Flawed Democracy Research Articles

Democracies or Authoritarians? Regime Differences in the Efficacy of Handling Covid-19 in 158 Countries

A new genre of contestation is seen in the discourse of democracy and governance worldwide concerning efficacy in combating the Covid-19 pandemic, that is, which regime is handling the pandemic better—authoritarian or democratic? As a response to this debate, premised on the practicality that differences in total confirmed cases and deaths reflect the raw quantity of government’s ability to control and handle an infectious disease, we examined differences in the reported number of total confirmed cases and deaths across the categories of political regimes. We used regime classification from the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Democratic Index—full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid and authoritarian regime. The country-wise reported number of Covid-19 confirmed cases and deaths were extracted from World Health Organization’s 6th Weekly Epidemiological Report. The results spotlight that if the democratic countries are inevitably more susceptible to pandemics, then we need to cautiously reassess the notion of public health and pandemics in the context of political regimes.

Historians Killed for Political Reasons in Ibero-America (1920-2020)

This essay examines the Ibero-American history producers who were killed for political reasons during the past century. It presents sixty victims from eight countries. Of these, 83% were killed by state forces, 17% by non-state forces. Dictatorships had the worst scores (58% of the victims), while flawed democracies also saw considerable casualties (32%), in contrast to emergent (7%) and stable democracies (3%). Much evidence was found for the thesis that killing these history producers did not necessarily mean the erasure of their names or achievements. Out of the sixty victims, nine (15%) were killed for political reasons that were mainly or partly related to their historical works. Six of these, however, occurred under democracies, particularly flawed or emergent democracies, and not under dictatorships. This finding leads to the hypothesis that well-entrenched dictatorships, wielding ruthless power, deter and block incriminating historical research – making the killing of history producers for history-related reasons relatively rare – whereas freer conditions in flawed and emergent democracies prompt or encourage such dangerous historical research. Those investigating past systemic violence or the crimes of previous dictatorships then risk becoming targets of the military seeking to install or restore authoritarian rule.

Konsep Kebebasan Menurut Jean-Jacques Rousseau dan Relevansinya Bagi Demokrasi Indonesia Saat Ini (Sebuah Kajian Filosofis - Kritis)

The focus of this paper is a discussion of the concept of freedom according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the philosophers of the Enlightenment. Rousseau's concept of freedom is always interesting to discuss in the context of a country that applies democracy as its political system, one of which is Indonesia. In discussing the concept of Rousseau's freedom, it is relevant to Indonesia's current democracy, which is in a state of flawed democracy according to the research results of The Economist Intelligence Unit in 2020. The goal to be achieved is to find new ideas as a solution to improve the quality of Indonesian democracy for the better. The method used in this paper is a qualitative method in the form of literature review. The findings in this paper is that the quality of freedom in Indonesian democracy is still very low, especially in the fields of religion and education. The task to fight for this freedom is first of all in the hands of the leaders of the nation and state.

Political Leadership from the Bottom: A New Theoretical Model of Followership

Different from many previous studies on leadership which focus on leadership within management science, this paper gives a fresh look by investigating the followership characteristics in the political approach. A new model adapted and renovated from Kelley (1992) on the followership model is applied to define the types of followers from a political perspective. The paper also used synthesis of the literature, observations, and survey data conducted by research centers such as the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, TCdata360, and Freedom House. Empirical evidence of three typical examples indicates that sheep followers are the major group in highly authoritarian leadership in China, while the archetype followership in Norway can receive a full democratic leadership style. In a more complicated case, the outsider type in the US may have a flawed democracy with elements of oligarchy. Received 9th December 2020; Revised 2nd March 2021; Accepted 20th March 2021

The Discriminatory Legalism Strategy and Hate Speech Cases in Poland. The Role of the Commissioner for Human Rights in Fighting Discrimination

<p>The regress of liberal democracy in the world has been progressing for years and the number of countries with the full democracy index is decreasing [Economist Intelligence Unit 2018, 2019; Freedom House 2018]. One of the serious threats to the rule of law and the human rights in modern democracy has become discriminatory legalism which is both strategy and weapon [Weyland 2013]. In order to weaken or marginalize the opposition and “rebellious” citizens, public authorities apply discriminatory legal instruments and democratic rules depending on who they are concerned with. Public authorities do this because of political views and use exclusion rhetoric, a language of hatred, stigmatizing all “strangers”, at last use hate speech on the Internet and beyond. The weaponization of hate speech is a convenient instrument for political struggle and the fight against inconvenient opponents. Hate speech is also used by far-right and nationalist organizations in the public sphere, which operate in an atmosphere of consent to their radical behaviour. Political hate speech plays an important role in the discriminatory legal strategy. Poland is included in the group of countries with flawed democracy (Article 7(1) TEU since 2017). The authorities introduced changes in law (which were defied as the “Frankensteinisation of legislation” by the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe [PACE] in 2019), democratic institutions and the prosecution applies a discriminatory legalism strategy. This problem is highlighted by the current Commissioner for Human Rights which is an independent institution in the field of fighting hate speech (except a few independent media and NGOs informing about the hate speech phenomenon). Many of hate speech cases are discontinued or not taken up by the prosecution. The numbers of cases of hate speech and hate incidents are increasing but the Polish authorities use the underreporting mechanism. The Ombudsman warns that only 5% of cases are reported to the police. The language of hatred and contempt used by the authorities in Poland has become the weaponization in the fight against citizens as political opponents: LGBT+ community, refugees, political opponents, independent judges and others.</p>

The heterogeneous effect of democracy, economic and political globalisation on renewable energy

This paper summarises the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on international cooperation’s role in combatting climate change and its impacts. The primary purpose of the research is to determine renewable energy development reliance on democracy and globalisation levels. The objects for analysis are Ukraine and countries with different democracy regimes: full democracy (Finland, Denmark, Spain), flawed democracy (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic) and hybrid democracy (Ukraine, Turkey and Montenegro). To gain the research goal, the authors examined data on the share of renewable energy, GDP per capita, labour force and gross fixed capital formation from 2012 to 2019. The data was retrieved from the Eurostat database, World Data Bank, KOF Swiss Economic Institute and the Economist Intelligence Unit. The following methods and tests were used: Levin, Lin, and Chu test; Augmented Dickey-Fuller Fisher and PhillipsPerron Fisher unit root test; Im, Pesaran, Shin’s panel unit root tests. The authors used the Pedroni test to cointegration among variables. The Fully Modified OLS and Dynamic OLS panel cointegration techniques were applied to evaluate a statistically significant longer-term relationship between variables. The findings confirmed that for countries with the hybrid regime, the changes in political and economic globalisation provoked the rapid growth of renewable energy compare with countries from full and flawed democracy.

Citizens’ inflated perceptions of the extent of democracy in different African countries: are individuals’ notions of the state an answer to the puzzle?

Based on responses to the Afrobarometer and other surveys, it appears that most Africans believe their country is democratic. Oftentimes they even express satisfaction with the degree of democracy. Experts, however, have shown that many African countries have a flawed democracy or an authoritarian regime. This discrepancy raises questions about trying to measure democracy based on people’s perceptions and what these perceptions actually indicate. The current study’s analyses (multi-level modelling) based on Afrobarometer (wave 5) indicate that the nature of an individual’s orientation towards the state (‘rights seeker’ vs. ‘privilege seeker’) can contribute to that individual’s belief in the existence of democracy and satisfaction with that perceived democratic governance. This orientation functions as a layer of belief that can affect the cognitive system used to evaluate a political system. When comparing rights seekers’ and privilege seekers’ responses, the rights seekers are more demanding and have higher standards for personal freedom and political liberty. Consequently, there are variations in the perception of the degree of democracy. Given that the majority of respondents to the Afrobarometer have a privilege seeking nature, this may affect the survey results on questions about democracy. The study explores further mechanisms relating to the possible effects of an individual’s orientation towards the state. It finds that privilege seekers tend to believe their country has less corruption and less unequal treatment than rights seekers do. Furthermore, privilege seekers award higher scores on government performance indicators such as ‘management of economy’ and ‘reduction of crime’ than do right seekers.

ROLE OF CORRUPTION AND ITS IMPACT UNDER VARIOUS REGIMES: CROSS COUNTRY ANALYSIS

Many empirical studies investigate relationship between democracy and corruption by considering democratic and non-democratic regimes. There are many economies which are not fully democratic and autocratic, so there is a dire need to explore these relationships in case of other two categories of political regimes, such as flawed democracies and hybrid regime. Does this relationship equally hold in these political regimes? This study gauges out the linkages between corruption and economic growth for all plausible cases of political regimes. Empirical analysis includes sample of 159 countries based on different political regimes, consisting on 20 full democracies, 55 flawed democracies, 39 hybrid regime, and 53 authoritarian regimes. The data are taken from the period of 2006 to 2019. The sophisticated empirical Bayesian estimation procedure is employed to explore the association between growth and socio-economic variables. The results indicate that corruption in case of mature democracies has no significant effect on economic growth While in autocracies has significant positive effect on economic growth. However, corruption has negative effect on economic growth in flawed democracies and hybrid regime

Does context really matter? The influence of deficient legal services on the intensity of political ties in the regulatory and legal arenas

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to apply the institution-based view and resource dependence theory in arguing that perceived deficiencies in a legal service sector where a foreign subsidiary operates will influence the intensity of its political ties with actors in both the regulatory and legal arenas. The authors further theorized that these relationships will vary across governance environments.Design/methodology/approachThe research context for this study was multinational enterprises (MNE) wholly owned foreign subsidiaries and international joint ventures (IJVs) operating in the Philippines and Thailand. Data for most variables in this study came from primary survey data collected in 2018 from senior managers of MNE WOSs and IJVs operating in the Philippines and Thailand.FindingsThe authors’ analysis of 352 foreign subsidiaries operating in the Philippines and Thailand show that, in a flawed democracy, perceived deficient legal services enhance the intensity of foreign subsidiary political ties with government actors in both the regulatory and legal arena. However, in a hybrid regime, perceived deficient legal services enhance only the intensity of foreign subsidiary political ties with government actors in the regulatory arena. The authors’ findings also suggest that the relationship between perceived deficiencies in legal service sector and the intensity of political ties is stronger for foreign subsidiaries that operate in heavily regulated industries across both a flawed democracy and hybrid regime. Conversely, the authors do not find the market orientation of these foreign subsidiaries to play a role in this process.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors’ study was unable to control for whether managerial perceptions of deficient legal services were well informed at the local or federal level. This issue raises the question of will the presence of an in-house legal department influence managerial perceptions with regard to deficiencies within a legal service sector? Based on these limitations, the authors suggest that future research can further extend political ties research by using a fine-grained analysis in investigating the antecedents of managerial perceptions of legal services within different legal jurisdictions.Originality/valueThe political ties literature has largely argued that political ties are more prevalent in environmental contexts comprising institutional voids as MNEs attempt to mitigate volatility associated with the lack of developed institutional infrastructure (e.g. Blumentritt & Nigh, 2002; Bucheli et al., 2018). However, the concept of institutional voids is very broad and still rather abstract in nature. Hence, scholars have yet to fully understand what types of institutional voids may drive MNE foreign subsidiary political tie intensity in varying governance contextsThe authors’ study attempts to contribute to this important line of research by investigating how one type of institutional void, namely, perceived deficiencies in the legal service sector, can influence the intensity of political ties in varying governance environments.

European development banks and the political cycle

This paper investigates whether the lending activity of European development banks is affected by opportunistic political behavior, by looking at the change in loans extended by these entities in election years. The empirical analysis leverages on a unique manually collected dataset that includes all the development banks headquartered in Europe, for the period 2002–2015.A comparison with the rest of the European banking system reveals that while the political view of development banks cannot be supported as a general rule, it finds empirical evidence in flawed democracies, where large development banks actually tend to increase their lending activity in election years.

The Supreme Court and the Demise of American Democracy: A Comparative View of Campaign Funding and Political Gerrymanders

United States has slipped from the list of fully functioning democracies maintained by The Economist magazine. U.S. is now considered a flawed democracy. magazine blames the impact of money in campaigns and the effects of political gerrymanders. This paper examines the U.S. Supreme Court cases that have led to these results and compares the resulting law to the laws of countries that have achieved and retained the status of fully functioning democracy.

Une autre démocratie en Amérique (1824–1844): Orestes Brownson, un regard politique (Another democracy in America [1824–1844]: Orestes Brownson, a political look)

In 1939 the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called Orestes Brownson “an American Marxist before Marx” (“Orestes Brownson: An American Marxist before Marx,” Sewanee Review, July–Sept. 1939, pp. 317–23). This posthumous qualifier derived from Brownson's most famous article “The Laboring Classes,” which stood in favor of a radical reform of the right to property (Boston Quarterly Review, July 1840, pp. 758–95). Almost eighty years after Schlesinger wrote his catchy phrase, the French historian Naomi Wulf revisits Brownson's specific view of democracy by showing how his works offered a critical and theoretical reflection on Jacksonian democracy. Her book goes beyond Brownson's polemical article to encompass the rich body of writings published by this leading intellectual of the Jacksonian era. Wulf elegantly describes Brownson's complex intellectual and social world. Rendering the task more difficult are his changing opinions during his fascinating life. Brownson's evolving views have enabled different and sometimes-conflicting interpretations to be formed—from Schlesinger's “first Marxist” theory to Russel Kirk's belief that the Jacksonian reformer was a consistent conservative. According to Wulf, Brownson's view of a flawed democracy cemented his intellectual journey and led him to promote major economic and educational reforms. Such a reformist creed was accompanied by a desire for a more active federal government, particularly interesting at a time when the national government was mainly “out of sight,” to use the historian Brian Balogh's words (A Government out of Sight, 2009). At the heart of Brownson's arguments was a denunciation of the failure of Andrew Jackson's democratic ideal. Far from Alexis de Tocqueville's contemporaneous celebration in his classic Democracy in America (1835), Brownson's work characterized Jacksonian America as incomplete and far from perfect.

Islam dalam Demokrasi Bangladesh

Isl?mic teachings believed by some to be inseparable from the life of Isl?mic society, including in-state life which makes democracy a political method complete with party systems but issues heard in Bangladesh that also uses the political method of democracy in the state, parties that embrace Isl?mic ideology a difficult problem was even declared a band party. This study aims to see, analyze with a descriptive approach with library data sources to see the facts that occur, the role of Isl?mic parties and find patterns of an Isl?mic party in Bangladesh, especially the JIB party (Jamaat Islamiyah Bangladesh) in democracy. The results of the study found that Bangladesh, including Flawed Democracy and the Bangladeshi regime, made the reasons for terrorism and history a pretext to suppress the Isl?mic party which is also an opposition government party, especially JIB, which is a fusion of the Bangladesh Muslim League and Isl?mic Democratic League. But despite the party's forbidden right-wing but has alliances with other major parties such as the BNP and Awami League and JIB still articulates through the mouthpiece of secular parties, even the voice of Islamic parties remains the key to BNP victory in elections.

The cascading crisis and the changing base of popular protest: The case of Iceland

The rise of economic injustice protests during the Great Recession era – i.e. against economic inequality, flawed democracy, and austerity – begs the question whether the social and political divisions underlying protest behavior have changed. Iceland offers a microcosm for studying such changes. Since the crisis struck, huge protests against economic injustice have emerged repeatedly, providing an opportunity to study how protest behavior has changed during the cascading crisis, that is, a crisis that started in finance but then led to recession, austerity, and political crisis. This article uses survey data obtained in Iceland before the crisis, and during two protest waves emerging at different stages of the crisis, that is, during the 2008–2009 financial crisis, and during the 2016 ‘Panama Papers leak’. The author finds that economic vulnerability, perceptions of flawed democracy, and political centrism emerged as predictors of protest behavior during the crisis. But the role of ‘new social movements’ allegiance seems to diminish in the later stage of the crisis. The study supports broad theses about changes in popular protest, yet it illustrates the need to embed the work in a given (evolving) social context.

Unraveling the contemporary drivers of renewable energy consumption: Evidence from regime types

The detrimental effect of climate change and pollutant emissions has shifted the attention of researchers and policymakers toward renewable energy resources. To unravel the underexplored determinants of renewable energy consumption, this study examines the individual and combined effect of innovativeness, regulatory quality, trade openness, and tax attractiveness after controlling for per capita GDP, financial liberalization, inflation, and political stability. In addition, system‐generalized method of moments estimator is utilized to reduce endogeneity bias in the model. A broader sample size of 85 countries is investigated and further divides it into four sub‐panels on the basis of regime types (full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid, and authoritarian regime). The findings indicate that innovativeness, regulatory quality, and trade openness are the major drivers of renewable energy consumption in global panel. The combined effect of innovativeness and regulatory policy is also statistically significant on renewable energy consumption. Furthermore, tax attractiveness positively moderates the relationship between trade openness and renewable energy consumption. The results differ across sub‐panels; however, the observed factors explain more variation in renewable energy consumption for full democracy and flawed democracy panels. It is suggested that economies should be shifted from authoritarianism to democracy to improve their public, industrial, trade, and tax policies which may help them to boost the consumption and production of clean energy. © 2019 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 38:e13146, 2019

Global Perspectives on Democracy and Public Stadium Finance

Arenas, ballparks, and stadiums built for professional sports teams or mega-events all around the world often come with large public costs. In democratic states, citizens are assumed to have a role in public policymaking, but previous research suggests the strength of this role can vary case-to-case. To examine the incidence of public stadium finance and public participation across the geopolitical landscape, a collective case study was employed and organized into regime type (i.e., full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, authoritarian regimes). The results of the study show clear contrasts in the financing mechanisms within and between regime types. Additionally, each case-study grouping contained examples of citizen-led public participation, though the efficacy of these democratic actions is questionable. This review complements the growing literature on public policy and stadium finance by assessing public engagement in current stadium-subsidy debates around the world.

Time for a Change

ABSTRACTPolitical scientists should put aside questions about whether voters are rational or irrational, informed or uninformed, and questions about how flawed democracy is. Although they are interesting, these questions are secondary. Answering them in no way helps people—it does not help them with their violent neighborhoods, their declining incomes, their flooded homes, or their dying crops. Instead, researchers should focus on the first-order question of how to improve democratic accountability.

The Discourse of Fear in American TV Fiction: A Furedian Reading of Person of Interest

Inserted in the ongoing discussion about the post-9/11 cultural archive, this paper analyzes the TV series Person of Interest (CBS, 2011–2016), created by Jonathan Nolan, through Frank Furedi’s theories about the discursive formation of fear as presented in his texts Politics of Fear. Beyond Left and Right (2005), Invitation to Terror. The Expanding Empire of the Unknown (2007), The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is the ‘Culture of Fear’ Itself (2007), and Precautionary Culture and the Rise of Possibilistic Risk Assessment (2009). We make these works converse with several American and European sociological views, offering a transnational perspective over the issues at hand. With an interdisciplinary approach and with a critical-cultural methodology supported by selected instances from the first four seasons of the show, we argue that, despite timid hints at a critique of the flawed American democracy, the show feeds into an ever-growing array of media proposals of a citizenship based on precaution, contributing to the reinforcement of the post-9/11 atmosphere of fear through a logic predicated on inevitability and a deflated sense of agency on the part of common people that discourages practices of resistance.

Alerts for policy makers extracted from papers published during 2014 in volume 6 of food security

1. Pressure on land in Kenya: T. S. Jayne and Milu Myanga draw attention to the sharp decline in productivity in Kenya when populations rise above 600–650 persons per km. They suggest that there is scope for promoting equitable access to arable land that is still unutilized through investment in infrastructure (pp. 399–421). 2. Soil fertility and persistent food insecurity: Emma Stephens and associates draw attention to the poverty trap engendered by low soil fertility and consequent low productivity and food insecurity (pp. 423–439). 3. Socio-economic and political factors in relation to drought vulnerability: Elisabeth Simelton and associates show that rice, wheat and maize production in middle income countries are particularly vulnerable to drought. Moreover, vulnerability was greater in authoritarian regimes and flawed democracies than hybrid regimes and full democracies (pp. 163–179). 4. Land and water availability in India: M. Dinesh Kumar and co-authors point out that there is a mismatch between the availability of arable land and water. They suggest as correctives, the judicious investment in surface water projects which encourage direct irrigation, replenishment of over-exploited aquifers, better use of green water and a shift to low water consuming crops (pp. 539–556). 5. Rainfall variability: Mintewab Bezabih and Salvatore Di Falco found that the uncertainty of rainfall prevented farmers from choosing high risk—high return crops and suggest that this could be mitigated by weather insurance policies and crop diversification (pp. 557–567).

Corruption and Flawed Democracy: Impact of Electoral Trend and Its Correlation of Electoral Integrity

Corruption leaves no visible trace, no bloodstain, it is a crime shrouded in secrecy. This paper attempts to analyse corrupt practices and modus operandi of electioneering practices that largely affect on electoral integrity with an experiment of India’s northeast. Elections are the pivotal ingredient to the democratic process which allows various political actors to compete over choices and issues. So, success of the democracy largely depends on the modus operandi of electioneering practices. In such a situation, most of the politicians usually adopted various techniques and strategies to get their ends. Free and fair elections may not be claimed in the real sense that one or either form that closely associated with corrupt practices demeans democracy. Indeed, analysis is based on quantitative and empirical methods through SPSS interpretation on the structural data collected from India’s northeast. As both the counterparts giver and taker have involved and liable to punished, the possibility to prove genuinely is very doubtful. On the other hand, majority of electorates were also on the whims in the sense that they have readily accepted the odds. That more than one-third of electorates were aware of such corrupt practices which meant many of them might be in the net of this malpractice. The state of democracy in India’s northeast is clear example of flawed democracy where elections are totally in servitude. Electorates of this region cannot decide their franchise instead influenced by various factors.