Struggle For Democracy Research Articles

The Prospect of Pragmatic Confucian Democracy: Reply to Dryzek, Macedo, Ackerly, and Li

The Prospect of Pragmatic Confucian Democracy: Reply to Dryzek, Macedo, Ackerly, and Li

The historical significance of the 2019 Hong Kong revolt

This essay discusses why the Hong Kong 2019 revolt means so much for future democratic movements despite its tragic defeat and its weaknesses. This was a massive democratic movement, with entirely legitimate demands: the dropping of an extradition bill which could legalise Beijing's attempts to prosecute Hong Kong citizens under the Mainland legal system; and the honouring of its commitment of granting universal suffrage to the Hong Kong people. This massive movement naturally brought with it multiple tendencies and contradictions. Taking advantage of the absence of a left labour movement, and a young generation who were newcomers to politics, right-wing and anti-Chinese voices became more vocal than their organisational strength might have indicated - though not strong enough to alter the fundamental character of this revolt as a democratic movement. In the last analysis, however, the balance of forces means that Hong Kong has little chance of preserving its liberty unless the Mainland situation begins to change. Success will ultimately depend on a united front between democratic forces in the Mainland and Hong Kong, an issue which the 2019 r evolt has not thought sufficiently about. However, the 2019 revolt, which helped to consolidate democratic consciousness among millions in Hong Kong, itself constitutes a new starting point for the future of democratic struggle, both in the Mainland and in Hong Kong.

Mbeki’s ‘I am an African’ Speech: Mobilising Psycho-Political Resources for Political Reconstitution of Post-Apartheid South Africa

ABSTRACT We offer a critical reading of Thabo Mbeki’s ‘I am an African’ speech to illustrate how he foregrounded humaning, namely onto-epistemological recovery, as a key dimension of psycho-political reconstruction. Mbeki’s speech, delivered on the occasion of the adoption of South Africa’s democratic Constitution, was inherent to the larger quest to (re)imagine South Africa and (South)Africanness and assert independent Black intellectual thought. Positioning himself as an epistemic agent, Mbeki historicised that moment of adopting the Constitution and attempted to raise critical consciousness about the protracted struggle for democracy. He mobilised marginalised knowledge about the anti-colonial struggle to challenge forgetfulness and limited interpretations of South Africa’s negotiated settlement. Mbeki also invoked the idea of a relational ontology and hermeneutic love to effect an inclusive Africanity constituted of multiple histories and ‘races’. Mbeki, resisting Afro-pessimism, referenced the making of an inclusive Africanity against Africa as a generative place despite the colonial encounter, African humanism and South Africa’s aspirations for reconciliation as articulated by the ANC and the Constitution. Notwithstanding the psycho-political import of Mbeki’s speech, the process of humaning remains incomplete.

Another World Is Possible: A Comparative Perspective

Another World Is Possible: A Comparative Perspective

ARŞIN MAL ALAN OPERETİ’ NİN İNCELENMESİ

Azerbaijan became acquainted with opera at the beginning of the twentieth century thanks to the tours organized by Russian and European operas to Baku. The intense admiration of the Azerbaijani people led Azerbaijani composers to produce works in opera style. In that period, Üzeyir Hacıbeyli combined his knowledge of authorship, historiography, scientists, education, journalism and musicians in the art of opera, based on the impact of the strong and aesthetic touch of art on people, and laid the foundations of opera in the East by composing the mugam opera "Leyli and Mecnun". In the revolution and democracy struggle that started in Azerbaijan, the artists and intellectuals of the period started an enlightenment movement through their works. On this occasion, Hacıbeyli turned from the opera style to the operetta style. Operetta is a musical / dialogue stage piece that takes its subject from social problems and aims to make the audience laugh while making them think. Hacıbeyli compiled the topics of his operettas from the reactionary perspectives that prevent his people from adopting modern life, offered solutions through his works and gave new and modern perspectives to his audience. The "Arşın Mal Alan" has gained a worldwide reputation thanks to the musical structure that it has created by carefully synthesizing the elements of the Azerbaijani national music style, folk mahnis, dances and mugam traditions with the European operetta style. This work, which is about the tradition of arranged marriage rebelled by the new generation, has been translated into more than sixty languages worldwide thanks to its musical and sociological success and has been adapted to the big screen. Considering that it is a very popular work in our country and in other countries where it has been staged and is of such importance for the Turkish world opera literature, the work does not take place in our opera scenes enough and it is noteworthy that the number of publications such as articles, theses and books about it in Turkey. With this study, it is thought to contribute to the literature. In this article, the history of Azerbaijan operetta, the life of Üzeyir Hacıbeyli and the operetta "Arşın Mal Alan" are examined. Keywords: Azerbaijan Opera, Üzeyir Hacıbeyli, Operetta, Opera, Arşın Mal Alan

Producing anti-regime protest news in a polarized and clientelistic media system: A frame building approach

This study examines media coverage of the 2019 anti-government protests in Montenegro. Based on 13 in-depth interviews and a quantitative content analysis, the data shed light on ways in which democratization struggles are manifested via protest framing in a polarized media system. This paper argues that media clientelism, as manifested through political parallelism and media instrumentalization, provides a better theoretical and analytical framework to understand not only the influence of structural factors that determine protest coverage, but also the role of ideology and journalism cultures embraced at the individual level. This framework is helpful to understand the role of media in democratic struggle not only in emerging and defective democracies, but also in increasingly polarizing societies in the West.

How propagames work as a part of digital authoritarianism: an analysis of a popular Chinese propagame

“Propagames,” or games with propagandistic content, have been emerging in the past two decades. They operate as a part of digital authoritarianism, together with other forms of new soft propaganda, to legitimate populist authoritarian states around the world. The contemporary democratic struggle against global authoritarian resurgence will require knowledge on how propagames and other digital propaganda work. But knowledge on propagames is seriously lacking compared to the voluminous scholarship on politically progressive, educational, and serious games. This study fills this research gap by analyzing the most popular propagame in China, Kangzhan Online (War of Resistance against Japan Online), and gamers’ reception of it. We begin with theoretical explorations of how to define propagames, how to demarcate them from other games with political content, and what role they play in digital authoritarianism. We eclectically borrow from four frameworks to analyze Kangzhan Online: the dual-process perspective, imaginary world studies, the sociology of collective memory, and the sociology of emotions. Our data include participant observation in the game for 3 months, formal interviews of 30 gamers, informal interviews with dozens of gamers, and documentary data from the official forum and the Chinese game media. The data were collected in 2009, 2010, and 2019.

Andreas Fulda, The Struggle for Democracy in Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong: Sharp Power and Its Discontents

Andreas Fulda, The Struggle for Democracy in Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong: Sharp Power and Its Discontents

The life and death of Paik Ki-wan, the lyricist of “March for the Beloved” and legendary figure of the struggle for democracy in Korea

ABSTRACT Paik Ki-wan, an 89-year-old Korean democracy activist, passed away on 15 February in 2021. He wrote the original poem, from which the lyrics of the song “March for the Beloved” (im-eul wihan haengjingog) originated. Many protesters across Asia sing this song, even in an ani-coup protest in Yangon recently. He has fought against dictatorship, and was tortured by it. As a result of the torture, he lost 38 kilograms, while he was in prison from his normal 82 kilograms. He never went to college or earned wages stably. He was an awakened warrior, poet, and teacher who helped poor children learn how to read. The dictatorial government broke down in 1987, and the Korean society went onto the transition road to democracy. In the presidential election in December 1987, the two representative democratic leaders—Kim Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam—both ran for the president and were divided into hostile competition. At this historical point, he was honored to run for president and pressured those two candidates in order to prevent the military candidate from coming into power. As they got old, many of those who fought for democracy on the streets together in 1987 were included in the middle-class group or became high-ranking officialis, but he insisted to stand on the streets beside the underprivileged and the weakest people, fighting against the military dictatorship, and even the liberal democratic government led by Kim Dae-jung and even the current Moon Jae-in.

Haynes , Rebecca Moldova: A History (review)

SEER, 99, 3, JULY 2021 564 retain its relevance, being both enlightening and entertaining, and written in a scholarly yet readable way with some familiar and many more unfamiliar illustrative examples. There are a number of misprints, most of which may be silently corrected. It is, however, unfortunate for Jonathan Waterlow, author of a book about life and humour under Stalin, that he should twice be referred to as Waterloo. Perhaps worse is the misspelling of the name of Brian Bennett as Bennet both in the text and the references, particularly as he is one of the few referenced authors who actually met Lukashenka when he was our Man in Miensk in the years 2003–07. These points do not detract seriously from a book which is without doubt a milestone in the important and fascinating field of political folklore. It should interest anyone interested in Belarus or, indeed, authoritarian societies in general. London Arnold McMillin Haynes, Rebecca. Moldova: A History. I. B. Tauris, London and New York, 2020. xvi + 237 pp. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £65.00; £19.99. In her book, Rebecca Haynes responds to the challenge of writing the history of one of the most recent states to emerge on Europe’s map: the Republic of Moldova. Very little has been written on this topic in English or in French (see Charles King, Alain Ruzé, Nicholas Dima, Stephen D. Roper), not always from a historical point of view, and sometimes a linguistic one (Donald Dwyer). The author has focused in the past on issues related to the history of Moldova and Romania, and has published several works on topics related to twentiethcentury political history. An explanation for the lack of monographs on the subject is the fact that the Republic of Moldova is a successor to only half of the former medieval principality of Moldavia, and it shares a common history with one part of what is nowadays Romania. Most historians have approached this region as a whole, and only historians from the Republic of Moldova have tried, for reasons that are easy to understand, to shape a history only for the region between the Prut and the Dniester rivers, seen as the evolution of a newly independent country set against the post-1991 struggle for democracy. A comprehensive study of this little-known region is therefore welcome. Its nine chapters present a valuable achievement of synthesis, with the author dealing with seven centuries of Moldovan history, from its beginning to the disputes between political parties in the contemporary Republic of Moldova. Haynes prefers to use the current REVIEWS 565 name of the republic, even when referring to the medieval and pre-modern period of the history of this principality, known in English literature under its Latinized name: Moldavia. It must also be pointed out that, within this political structure, the area between the Prut and the Dniester (called Bessarabia by the Russians after 1812) was always an area of secondary interest, less populated and less urbanized and with lower economic status, since it was more exposed to Tatar attacks from Crimea and Budjak. Haynes, though, has risen to the challenge of integrating the territory of the current Republic of Moldova (the eastern part of the former principality) into the history of the entire country — not an easy task. She initially focuses on the country as a whole, only shifting her attention to the area between the Prut and the Dniester after it began to be shaped into existence after the Russian occupation of 1812. This is a common situation in many other countries in the Balkans, where there are several histories shared by different states. I should note the author’s capacity for synthesis, as she presents us with a coherent narrative that allows the reader unfamiliar with the political landscape in Southeast Europe to better understand the complex political and economic relations that guided the evolution of the Romanian principalities. Caught between various neighbouring powers, such as Poland, Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, which were later joined by Russia and Austria, Moldavia managed to preserve its political identity, and retained a wide autonomy even in the darkest years of the eighteenth century. The strongest part...

Radical Nostalgia

Radical Nostalgia

Transformacija države i prava u Iranu nakon Iranske revolucije 1979. godine

With the overthrow of the regime of Reza Pahlavi in 1979, the Iranian revolution ended the existence of the 2,500-year-old Persian Empire and built the Islamic Republic of Iran on its foundations. The revolution was the product of three independent social structures that merged at one point. One was the structure of constitutionalism that grew out of a century-long struggle for democracy supported by modernists; the second was Islamism as a movement to set Sharia law as the primary law supported by rural elements in society in response to Western urban elites and accepted by merchants; and the third is the nationalist structure, driven by rage fueled by Iran's long subordination to European powers. The basic principle of the Islamic Republic of Iran, proclaimed by the new constitution from 1979, is the positioning of God as the supreme bearer of people's sovereignty and people who are only marginal representatives of his power on Earth. Ayatollah Homenini, the supreme leader of the Islamic Revolution and the Iranian state, in this regard created a thesis about the Islamic State as a political representation, created on the basis of the people's will, in order to enforce God's laws. In practice, such system meant setting up Sharia (religious) laws as the only source of law in regulating social, legal and other relations within the community. A dichotomy has been created in the management of the state, so there are two groups of authorities. The first, the conciliar, consists of the Supreme leader, the Council of Guardians (Shora-ye Negahban-e Qanun-e assassi), the Council of Experts (Majles-e Khobragan Rahbari) and the Judgment Council. The task of these councils is to oversee the activities of all levels of government in order to preserve the unity, sovereignty and integrity of the Iranian political system. The conciliar government supervises and advises the republican part of the government, ie. its legislative, executive and judicial aspects. In addition to conciliar government, there is a republican government that creates laws and political decisions in accordance with religious teachings and under the supervision of theocratic political institutions. All laws and court decisions must be based on the principles of the Qur'an, and their proper interpretation requires an understanding of religious principles. On the basis of the constitution, a special High Judicial Council was established, which amended the pre-revolutionary laws (criminal, commercial, civil and procedural), thus creating the so-called “Transitional law”. The biggest changes affected the area of criminal law, where the principle of talion revenge was introduced (“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”) and the strict punishment of extramarital relations and same-sex relationships. In the domain of marital and family law, a man is given a number of rights, thus putting the woman, as a marital partner, in a more unequal position. Husbands were facilitated in divorce, temporary marriages with more than one woman were allowed, while on the other hand women were allowed the right to divorce only if it was explicitly allowed by her husband during the marriage. The revolution also introduced new sources in the regulation of legal relations. Thus, by an order of the Supreme Judicial Council of 23 August 1982, judges were ordered to use direct authoritative Islamic texts or sources on which to base their judgments in resolving disputes. Judges are required by this Order to address the Council of Guardians of the Constitution if they cannot determine with certainty whether a regulation is in accordance with Sharia law or not. If the judge does not know which law to apply, he must contact the Office of Ayatollah Khomeini for further instructions. In addition to the internal one, the revolution caused radical changes in the foreign policy field, positioning Iran as an important participant in numerous international processes at the regional and global level.

Resisting through participation

After 21 years under a violent military dictatorship, institutions’ democratization processes took place in Brazil in the past three decades, starting from the Constitution of 1988. As one of the actors in the struggles for democracy, psychologists whose practices are committed to its consolidation in different contexts are constantly facing challenges due to the contradiction between government´s democratic discourses and its authoritarian practices - which tends to be increasingly constant with the rise of a far-right government to the power. This scenario demands, more than ever, that Brazilian Psychology liberates itself from uncritical conceptions to build decolonizing foundations and practices for strengthening and expanding people´s agency. Considering school as an everyday life context for people in the early stages of development, we understand this place as a privileged space for the intervention of psychologists. We intend to share in this presentation some reflections built from participatory action research on how psychologists can promote the participation of students in school. We argue that, in a context of constant attacks to people’s rights, creating conditions for children to recognize and expand possibilities of action to conduct their everyday lives, as well as producing science that supports it, is a great form of resistance and contribution Psychology can make in such dark days.

Bringing democracy down to scale: subnational democratic struggle in Britain

Comparative democratization scholars tend to examine the national level of the state with little concern for the impact of different levels or scales of political activity. Drawing from critical institutionalism, this paper provides a spatiotemporal analysis of the intersection of economic and political struggles that have led to regional democratization in Britain.

Exploring the Voices of the Rif Hirak activism: The struggle for democracy in Morocco

ABSTRACT This article explores how the Rif Hirak activists perceive the legitimacy of the demands that were made vocal in the northern Rif of Morocco following the tragic death of a fishmonger in 2016. Given the lack of empirical studies, this article aims at stimulating more in-depth research into this neglected territory of knowledge. Accordingly, our major aim is to look at how these activists (i) perceive the emergence of the Rif Hirak Movement (ii) the basis on which they perceive the legitimacy of their demands and (iii) last how State’s approach towards these demands impacted youth emigration. To achieve this purpose, 15 activists were interviewed. The findings reported here strongly indicated the activists’ determination to the Voice option, mainly because of its legitimate basis. On the basis of this knowledge, the data gathered will be analyzed within the Voice, loyalty, and exit (EVL) framework.

On Democracy in Iran in the Islamic Republic Era: A Knowledge-based Social Outline

Iranians’ struggle for democracy has dominated the contemporary history of the country for the last century. These attempts have often resulted in the emergence of authoritarian regimes rather than institutionalizing democracy in the body of the state. Scholars and politicians often consider the process of institutionalism of democracy in Iran to be a top-down approach toward political reform. The literature on the topic either focuses on economics and its associated politics or industrialization and legal reform as keys to success but often ignores the social foundations of institutionalism of democracy and, in the process, undermines their roles. Transition to democracy in Iran requires a social context based on Habermas’ “Tripartite of Knowledge,” and these conditions democratize the construction of a social system that prioritizes rational inquiry, socio-moral knowledge, and sociopolitical knowledge, and the need is to form a democratic society in line with the realization of political democratization.

Inspiring Democratic Progress in Development Assistance: South Korea's Aid Policy Reforms via Civic Engagement

Korea is particularly recognized for being an inspiring global actor, as the first country to evolve from recipient to donor, with a predominant emphasis on its admirable economic trajectory. Yet, as an official development assistance (ODA) actor, the long and arduous struggles for democracy rarely feature in its development policies, programs and practices. These struggles, exemplified by the role of civil society to free Korea of its authoritarian rule and also more recent examples, such as the candlelight protests resisting the corruption of the Park Geun-hye administration, deserve more consideration in its ODA interventions. When president Moon Jae-in – with its roots in progressive society – was elected in 2017, a period of closer collaboration between the government and progressive civil society commenced again. In this article we explore how and whether this renewed constructive relationship could help address some of the structural problems in Korean ODA. Moreover, we investigate how this improved relationship can be more fundamentally institutionalized in the field of Korean ODA, thereby also inspiring actors in developing countries.

The People's Paving Stones: The Material Politics of International Human Rights in the Baldosas por la Memoria of Buenos Aires

Abstract Baldosas por la memoria are memorial paving stones handcrafted by loosely networked activists. Produced continuously from 2006 to an informally established protocol, they memorialize “the disappeared” and others murdered by the state terrorism of the Argentinian dictatorship (1976–1983). As a synecdoche of the “down and dirty” everyday pavements, they function as a metonym for democratic struggle and popular sovereignty. Aesthetically, they work against the “forgetting” and kitschification to which conventional memorials become subject. Through remediation into books and a DVD documentary, they participate in controversies within the international politics of human rights. Using a “material turn” within visual analysis, yet distinct from the “new materialism,” this article explains how they function within familiar genres of memorialization but in wholly novel ways. Baldosas create ethical complexity and moral ambiguity by troubling collective memory. Thus, we examine their relation to guilt, complicity, trauma, and affect.

The Role of Religio-Political Parties in the Democratic Transition of Pakistan

Religio-Political parties are an integral part of the politics of Pakistan. Theyhave played a vital role in political mobilization, be it inside or outside theparliament, both during civilian and military rule. The military rulers of thecountry have never transferred power to the civilians, until a struggle fordemocracy has been made. That has led to compromise of transition frommilitary to civilian governments. It mainly focuses on the role of Jamiat-iUlema-i-Islam- (JUI) and Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan in the revival of people’spower in the country. It also aims to see how religio-political parties work todevelop pressure on the rulers for democratic transition in Pakistan. Despitediverse sectarian and political backgrounds, how the leadership of religiopolitical parties brought political parties on one junction against dictatorship.Furthermore study explains that how religio-political parties eitherencouraged or discouraged the aspect of dynastic politics in Pakistan.Building and analyzing this argument in the dynamics of structuralfunctionalism and role theory, the organizational structure of religio-politicalparties is studied and evaluated to see connection in the role of JUI and JIPtowards democratic transition.

Write. Persist. Struggle: Sponsors of Writing and Workers’ Education in the 1930s

Organizations like the John Reed Clubs and the WPA Federal Writers’ Project, as well as publications like The New Masses can be seen as “literacy sponsors” of the U.S. literary left in the 1930s, particularly the young, the working class, and African American writers. The vibrant, inclusionary, activist, literary culture of that era reflected a surge of revolutionary ideas and activity that seized the imagination of a generation of writers and artists, including rhetoricians like Kenneth Burke. Here I argue that this history has relevance for contemporary community writing projects, which collectively lack the political cohesiveness and power of the national and international movements that sponsored the 1930s literary left but may anticipate another global period of struggle for democracy in which writers and artists can play a significant role.