Democratic Political Process Research Articles

Consumer Protection, the Nation-State, Law, Globalization, and Democracy

Consumers are now participants in a global market, and possibly in a cybermarket. Law can only protect them (or us-we are all consumers) through rules which are essentially national, and which can only be enforced within national frameworks. Most of those rules have been enacted through a democratic political process. If the rules are useless in practice, people may question the usefulness of democracy and nation states. Consumer protection laws enable the correction of market failures and the redress of inequalities of information and power. Recent cases indicate that consumer protection laws, for a number of reasons, will be of little practical use to protect consumers in the global economy and in cyberspace. That raises the question of whether democratic politics can ever be used to bring countervailing force against those who abuse their position in the global market or the cybermarket. If so, what other national laws will be rendered useless: labor laws, environmental laws, other laws that result from an often vigorous political process? What functions remain for democratic politics?

Diversity in Democracy: Minority Representation in the United States and Freedom Is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates, and American Presidential Politics

Diversity in Democracy: Minority Representation in the United States. Edited by Gary M. Segura and Shaun Bowler. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005. 316p. $45.00.Freedom Is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates, and American Presidential Politics. By Ronald W. Walters. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. 239p. $27.95.Diversity in Democracy is an ambitious book—even more ambitious than its subtitle suggests. Together with an impressive team of contributors, Gary Segura and Shaun Bowler set out to examine how minority Americans—blacks and Latinos, in particular—engage with the democratic political process, from how they align themselves within the existing party system to how they use the tools of democratic citizenship (namely, the vote) to advance their interests. In many ways Segura, Bowler, and their colleagues succeed and, in the process, reveal a number of important empirical phenomena and relationships, such as the value of descriptive representation in promoting both political trust and participation. Because of its contribution to basic knowledge about minority political behavior, this book would certainly be a valuable addition to any minority politics syllabus. However, its ambition is both a source of strength and a weakness.

Civilian supremacy in democracies with ‘fault lines’: The role of the parliamentary standing committee on defence in Bangladesh

This article sets out to identify the conditions that promote civilian supremacy over the military in the post-military democracies. The article addresses the case of Bangladesh, where a decade-old post-military democratic political process is riddled with problems, such as the absence of opposition parties in the parliament, chronic political instability and violence and inefficient governance. However, the powerful military has not yet shown any inclination towards intervention in domestic politics. Rather, various civilian institutions, such as the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence (PSCD), have been successful in raising the level of the military's accountability to the civilian government and society. The article seeks to explain the role of PSCD during 1998–2001 in promoting civilian supremacy in Bangladesh. It argues that three sets of factors can explain the PSCD's role. First, there is intense competition for political power between the two major parties, which resists the military's involvement in politics in favour of any one political party. Second, there is the important role of civil society in favour of civilian supremacy. Third, there are external factors such as the donor countries' and international agencies' stance in favour of democracy and the Bangladesh military's participation in United Nations peacekeeping missions, which are discouraging military intervention in politics at home.

What We Desire, What We Have Reason to Desire, Whatever We Might Desire: Mill and Sen on the Value of Opportunity

I compare Mill's and Sen's accounts of the value of opportunity, focusing on a tension between two ideas they both uphold: that individual freedom is an important component of well-being, and that, because desires can be adaptive, actual desire is not always a good indicator of what will give well-being. The two writers' responses to this tension reflect different understandings of the relationship between freedom and desire. Sen links an individual's well-being to her freedom to choose what she has reason to desire, and looks to a democratic political process for a collective judgement about what it is rational to desire. Mill links the individual's well-being to her freedom to act on her own desires, whatever they may be, within the constraints imposed by a fair initial distribution of resources. He sees no need for collective judgement about what is ultimately valuable in human life. I side with Mill.

Robert Cover's 'Nomos and Narrative': The Court as Philosopher King or Pontius Pilate?

This paper suggests that Robert Cover`s project of distancing courts from state violence is doomed to failure. Disagreements between the nomoi postulated by Cover are matters of incommensurable value judgements, in relation to which legal rationality is inappropriate. Disagreement between nomoi is more plausibly regarded as a matter of feeling rather than rationality and expressed by the notions of the sublime and the beautiful as advanced by Edmund Burke. Furthermore, according to Cover`s premise, the nomos of a community can be externally evaluated only from the perspective of another nomos so that the notion of an objective standpoint apparently represented by Cover`s `imperial community` seems to be contradictory. The notion of a court with a `committed constitutionalism` of its own but having no privileged status also seems contradictory since it allows judges to wash their hands of responsibility for their decisions (in a manner reminiscent of Pontius Pilate). If this is so, then the court is not the most appropriate mechanism to make choices between competing value systems and violence may be avoided only by appealing to sentiment as the basis for a modus vivendi. This approach reflects Cover`s insistence that a community is held together by non-rational factors and may provide the basis for a more vibrant democratic political process.

Caste and Democracy: Assertion and Identity among the Dalits of Rural Punjab

The literature on the political sociology of caste identity/mobili sations in contemporary India and her democratic political process generally focuses primarily on macro analysis of electoral politics or caste associations. The existing formulations on 'caste and politics ' have also been drawn largely from such analyses where the political experience of the so-called middle-level, landowning 'dominant' castes has been the primary source of empirical data. Based on three case studies of caste-related conflicts and dalit assertions in contem porary rural Punjab, this paper tries to show that, historically, politicisation of caste identities varies significantly across different caste groups. The experience of being a member of a dalit caste, for example, is very different from that of being a member of an 'upper ' or dominant caste. This paper, therefore, argues for a more differen tiated understanding of the subject, which can be best derived from micro analyses of changing caste relations in contemporary India.

Building health information systems in the context of national strategies for the development of statistics.

The focus of this issue of the Bulletin is a most welcome indication of renewed attention on health information systems (HISs) and on information systems generally. Recent work by Chris Scott highlights the need, both in countries and globally, to develop the culture of evidence-based policy-making: to help identify issues; inform the design and choice of policies; forecast the future; monitor policy implementation; and evaluate policy impact (1). Scott also considers alternative criteria for policymaking and concludes that none of them is consistent with transparent and accountable democratic political processes, nor is likely to lead to equitable, efficient and effective policy outcomes. Good statistical systems are essential for good governance and are part of the enabling environment for development. In this issue, Carla AbouZahr & Ties Boerma (pp. 578-583) and Sarah Macfarlane (590-596) note the increasing emphasis on the need for a wide range of statistics to inform sound decision-making on health policy and its execution. These needs go far beyond information from, and on, the health system itself, including information on the socioeconomic, demographic, environmental and behavioural determinants of health outcomes, taken for instance from vital registration systems, household surveys and population and housing censuses. Health policies and outcomes are also linked to policies and outcomes in other sectors, such as education, and to more general development frameworks such as poverty reduction strategies and the monitoring of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This is highlighted in the case of information needed to understand, prevent and cure diseases. For example, heightened concern about HIV/AIDS is bringing agencies and sectors together to implement, monitor and evaluate interventions to prevent and control the epidemic. This focuses attention on the need to look across national statistical systems, which are generally not well equipped to meet these increased policy requirements; and the countries that need good statistics most are those with the weakest information systems. The importance of strategic approaches to statistical development was recognized by the Second International Roundtable on Managing for Development Results, held in Marrakech, Morocco, in February 2004. The Marrakech Action Plan for Statistics (2) set a target for all low-income countries (where appropriate) to have national strategies for the development of statistics (NSDSs) by 2006 and to have started to implement them by the following year in order to have high-quality, locally produced data for the next major review of the MDGs in 2010. To be effective, NSDSs should be integrated into national policy processes and included in the policy dialogue between developing countries and donors. PARIS21 (Partnership in statistics for development in the 21st century) has developed guidelines (3) that envisage NSDSs as a dynamic and consultative approach that draws on existing best practice in statistical planning and improvement, covering the whole national statistical system, building on the United Nations' fundamental principles for official statistics (4), good practice in technical cooperation (5), and existing statistical improvement processes such as the International Monetary Fund's general data dissemination system (6). …

‘The Devilish Thing’: The Commonwealth and Zimbabwe's Dénouement

One of the abiding ironies of the Commonwealth is that one of the organization's key statements on democracy and human rights is known as the Harare Declaration. This called for the liberty of the individual under the law and the individual's inalienable right to participate by means of free and democratic political processes in framing the society in which he or she lives. Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe (and other African leaders) signed up to this normative commitment voluntarily, with its emphasis on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Yet in the case of Zimbabwe such norms were actively and consciously undermined by a number of the Commonwealth's own members.

Regime change and nation building: can donors restore governance in post‐conflict states?

AbstractForeign aid agencies and international assistance organisations are now heavily involved in nation building in post‐conflict states. Their record of strengthening democratic governance in countries where civil war or military force replaced unpopular regimes is mixed. Experience suggests that a complex set of conditions must be created quickly in order to rebuild indigenous governance. Ensuring security, providing assistance through a transparent and coherent plan of action, coordinating donors' activities, establishing strong and legitimate national authority, strengthening democratic political processes, transferring responsibility and resources for development to a new government, stabilising the economy and strengthening social capital and human assets must all be done in quick succession. Achieving these goals requires a cadre of civilian and, sometimes, military personnel with expertise in post‐conflict nation building. The frequency with which government aid programmes and international assistance organisations engage in post‐conflict reconstruction also suggests the need for more explicit national and international policies and the creation of specialised nation‐building agencies to undertake these difficult tasks. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

On A Political Solution to the NIMBY Conflict

Scale economy in the construction and operation of public facilities, such as landfills, calls for cooperation among communities to build a common facility (Arthur O’Sullivan, 1993). Such a facility is a mixture of a public good and a private bad and, hence, leads to strong opposition by communities to locate it in their vicinity (Bruno S. Frey et al., 1996). This is one of the most serious environmental concerns of recent years, and is known as NIMBY: “not in my backyard.” In this paper we study the hypothesis that a democratic political process creates an adequate mechanism for the resolution of the NIMBY conflict. The intuitive explanation is simple. A NIMBY conflict is likely to induce lobbying and symmetric pressures by all threatened communities in the relevant region. As is well known (Gene M. Grossman and Elhanan Helpman, 1994), when subject to symmetric pressures, politicians stick firmly to principles and function most efficiently. The existing literature on the siting of noxious facilities focuses mainly on normative issues, such as welfare-maximizing siting via decentralized community-based mechanisms (e.g., Howard Kunreuther and Paul R. Kleindorfer, 1986; Robert C. Mitchell and Richard T. Carson, 1986; and Deborah Minehart and Zvika Neeman, 2002). Evidently, however, such mechanisms have seldom been practiced (e.g., Stephen K. Swallow et al., 1992). The current study adopts a positive approach, integrating a political-economic framework with a model of a competitive real estate market. In the theoretical section, a government of a linear two-city economy determines the location of a noxious facility, which affects the equilibrium in the real estate market and induces the spatial distributions of price and population. The government is subject to political pressures by city-level lobbies of landowners (both landlords and home owners). In general, the political equilibrium and the socially optimal siting differ. However, the more equitable the distribution of landownership in the region, the smaller the difference. At the limit, when property distribution is perfectly equitable and all cities participate in the political arena, the government locates the facility at the socially optimal site. The analysis proceeds by identifying additional conditions under which the political equilibrium siting coincides with the socially optimal location and, with an empirical analysis. In the empirical section, the theoretical framework is extended to account for a multiple-city region, and is calibrated to assess the prospects of the political system for resolving the NIMBY conflict in the context of landfill-siting in Israel. It is shown that if all cities in the region form political lobbies and the politicians are not extremely corrupt, the political siting is close geographically to the socially optimal location, and the difference entails a less than 0.1 percent reduction in social welfare. Moreover, even if the formation of lobbying in the region is incomplete, as long as the weight the politicians assign to social welfare is larger than 0.7, the proximity of the politically and socially optimal locations is preserved. We interpret the above results as supportive of the hypothesis of an effective political solution to the NIMBY conflict.

Catching the "Third Wave" of Democratization?: Debating Political Party Effectiveness in Africa Since 1980

AbstractMany observers believe that multi-party democracy increasingly represents the inevitable future of governance around the world, including Africa. Some countries such as South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, and Senegal have in fact made remarkable progress in instituting and moving toward consolidation of democratic systems. There has also been a history on the continent, however, of political systems that place de facto or de jure legal constraints on the ability of political parties to function. In fact, in recent years many African leaders have only grudgingly permitted multi-party politics under donor pressure. There remains a current of underlying skepticism toward political parties, and arguments exist against multi-party politics. This paper identifies and explains five key arguments. It then critiques them and determines that while individual elements of these arguments may have some validity, the conclusion that is drawn, i.e.that party activity should be constrained, if not prohibited, is not consonant with democratic governance. The final section presents suggestions of how weaknesses in political party functioning could be addressed without placing limits on the ability of parties to play their legitimate role in a democratic political process.

Accountability and Law in Europe: Towards a New Public Legal Order?

Accountability and Law in Europe: Towards a New Public Legal Order?

Is There a Democratic Norm in the Americas? An Analysis of the Organization of American States

The preamble of the Organization of American States (OAS) Charter is explicit about a commitment to representative democracy as indispensable condition for the stability, peace and development of the region. (1) However, in the four decades after inception in 1948, the OAS failed to develop a consistent policy regarding the promotion of democracy in the hemisphere. For instance, while the Cuban government was suspended from the OAS in 1962 for incompatibility with inter-American principles and objectives, the (anticommunist) authoritarian regimes that emerged in South America in the 1960s and 1970s were passively condoned. Many observers came to view the OAS as a facile extension of the Cold War security interests of most powerful member, the United States. With the end of the Cold War, however, the OAS has come to play an increasingly significant role in Western-hemispheric relations. (2) With the approval in June 1991 of the Commitment to Democracy and the Renewal of the Inter-American System and the adoption of OAS Resolution 1080, the organization renewed pledge to protect democracy in the region and established the institutional mechanisms for doing so. In particular, Resolution 1080 pledges the OAS secretary-general to convene an immediate emergency meeting of the OAS Permanent Council following any sudden or irregular interruption of the democratic political institutional process. (3) It is then the task of the Permanent Council to examine the situation and recommend whether or not a special meeting of the ministers of foreign affairs or of the General Assembly is warranted--all within ten days of the democratic crisis. In amending the charter through the adoption of the Washington protocol, the organization established that the General Assembly c ould, with a two-thirds vote, suspend any member state from the OAS in the event that its democratically constituted government has been overthrown by force. (4) The OAS also created a specific organization arm, the Unit for the Promotion of Democracy (UPD), to develop programs reinforcing the hemispheric trend toward democracy. Moreover, with the recent adoption of the Inter-American Democratic Charter on 11 September 2001, the QAS broadened conception of what constitutes a democratic crisis to include any unconstitutional alteration of the constitutional regime. (5) In short, the OAS now appears to spearhead a vigorous international regime for the defense of democratic rule in the hemisphere. Indeed, Heraldo Mufioz, a former chairman of the OAS Permanent Council, recently claimed that there is now a right to democracy in the Americas in the sense that a concern for the promotion and defense of democracy in the inter-American system has evolved into a normative obligation and, most important, is being implemented through collective action. (6) This new commitment by the OAS, in turn, raises several key questions for the study of international politics. First and foremost, is OAS action in relation to the defense of democracy motivated primarily by strategic or by normative factors? Second, under what conditions would the OAS actually intercede to protect and/or restore democracy in a member state? Finally, what type of OAS action would we expect to see if the OAS were to intervene? Two competing theories in international relations, realism and normativism, offer different explanations for the existence and behavior of international organizations (IOs). Realists view IOs as reflections of the underlying balance of power within the international system; as such, IOs are thought to have no real autonomy of their own. Normativists, in contrast, see IOs as reflections of a normative consensus shared by member states and the wider population of epistemic communities. IOs, for normativists, may develop considerable autonomy from member states. In order to assess the purported normative obligation to democracy in the Western Hemisphere, this essay examines the predictions that realist and normativist theories make regarding IOs and evaluates them against the evidence of OAS practice since the Santiago declaration. …

Hamlet and the Baker's Son: My Life in Theatre and Politics

Hamlet and the Baker's Son is the autobiography of Augusto Boal, inventor of the internationally renowned Forum Theatre system, and 'Theatre of the Oppressed' and author of Games for Actors and Non-Actors and Legislative Theatre. Continuing to travel the world giving workshops and inspiration to teachers, prisoners, actors and care-workers, Augusto Boal is a visionary as well as a product of his times - the Brazil of military dictatorship and artistic and social repression and was once imprisoned for his subversive activities. From his early days in Brazil's political theatre movement to his recent experiments with theatre as a democratic political process, Boal's story is a moving and memorable one. He has devised a unique way of using the stage to empower the disempowered, and taken his methods everywhere from the favelas of Rio to the rehearsal studios of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Changing conceptions of terrorism

This paper looks at the changing conceptions of causality and characteristics of terrorism within the framework of liberal philosophy, democracy and the market economies. It takes the position that the liberal world‐view has to blame itself for terrorism and the new warlords that have emerged in the current moment. The liberal ontology, democratic political process and games that nations have played like state‐sponsored terrorism are responsible for the current delineation of terror, which as a word, has meant different moral things at different times since the emergence of the modern state in the West. Given the writings of philosophers from Thomas Hobbes downward and the killing of a passenger of IC‐814 flight, terror has been linked first, to right to property and, then to right to life alone. The analyses of terrorism in India look at the causes partially. They ascribe its characteristics either to religion or ideology. They further look at the causality in terms of ad‐hoc administrative response of the political class. It is necessary to adopt a holistic view and look at the political process within democratic structures.

Politics in the trenches: citizens, politicians, and the fate of democracy

Ask most Americans what they think of politics and you'll likely get an earful. With suspicion and distrust of public servants running high, many citizens seem dispirited by the very process that has made the United States a showcase for democracy. Now ask Tom Volgy. This former mayor of a major western city, who is also a political scientist, contends that most elected officials are the very opposite of what the public thinks: honest, hardworking people whose real work goes unnoticed by most of their constituents and the media. Volgy has interviewed more than 300 elected officials mayors, city council members, legislators from all over the United States to offer a decidedly contrarian view of politics. He explores the lives and working conditions of elected officials at the local level the area of democracy closest to the public to show that officeholders are for the most part average citizens, not the slick lawyers or political pros we usually imagine them to be. Most are motivated by a sense of civic duty, and they often work for token salaries, yet once elected they give up their personal lives and fall prey to every conceivable brickbat of public and media outrage. In Politics in the Trenches, Volgy shows what really happens behind the scenes of government. He contrasts perception with reality regarding the rewards and perks of office. He examines the process of experimentation in the political laboratory and shows how the news media distort it. He provides a case study of homelessness to illustrate the system's constraints and limitations. And he offers a chapter on a typical week in office that will be an eye-opener for most readers. Although admittedly there are many flaws in the democratic political process, observes Volgy, all are correctable as long as citizens believe in the essential worth of the system itself. His book offers a fresh perspective on democratic governance and tackles tough issues such as campaign finance reform, urging citizens to understand the process before they condemn its players out of hand. More than that, this is a call to action, warning us that we could lose true democracy if we don't get involved.

Living in a Post-Punk Papacy: Religion and education in a modernist world

This article examines the constraints on discourse in a modernist context and the means by which these constraints are imposed. It explores the deconstructive possibilities and opportunities offered in applying a postmodern critique of the same within this context. It primarily advocates a re-reading of the construct of knowledge such that it does not depend on epistemological theorising but performative activity, related to the observations of a number of postmodern and pre-postmodern writers. It suggests a dislocation between what we regard as knowledge and what might be experienced as empowerment through involvement in more democratic political processes. It also takes account of what is understood as the changing of an environment from the modern to postmodern, altering the situation of the subject, and applies this critically to religious and educational ideologies.

The Sierra Club and Immigration Policy: A Critique

In 1998, the Sierra Club membership voted in a contentious referendum to refrain from including restriction of U.S. immigration as part of its official club population policy. Club proponents of immigration reduction had declared the problem was simply the environmental impact of greater numbers of people; however, they failed to distinguish themselves from groups with much broader immigration-reduction agendas, leaving themselves open to charges of racism. The club faction calling for the exclusion of immigration issues from the policy, on the other hand, failed to acknowledge the demographic reality of the contribution of immigration (30%) to the growth of the U.S. population. As a result, current club policy is not credible, as it calls for a reduction in the U.S. population but ignores immigration. The Sierra Club's complex organi- zational structure and open, democratic political process make it particularly vulnerable to internal conflict during periods of changing perspectives within the organization.

Non-Nationalist Voting in Bosnian Municipal Elections: Implications for Democracy and Peacebuilding

In both the general theory of peacebuilding and the specific implementation of peace agreements, the establishment of democratic political processes and institutions is accorded a high priority by external actors in their efforts to stabilize war-torn societies. An emphasis on free elections has been especially insistent in the peacebuilding processes developed for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and was a keystone of the 1995 Dayton Agreement. This article focuses on the 1997 municipal elections because they were widely regarded as an important test of peacebuilding assumptions and because they illuminate local differentiation in non-nationalist voting. Our analysis indicates that a higher degree of optimism about the strength of non-nationalist voting may be justified than commentators have detected, especially if it allows for an ideological interpretation of the policies of former communists in Republika Srpska. Non-nationalist voting has varied in relation to the presence of ethnic Bosniacs, the population density and the mix of ethnic types. Generally, however, the municipal elections indicate that casting votes has not been a peacebuilding panacea in terms of the international organizations' strategic goal of building a unitary, self-governing, multi-ethnic state. Instead, the elections have legitimized ethnically purged constituencies and led to a flawed protectorate in which the Office of the UN Secretary-General's High Representative (OHR) and the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) have become increasingly inveigled into attempting to manipulate local politics.

Democratic Governance Beyond the Nation-State:

International institutions not only increase system effectiveness or output legitimacy, but are also a normatively plausible response to the problems for democracy that are caused by globalization. In this way, international institutions also increase input legitimacy. It is therefore a false approach to pin down the problem of democracy beyond the nation-state as a choice between `effective problem-solving through international institutions' and `democratic political processes'. At the same time, it is indisputable that the actual functioning of these international institutions does not meet democratic standards. By correctly pointing to the deficits of current international institutions, sceptics too quickly conclude that most deficits in the working of international institutions cannot be remedied. The sceptical argument is founded on two more or less explicit background hypotheses that can be empirically challenged. The first background hypothesis states that a demos cannot exist at the transnational level. I will modify this statement in theoretical terms and offer some conceptual distinctions that may prepare the ground for further empirical investigation. The second background hypothesis of the sceptics postulates a zero-sum relationship between national sovereignty and supranationality. I will put forward some concrete institutional proposals that undermine the zero-sum logic of the sceptics, concluding that in a denationalized society, democratic legitimacy can only be achieved by a mixed constitution comprising majority procedures and negotiation mechanisms.