Different Aspects Of Democracy Research Articles

Democracy, accountability, and forest loss: a cross-national analysis of low- and middle-income nations

ABSTRACT The existing cross-national research on democracy and forest loss has produced contradictory results. On the one hand, some studies find that democracy is related to less forest loss because of electoral accountability and guaranteeing political rights and civil liberties. On the other hand, studies find that democracy is related to increased forest loss in low- and middle-income nations because leaders promote policies that prioritize economic growth over protecting the natural environment. We use this research as a starting point for our study and build upon it in two ways. First, we examine how vertical, horizontal, and diagonal accountability – three different aspects of democracy – impacts forest loss in low- and middle-income nations. Second, we address the issue of endogeneity in the vertical, horizontal, and diagonal accountability. To do so, we analyze data for 80 low- and middle-income nations using a two-stage instrumental variable regression model. We find that higher levels of horizontal and diagonal accountability are related to less forest loss. We do not find that vertical accountability is related to forest loss in low- and middle-income nations. From the findings, we arrive at our theoretical implication, which support arguments concerning how actors at different scales work individually and together to promote conservation.

Democracy in a Global Emergency

As countries around the world went into lockdown, we turned to 32 leading scholars working on different aspects of democracy and asked them what they think about how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted democracy. In this article, we synthesize the reflections of these scholars and present five key insights about the prospects and challenges of enacting democracy both during and after the pandemic: (1) COVID-19 has had corrosive effects on already endangered democratic institutions, (2) COVID-19 has revealed alternative possibilities for democratic politics in the state of emergency, (3) COVID-19 has amplified the inequalities and injustices within democracies, (4) COVID-19 has demonstrated the need for institutional infrastructure for prolonged solidarity, and (5) COVID-19 has highlighted the predominance of the nation-state and its limitations. Collectively, these insights open up important normative and practical questions about what democracy should look like in the face of an emergency and what we might expect it to achieve under such circumstances.

Evaluations of the quality of the representative channel and unequal participation

This article analyzes how individual-level assessments of the quality and functioning of the representative channel affect citizens’ likelihood to turn out to vote and to engage in alternative forms of non-institutionalized participation, and whether these relationships are moderated by individual resources as measured by education. Relying on novel data from the sixth round of the European Social Survey on how European citizens evaluate different aspects of democracy we show that negative evaluations of the quality of the representative channel discourage voting, but only promote participation in demonstrations among the highly educated. These findings highlight potential inequalities in citizens’ ability to voice their political demands: while highly educated individuals are likely to translate their negative evaluations of the institutional channel of representation into non-institutionalized forms of participation, in the presence of negative evaluations low educated individuals are simply more likely to withdraw from politics.

A Study on Regime Type and Globalization in Simultaneous Equation Framework

In this study we build a simultaneous equation model in which the measures of different aspects of globalization (attributable to KOF) and different aspects of democracy (attributable to EIU) are related in seven structural equations. A bi-directional relationship between democracy and globalization is visualized. The model is estimated by the conventional 2-SLS as well as a modified 2-SLS in which Shapley value regression is used at the second stage of 2-SLS. On the basis of our analysis we conclude the following: (1) Overall, democracy and globalization promote each other and hence there is a bi-directional causality with positive relationships running both ways between democracy and globalization. At a national level, there may be various intermediary conditions that modify the relationship as well as set in motion a complex of positive and/or negative feedbacks to accelerate or retard the pace of globalization and democratization in a country-specific manner. However, when a large number of countries are studied a clear relationship emerges out. (2) There is a need to estimate the structural coefficients of the model cautiously since the regression equations may be suffering from collinearity among the predictor variables. The Shapley value regression based 2-SLS has performed better than the conventional regression in estimating the structural parameters of the model. (3) It is expected that the system methods of estimation of the model would give better results than what are obtained by the single equation methods of estimation of structural parameters of the model.

Does might make right or fight? Coercive capacity, democracy, and human rights, 1975 to 2010

ABSTRACTDemocracy is generally beneficial for human rights whereas coercive capacity increases government repression. Using data for 161 countries between 1975 and 2010, I consider how different aspects of democracy interact with the size and scope of a country's military apparatus to shape respect for bodily-integrity rights. Does democracy ameliorate the negative effects of coercive capacity? Or, does a strong military overpower the positive impact of democracy? Multivariate analyses suggest that high levels of democracy neutralize the effect of coercive capacity on bodily-integrity violations. At the same time, high levels of coercive capacity increase human rights abuses even in the most democratic regimes, at least when different aspects of democracy—executive constraints, competitive elections, and media freedom—are evaluated in isolation. Regimes that combine respect for media freedom with constraints on executive authority or competitive elections are able to harness coercive capacity for protective purposes.

Noví mladí Masaryci? Podpora demokracie a jejích principů u českých adolescentů

This article investigates levels and predictors of support for democracy and two democratic principles (free speech and minority rights) among Czech 14- to 17-year-olds. An analysis of survey data collected in primary and secondary schools in four regions in 2014 (N = 1,959) reveals that among young Czechs general support for a democratic regime is relatively independent from more specific pro-democratic attitudes (although there is an association between general support for democracy and the abstract principle of freedom of speech). On a general level, democracy was supported by about two-thirds of adolescents in the sample. Similar or even higher levels of support were found for the two principles of democracy when presented in abstract terms. However, when these principles were presented to them in specific, less clear-cut contexts, support for them was much lower. Specifically, despite their strong support for free speech, about half of respondents supported restricting unconventional political activism. Moreover, a similar proportion of participants seemed to downplay minority rights when the majority rule was emphasised. Results of the analysis also revealed that support for different aspects of democracy was predicted by various psychological and socioeconomic factors.

A New Kind of Two-Stage Least Squares Based on Shapley Value Regression

The Two-Stage Least squares method for obtaining the estimated structural coefficients of a simultaneous linear equations model is a celebrated method that uses OLS at the first stage for estimating the reduced form coefficients and obtaining the expected values in the arrays of current exogenous variables. At the second stage it uses OLS, equation by equation, in which the explanatory expected current endogenous variables are used as instruments representing their observed counterpart. It has been pointed out that since the explanatory expected current endogenous variables are linear functions of the predetermined variables in the model, inclusion of such expected current endogenous variables together with a subset of predetermined variables as regressors make the estimation procedure susceptible to the deleterious effects of collinearity, which may render some of the estimated structural coefficients with inflated variance as well as wrong sign. As a remedy to this problem, the use of Shapley value regression at the second stage has been proposed. For illustration a model has been constructed in which the measures of the different aspects of globalization are the endogenous variables while the measures of the different aspects of democracy are the predetermined variables. It has been found that the conventional (OLS-based) Two-Stage Least Squares (2-SLS) gives some of the estimated structural coefficients with an unexpected sign. In contrast, all structural coefficients estimated with the proposed 2-SLS (in which Shapley value regression has been used at the second stage) have an expected sign. These empirical findings suggest that the measures of globalization are conformal among themselves as well as they are positively affected by democratic regimes.

E-democracy: the fruit of e-government

E-democracy is becoming an important topic for research after the global boom in the internet and the social media influence on societies. Using electronic channels for different aspects of democracy is becoming a necessity more than a luxury. This research tries to investigate the influence of e-government on the democratic process. E-democracy is conceptually linked to e-government, where previous research indicated such inclusion. This research proposed a framework that depicts the dimensions of e-government as a research domain. Also, utilising secondary data from two distinct sources of archival reports, this research tried to build a model for predicting the democratic level in a country (represented by the Economist Intelligence Unit democracy index) using the e-government readiness index (represented by United Nations e-government readiness index). Results indicated that a significant relationship exists between UN-EGRI and EIU-DI for 163 countries of the world. Conclusions and future work are stated at the end.

Does Democracy Have a Different Impact on Corruption in Africa?

The author investigates the relationship between corruption and the newer proxies of democracy for African countries. The regression results suggest that countries that are relatively more democratic are also less corrupt. Of the different aspects of democracy examined, the functioning of government and political participation are found to be significantly correlated with corruption. The estimates suggest that countries with functioning and efficient governments and healthy political competition are less corrupt. Unlike the early empirical studies, the evidence of a nonlinear relationship between corruption and the new proxies of democracy is weak, especially after controlling for other factors and correcting for the endogeneity problem. Our results suggest that ethnolinguistic fractionalization and the level of development are also important determinants of the level of corruption in Africa.

You Can’t Win If You Don’t Fight

What effect, if any, does democracy have on outcomes of counterinsurgency wars? Previous studies have provided inconclusive answers mainly because of the challenges involved in testing the question empirically: First, insurgencies are not accidental and the anticipated outcomes also affect whether they break out in the first place. Second, regimes are non-random and their determinants can also affect insurgency incidence and its outcomes. Moreover, different aspects of democracy can have opposite effects on the government's chances of winning. I address these challenges by conducting a critical test to distinguish between different causal mechanisms. I find that domestic institutions that are associated with public goods provision make insurgency onsets less likely. I also show that once we control for this selection effect, domestic political institutions do not influence insurgency outcomes.

Politics and Democratic Consciousness in Modern Iran

The books under review address different aspects of democracy’s tortuous path as both a much-cherished political value and an institutional arrangement in modern Iranian society. They do so by explaining how the struggle for basic rights and freedoms has over time necessitated a national yearning for a “clear consciousness” that constantly traverses the boundaries of the familiar and the foreign, the universal and the particular. It is the great merit of all three works that they approach the troubled pursuit of democratic ideals through a contextual reading of Iranian political and social history over the past century. They are not given to fixed ideas and false binaries so fashionable today in writings on Muslim-majority societies (e.g. Islam vs. secularism, modernity vs. tradition, West vs. East), nor are they guided by melodramatic prophecies about the apparent “End of History” or an impending “Clash of Civilizations.”

Revolutionary, advocate, agent, or authority: context-based assessment of the democratic legitimacy of transnational civil society actors

The literature on transnational civil society encompasses a number of conflicting views regarding civil society organizations’ (CSOs) behavior and impacts and the desirability of civil society involvement in international policymaking. This piece suggests that this lack of consensus arises from the diverse range of contexts in which CSOs operate and the wide variety of activities in which they engage. This article seeks to organize and analyze the disparate data on civil society by developing a context-based standard of democratic legitimacy for CSOs. The article disaggregates democracy into input, throughput, and output components, and shows how CSOs must support or manifest different aspects of democracy in order to be democratically legitimate in a given context. Applying this standard to existing works, the article identifies several problems in current research, including a failure to recognize ways the democratic imperatives of transnational advocacy differ from national advocacy, and the potential for international civil society interventions to undermine local democratic processes.

Seven aspects of democracy as related to study circles

It is estimated that between 1.2–1.6 million Swedes take part each year in various study circles. These are considered to be significant for democracy. The empirical evidence for this claim is scrutinized in this text. The theoretical basis for the interpretation is meanings given to the concept of democracy in the discourse on democracy. Seven qualitatively different aspects of democracy are thus highlighted: equal participation, horizontal relations, deliberations, knowledge that informs standpoints, recognition of diverse identities, internal democratic decision-making, and action to form society. It is argued that the seven aspects can be looked upon as a chain, since they, to some extent, focus on different phases in a democratic process.