Democracy Today Research Articles

Authoritarian resilience in Morocco after the Arab spring: a critical assessment of educational exchanges in soft power

ABSTRACTThe aim of this article is to critically assess Joseph Nye’s claims about student exchange programmes by examining the impact of Morocco’s educational relationship with the EU on the kingdom’s political development during and since the Arab Spring. Nye maintains that such schemes are important sources of soft power which Western countries can use to promote their values – including that of democracy – in the societies of the visiting students. Despite tens of thousands of its citizens enrolling in European universities each year, however, Morocco is scarcely any more democratic today than it was when the Arab Spring began. The article considers what the country’s non-democratisation means for the EU’s soft power and this facet of Nye’s thesis.

Religion and the Public Sphere in Premodern India

AbstractWhen in 1962 Habermas formulated his theory of the public sphere as “a society engaged in critical debate” he sought to describe something he felt was unique to the modern liberal democratic Western world. Yet the creation of discursive spheres where people across lines of social difference debate questions of the common good, mutual interest, and forms of equality long predates the modern era and flourished well outside the “Western” world. This essay adapts Habermas’ influential concept to highlight the emergence of a nascent public sphere at the earliest layers of Marathi literary creation in 13th century India. At this inaugural stage of a regional language’s full shift to writing, we see traces of a debate in the language of everyday life that struggled over the ethics of social difference, a public deliberation that might presage key aspects of Indian modernity and democracy today.

Batson for Judges, Police Officers & Teachers: Lessons in Democracy From the Jury Box

In our representative democracy we guarantee equal participation for all, but we fall short of this promise in so many domains of our civic life. From the schoolhouse, to the jailhouse, to the courthouse, racial minorities are underrepresented among key public decision-makers, such as judges, police officers, and teachers. This gap between our aspirations for representative democracy and the reality that our judges, police officers, and teachers are often woefully under-representative of the racially diverse communities they serve leaves many citizens of color wanting for the democratic guarantee of equal participation. This critical failure of our democracy threatens to undermine the legitimacy of these important civic institutions. It deepens mistrust between minority communities and the justice system and exacerbates the failures of a public education system already lacking accountability to minority students. But there is hope for rebuilding the trust, accountability and legitimacy of these civic institutions on behalf of minority citizens. There is one place where we have demonstrated a deeper commitment to our guarantee of democratic equality on behalf of minority citizens and exerted greater effort to that end than perhaps in any other domain of our civic life—the jury box. This paper recounts this important history and explores the political theory underlying the equal protection jurisprudence of jury selection. It then applies these lessons gleaned from the jury context to the constitutional defense of efforts to achieve greater racial diversity within the judiciary, law enforcement, and public education, all of which are as important to the legitimacy of our democracy today as the jury has been throughout American history.

“De onde? Para onde?” The Continuity Question and the Debate over Brazil’s “Civil”-Military Dictatorship

This article deals with the disputed terminology used to refer to the Brazilian military regime (1964–1985). On one side is the traditional “military dictatorship” nomenclature, which places the armed forces at the center of the political system during the period in question. Conversely, the more recent “civil-military dictatorship” terminology notes that the regime depended on civilian allies in business and government, as well as popular support, throughout its existence. My entry point is a heated 2012 debate between journalist Pedro Pomar and the radical art collective Coletivo Zagaia. I explore how new social actors that emerged after redemocratization have become central to the struggle over human rights in Brazil and, more specifically, how the dictatorship is remembered in the present. This debate among scholars, activists, bloggers, and journalists is fundamentally about memory, accountability, and, I argue, the quality of Brazilian democracy today.

The Object of Allegory (A Polemic)

This article reads together Baudelaire’s poem “Le Cygne” and sections from Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia in order to argue that a pathology of melancholic allegory and the norm of grievable object loss coexist in an endless and nondialectical struggle that is to be affirmed. The allegory of melancholia translates the loss of the object into the defective principle on which—because of our structural disanalogy, because of the conflict between institution and principle at the heart of the catastrophe of representative democracy today—subjects stand forth as distinctly grievable-ungrievable objects, and on this defective concept may found ephemeral, transparent, and formal administrative modes, agencies, and instances of association. These are called, in the article, globally weak republican institutions.

Democratising Moves: Power, Agency and the Body

Abstract Recently, the word ’democracy’ has been featured prominently in the press, with calls to restore it, save it from ominous threats and expose challenges to its principles, all predicated on an assumed understanding of the concept. Many of the roots of today’s democracies reach back to the 18th century revolutions in the pre-U.S. American colonies and France, which continue to reinforce Euro-American values and ideologies of nation. The transfer of power remains a defining principle, shifting control from elites to the masses. How do the principles that inspired democratic revolutions relate to the ballot-box versions of democracy today? This article considers contemporary complexities of democracy as a concept, offering examples of how it is embodied through iconography, gestures of defiance and civil disobedience. Democratic values are explored in more formal choreography and in creative processes that establish associations with political agency.

Socialism and democratic strategy in Italy’s Biennio Rosso: Gramsci contra Treves

This article examines the divisions in Italian socialism between revolutionaries and reformists against the backdrop of the Biennio Rosso (1919–20), taking the writings of Antonio Gramsci and Claudio Treves respectively as characteristic of the two traditions. The central focus is on their opposing accounts of how the socialist movement should organize the masses to achieve its objectives – referred to here as its ‘democratic strategy.’ I demonstrate how the key strategic elements of Gramsci’s and Treves’s positions developed in a dialogue centered on the place that violence, (il)legality, soviets, parliaments and compromise should play in effectively mobilizing the masses for socialism. The article concludes by arguing that in retrospect Treves’s reformism has been a more successful approach, and Gramsci himself conceded something to it in his prison writings. However, I also maintain that the popular character of Gramsci’s radical democratic strategy – first fashioned in the Biennio Rosso – can still contribute to debates on socialism and social democracy today.

Diversification and democracy

Does diversification of an economy improve the chances of democracy? In theory, diversification may reduce elite cohesion and improve citizens’ outside options, making democracy more likely. This paper estimates the effect of export diversification on democracy, using data from 143 countries. We use variability within countries in fertile soil as an instrument for diversification, controlling for country size. To address the possibility that current fertile soil variability may have been influenced by historical country characteristics that could also have affected democracy today, we control for historical changes in land cover. We identify a statistically significant, positive effect of diversification on democracy.

Liberal Democracy’s Fading Allure

What accounts for the troubled condition of liberal democracy today? Standard explanations cite factors such as slowing economic growth and rising economic inequality, political polarization and gridlock, globalization, and moral and cultural decadence. Yet such explanations cannot account for the speed with which democracy’s decline has surged to the forefront of political discourse around the world. And it can hardly be a coincidence that disaffection with liberal democracy and support for populist parties are growing in both new and longstanding democracies alike. Simultaneously, authoritarian regimes of various stripes are showing a new boldness as the confidence and vigor of the democracies wane. Liberal democracy will regain its former health only if voters become convinced not only of democracy’s intrinsic merits but also of its superiority to all possible alternatives.

Explorations on the Abbasids Political Culture in Pursuit of Sustainable System of Governance in the Muslim World

Today democracy and good governance are absent from the Muslim world. Some attribute this to the religion of Islam itself while others, the mainstream of the world community, have attributed it to the Muslims themselves. The two however are intertwined and the later is on a course to a distractive paint of the former. History manifests itself in diverse ways and contemporary political outlook of the Muslim world is not a new phenomenon. The main objective of this study is to provide insights into the history of Muslim political thought; the Abbasid dynasty is the case under examination. One argues that the main contribution of the Abbasids is the development of a strong political system which has eventually led to a political stability and a steady economic growth. The political characteristics and the economic development during the Abbasid period, which was later recognized as the Golden Era in the Muslim political history, are the main focus of this work. This is crucial in order to understand the political backbone of the dynasty. Foreign relations which also contribute to the rise and the fall of Abbasids are also evaluated. Reassessment of the religious and political or territorial conflicts against other nations will be principal discourse in this work. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n4p228

Representation and Consent: Why They Arose in Europe and Not Elsewhere

Medieval Western Europeans developed two practices that are the bedrock of modern democracy: representative government and the consent of the governed. Why did this happen in Europe and not elsewhere? I ask what the literature has to say about this question, focusing on the role of political ideas, on economic development, and on warfare. I consider Europe in comparison with the Byzantine Empire, the Abbasid Caliphate, and Song Dynasty China. I argue that ultimately Europe's different path may have been an accident. It was produced by Western Europe's experience of outside invasion that replaced the Western Roman Empire with a set of small, fragmented polities in which rulers were relatively weak. Small size meant low transaction costs for maintaining assemblies. The relatively weak position of rulers meant that consent of the governed was necessary. I also suggest how these conclusions should influence our understanding of democracy today.

Towards a reconstructive approach in political philosophy

This paper compares the democratic theories of Pierre Rosanvallon and Axel Honneth. The aim is to show how their work could form the basis of a ‘reconstructivist’ approach in political philosophy that rehabilitates the insights of 19th-century thinkers such as Guizot and Hegel concerning the benefits of combining political philosophy with history and sociology. Whereas the dominant procedural approaches in political philosophy tend to disconnect normative theory from the actual study of society and its history, Rosanvallon and Honneth argue that in order to understand the problems that face our democratic societies today we need a closer connection between theory and practice. Both have therefore developed a method that consists of historically reconstructing developments in modern society in order to identify certain pathologies. The paper compares the different diagnosis that Rosanvallon and Honneth give of the central pathology that faces democracy today, which in Rosanvallon’s reconstruction is related to the problem of representation and in Honneth’s account to the problem of recognition.

Fascism and Democracy Today: What Use Is the Study of History in the Current Crisis?

Fascism and Democracy Today: What Use Is the Study of History in the Current Crisis?

Book Review: Alexandros Kioupkiolis and Giorgos Katsambekis (eds), Radical Democracy and Collective Movements Today: The Biopolitics of the Multitude versus the Hegemony of the People

Book Review: Alexandros Kioupkiolis and Giorgos Katsambekis (eds), <i>Radical Democracy and Collective Movements Today: The Biopolitics of the Multitude versus the Hegemony of the People</i>

Karl Mannheim on democratic interaction: Revisiting mass society theory

Abstract This essay re-considers Karl Mannheim’s notion of democratic behaviour in the context of mass society. Although the term ‘mass society’ seems archaic, it is still the precondition of democracy today. Mannheim conceptualized mass society as irrational, disintegrating Great Society and presented the remedy of Planning for Freedom to counter the crisis of mass democracy. In his remedy Mannheim advocated social education that fosters citizens’ democratic interaction, and the keywords of his education were ‘integrative behaviour’ and ‘creative tolerance’. The similar orientation of his remedy can be found in much more contemporary critiques of deliberative democracy. Iris Marion Young’s ‘communicative democracy’ was a version of her democratic interaction in a complex, large-scale mass society. Young’s notion of ‘reasonableness’ has substantial affinity with Mannheim’s integrative behaviour, both of which require the democratic attitude of hearing the other side and the readiness to self-transform. Mass society theory has relevance for contemporary democratic theory.

Planners – A silenced profession? The politicisation of planning and the need for fearless speech

With the launch of over 40 official investigations between 2010 and 2014 alone, planning is clearly an area of renewed political interest in Sweden. Drawing on Jodi Dean’s interpretation of politicisation, which entails raising the particular to the level of the universal, in this article I argue that we are currently witnessing ongoing politicisation of planning, but of a form which aims at making planners loyal to the current neoliberal politics. I situate this argument within a wider debate which contends that democracy today is characterised by trivialisation and conformity. In response to this situation and drawing on Michel Foucault’s work on the concept of parrhesia, which means fearless speech, I identify a need for planners to develop a critical ethos and shoulder the necessary role of resistance to politics.

The art practice of Carlos Motta and the archive as tool for re-enactment and communication

This essay discusses the practice of contemporary, multidisciplinary artist Carlos Motta (Colombia/USA), who explores history, politics, religion, sexuality, and gender in the context of today's democracy, and from the view of side-lined groups and their subjective views. Approaching this topic from a distinctly leftist political field, Motta critiques democracy as a political framework that imposes the rule of the majority upon minorities, who are obliged to adhere to hegemonic norms that determine their way of economic, social, and political engagement. Motta's strategy traverses extensive research and the formation of online archives through which he establishes carefully curated repositories that critique power relations and the hegemony of the majority. He furthermore, uses documents from the archive to re-enact and re-contextualize historical events in contemporary settings. This multifaceted approach contributes to the creation of multiple voices that are in dialogue with each other. As a result, the artist's practice underlines the significance of archives and their contingency for the future, as well as their potential to provoke change. This essay argues that Motta uses the archive as a tool for communication and impetus for action. Through this artist's contribution to contemporary art, he unearths pressing issues concerning unequal power relations, opening avenues for discussion and debate.

Policing Democracy: Overcoming Obstacles to Citizen Security in Latin America

Latin America is more democratic today than in the recent past, yet in places also far more violent. Parts of the region suffer the world’s highest crime rates, and a widespread sense of insecurity fuels calls for tougher policing. Understanding the origins of this problem, and suggesting ways out of it, is Mark Ungar’s aim in this ambitious and insightful book.

Tocqueville on Religion, the Enlightenment, and the Democratic Soul

This article proposes a new interpretation of Tocqueville's thought, one that focuses on his account of religious psychology. From his observations of America, Tocqueville concludes that human beings have a natural hope for immortality—a hope that is driven by a paradoxical but ineradicable desire to affirm and forget oneself simultaneously. Tocqueville formulates this insight as a critique of the Enlightenment thinkers who laid the foundations for liberal democracy; I argue that he crafts his “new political science” to provide healthy outlets for the religious hopes whose existence these thinkers largely denied and whose anomalous presence in the United States has accordingly led to unforeseen dangers. Tocqueville's analysis not only helps us understand and begin to remedy those dissatisfactions that characterize democracy today but it also reveals his theoretical depth, political moderation, and sober assessment of our moral psychology in a way not seen before.

Rollback of Democracy? A Tocquevillean Perspective

AbstractThis article suggests that to judge the state of democracy today we need to clarify what we mean by democracy. Not simply given, democracy's institutional and moral meanings have been historically, and continue to be at present, the subject of intense disagreement. Drawing on one of the most influential accounts of modern democracy – Tocqueville's – it argues that far from rolling back, democracy defined by the passion for equality is, so to say, rolling forward; and that the various crises we are observing today issue less from the retreat than from a deepening of inherently democratic tendencies. These same trends may help explain the rise of neo‐liberalism in recent decades. Mitigating these deep‐seated tendencies would require a comprehensive set of remedies. Among them is the need to rethink not only the nature of equality but also, perhaps above all, the meaning of freedom.