Mass Democracy Research Articles

Support for radical left parties in Western Europe: social background, ideology and political orientations

Radical left parties (RLP) have been significant actors in many Western European party systems since the expansion of mass democracy. In some cases, they have been very relevant forces in terms of popular support. Despite this fact, they have not received a great deal of attention in past decades from a comparative perspective. Through examination of the role of an important set of factors, this article provides, for the first time, a cross-national empirical account of the variation in voting for RLPs across Western Europe, based on individual-level data. It evaluates the effect of key socio-demographic and attitudinal individual-level variables on the RLP vote. The findings point to the continuing relevance of some social and political factors traditionally associated with votes for RLPs, and to the relevance of attitudinal variables.

Mind, politics, and the academyThe Open Mind Cold War Politics and the Sciences of Human Nature Jamie Cohen-Cole University of Chicago Press, 2014. 405 pp.

Mind, politics, and the academyThe Open Mind Cold War Politics and the Sciences of Human Nature <i>Jamie Cohen-Cole</i> University of Chicago Press, 2014. 405 pp.

Les Ecrits politiques de Max Weber: esquisse d’une lecture sociologique

The author argues that Max Weber in his Politische Schriften (from 1906 to 1919) is using a sociological approach to the prevailing problems of Russia and Germany, grounded on categories of his political sociology. Weber’s in-depth analysis of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and of its outcome brilliantly illustrates this approach. In the first of his memoirs, overviewing Russian society as a whole, he highlights the multiple impediments to a success of bourgeois democracy in Russia; in the second one, he points out the political factors, as symbolized by “pseudo-constitutionalism”, that caused the failure of the liberal Revolution. In his “Parliament and Government in a reorganized Germany”, Weber rests on the analysis of bureaucracy in his first “sociology of domination”, pointing out that bureaucracy is unavoidable in modern society as well as it threatens to be overpowering. It is therefore required, in Weber’s view, to build institutions assuming a counterpoising function: he first conferred this role on a strong parliament, on the model of the English Parliament. Then, after the fall of the Wilhelminian Empire, he emphasized the plebiscitary power of a Reichsprasident. As a whole, Weber’s analyses bring out the dilemma between oligarchy and democracy but also the subtle relations linking them in the context of political modernity. Oligarchy is a threat to democracy because bureaucracy’s power can, if not checked, extend into the political field and because political parties are more and more oligarchic organizations. Large-scale socialism can only worsen the situation and lead to “bureaucracy’s dictatorship”. Therefore, Weber argues for the setting up of counterweights on the societal level. There is a way out of Michels’ dilemma in the national competition between bureaucratized parties. Weber is faced again with an authoritarian danger when he emphasizes in his last political writings the plebiscitary-caesaristic component of leadership. Yet, charisma shows a new face, when the leader relies on the trust of the masses: it is “reinterpreted in an anti-authoritarian way”. Thus, in Weber’s view, charisma can adjust itself to the modern context of mass democracy.

The Aftermath of suffrage: women, gender, and politics in Britain, 1918-1945

Introduction Julie V. Gottlieb and Richard Toye 1. Emmeline Pankhurst in the Aftermath of Suffrage, 1918-1928 June Purvis 2. From Prudent Housewife to Empire Shopper: Party Appeals to the Female Voter, 1918-1928 David Thackeray 3. The Impact of Mass Democracy on British Political Culture, 1918 - 1939 Pat Thane 4. The House of Commons in the Aftermath of Suffrage Richard Toye 5. Feminism and the Modern Woman: Debates in the British Popular Press, 1918-1939 Adrian Bingham 6. 'Doing Great Public Work Privately': Female Antis in the Interwar Years Philippe Vervaecke 7. Towards an Archaeology of Interwar Women's Politics: the Local and the Everyday Karen Hunt and June Hannam 8. 'Shut Against the Woman and Workman Alike': Democratizing Foreign Policy Between the Wars Helen McCarthy 9. 'We were done the moment we gave women the vote': The Female Franchise Factor and the Munich By-elections, 1938-39 Julie Gottlieb 10. 'They have made their mark entirely out of proportion to their numbers': Women and Parliamentary Committees, c. 1918-1945 Mari Takayanagi 11. The Political Autobiographies of Early Women MPs c.1918-1964 Krista Cowman 12. 'Women for Westminster,' Feminism, and the Limits of Non-partisan Associational Culture Laura Beers

Crisis of political parties and representative democracies: rethinking parties in associational, experimentalist governance

The contrast between the normative functions of political parties in representative democracies and their empirical working is stark and rapidly increasing. This article starts from a sober, realist account of the empirical state of affairs and from structural problems of democracy and participations – in terms of limits of time, information, qualification and relevant expertise – that have to be acknowledged by any realist–utopian proposal of alternatives beyond the exclusive alternative of ‘thin, realist democracy’ or emphatic ‘strong, participatory, direct, or mass democracy’. We can do better. My search for institutional alternatives looks not for the replacement of political parties but for their relief. Many, not all, of their normative tasks can be shared with other functional networks, associations and organizations. In exploring such a new division of political labour I draw on older debates and designs of associative democracy and on recent discussions to democratize expertise and to expertise democracy in order to address urgent societal problems of high-risk decisions under conditions of extreme complexity, contingency, unpredictability and uncertainty and deep contestedness of our knowledge, problems that turn out to be unmanagable by party politics and representative democracy.

Crisis del modelo neoliberal, hacia una planificación regional. Un aporte polanyiano

Using Karl Polanyi’s analytical instrument, I argue that the current withdrawal of the industrialized powers and the emergence of alternative policies in Latin America are determined by the crisis of the neoliberal model. The polarity between democracy and the market, observed since the beginnings of liberal capitalism, has deepened since the inter-war period due to the appearance of so-called “mass democracy.” Since that period, foreign policies of industrialized countries have derived from social conflict caused by this polarity. Current neoliberalism, which favors the limitation of democracy in favor of the self-regulating global market, is a system that contains inherent contradictions on financial and socio-political levels. These contradictions are the cause of the current crisis in the United States and the European Union, a crisis that favors the beginning of a new era characterized by greater regional planning and a plurality of development paths.

Toward a Robust Theory of the Chinese Constitutional State

The state of constitutional theory is in flux. What was once the preserve of those who organized the state became the expression of mass democracy and the popular will, one that has been increasingly constrained by international consensus on the limits of political will within national borders. The stakes are high—constitutional legitimacy is fundamental to internal political stability and to international acceptance. Among the most contested forms of modern constitutional states are party-state systems grounded in Marxist-Leninist theory. This article considers Jiang Shigong’s development of a coherent and legitimating constitutionalist theory of China’s party-state system. It considers Jiang’s argument that constitutionalism must start with values and structure and then considers the mechanics through which it is institutionalized—either in writing or through structuralist approaches. It also examines Jiang’s construction of a formal-functional theory of Chinese constitutionalism that acknowledges the democratic basis and the representative character of the Chinese Communist Party within the party-state system. Jiang’s theoretical developments point to the deepening of an understanding of the legitimacy of Chinese constitutionalism. Jiang Shigong is part of a small group of Chinese academics who are working along distinct paths to move beyond the “legitimacy” issue of Chinese constitutionalism and tackle the much harder but more important question of the continued development of Chinese constitutionalism along the lines of its own logic. Critical to that project are notions of civic education and the consequences of the separation of powers at the heart of Chinese constitutionalism—one that distinguishes between the administrative power of the government, including the administration and rule of law, and the political power of the Chinese Communist Party, including the nation’s constitutional norms.

“Know All Men By These Presents”: Bonds, Localism, and Politics in Early Republican Mississippi

This article examines local politics in Mississippi during the early to mid-nineteenth century, by examining the bonds that officeholders were required to post to hold their positions in county government. The article argues that while states like Mississippi remain at the forefront of the history of American mass democracy, the existence of this election ritual paints a complicated picture of political practice. By requiring officeholders to post hundreds and even thousands of dollars to hold office, and by requiring that political friends vouch for them with their money and their reputations, bonds dampened democratic elections at every turn. In so doing, bonds suggest just some of the ways in which Americans practiced a much more complex politics than current paradigms allow.

Mass Democracy in a Postfactual Market Society: Citizens United and the Role of Corporate Political Speech

This chapter addresses the problems underlying Citizens United v. FEC (2010), a case decided by the United States Supreme Court in 2010. Part I discusses political speech within a context defined by three factors: (1) electorates that are so large that speech must address them largely by using “mass media”; (2) a postfactual culture where analysis and debate often rely on distortions, misstatements, or fabrications of factual matters; and (3) a market society where effective political speech depends largely upon having the financial ability to use mass media. After discussing the legal fiction of corporate personhood, Part II argues first, that Citizens United has a reasoned basis and second, that critics allow their concern about the role of wealth in politics to divert them from addressing both the basis of the decision and other avenues of reform. Part III discusses measures to limit the role of money in politics and the problem that, in a market society, speech is always, to some extent, for sale.

“AN ORGAN OF UPLIFT?”

This article examines the role the popular daily press played both in integrating voters into Britain's new mass democracy after 1918, and in redefining the nature of political debate. It will start by suggesting that “depoliticisation” is not the most useful model for understanding interwar popular journalism. The article will then look briefly at the ways in which the popular press addressed the people most poorly integrated into British political culture, namely the new female voters and the non-unionised working class. It will highlight the extent to which the popular press emphasised the importance of citizenship and encouraged involvement in the political process. While not seeking to disguise the limitations of this material, it will argue that the popular press's political content was more varied and unpredictable than historians often assume.

Emerson’s Politics

Arsic, Branka. 2010. On Leaving: A Reading in Emerson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. $51.50 hc. xi + 387.Greenham, David. 2012. Emerson's Transatlantic Romanticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. $85.00 hc. xiv + 213.Habich, Robert D. 2011. Building Their Own Waldos: Emerson's First Biographers and the Politics of Life-Writing in the Gilded Age. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. $29.95 sc. $29.95 e. xxviii + 186.Levine, Alan M., and Daniel S. Malachuk, eds. 2011. A Political Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. $40.00 hc. $40.00 e. xi + 487.Writing for a nation that had recently ended Reconstruction with a devil's bargain that took the federal government out of race politics, Emerson's first biographers had little incentive to commemorate him as a religious rebel who became an abolitionist. Rather, Emerson's legacy was first written in the affirming terms of a literary nationalism built around the heroic independence of the private individual. But in 1882 when Emerson died, even that effort faced significant obstacles because his name, like the word Transcendentalism, was already shorthand for a self-indulgent posture of mystical optimism.Despite the emerging caricature, oracular sketches of the sage of Concord always competed with serious efforts to grapple with Emerson's writing. Friedrich Nietzsche's absorption of Emerson's essays and John Dewey's 1903 commemorative essay Emerson: Philosopher of Democracy began a continuing project of incorporating Emerson's thought into analysis of identity, aesthetics, epistemology, and spirituality. Partly because of the caricature, Emerson's relevance to politics has always been ambiguous. Philosophers with a particular interest in public life have often addressed Emerson's writing. But they have tended to assume that Emerson's thought is fundamentally self-reflective and that its importance for politics is more implicit than explicit. The priority that George Kateb gives to mental over active self-reliance, for example, characterizes this approach to Emerson's thought about liberal political identity (2002, 33-36). In recent criticism, however, it has become common to assume that Emerson's essays make explicit political interventions. Thus, in addition to its relevance for subjectivity, spirituality, aesthetics, and epistemology, Emerson's writing also bears on questions of community, structures of public authority, situated selfhood, citizenship, civic obligation, the value of institutional memberships, and other questions related to political integration.The distinction between Emerson's implicit and explicit relationships to political thought is important because it repositions his project in relation to civil society. It makes him less a critic and skeptic trying to defend individuality against the alienations of mass democracy and industrialization, and more an affirmative theorist of communal relationships trying to envision citizens living in an actually existing civil society.In the 1990s, works such as Len Gougeon's Virtue's Hero (1990), Phyllis Cole's Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism (1998), and Albert J. von Frank's The Trials of Anthony Burns (1998) led to extensive reconstruction of the Transcendentalists' involvement in politics. This research has demonstrated the depth and breadth of their involvement in antislavery and their advocacy of women's and Native American rights. As a result, where it was once reasonable to dismiss Emerson as politically irrelevant and to treat Transcendentalism as an effort to withdraw from the politics of Jacksonian democratization, it is now much more difficult to do so. On the other hand, with the reconstruction of Emerson's thought about race and slavery, recent historicist work has also made it easier to argue that Emerson's politics are either aggressively racist or methodologically reactionary. For example, in her recent history of race in the United States, Nell Painter (2010) singles Emerson out as a uniquely pernicious advocate of Anglo-Saxon superiority. …

Trade Unions in Nigeria and the Challenge of Internal Democracy

Trade Unions emerged from the efforts of workers to seek improvement on existing working conditions through collective actions. They function to provide social, economic, political and psychological benefits for their members as well as the platform for participation in managerial functions in the industry. Today’s unions are no more mere bargaining agents or lobbyists but rather transformed into a social movement through which the working class has promoted mass democracy. In the face of persistent agitation for participatory democracy in the larger polity , this paper examines the level of adherence to the tenets of democracy in the internal workings of five trade unions across south west Nigeria. A total of six hundred and forty workers in wage employment were selected for this study, using a multi-stage ramdom samplying technique. In-depth interviews were held to compliment the use of the questionaire administered. The research reviewed some literature and is hedged on the pluralist perspective. The findings revealed that these unions are yet to imbibe the tenets of democracy in their internal administration as, for example, female participation in their activities is only about 23 percent.The study therefore recommends appropriate measures to ameliorate the situation. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n6p97

Diehard Conservatism, Mass Democracy, and Indian Constitutional Reform, c.1918–35

This article explores the Conservative Party crisis over India to examine the relationship between diehard Conservatives and Britain's emerging democracy. Far from rejecting democracy outright, diehard rhetoric and mass communication demonstrates how they adapted to it and utilised it in pursuit of their objectives. The accommodation of diehard Conservatism within the Conservative Party was a necessary and mutual embrace. Contrary to popular image, it promoted Conservative unity and contributed to the party's remarkable electoral success. Unable to exact decisive victories, the capacity of diehard Conservatives to generate party crises over imperial questions, among grass‐roots and back‐bench Conservatives, ensured that they had a role in shaping the presentation and content of party policy. This had implications for leadership efforts to liberalise the party, and also popular perceptions of British imperialism and the feasibility of democracy in India.

Towards a Robust Theory of the Chinese Constitutional State: Between Formalism and Legitimacy in Jiang Shigong's Constitutionalism

The state of constitutional theory is in flux. What was once the preserve of those who organized the state became the expression of mass democracy and the popular will, one that has been increasingly constrained by international consensus on the limits of political will within national borders. The stakes are high — constitutional legitimacy is fundamental to internal political stability and to international acceptance. Among the most contested forms of modern constitutional states are Party-State systems grounded in Marxist-Leninist theory. This essay considers Jiang Shigong’s development of a coherent and legitimating constitutionalist theory of China’s Party-State system. The essay considers Jiang’s argument that constitutionalism must start with values and structure and then consider the mechanics through which it is institutionalized — either in writing or through structuralist approaches. It also examines Jiang’s construction a formal-functional theory of Chinese constitutionalism that acknowledges the democratic basis of framework and the representative character of the Party within the Party-State system. Jiang’s theoretical developments point to the deepening of an understanding of the legitimacy of Chinese constitutionalism. Jiang Shigong is part of a small group of Chinese academics who are working along distinct paths to move beyond the “legitimacy” issue of Chinese constitutionalism and tackle the much harder but more important questions of the continued development of Chinese constitutionalism along the lines of its own logic. Critical to that project are notions of civic education and the consequences of the separation of powers at the heart of Chinese constitutionalism — one that distinguishes between the administrative power of the government, including the administration and rule of law, and the political power of the CCP, including the nation’s constitutional norms.

Latin American Populism: Tentative Reflections for a Global Historiographical Perspective

Latin American populism has usually been considered as an integrationist strategy towards the urban working classes in the context of mass democracy and import substitution industrialization. Among its features, the following ones can be identified: support from the working classes, charismatic leadership, nationalism and anti-intellectualism, anti-communism, state-centered conception of historical change, and corporatism. Recent writings influenced by the “linguistic” and “cultural” turns, despite their different social ontologies, also proclaim Latin American populisms’ peculiarity. In these cases the notion of “political style” prevails over socio-economic explanations. The available investigations are often based on national experiences or comparative approaches among two (or three) cases like Peronism and Varguism, or Cardenism. In so doing they provide a catalogue of “populisms” instead of a common understanding of the so called “Latin American” populism. This paper aims to review the very question of “Latin American populism” from a critical understanding of a global historiographical perspective. From this complex point of view it will be argued that historical analysis requires a globalizing critique of the prevailing social theory, and of the often implicit historiographical assumptions. The core of the argumentation will be focused on the Western distinction between state politics and civil society.

Conservatives, the Constitution and the Quest for a ‘Representative’ House of Lords, 1911–35*

This article presents a new interpretation of Conservative attitudes towards house of lords' reform in the early 20th century. Coinciding, as it did, with the introduction of universal adult suffrage, the campaign to reform and strengthen the second chamber has traditionally been understood as a reaction against democracy. Conversely, this article, emphasizing the politics rather than policies of reform, argues that many Conservatives sought to establish a legitimate role for a second chamber within the new democratic settlement and that the campaign for reform is, consequently, better understood as a constitutional means of ‘making safe’, rather than resisting, mass democracy. The account sheds new light on how the impulse behind reform was frequently rooted in a commitment to democracy, how reform commanded the support of a wide cross section of the Conservative parliamentary party, and why the reform campaign had folded by the early 1930s. In doing so, it reframes an important episode that helped close the long‐19th‐century tradition of constitutional reform in British politics.

The Paradoxes of Post-War Italian Political Thought

Summary This article examines the complex nature of post-war Italian political thought, stressing the importance of Italy's unusual institutional and historical political arrangements, but also the vibrancy of its political ideologies in this period. In the past it has often been argued that the dysfunctional nature of post-war Italian democracy with its rapidly changing governments, and widespread corruption—which nonetheless coexisted with the one party, the Christian Democrats, being constantly in power—led to the atrophying of political theory in general, and political ideologies in particular. But this picture is strongly disputed here—on the contrary it is argued that Christian Democratic, Left and liberal political ideologies were all complex and interesting. Thus if Christian democracy should ultimately be seen as an ‘ideology of transition’ which existed to help Catholicism adapt to the parameters of modern mass democracy, and which lacked a thinker of the calibre of Jacques Maritain, it nevertheless contained within it important debates on the role of the state, between such interesting thinkers as Giuseppe Dossetti and Alcide De Gasperi. And if anything, political thinking on the Left in the post-war period was even more complex, with visceral debates within the (large) Communist Party (PCI) over whether to work within the law—between such thinkers as Palmiro Togliatti and the Il Manifesto group. Equally on the more revolutionary Left, there were important debates about how quickly capitalism could be made to collapse through revolutionary action between thinkers such as Raniero Panzieri and his more radical disciples, Mario Tronti and Antonio Negri, while later, due to the general failure of these revolutionary efforts, post-modern thinkers such as Gianni Vattimo sought to abandon grand metaphysical narratives, whilst retaining a commitment to Left of centre political commitments. Finally, although not part of a widespread mass movement, the liberal thought of Norberto Bobbio was also highly interesting and sophisticated—borrowing from Hobbes and Kelsen, he sought to advocate a modest form of liberal democracy which allowed for civilised forms of conflict, and the protection of minorities, and which rejected the contention of Marxists that civil rights could not be distinguished from economic ones. Overall, if normative aspirations in post-war Italian politics were often frustrated in practice, this was certainly not due to any lack of theoretical vibrancy.

Heir Not Apparent: Douglas Hailsham, the Role of the House of Lords, and the Succession to the Conservative Leadership 1928-31*

The moment that Lord Curzon was passed over and Stanley Baldwin succeeded Andrew Bonar Law as prime minister in 1923 is generally regarded as a turning point in British political history. From this time it appeared that members of the house of lords were barred from leading political parties and becoming prime minister. In an age of mass democracy it was deemed unacceptable for the premier to reside in an unelected and largely emasculated chamber. This understanding is seemingly confirmed by the career of the Conservative politician, Douglas Hogg, 1st Viscount Hailsham. Notwithstanding a late entry into political life, he was regarded as a potential successor to Baldwin. His acceptance of a peerage to become lord chancellor in 1928 has been seen as the moment when Hailsham's claims to lead the Conservative party ended. But although Hailsham never became Conservative leader, his experience undermines the suggestion that peers were unable to lead political parties in inter-war Britain. Despite his position in the Lords, his chances of succeeding Baldwin never vanished. The crisis in Baldwin's leadership after the loss of the 1929 general election and the lack of a suitable successor in the Commons created the circumstances in which leadership from the Lords by a man of Hailsham's ability could be contemplated. Hailsham's continuing prominence within the Conservative ranks and specifically his contributions to the party during the years 1929�31, together with the thoughts of high-ranking Conservative contemporaries, make it clear that he very nearly emerged as Baldwin's successor at this time.

Mass Democracy, Class Struggle, and Remolding the Party and Government during the Land Reform Movement in North China

Through an investigation of the 1947–1948 campaign of remolding the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the government, which was driven by the revolutionary idea of “mass democracy,” in the CCP-controlled “old areas” in North China, this article reveals both intrinsic connections and profound contradictions between this self-directed revolutionary movement and the discursive practices of “class struggle” in land reform. It also sheds light on a significant consequence of the movement: the birth of “rule-by-virtue democracy” and its quasi-institutionalized mode of operation of “mass-involved party rectification.”

Containing Contention: A Reinterpretation of Democratic Change and Electoral Reform in the Australian Colonies

Australia was a precocious mass democracy. In the middle of the 19th century the franchise was extended to nearly all white male adults, the secret ballot was introduced, and other important reforms implemented. Surprisingly, these developments have attracted little recent attention. Dominant interpretations are based on selective surveys of particular colonies; they either elevate the gold diggings or else cynically claim that democratisation was mostly accidental and inglorious. This paper encompasses a survey of the three major colonies. It argues that widespread collective action was a spur to political change, and that electoral reforms were introduced to contain future contention.