Healthy Democracy Research Articles

Ethical Judicial Restraint and the Rule of Law: Strengthening Constitutional Integrity in the UK

This article establishes the theoretical framework for evaluating the concepts of ‘elective dictatorship’ and ‘partisan politics’ within the broader context of UK rule of law and ethics. It critically examines these notions to diverge from the conventional practice of parliamentary sovereignty in instances of power abuse. The term ‘elective dictatorship’ describes a scenario where an elected political party wields substantial power without effective checks and balances, leading to a concentration of power within the ruling party. This situation raises concerns about the erosion of democratic principles and potential power abuse. Closely linked to this is the concept of partisan politics, where alignment with a particular political party leads to abuses of power, challenging the principle of parliamentary sovereignty. Various factors contribute to this dynamic, including ideological, social, and economic considerations. In a healthy democracy, political parties play a crucial role in representing diverse interests and offering voters choices. However, when partisan politics becomes overly polarised and prioritises gaining and maintaining power at any cost, it can foster an elective dictatorship. This article reviews existing literature in this domain and addresses these concepts within the context of the rule of law and ethics. It aims to fill a gap in the literature by establishing the conceptual parameters for ‘elective dictatorship’ and ‘partisan Politics’, and argues that when both are used to undermine the judiciary, the court has a duty to depart from traditional norms. It further recommends that courts assess any legislation enacted by the government and Parliament against the rule of law, morality, and ethics. Keywords: Elective Dictatorship; Partisan Politics; Ethics; Rule of Law; Parliamentary Sovereignty.

Freire, Critical Pedagogy, and Culture Circles

In celebration of our 20th Anniversary as a journal, the InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies editorial team opted to put forth a call on the work of Paulo Freire, critical pedagogy, and culture circles. It’s hard not to continue to see why critical pedagogy, a praxis of nurturing critical consciousness toward humanization and society towards justice, continues to be an essential aspect of education in P-20 settings in a healthy democracy. This issue was an opportunity to showcase contemporary work and research inspired by the legacy of Paulo Freire. Humanizing education is a collective practice in partnership with students and communities, redresses structures that maintain social inequalities and hierarchies of human life, and repairs the harm they have inflicted (Freire, 1970; Paris & Alim, 2017). The call to humanize education is especially urgent given our ongoing crises in education: unceasing youth gun violence and school shootings (Schildkraut & Muschert, 2019); the defunding divestment of public instruction and closures of public schools (George, 2024); the varied emergences COVID-19 variants and other looming pandemics (Pokhrel & Chhetri, 2021); corresponding deterioration of working conditions and livable wages for those working for our nation’s education systems (Schmitt & deCourcy, 2022; Souto-Manning & Melvin, 2021); book bans and bans misconstruing interpretations of Critical Race Theory, and acceptance and kindness towards LGBTQIA students, teachers, and their families (Morgan, 2022); proposed and implemented legislation to dehumanize queer, trans, nonbinary, and intersex children and parents (Goldberg & Abreu, 2024); and ongoing racialized hate and terror harming Black, Asian, and other nonwhite students, teachers, and their families, among others (Gillborn, 2006; Gover et al., 2020 ; Tuchinda, 2023; Wun, 2014). The urgency of critical pedagogy remains as relevant as ever.

Moving beyond us-versus-them polarization towards constructive conversations

ABSTRACT The global surge of political polarization poses a significant threat to liberal democracies. The prevailing “us-versus-them” mentality prevents leaders from effectively addressing societal issues. While intergroup dialogue shows promise in bridging divisions among diverse identity groups, the dynamics of real-life conversations between individuals with opposing political identities remain underexplored. This study investigates a unique case study of constructive face-to-face interactions among American political elites on a contentious issue. By examining how opposing leaders collaborate towards shared goals, the research identifies communicative actions that can reduce polarization. This study delves into the complex dynamics of polarization, as both an issue-based and identity-based conflict, focusing on interactional framing strategies leaders use to navigate their differences. The findings reveal that political leaders bridge ideological divides by embracing multiple frames, reconnecting conflicting frames, and developing neutral non-political frames. They also foster positive relations, use superordinate identities, and decrease social distance, thereby bridging their identity gap. By fostering convergence rather than accentuating differences, they effectively counteract polarization. Studying rare examples of constructive bipartisan collaboration offers valuable insights into reducing polarization, restoring political trust among the general public, and mitigating broader societal impacts, ultimately strengthening the foundations of a healthy democracy.

KAJIAN YURIDIS PASAL 23 AYAT 1 UNDANG-UNDANG NOMOR 2 TAHUN 2011 TENTANG PARTAI POLITIK MENGENAI BATAS MASA JABATAN KETUA PARTAI POLITIK

This study addresses the urgency of limiting the tenure of party leaders in Indonesia to strengthen the democratic system. According to Karl Popper, democracy allows citizens to control their leaders, contrasting with authoritarian leadership styles. Indonesia, as a democratic nation, recognizes the crucial role of political parties in political dynamics, regulated under Law No. 2 of 2011. However, this law does not specifically address the tenure limits of party leaders, leading to potential abuse of power and the emergence of political dynasties. This research highlights cases such as PDIP, Demokrat, and Gerindra, where party leaders have held their positions for extended periods. The study advocates for the implementation of standardized rules regarding the term limits of party leaders to prevent authoritarianism and ensure a healthy democracy.

Threats to Political Information Environment and Democracy: Polish Politicians’ Perceptions [Zagrożenia dla środowiska informacji politycznej z perspektywy polskich polityków

The current political information environment (PIE) is in flux undergoing a series of well documented changes. These changes may affect the conditions for a healthy democracy being oftentimes associated with a growing number of uninformed, selectively informed, or even misinformed citizens. While each of these specific changes has received a lot of individual attention, less is known about the perceptions held by political elites towards the threats and opportunities associated with the PIE. This qualitative study examines the main concerns, challenges, and threats that representatives of political elites perceive with regards to the current political information environment. The analyses are based on a series of in-depth interviews conducted with politicians in Poland. The investigation revealed some shared perceptions among politicians across ideological orientations on challenges related to the current developments in the media, as well as differences in perceptions on their causes and potential solutions.

Quality of Government, Democracy, and Well-Being as Determinants in Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals

Recent reports have indicated a slowdown in global progress towards compliance with the 2030 Agenda and a setback in some objectives. This has prompted the development of research to identify the factors contributing to some countries moving faster than others in achieving the goals. Until now, the literature has emphasized the role of economic and institutional factors in achieving the 2030 Agenda, making it necessary to investigate the effects that other political or social factors may generate. To contribute to this purpose, this article aims to identify the effect of the quality of government, democracy, and well-being on aggregate compliance with the 2030 Agenda. Through a quantitative analysis that uses the level of achievement of the 2030 Agenda as a dependent variable and six independent variables related to the quality of government, democracy status, and well-being, we found that the effectiveness of government, the welfare regime, subjective well-being, and democracy status positively influence the achievement of sustainable development objectives. These findings have practical implications, as they suggest that countries with solid and effective government institutions, social safety networks, high subjective well-being, and healthy democracy have greater potential for meeting the goals of the 2030 Agenda, emphasizing the urgency of our collective efforts.

Penerapan Algoritma Support Vector Machine untuk Memprediksi Tingkat Partisipasi Pemilu terhadap Kualitas Pendidikan

Elections are a democratic means of choosing leaders. Public participation in elections is important for a healthy democracy. The quality of education influences public participation in elections. Therefore, the government needs to improve the quality of education in the Pasuruan Regency area. This research aims to predict the level of participation in elections on the quality of education in Pasuruan Regency. This research uses the Education sector dataset obtained from BPS data for Pasuruan Regency in 2022 and the level of election participation obtained from the recapitulation of the 2019 election results. Data analysis was carried out in an experimental stage to determine the variables to be predicted (target variables) and the variables used to predict it (predictor variable) using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm with three kernels, namely linear, rbf, and polynomial. The findings show an accuracy of 88.4% for the linear kernel, 88.5% for the rbf kernel, and 88.5% for the polynomial kernel. The quality of education can influence the level of election participation. This is because high quality education can increase public awareness of the importance of participating in elections.

Between Virtuous Trust and Distrust: A Model of Political Ideologies in Times of Challenged Political Parties

Abstract The analytical model of political ideologies offered in this article describes the connection between rising levels of distrust towards societal institutions in modern democracies and how such developments has challenged traditional and long-standing political parties in the Western world, such as the Danish political party Radikale Venstre [the Danish Social-Liberal Party]. Through use of a tripartite model of trust developed by Arman Teymouri Niknam during his interpretation of Mary Wollstonecraft’s attitudes towards trust brought together with different aspects of Axel Honneth’s social-philosophical framework, Teymouri Niknam and Leif Hemming Pedersen show how distrust may be able to act as a progressive tool in the creation of a more just, diverse and equal future and also how a virtuous and healthy form of democracy is an ideal that can be challenging to realise in practice. Teymouri Niknam and Hemming Pedersen are thus able to point to the ways in which a healthy democracy needs a balance of virtuous trust and distrust in order to achieve a good amount of both stability and progress, thus pointing to a difficult balancing act that many traditional political parties find themselves struggling with especially at this point in time in many contemporary democracies.

Neutral news from in- and out-party media and attitudes toward them: integration of expectancy violations theory and hostile media perceptions

ABSTRACT The contemporary U.S. media environment is characterized by a strong partisan divide. Both Democrats and Republicans express strong distrust in oppositional media and accuse them of showing partisan bias. Clearly, this public opinion climate is not helpful to a healthy democracy. Unlike the common wisdom, these news outlets do provide neutral political coverage. Based on propositions from expectancy violation theory and hostile media perceptions, we test the effects of exposure to neutral news from an out-party outlet on violation interpretation and attitudes toward oppositional media. An online experiment (N = 610) shows that exposure to neutral news from an out-party outlet leads to violation unexpectedness and valence for Democrats and violation valence for Republicans. We also find an indirect positive effect of exposure to neutral news on attitudes toward an out-party outlet through violation valence for Democrats and Republicans. Unlike what can be expected of hostile media perceptions, these effects are more noticeable for stronger partisans. Our study also reveals different patterns of partisan reactions to neutral news from in-party outlets. Theoretical implications are discussed.

MEXICO’S DEMOCRACY UNDER THREAT? EFFECTS OF FEAR AND CORRUPTION IN MEXICO: UPDATED

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to expose public attitudes in Mexico towards the perceived success or failure of democracy in the country, and possible support for authoritarian alternatives that might be perceived as more successful in delivering justice and security. Theoretical Framework: Mexico’s new democracy has stalled due to severe and persistent corruption scandals and an overwhelming security and justice crisis, heightened by an explosion of violence associated with narcotics trafficking organized crime. The situation is serious enough to question the survival of democracy in Mexico. Design/Approach: This paper presents and analyzes data from the Americas Barometers of 2006 - 2019 that cover the main period of extreme insecurity in Mexico. Findings: The article confirms that Mexicans are disappointed with the way democracy works in Mexico. Their frustration is driven by several factors: perceptions of political corruption, concerns for the country’s safety and security, and their economic situation. The most salient concerns have to do with corrupt politicians and security. A substantial proportion of the Mexican public is considering trading democracy for security. Research, Practical, & Social Implications: Further study should examine if there is support for extra-legal suppression of crime, if support has increased perhaps out of frustration, and the complex relationship Mexicans have with the widespread perception that both the political system and the justice system is irrevocably corrupt. Originality/Value: The issue of the survival of nascent democracy is of great interest in comparative politics and Latin American studies. The broader question is how to help youg democracies mature into healthy democracies.

Parliamentary standards under attack: an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the Westminster Parliament

ABSTRACT Healthy democracies require ethical leadership and respect for rules, but since the 2000s we have witnessed serious attacks on standards in the UK Parliament. Two narratives about scandals will reveal cultural and social aspects that are often ignored by the public, journalists and parliamentary scholars. A slow development of conditions led to a scandal over misuse of expenses in 2009, while rule-breaking in Parliament during Prime Minister Johnson’s term in office emerged more suddenly, in part out of the rupture of Brexit. Making sense of these cases about standards, and the connections between them, requires a theoretical approach that goes beyond looking at the bad behaviour of individuals or rotten cultures within a malfunctioning system. In the gap between the two, you find relationships. I make an argument for a relational, cultural and historical approach within which people act in complex configurations of interdependence as both individuals and socialised actors.

Dialogue in the Social Media Age

Abstract The anti-dialogical nature of social media has exacerbated social divides while widening the gap between policy decisions and their lived implications. Effective interpersonal relationships – both a conduit and requisite of democracy – are arguably grounded in dialogue. As envisaged by Martin Buber, dialogue necessitates holding space for other subjectivities, constituting a humanistic approach to building trust and community. To build a healthy democracy, we thus need to reconceptualise the practical connections between dialogue, collaborative participation and public engagement. To this end, this article puts forth a two-pronged approach to the contribution of dialogue: by fostering presence while unsilencing marginalised voices. Specifically, we will explore the potential applications of Buberian dialogue within the practice of Structured Democratic Dialogue (SDD). As a methodology that both requires and facilitates trust-building absent in social media mechanisms, SDD promises a path towards greater inclusiveness and commitment core to the workings of deliberative democracy.

A LETTER FROM SPECIAL EDITION EDITOR IN CHIEF - DR. SHIVA SHANKARAN KR

Dear Readers and Contributors,The Department of Journalism & Mass Communication, Faculty of Science & Humanities, SRM Institute of Science & Technology, Kattankulathur organized a Two- Day National Conference on Journalistic and Creative Freedom: Prospects and Challenges on 21, & 22 September 2023. The conference had eight sessions, including two hybrid mode sessions; the conference has papers across India.The conference included eight different panel experts in the field of our conference themes, such as Press freedom, Media independence, Free speech, Editorial independence, Censorship, Information access, Journalistic ethics, Media pluralism, Artistic expression, Creative autonomy, Freedom of imagination, Intellectual property, Cultural diversity, Creative license, Copyright protection, Artistic integrity, Unrestricted creativity, Online censorship, Social media moderation, Content filtering, Information control, Digital censorship, Content moderation policies, Online speech restrictions, Content removal, Online surveillance. During the research presentation, the experts and participants discussed and cultivated knowledge on the specific topic among the audience.Significantly, the keynote speaker Dr. Debi Chatterjee, Former Professor, Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, emphasized the role of media in safeguarding democracy in a nation. Transparency and accountability are essential for the functioning of a healthy democracy. Investigative journalism exposes corruption, abuse of power, and other threats to democratic principles. The notable speaker has highlighted the important factor that Media plays a fundamental role in providing citizens with accurate and timely information about political events, policies, and issues. She also asked the media students as well as professionals to be torch bearers for media as well as creative freedom. The valedictory speaker Mr. Nandakummar R, Director, Directorate of Communication, SRM Institute of Science and Technology has incited a diverse and pluralistic media landscape ensures that a variety of perspectives and opinions are represented. And Media diversity is crucial for preventing the concentration of power and fostering a more inclusive democracy.The conference research papers had Sixty-Seven research papers have presented during the two days National conference: Forty-Seven (47) papers on the physical mode and twenty (20) on hybrid mode, including special sessions. Few papers related to scope were selected to be published in the UGC Care-Listed Journal "ShodhKosh: Journal of Visual and Performing Arts" as a special issue titled "National Conference on Journalistic and Creative Freedom: Prospects and Challenges”. I express my sincere thanks to the publisher of Granthaalayah Publications for their noble partnership with our institution, inspiring and acknowledging researchers.

America Needs a Realistic Ukraine Debate

A healthy democracy ought to be able to develop and debate its national-security options honestly, openly and vigorously. This has not been the case when it comes to the United States’ policy on Ukraine. The American debate is instead polarised between supporting Ukraine for ‘as long as it takes’ and withdrawing support altogether. To view the war in such binary terms is not good for the United States. Nor is it good for Ukraine. There is obviously a strategic logic to punishing the Kremlin for its aggression, and we can continue to hope that Ukraine emerges from this war as a democracy with a bright European future. On the current course, however, Americans are in for a very long and very costly war over a relatively small amount of territory of limited strategic relevance to the United States. Unless US policymakers can arrive at a constructively pragmatic realism, disaffected voters could revolt in a manner that exacerbates America’s existing domestic political fractures.

Narratives of democracy: Educated elites’ responses to democratic erosion in Indonesia

Conventional wisdom maintains that a robust educated middle class is an important factor for a healthy democracy. Recent empirical evidence, however, has shown that there is a significant variation in middle class support for democracy. How do educated elites respond to declines in democracy? To date, we know relatively little about how the educated elites view, talk, and respond as democracy erodes in their country. We address this gap by conducting a discourse analysis of government and educated elites texts in Indonesia from 2010 through 2020. We find that government and educated elites’ discourses on democracy as democracy backslides tend to diverge significantly: While official texts boast of the Indonesia's identity as a Muslim-majority democracy, materials produced by the country's educated middle class express increasing disenchantment with weak political parties, restrictions on freedom of speech, repressive measures toward government critics, and limited checks on executive overreach. Our results suggest that as democracy erodes, government officials’ narratives continue to present the country as a robust democracy, and as such, official narratives alone would not reveal the cracks in democracy in the early stages of decline. Instead, traces of decline are more visible in everyday discourses, where informed citizens express their concerns and criticisms with less fear of reprisals. Rather than standing with the ruling elites, the educated elite authors and producers in our data respond to democratic erosion by resisting and criticizing illiberal measures and demanding greater protection of rights. Our work highlights the importance of an engaged educated middle class who can perceive the subtle erosion in democratic practices and challenge it, both in Indonesia and beyond.

Democratic Norms and the Ethics of Resistance

Most democratic theories recognize that democracy requires widespread adherence to both formal and informal norms that constrain the use of power and structure relationships among citizens. Most also recognize that a healthy democracy requires some forms of activism or resistance that transgress those norms to disrupt hierarchies, challenge injustices, and drive discursive innovation. Recent systemic theories of democracy show that democratic theory can incorporate these two realities without contradiction, but it is not clear whether an ethic of citizenship can do the same. This article reviews recent literature on the purposes and ethics of transgressive politics while also drawing attention to neglected questions about the functions of democratic norms and how they are maintained amid transgressions. These are questions that must be addressed by an ethic of citizenship that can navigate the tension between the authority of democratic norms and the constructive potential of transgressive politics.

Why Do Issues “Whose Time Has Come” Stick Around? Attention Durability and the Case of Gun Control

In any healthy democracy, myriad policy issues compete for the public’s attention. Most remain on the periphery of politics, either because they achieve salience only in narrow communities of interest or because they grab headlines only for brief periods of time. But sometimes issues become what we term “durable attention items”—they capture public attention and sustain it over many years. Why? We focus on one such newly durable issue—gun control in the United States. Using an original dataset of roughly 4,500 letters to the editor over a 40-year period, we demonstrate that this once-episodic issue, long dominated by a narrow constituency of pro-gun advocates, has become a mainstay of mass politics. We show that the gun issue’s growing agenda status is due entirely to pro-regulation people mobilized by a combination of contextual factors, namely regularized mass shootings and efforts to relax gun policy, working in tandem with partisan polarization. Besides offering novel evidence of a fundamental shift in American gun politics, the study contributes to our theoretical understanding of how episodic issues come to command consistent political engagement over the long term.

The Healthy Democracy Kit: design, implementation, uptake, and impact of a novel voter registration toolkit for healthcare settings

BackgroundAccess to voting is increasingly recognized as a social determinant of health. Health equity could be improved if healthcare workers (HCWs) routinely assessed the voter registration status of patients during clinical encounters and helped direct them towards appropriate resources. However, little consensus exists on how to achieve these tasks efficiently and effectively in healthcare settings. Intuitive and scalable tools that minimize workflow disruptions are needed. The Healthy Democracy Kit (HDK) is a novel voter registration toolkit for healthcare settings, featuring a wearable badge and posters that display quick response (QR) and text codes directing patients to an online hub for voter registration and mail-in ballot requests. The objective of this study was to assess national uptake and impact of the HDK prior to the 2020 United States (US) elections.MethodsBetween 19 May and 3 November 2020, HCWs and institutions could order and use HDKs to help direct patients to resources, free of cost. A descriptive analysis was conducted to summarize the characteristics of participating HCWs and institutions as well as the resultant total persons helped prepare to vote.ResultsDuring the study period, 13,192 HCWs (including 7,554 physicians, 2,209 medical students, and 983 nurses) from 2,407 affiliated institutions across the US ordered 24,031 individual HDKs. Representatives from 604 institutions (including 269 academic medical centers, 111 medical schools, and 141 Federally Qualified Health Centers) ordered 960 institutional HDKs. Collectively, HCWs and institutions from all 50 US states and the District of Columbia used HDKs to help initiate 27,317 voter registrations and 17,216 mail-in ballot requests.ConclusionsA novel voter registration toolkit had widespread organic uptake and enabled HCWs and institutions to successfully conduct point-of-care civic health advocacy during clinical encounters. This methodology holds promise for future implementation of other types of public health initiatives. Further study is needed to assess downstream voting behaviors from healthcare-based voter registration.

Healthy citizens, healthy democracies? A review of the literature

A growing literature over the past 10 years on health and political behavior has established health status as an important source of political inequality. Poor health reduces psychological engagement with politics and discourages political activity. This lowers incentives for governments to respond to the needs of those experiencing ill health and thereby perpetuates health disparities. In this review article, we provide a critical synthesis of the state of knowledge on the links between different aspects of health and political behavior. We also discuss the challenges confronting this research agenda, particularly with respect to measurement, theory, and establishing causality, along with suggestions for advancing the field. With the COVID-19 pandemic casting health disparities into sharp focus, understanding the sources of health biases in the political process, as well as their implications, is an important task that can bring us closer to the ideals of inclusive democracy.

On Ethically Informing Citizens About Political Conspiracies

ABSTRACT Conspiracy theorizing can sometimes have regrettable features that speak for suppressing it. Yet, given that an adequately knowledgeable citizenry is a prerequisite of a healthy democracy, the public should be informed about politically important events, including political conspiracies. In this article, I focus on the relationship between informing citizens about political conspiracies and the kind of conspiracy theorizing that arguably should be suppressed. More precisely, I maintain that informing citizens about political conspiracies threatens to lead to the kind of conspiracy theorizing there is reason to suppress, and I examine how the potential drawback ought to be dealt with. I propose that informing citizens about political conspiracies should both proceed in light of pertinent research on conspiracy theorizing and pay heed to adequate knowledge about the circumstances in which conspiracies are publicized.