positive understanding of multipartyism and democracy. We argue that multiparty elections create an institutional space for oppositional parties, instrumentally motivated to promote further positive democratic change. We hypothesize that multiparty regimes are (1) generally more likely to experience positive democratic change, and (2) more importantly, more likely to do so when faced by internal or external regime threats. We test these hypotheses using cross-section time-series data on 166 countries in the period 1973–2010. Our results show a general positive effect of multipartyism for democratic change, and that multiparty regimes are more likely to improve their levels of democracy when faced with demonstrations and economic crisis.

Instrumentalisation de la coopération chinoise et transition politique au Sénégal: analyse de l’ère Wade

In countries like Senegal where democracy seems to be institutionalising itself, evaluation of the quality of this practice often happens at critical points of reference such as elections. The democratic changes between Presidents Diouf and Wade in 2000 and between the latter and President Macky Sall in 2012 are generally deemed to be indicators of the healthy condition of democracy in this country. The present article stipulates that the politicians involved in this alternation plan and prepare for it as much at the heart of their administrations as do the political parties, but often also outside election periods. This article demonstrates that the Wade regime, following that mindset, has instrumentalized its cooperation with China in attempt to consolidate its power.

Depicting concurrency between the participatory and the strategic design practice within the urban context

The context of everyday urban life is the cradle of more democratic social changes, and on which design practice aimed at the regeneration of urban space towards something more democratic, inclusive, participative and resilient has to focus. However, design practice within the city has hardly been successful from this perspective. In this paper a path to strengthening design practice within the urban context is presented by identifying the points of concurrency and enrichment between strategic design from the perspective of the ecosystem and the participatory design approach of infrastructuring agonistic public spaces. Political design and agonistic democracy are the theoretical thread running in the background of the discussion here presented that results in affirming the need to qualify metadesign, within strategic design, as infrastructuring agonistic public spaces when acting within the city, as well as to amplify the potentiality of the suggested practice through the integration of prototyping and scenario building. Keywords: strategic design, infrastructuring, agonistic public spaces, urban context.

Radio and political change: listening in contemporary Morocco

ABSTRACTAmong the effects of the Arab uprisings on Morocco were the adoption of a new constitution and the emplacement of an Islamist-led coalition government. Despite these significant changes, the internal discussion on democratic change and increased political participation and freedom is ongoing. The media are both one of the major subjects and the forum of this debate. An important development has been the liberalisation of the previously state-controlled radio sector in 2005, with 13 private radio stations having been established in addition to the already existing public stations. As the restructuring of the audiovisual sector is a recent phenomenon, this paper asks how contemporary Moroccan audiences responded: What do they listen to and why? In order to answer this question, fieldwork was conducted for a period of three months, primarily interviewing taxi drivers as a major cohort of radio listeners. In addition, an online survey of students’ listening preferences helped to contrast the taxi-driver findings with those relating to a younger generation. Theoretically, the paper approaches the topic by looking at the ‘uses and gratifications’ theory in an authoritarian context. The findings indicate that newly established private radio stations enjoy wide popularity and thereby are challenging the public stations’ position.

Measuring subnational democracy: toward improved regime typologies and theories of regime change

ABSTRACT Social scientists have been limited in their work by the paucity of global time series data about subnational institutions and practices. Such data could help scholars refine regime typologies, improve theories of democratization and regime change, better understand subnational democracy, and illuminate issues of development, conflict, and governance. This article addresses the lack of data by introducing 22 subnational measures from a new dataset, Varieties of Democracy. Validity tests demonstrate that the measures’ strengths outweigh their weaknesses. The measures excel in covering all subnational levels for most countries, capturing different elements of subnational elections, and including a variety of dimensions of elections and civil liberties. The measures also offer unmatched global and temporal coverage. The article demonstrates how these strengths can provide scholars with the benefits described above.

Trust and Tolerance across the Middle East and North Africa: A Comparative Perspective on the Impact of the Arab Uprisings

The protests that swept the Arab Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are expected to have influenced two key civic attitudes fundamental to well-functioning democracies: trust and tolerance. However, systematic comparative assessments of the general patterns and particularities in this region are rare. This contribution theorizes the uprisings’ impact and presents new society-level measurements of trust and tolerance for the MENA, synchronizing over 40 Arab Barometer and World Values Survey surveys on Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, and Yemen, from before and after the uprisings. The analyses firstly show political-institutional trust falling in the uprisings’ aftermath in countries that went through democratic reform or regime change. It appears that politicians misbehaving and reforms not resolving social problems hurt people’s trust in politics. Secondly, in democratic transition countries Egypt and Tunisia, a decrease in social trust reflected the pattern of political-institutional trust indicating a spill-over effect. Thirdly, ethno-religious tolerance dropped region-wide after the uprisings, indicating that the aftermath of religious conflict impacted the entire Arab region. These results support rational-choice institutionalist theories, while at the same time refining them for the MENA context.

How does democratization affect the composition of government expenditure?

This study examines the effects of democratization on the size and composition of government expenditure using the data of 125 countries between 1972 and 2010 at most. Specifically, we focus not only on the total expenditure but also on the composition, and we employ dichotomous indices of political regimes rather than score indices. Moreover, we construct instruments for democratization based on the democratization wave and conduct an instrumental variables estimation to address endogeneity problems. Our results show that while democratization does not have a significant impact on total expenditure, it increases expenditure on health. Democratization decreases expenditure on defense, although the result of the instrumental variables estimation is not significant. Furthermore, considering the time-varying effect of democratization, defense expenditure starts decreasing immediately after a regime change and health expenditure increases in the medium and long run, while they do not significantly vary before a regime change. Thus, while focusing only on total expenditure does not uncover the effects of democratization, considering detailed categories of government expenditure enables us to understand how democratization changes governments’ behaviors.

Can extreme rainfall trigger democratic change? The role of flood-induced corruption

Using a new dataset of extreme rainfall covering 130 countries from 1979 to 2009, this paper investigates whether and how extreme rainfall-driven flooding affects democratic conditions. Our key finding indicates that extreme rainfall-induced flooding exerts two opposing effects on democracy. On one hand, flooding leads to corruption in the chains of emergency relief distribution and other post-disaster assistance, which in turn impels the citizenry to demand more democracy. On the other hand, flooding induces autocratic tendencies in incumbent regimes because efficient post-disaster management with no dissent, chaos or plunder might require government to undertake repressive actions. The net estimated effect is an improvement in democratic conditions.

Sain noyon xan kolostorvárosa

This article gives an overview of the three-hundred-year history of one ofthe largest Mongolian monasteries. During the Manchu period (1691–1911)and the sovereignty of the Mongols (1911–1921), it was the residence of theSain Noyon Khans, the rulers of Sain Noyon Khan Aimag. Although writtensources contain inconsistent data about its foundation, development, and thenames of its temples, the reminiscences of three old monks lively illustratethe life in the monastery and its vicinity before the destruction of the monastery. The monastery had various types of temples and schools, moreover,it was the headquarter of the Sain Noyon Khan himself. A local reincarnation and a Tibetan master resided there permanently, and the ThirteenthDalai Lama also visited it in 1906. The monastery was totally destroyed in1937–1938, but after the democratic changes old monks rebuilt a temple in1990, and started to educate the new generations of monks. The area is richin gold, thus the usual task of the monks is to pacify the local spirits. Manyof the statements of the article derive from the results of the ‘Documentationof Mongolian Monasteries Project’, taking place in 2007, which aimed atdocumenting all monasteries that ever existed in Mongolia.

Democratization and Social Movements in South Korea: Defiant Institutionalization

South Korea provides an intellectual challenge in the fields of social movements and democracy in that intense mobilization and the strong influence of social movements have accompanied steady democratization for more than two decades, despite major theories having predicted otherwise. This book examines how social movements in previously authoritarian contexts evolve after democratic transition, using South Korea as a case study. It explores how democratic change influences the form of social movements, and how social movements affect the pace and direction of democracy in turn. It explains how South Korean social movements were able to attain strong political influence by focusing on four causal factors: the configuration of major political actors during the transition period, the relational dynamics among social movement groups, the relationship between social movements and institutionalized political actors, and the impact of transnational forces in the post-transition period. Unlike previous scholarship, the book takes a historical, actor-centered, and process-oriented approach that closely follows the interactions among contending actors through event sequences, rather than being driven by abstract theoretical frameworks. In doing so, it analyses uses a broad range of evidence, including police records, untapped activist documents, presidential memoirs, newspaper accounts and original data sets. Shedding light on the complex political reality that gave rise to a contentious civil society in South Korea after democratization, this book also illuminates the institutional conditions that can help promote domestic peace and stability. Therefore it will be of great use to students and scholars of Korean Studies, Korean politics and social movements, as well as policy makers.

Političke promjene uvjetovale novi medijski sustav

The paper deals with media issues in Zadar local newspapers in the first ten years of democratic changes in Croatia. This period was marked by the socio-political and cultural changes, and the hardest days the Croatian people were going through during the Croatian War for Independence.Zadar is the city of the rich media history, which dates from the Royal Dalmatian in 1806. Even in the nineties of last century, the city of Zadar continued its rich newspaper tradition. The newspapers were being issued, the new radio stations were being established as well as the local television. The aim was to explore the theme of the articles and the authors’ point of view in terms of media and media issues from 1990 to 2000, in Zadar local newspaper Narodni list (weekly), Zadarski list (weekly/daily), Zadarski tjednik (weekly), Fokus (monthly) and Zadarski regional (weekly). The paper applied the method of quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The work is based on a corpus of 390 newspaper articles.

Teach the Partnership: Critical University Studies and the Future of Service-Learning

Edward Zlotkowski's (1995) article Does Service-Learning Have a Future? challenges the academy to integrate community-engaged learning into the curriculum. As Zlotkowski suggests, students, staff, and faculty ought to engender a culture of civic action and ethical accountability enhanced by rigorous coursework, but this goal necessitates resources: administrators must invest in service-learning to reap its full benefits. Issues arise, however, when one considers this investment in light of the academy's corporatization. Nussbaum (2010) has noted, for instance, how colleges and universities increasingly emphasize vocational training and professional readiness at the expense of humanist inquiry and civic responsibility. The academy's corporatization, she argues, threatens to erode the skills at the heart of democratic citizenship. Williams (2012) likewise censures this market-driven academy research progressively governed more by corporations that fund and benefit from it, with faculty downsized and casualized, and with students reconstituted as consumers subject to escalating tuition and record levels of debt (p. 25). He insists that students, staff, and faculty must engage critically with these unsettling trends in higher education--an appeal, I argue, service-learning educators in particular must heed. As higher education, deeply influenced by neoliberalism's pressures to marketize, adopts the structure and value systems of big business, it risks placing private interest before public concern. This danger, even more acute twenty-one years after the publication of Zlotkowski's article, underscores the need for a reassessment of the institutional means by which service-learning happens. Perhaps, Zlotkowski (2015) wonders in his framing essay for the Future Directions Project, there is a fundamental mismatch at the heart of our work that we have not wanted to recognize (p. 84). Higher education may not prove the best location, after all, from which to effect progressive democratic change. In what follows, I stay the course with this provocation and argue that service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) educators must teach their partnerships--the specific histories, missions, and stakeholders involved--and thereby contextualize SLCE within the often problematic forces at work within and upon higher education. I thus call on the movement to interrogate, pedagogically, the motivations behind institutional commitments to SLCE and to account, ethically, for the economic and social privilege animating this service. Consider the Means To look back on the past twenty years and forward to the next is to acknowledge higher education's rapid corporatization and internationalization. I recommend that SLCE educators engage with the academy's globalization--the process whereby higher education assumes a corporate mentality and expands its reach internationally--by designing instruction in the vein of critical university studies (CUS). CUS is an emerging field that examines higher education in light of its history and cultural context. CUS analyzes both historical shifts in conceptions of the academy and contemporary issues such as adjunct labor and student debt, thereby examining the university as both a discursive and material reality (Williams, 2012, para. 10). CUS is interdisciplinary by nature and gives students the opportunity to analyze both higher education and specific institutions through a lens that is particularly relevant given the current trends toward corporatization and internationalization. Indeed, conversations about their school's history, governance, and endowment position students, staff, faculty, and, especially in the case of SLCE, community members to think about the ethical dimensions of the academy's presence and impact in broader publics. While this sort of dialogue may well happen in SLCE classrooms around the world, the explicit inclusion of CUS in SLCE programming aims to make these conversations more intentional and concrete. …

Enclaves of freedom. On „second circulation” publishing in the PRL

„Second circulation publishing”, the broadly defined publishing and cultural movement, independent of the authorities of the PRL and not subject to state censorship, was initiated in the autumn of 1976 by the community which opposed communist party rule in Poland. The author of the article offers a synthesis defining the notion of „second circulation”, indicating its scope of influence and its reach, discussing its significance at the levels of community, cultural and political life, and its influence on the democratic changes in Poland and other Central and East European states in the late-1980s.

“The transformative power of Europe” beyond enlargement: the EU’s performance in promoting democracy in its neighbourhood

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that the European Union’s (EU) performance in promoting democracy in its neighbourhood is not only compromised by the lack of a membership perspective but the selective sanctioning of non-compliance with democracy standards caused by conflicting foreign policy objectives. We identify two conditions for the EU’s consistent application of democratic conditionality: the absence of a stability-democratisation dilemma and the presence of pro-democratic reform coalitions. If neither of these conditions is present, the EU is more likely to act as a status-quo than a transformative power prioritising (authoritarian) stability over uncertain (democratic) change.

Transforming cities: does urbanization promote democratic change?

ABSTRACTTransforming cities: does urbanization promote democratic change? Regional Studies. Could urbanization lead to more democracy and better government for the mega-cities of the developing world? This paper reviews three channels through which urbanization may generate political change. First, cities facilitate coordinated public action and enhance the effectiveness of uprisings. Second, cities may increase the demand for democracy relative to dictatorship. Third, cities may engender the development of ‘civic capital’ which enables citizens to improve their own institutions. History and empirics provide significant support for the first channel, but less evidence exists for the others. Urbanization may improve the quality of poor-world governments, but more research is needed to draw that conclusion.

Sorbian Members of the People’s Chamber in the GDR (1949–1990)

The activities of Sorbian deputies in the People’s Chamber, the highest legislative body in the German Democratic Republic, is a subject that has yet to be fully studied. This paper outlines the main findings of our research, undertaken in Germany in the years 2014–2016. For our study of Sorbian deputies, we have divided the existence of the People’s Chamber into three basic periods: the Era of Kurt Krjeńc (1950–1964/1967), the Era of Jurij Grós (1967–1990), and the Era of Democratic Changes (1990). Each period is associated with important figures from Sorbian Lusatia. We counted a total of 28 deputies in the People’s Chamber who were in some way associated with life in this region. However, there was no chance of promoting the interests of the Sorbs in the People’s Chamber, since despite being the GDR’s highest legislative body, its role was purely formal and symbolic.