Democratic Tradition Research Articles

Україна: від конфлікту демократії та ринку до конфлікту громадянського суспільства та олігархів

The article is devoted to the problem of the formation of the newest Ukrainian state and market economy, which are directly related to the democratic tradition of the Ukrainian people. The struggle for democracy in Western Europe was facilitated by the development of private property and liberal thought, which resulted in the adoption of such core values as freedom and equality of opportunity. It is also about guaranteeing private property as an inalienable basis for the freedom of the individual, introducing a system of separation of powers, developing the idea of a rule of law, equality of all citizens before the law, tolerance towards minorities. It is also about guaranteeing private property as an inalienable basis for the freedom of the individual, establishment of the system of separation of powers, developing the idea of law-based state, equality of all citizens before the law, tolerance towards minorities. The situation of domination in Ukraine of the economic elite causes tensions between this elite and not enough formed and organized middle class. It is unlikely that in the short-term, this will lead to a restructuring of the political-party system. But outside the formal and increasingly ritual arena of the election, new types of social associations are formed. The fourth power in the form of civil society may not be as weak as it seems at first sight. However, whether it is in the power of the most important task of Ukrainian society – the gradual and peaceful change of political and economic elites, remains an open question.

LEGISLATIVE ACCOMMODATION OF INTERESTS OF ETHNIC MINORITIES IN THE COURSE OF FORMATION OF THE UKRAINIAN STATE AT THE BEGINNING OF 20 CENTURY

In article it is noted that World War I, having extremely aggravated political and social and economic problems of belligerent parties, caused considerable rise of the national liberation movement. In the years of war, Galichina became an object of active international policy, at first as a component of the empire of Gabsburgov, and then as the sovereign state of the Ukrainian people. Also World War I accelerated political changes in Central and Eastern Europe and emergence of the Ukrainian state educations in Galichina. Introduction and developments of basic standard and legal documents in such spheres state and social and political life as formation of state governing bodies, justice, Armed Forces, social, economic, national and cultural and educational sites became the main result of legislative activity of power structures of West Ukrainian People's Republic on nationalities. The mechanism of the state and national policy of West Ukrainian People's Republic on non Ukrainian the population was based on democratic traditions of parliamentarism of the former Austria-Hungary. Such fundamental principles of national policy allowed power structures to direct the state construction to the democratic course, to make it socially oriented.

On Artificial Intelligence’s Razor’s Edge: On the Future of Democracy and Society in the Artificial Age

The introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our contemporary society imposes historically unique challenges for humankind. The emerging autonomy of AI holds unique potentials of eternal life of robots, AI and algorithms alongside unprecedented economic superiority, data storage and computational advantages. However, the introduction of AI to society also raises ethical questions. What is the social impact of robots, algorithms, blockchain and AI entering the workforce and our daily lives on the economy and human society? Should AI become eternal or is there a virtue in switching off AI at a certain point? If so, we may have to define a ‘virtue of killing’ and a ‘right to destroy’ that may draw from legal but also philosophical sources to answer the question how to handle the abyss of killing with ethical grace and fair style. In light of robots already having gained citizenship and being attributed as quasi-human under Common Law jurisdiction, should AI and robots be granted full citizen rights – such as voting rights? Or should we simply reap the benefits of AI and consider to define a democracy with different classes having diversified access to public choice and voting – as practiced in the ancient Athenian city state, which became the cradle of Western civilization and democratic traditions spread around the globe. Or should we legally justify AI slaves to economically reap their benefits, as was common in ancient Rome, which became the Roman Law legal foundation for Continental and some of Scandinavian Law traditions and which inspired very many different codifications around the world. Finally, we may also draw from the Code Napoleon, the French Code Civil established under Napoleon in 1804, which defined male and female into two classes of human with substantial right and power differences, and – to this day – accounts for one of the few documents that have influenced the whole world in legal and societal ways. In asking critical questions and unraveling the ethical boundary conditions of our future artificial world, the paper thereby takes a descriptive – afar from normative – theoretical angle targeted at aiding a successful introduction of AI into our contemporary workforce, democracy and society.

The Pragmatist Question of Sovereignty

ABSTRACTIn Democracy and Tradition, Jeffrey Stout asks Christian political theologians if they can discern God's activity in modern democratic cultures. In so doing they might “acknowledge the sovereignty of God while transcending both resentment of, and absorption into, the secular.” As Stout recognizes, the question of sovereignty is relevant not only to Christian, but also Jewish and Islamic thought. However, interreligious comparisons remain undeveloped in his work. In response, the following essay coordinates Stout’s pragmatism with developments in comparative theology. It then evaluates both the Jewish messianism of Gershom Scholem alongside Islamic sovereignty (hakimayyah) in the thought of Sayyid Qutb. While their viewpoints differ in considerable respects, they nonetheless provide key test cases for Stout’s questions concerning divine sovereignty. In sum, the paper opens new avenues for religious deliberations in democratic traditions.

«Всею землею Российские державы»: Очерк истории народовластия в России (X–XVII века)

The idea of democracy plays one of the leading roles in contemporary Russian political discourse. Still nowadays a lot of Russian people perceive the idea of democracy as something foreign and borrowed, derived from the outside, furthermore even the word “democracy” very often carries negative associations. Each people, country and civilization has the right to independently decide the issue of their political system on the basis of their own specific historical experience and not accept theoretical schemes and models imposed from the outside. Russia has also its own historical experience as the history of Russia and country and civilization runs to more than thousand years. But that doesn’t mean that there were no democratic institutions in the history of Russian people or that there were no democratic practices. What kind of public democratic system can be found in Russian political tradition? The present article is devoted to the study of this question. The author examines democratic traditions in Russia in the 10th–12th centuries. We certainly won’t find the theoretical conception of the term “democracy” in spiritual; and political ideas in Russia of the 10th-12th centuries, as well as any detailed analysis of the history of Russian democratic institutions in the works of Russian thinkers of that time. Still annalistic and other sources contain extensive factual data that can be used by the researchers for the analysis of Slavic and Russian democratic traditions and reconstruction of the democratic conceptions of our ancestry.

Features situational analysis of political instability in the conditions of globalization

In the field of scientific research is the selection and use of approaches for analyzing the state of the political system of society. The collapse of the colonial system, the socialist camp led to the formation of a significant number of states by transitional political regimes. Intensive globalization processes accelerated the already contradictory socio-political processes in transitional and quasi-democratic states. Despite the lack of experience of statehood in some countries, or the lack of democratic political traditions and practices, led to the formation of contradictions between formal and informal rules by the institutions of transitional societies. In the context of the study of the interaction of formal and informal institutions, the question of the use of situational analysis and the synergetic approach, in the process of studying the causes, consequences and the essence of political stability of the instability, is actualized. In cases of situational analysis, it is especially important to note that the essence of the method consists in studying both formal institutions (organizational forms) and informal (practices, models and rules of the game) - as the main subjects and objects of the political process. At the same time, if the situational analysis simply states the presence of certain formal or informal designs, the synergetic approach allows us to trace the dynamics and development of political processes. Considering the political system in which energy acts as the information produced by such formal institutions as political parties and organizations, the synergetic method allows us to consider the system as a self-regulating organization capable of arming the manifestations of political instability. Or vice versa - as a system artificially restraining social entropy, and therefore doomed to destruction, as a result of the action of attractors: economic, political, social, environmental, in the cases of our research.With the help of general scientific (historical, systematic, functional, sociological), general logical methods (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, analogy, abstraction) and the methods of politological theoretical and applied learning (institutional, structural comparative, comparative, axiological, behavioral), the analysis of the influence of non-institutional factors on the procedural, organizational and structural aspects of the political system is performed. Research allows us to reveal the essence, structure and consequence of existing processes in the political system. The synergistic method and situational approach details the existing processes, enabling to conduct a correct analysis of the relevant processes. Thus, it can be concluded that these two methods make it possible to qualitatively evaluate and demand. This allows us to correct the actual political practice, towards stabilizing the political environment.

System rządów parlamentarnych na obszarze poradzieckim: casus Mołdawii i Łotwy

The fundamental problem faced by the states that have emerged in the area of the former USSR involved the definition of the desired form of their own political regime. The choices made in this respect in the first stage of political transformation were frequently limited only to the formal stipulation of model legal and constitutional solutions. The post-communist elite wielding power in the new states was characterized by a desire to form a one-man organ of state in the form of a strong president. The absence of democratic traditions and the negative legacy of the USSR have profoundly influenced the processes of shaping the political regimes in the post-Soviet area, and have actually become the predominant reason to legitimize authoritarianism. Only a few states of the former USSR have decided to adopt a model of governance other than a strong presidential system. Latvia deserves attention in this respect, as it has decided to reinstate the tested political principles of the interwar period. In the process of political transformation, the Latvian political elite has opted for the parliamentary system of governance and chose a weak presidency and the primacy of parliament. The transformation process was quickly completed allowing Latvia to be classified today as a non-consolidated democracy. Moldova’s adopting the system of parliamentary governance in 2000 was, in turn, an unintentional result of a political conflict caused by the President’s endeavors to form a strong presidential system. Moldovan parliamentarianism is a product of a protracted shaping of the institutional foundations of the political system and a byproduct of political competition between the legislative and executive powers. The domination of Communists on the Moldovan political stage, however, resulted in the state’s appropriation by one group and President Vladimir Voronin, who enjoyed a great influence exerted both on the parliamentary majority (as the leader of the ruling party) and the government, despite the formal system providing for a parliamentary republic. There emerged a dangerous precedent of the President exceeding his rights and thus becoming the actual leader of a formally parliamentary republic. In the period from 2001–2009, Moldova was a system of controlled democracy where apparently democratic institutions were in fact a cover for undivided, informal power wielded by a small circle. This triggered a social revolution in 2009 and early parliamentary elections, which resulted in a transfer of power and the establishment of a coalition of liberal and democratic parties clearly expressing their intention to implement market reforms and European integration. Despite political obstruction in Moldova’s shaping of its political system, the country stands out among the former post-Soviet republics. It is the only state in the Commonwealth of Independent States where a continuous and uninterrupted cycle of the transfer of power by means of elections can be observed to conform to the law and constitution since the country declared independence in 1991.

What Hippo and Grand Rapids Have to Say to Each Other

This essay situates James K. A. Smith’s Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology in the context of contemporary social criticism, Augustinian politics, and the cultural turn in religious ethics. While commending Smith’s liturgical ambitions and newfound appreciation for the democratic tradition, I raise critical questions pertaining to eschatology, war and nationhood, and the extent to which he overcomes familiar debates in Christian social ethics.

Family Political Socialisation and its Effect on Youth Trust in Government: A South African Perspective

ABSTRACTCurrent debates on citizenship and democracy highlight the salience of cooperative relations between government and its citizens. Scholars observe that governments and its institutions function better where there is cooperation and trust. However, evidence suggests that political interest is waning and trust in government, dwindling. More especially, concerns about the effects of youth disengaging from political life are increasing. This phenomenon is more worrying in young democracies, where democratic traditions and principles are still evolving. This study examines the effect of family politicisation on youth trust in government. This quantitative study used a cross-sectional correlational research design. A two-level approach was adopted. At the first level we examined the prevalence of political discussions in the home and the trust attitudes of the family (as indicators of family politicisation) and youth towards government. At a second level we conducted a regression analysis to determine relationships between parent-adolescent communication and youth trust in government; family trust in government and youth trust in government; and finally, parent-adolescent communication and family trust on youth trust in government. The results suggest that a combination of parent- adolescent communication and family trust in government in a model, significantly positively predicts youth trust in government.

The Many Individuals of the Liberal and Democratic Traditions

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From Deliberative to Radical Democracy? Sortition and Politics in the Twenty-First Century

This article defends four claims. The first is that in the last few decades, two waves of democratic innovation based on random selection must be differentiated by their partly different concrete devices, embodying different social dynamics and pointing toward different kinds of democracy. The second claim is that the rationale of the first wave, based on randomly selected minipublics, largely differs from the dynamic of political sortition in Athens, as it points toward deliberative democracy rather than radical democracy. Conversely, empowered sortition processes that have emerged during the second wave capture better the spirit of radical Athenian democratic traditions. The third claim is normative: these empowered sortition processes are more promising for a real democratization of democracy. The last claim is that any proposal of a legislature by lot must rely on this lesson when trying to defend a normatively convincing and politically realistic perspective.

Developing Macau’s junior secondary schools music curriculum

For centuries, Macau’s schooling has embraced laissez-faire market principles, a stasis that from AY2016/17 is being changed by the government offering schools tuition coupons conditional on their adoption of a common school curriculum. A study of part of this new common curriculum, the development of a music curriculum for junior secondary schools in Macau, addresses three research questions: (a) What are music teachers’ perceptions and how do these frame the implementation of Macau’s common music curriculum? (b) Do music teachers’ expectations align with those of the central government? (c) Do music teachers perceive that they impact on or are impacted by this innovation? Discussion of the findings highlights a controversy about the role of teachers within curriculum development – should teachers be center staged (Lawton (2012 [1980]) or is this view an oversimplification based on false assumptions of a social democratic tradition (Whitty (1985, 2012 [1981])?

Instrumentalising Referendums? Assessing the Strategies of the Swiss People's Party

Recent popular referendums gave rise to increased public and scholarly debate on how civic participation affects traditional democracies. Particularly, the debate revolves around the question as to what opportunities referendums hold for populist parties. Referendums can be regarded either as tools for populists to increase their political influence or as an instrument to diminish protest votes and thus the support for populist parties. This paper contributes to the debate by analysing how the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) employs referendums as a tool to pursue its political strategies. Switzerland serves as a ‘populist laboratory’, because the country is outstanding concerning the number of performed referendums. Moreover, the SVP constitutes one of the most radical and successful populist right-wing parties in Western Europe. Through the analysis of 155 referendums and a subsequent discourse analysis of party manifestos, the paper shows that the SVP extensively employs referendums as part of its political strategy.

Participatory deliberative democracy: toward a new standard for assessing democracy? some insights into the Italian case

ABSTRACTDefining what democracy means nowadays seems increasingly problematic as several alternative democratic visions are being developed and contrasted in normative theory and political practice. On the one hand, there are traditional accounts of democracy that are highly formal and minimalistic. Citizens are endowed with political rights, which they use to advance their interests, particularly through regular elections, which delegate power to governing representatives. Representative democracy has been long identified with this conception. On the other hand, alternative perspectives have emphasised the untapped potential of liberal societies. These more radical perspectives belong to two main democratic traditions: participatory democracy and deliberative democracy. On the basis of a common framework of participatory and deliberative norms, this paper envisages an alternative and more robust idea of democracy to offer normative guidance in democratising contemporary societies. We tie our discussion to an analysis of how Italian democracy could be improved.

Just a Show? Effects of Televised Debates on Political Attitudes and Preferences in Slovakia

The popularity of televised political debates is growing, attracting millions of viewers. However, evidence that such debates can shift voters’ attitudes is mixed and the impact on voters’ preference is also mixed. In addition, the evidence comes mostly from presidential elections in the United States and almost exclusively from established democracies. A call for comparative research in new democracies has been made several times. Our research answers the call and contributes to this debate by comparing two experimental studies based on first-order national elections and second-order European Parliament elections in Slovakia. To our knowledge, this is the first time such a study has been performed in a post-communist EU country. We employed a pre-test/post-test experimental design in a controlled environment with participants randomly assigned to both groups. The results show that debate exposure has a stronger effect on opinions about candidates’ leadership skills, credibility, and economic competence if the candidates were previously unknown. Familiarity with the candidates and pre-existing preferences also function as a block to preference change. Almost all of our findings are in line with previous research originating from Western contexts. Therefore, we conclude that the causal mechanism linking debate exposure to voters’ preference and attitudes in the post-communist context is similar to that in Western countries with long-term democratic traditions.

Electoral Violence and the Challenge of Democratic Consolidation in Nigeria

Elections are the hallmarks of democracy; they also serve the purpose of peaceful change in government and confer political legitimacy on the government. Viewed from this prism, elections represent the expression of the sovereign will of the people. However, the conduct of elections in a plural society like Nigeria is often fraught with animosities and violence. Failing is the process to satisfy the test of popular participation and legitimacy. At the core of this bitter contest is the struggle for power by factional elite groups perceived as representing ethno religious and regional interest. Electoral seasons more than anytime else reveals the fragility and soft underbelly of the Nigerian state. The country’s electoral history is replete with narratives of flawed and disputed elections that have turned violent, resulting in numerous fatalities and reversing previous attempts at democratic consolidation. The 2015 general election was unprecedented in the annals of the country because for the first time an entrenched and incumbent party was defeated at the polls, and the country witnessed a peaceful alternation of power between contending political parties thereby fulfilling one of the preconditions for democratic consolidation. A tensed pre-election political atmosphere occasioned by the activities of the terrorist group, Boko Haram, that then controlled a large swath of Nigeria’s territory and a fragmented elite divided along ethno-religious and regional lines foreshadowed the election. Shuttle diplomacy by the United States secretary of state and the constitution of body called ‘National Peace Committee’ comprised of Kofi Anan, the immediate past secretary general of the United Nations, past presidents of Nigeria and leading clergymen and the postponement of the election date by six weeks before the electoral management body could deliver an election whose outcome was accepted by the contending political parties and averting the prediction of an apocalyptic endgame. This study seeks to engage the factors that make conduct of elections in Nigeria to be violent prone and undermine attempts at institutionalising a democratic tradition. The methodology is qualitative in approach, relying on secondary data from books, journal articles and newspaper commentaries.

"Legitimacy, Performance, and China's Democratic Future—Navigating between Prudential Pragmatism and Moral Idealism"

"Legitimacy, Performance, and China's Democratic Future—Navigating between Prudential Pragmatism and Moral Idealism" Gang Lin (bio) Jiwei Ci, Democracy in China: The Coming Crisis. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2019. x, 420 pp. Hardcover $45.00, isbn 978-0674-23818-3. During the third wave of democratization, liberal democracy gained popularity in the world. In the past decade, however, it lost momentum, leading to an arguable view of worldwide democracy decline.1 In the case of China, the quest for democracy started well before the third wave, when the first republic in Asia appeared in 1911, although the early rehearsals of representative democracy in that country were unsuccessful. What China has practiced since 1949 is socialist democracy informed by Karl Marx's communist thought but constrained by social and economic underdevelopment and an inexorable legacy of authoritarianism cohabitated uncomfortably with partial and periodical egalitarianism. The Chinese Formula (zhongguo fang'an, in the words of Xi Jinping) of democracy featured by Leninist democratic centralism and one-party leadership is at odds with universally accepted definition of democracy contributed unilaterally by Western democratic societies, where the mainstream views disregard China as a democracy, simply relegating to lip service that country's official upgrading of democracy, freedom, equality, justice, and the rule according to law as part of socialist Core Value (hexin jiazhi). The subject of Jiwei Ci's book—democracy in China—is explored with such arguable conventional wisdom. The coming crisis as the subtitle actually refers to the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), rather than democratic fortune in China. Actually, the main theme of the book is why China needs a democratic change and how China can overcome the related challenges with appropriate responses. This volume demonstrates its strength in theoretic/philosophical discourse and logical reasoning, free from empirical hypothesis and verification relying on quantitative analysis. From a prudential perspective, Ci makes a strong argument in the Introduction that China is in an urgency to bring about a democratic regime complementary to its democratic society. While people may disagree on such asynchronism in China's political and social developments, Ci believes China [End Page 177] has developed a substantial degree of democracy in society based on "equality of condition," a concept used by Tocqueville in his pathbreaking book Democracy in America.2 From this viewpoint, political democratization in China is justified not so much by moral desirability as by prudential necessity for reason of institutional fittingness and governability on the part of regime. This does not suggest that the author has no normative inclination on this value-laden subject. As Ci contends at the very beginning, one extraordinary challenge to liberal democracy is its "oligarchic capture" manifested by growing "polarizing effects of globalization and digital technology" in the United States and, to a lesser degree, other advanced European countries (p. 2). However, liberal democracy, despite its drawbacks, is still better than other choices for China. This does not suggest China can easily approach such a desirable—however modest—and necessary goal. Four daunting challenges to China's democratization are presented thereafter: (1) the inexorable role of the ruling CCP, (2) the absence of a basic level of individual and societal moral maturity, (3) the weakening of the party's centripetal capacity of holding a vast country full with ethnic diversity but lacking democratic tradition, and (4) a lack of preexisted institutions to balance democracy against capitalism as well as neoliberalism. According to Ci, these daunting challenges require prudent responses. This book is divided into three parts. The first part (chapters 1 and 2) argues that a looming legitimation crisis calls for an urgent and prudent response. Legitimation crisis is a hot issue in the field of China studies after Mao, as by-products of reform and openness, economic inequality, social polarization, and official corruption have agitated a new legitimation crisis in China. In response to the wave of global democratization, the CCP has tried to "keep pace with the times" and perpetuate its lifespan by transforming itself from a revolutionary ruling party into a "developmental ruling party"—regaining its ruling legitimacy by building a relatively prosperous society and rejuvenating the Chinese nation. In other words, the ruling...

On intellectual foundations of the modern democratic tradition

On intellectual foundations of the modern democratic tradition

The European Competition Network in the European Administrative System: Theoretical Concerns

The public administration of the European Union (EU) is a sui generis multi-level structure under constant development. After five decades of successful functioning, the European Union still lacks a coherent and comprehensive set of codified rules of administrative procedure at all levels. The existing acquis related to European administration and administrative procedures is fragmented, sector specific and although it is based on the constitutional principles of the democratic traditions of its Member States, such coincidence is often insufficient for the present requirements of good administration. The EU basically relies on indirect administration, while a growing number of cooperation forms exists of the competent authorities that aims to ensure efficacy of execution and to overcome diversity of non-harmonised legal areas. The aim of this paper is to place the European Competition Network (ECN) in this structure, explore and examine its legal nature as it is probably the most advanced example for such cooperation. The ECN incorporates and reveals the major procedural law questions of European administration; it is a rather successful form of cooperation, and although its core issues fail to correspond to the fundamental requirements of European administrative procedures, there seem to be positive changes in the evaluation of soft law and the functioning of the system.

ДЕМОКРАТИЯ И ДЕМОКРАТИЧЕСКИЙ ТРАНЗИТ В ИСТОРИЧЕСКОЙ РЕТРОСПЕКТИВЕ

The article is devoted to the study of a complex set of problems related to the ideas of democracy and practices of democratic transit in the mirror of Contemporary history. The author proceeds from the fact that the loss of geopolitical bipolarity has led to the intensification of efforts to form a new world order. Democracy has become its political form. At the same time, contemporary political development follows a variety of multidirectional trajectories. Democratization is not a normative, one-line and progressive process. The author tries to analyze such basic concepts as “democracy”, “good governance”, “human rights” in relation to the non-Western societies, and to develop an adequate methodology to study the ways of social and political development of modern States. He focuses on identifying the peculiarities of governance and the functioning of power, establishes the form of the interaction between the socio-cultural environment and the political institutions in post-Communist, post-colonial and post-totalitarian States. It is concluded that the 21st century will witness the struggle of democratic and anti-democratic trends not only on a global scale, but perhaps - in less dramatic forms - in the very citadels of traditional democracy.