Minimalist View Research Articles

Democratization in the Middle East: Turkey-How Far from Consolidation?

Democratization in the Middle EastTurkey-How Far from Consolidation? Ergun Özbudun (bio) On 24 December 1995, Turkey held free and competitive elections for its 550-member, one-chamber parliament, the Grand National Assembly. Turnout was high. Five parties surpassed the 10 percent threshold needed to qualify for seats in parliament. The three biggest vote-getters were the Islamic-oriented Refah (Welfare) Party, with 21.4 percent and 158 seats, the center-right Motherland Party, with 19.7 percent and 133 seats, and the center-right True Path Party, with 19.2 percent and 135 seats. Intent on preventing Refah from forming a government, leaders of Motherland and True Path began intense negotiations. At the end of February 1996, after two months of talks, they announced the formation of a minority coalition government with the support of the Democratic Left Party (14.6 percent and 75 seats). While the December 1995 balloting was the twelfth consecutive open election that Turkey has held over the last 45 years, the period since 1960 has also witnessed three military interruptions of the democratic process. Each time the military intervened—in 1960, 1971, and 1980—democracy was restored relatively quickly and smoothly, suggesting that the soldiers’ intention on each occasion was a “moderating coup” rather than the creation of a lasting bureaucratic-authoritarian regime. Today, democratic discourses seem to be dominant, and there is little fear of an authoritarian regression. Yet few analysts would call Turkey a stable or consolidated democracy. The continuing elusiveness of consolidation, despite nearly half a century of multiparty politics, indicates a certain malaise and makes Turkey an interesting case for comparative purposes. What are the factors that may help or harm [End Page 123] Turkey’s prospects for democratic consolidation, and what light can recent theoretical and comparative reflection shed on them? The interests of political scientists are naturally conditioned by the political environment in which they live. Thus during the “second reverse wave of democratization” (roughly from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s), they focused on the crises and breakdowns then besetting democratic regimes. 1 With the advent of the “third wave” of democratization (from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s), interest shifted to authoritarian breakdowns and transitions to democracy. 2 The focus now in the 1990s is clearly on the consolidation of democratic regimes; the trendy topic of the following decade is likely to be the “persistence” or “quality” of democracy, unless a third “reverse wave” comes along to command scholarly attention. Democratic consolidation, to borrow Adam Przeworski’s apt description, means that democracy “becomes the only game in town, when no one can imagine acting outside the democratic institutions, when all the losers want to do is to try again within the same institutions under which they have just lost.” 3 The concept of democratic consolidation admits both “maximalist” and “minimalist” understandings. The maximalist view emphasizes the embrace of democratic values by most citizens after a long socialization process, while the minimalist view stresses the mere absence of significant challenges to the legiti-macy of democratic institutions—particularly the prevalence of free and competitive elections. 4 Both approaches have problems. If the maximalist approach is carried to the extreme, no democratic regime can be considered truly consolidated. Nor does it square with historical realities, because “in no known case does there appear to have been a majority of democrats before the advent of political democracy.” 5 The minimalist approach, on the other hand, runs the risk of “electoralism,” or equating democratic consolidation simply with the holding of regular, competitive elections. Even a minimal procedural notion of democratic consolidation must include more—the superiority of democratically elected civilian authorities over nonelected (e.g., military) officials, for instance, as well as broad respect and effective guarantees for the basic civil liberties of all citizens. As defined above, consolidation seems similar to political institutionalization (meaning a situation in which the formal and informal rules of the regime are widely understood and accepted, and thus heavily influence the behavior of the major political actors). This similarity, however, holds only to the extent that the institutionalized patterns of behavior are truly democratic. If they are not—for example, if...

A minimalist view of the secretory pathway in Plasmodium falciparum

Would nature accept a eukaryotic cell that lacks a Golgi complex during a major part o f its life cycle? Here, George Banting, Jürgen Benting and Klaus Lingelbach review recent morphological and biochemical data on the asexual intraerythrocytic stages of the protozoan parasite Plasmodium falciparum. They argue that these data may indicate that some stages o f the life-cycle of this highly specialized organism lack a ‘classical’ Golgi complex.

Complex behaviors: Evolution and the brain

AbstractThree issues are addressed in this commentary. (1) Wilkins & Wakefield are commended for placing the complex behavior they discuss within an evolutionary matrix. (2) They err on a number of points in regard to their treatment of this complex behavior. These involve (a) their emphasis on the evolution of conceptual structure rather than language, (b) their equation of meaning with reference, (c) their minimalist view of learning theory, and (d) their separation of the evolution of speech from that of language. (3) They adopt a framework for neural preconditions that has been clearly discredited on both behavioral and neuroanatomical grounds. Finally, recent research involving modern neuroimaging techniques casts further doubt on the authors' postulated functions for the neural areas they discuss.

Government, Morality and the Family

The question of government and morality is raised by public clashes over the proper role, if any, of government regulation of morals, or government fostering of things conducive to moral behavior. There are minimalist and maximalist views, akin to the failed ideologies of complete laissez-faire and full government ownership in the economic realm. Between the extremes, which have failed in the moral as well as the economic realm, there is a proper sphere for government support of morality, and institutions that produce virtue and civilized citizens. In particular, there is a need restore authority to the family, moral education to the schools, and parental responsibility and choice in education.

A cleansing storm: The august coup and the triumph ofperestroika

Two approaches can be taken to the Soviet coup of 18–21 August 1991. The maximalist version stresses the revolutionary elements of mass popular mobilization and the triumph of democracy, whereas the minimalist view stresses the elements of continuity and the manipulation of events by the democrats. An examination of a number of models of the coup suggests that both approaches provide valuable insights yet neither is entirely adequate. The coup acted as the catalyst for a profound structural transformation of the polity and society.

Transition to Modernity: Essays on Power, Wealth and Belief.

List of illustrations List of contributors Introduction Part I. The Pre-Modern World: 1. World languages and human dispersals: a minimalist view Colin Renfrew 2. Nomads and oases in Central Asia A. M. Khazanov 3. Why poverty was inevitable in traditional societies E. A. Wrigley Part II. Transitions to the Modern World: 4. On a little known chapter of Mediterranean history Karl R. Popper 5. Ernest Gellner and the escape to modernity Alan MacFarlane 6. The emergence of modern European nationalism Michael Mann 7. Sovereign individuals Ronald Dore Part III. Modernity and its Discontents: 8. Science, politics, enchantment Perry Anderson 9. Deconstructing post-modernism: Gellner and Crocodile Dundee Joseph Agassi 10. A methodology without presuppositions? John Watkins 11. Gellner's positivism I. C. Jarvie 12. Left versus Right in French political ideology Louis Dumont 13. Property, justice and common good after socialism John Dunn 14. Social contract, democracy and freedom Gerard Radnitzky 15. Thoughts on liberalisation Jose Merquior 16. Peace, peace at last? John A. Hall Indexes.

Paul Horwich's Truth

This is an important book: It is the most sustained defense of a minimalist conception of truth in print. It systematically deals with all of the usual objections to minimalist views of truth (redundancy theories and their ilk), in most cases providing devastating replies to them; and it contains interesting things to say about many issues that are or have been thought to be connected to the topic of truth. Its arguments are lucid and of high quality, and it is broad in scope. I recommend it with enthusiasm.

Random causes with directed effects: the Indo-European language spread and the stochastic loss of lineages

Since the beginning, studies of Indo-European have seen it as a large phenomenon necessarily having a large, usually single cause. Yet apparent pattern can arise from chance causes that need have no great historical order. In a minimalist view, set out here as a theoretical hypothesis, the pattern of Indo-European can simply arise from a kind of social Brownian motion, in which a large pattern invents itself out of countless little perturbations between adjacent language communities

Parliament and democratic consolidation in southern Europe: Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Turkey

Part 1 Theoretical perspectives: parliament as a central site in democratic consolidation - preliminary exploration, U.Liebert parliaments, consolidation, institutionalization - a minimalist view, G.DiPalma. Part 2 parliamentary practice in Southern Europe - the case studies: the centrality of parliament in a protracted democratic consolidation - the case of Italy, M.Cotta by consociationalism to a majoritarian parliamentary system - the rise and decline of the Spanish Cortes, J.Capo, R.Cotarelo, D.Lopez Garrido and K.Subirats the difficulties of rationalization in a polarized political system - the Greek chamber of deputies, N.Alivizatos revolutionary transition and problems of partliamentary institutionalization - the case of the Portuguese national assembly, M.Brega da Cruz, M.Lobo Antunes cyclical break-down, redesign and nascent institutionalization - the Turkish grand national assembly, E.Kalaycioglu. Part 3 Comparative perspectives: political parties, parliaments and democratic consolidation in Southern Europe - empirical and theoretical perspectives, G.Pridham parliaments in the consolidation of democracy - a comparative assessment of Southern Europe experiences, U.Liebert.

Crystal Identification in Human Synovial Fluids: Methods and Interpretation

Gout is largely solved, both from diagnostic and therapeutic standpoints. Acute gout is easily suppressed and joint destruction can be prevented and at least reversed by lowering the serum uric acid level with relatively safe and very effective drugs. But the arthritides associated with the calcium-containing crystals remain untreatable by other than symptomatic or surgical means. If we had a method or a drug to remove CPPD or BCP crystal deposits from joints, would it make any difference in the severity of the arthritis? Which of the paradigms shown in Figure 5 holds for these crystals? If joint damage directly follows crystal deposition as in gout, then crystal removal should prove prophylactic. The unusual pattern of joint degeneration associated with polyarticular CPPD crystal deposition and the initial appearance of CPPD crystals in radiographically normal cartilage favors this idea. But radiologic chondrocalcinosis appearing in knees subjected years before to meniscectomy but not in the contralateral knees suggests that crystal deposition, in these cases at least, is secondary to trauma or surgery. If degeneration of cartilage precedes crystal deposition, as it probably does in the case of BCP crystals, then crystal removal may not be particularly helpful. Dieppe and his colleagues proposed that the calcium crystals provide a positive feedback (amplification) loop. This represents the minimalistic view of their importance. The biologic consequences of the calcium crystal deposition diseases are now being explored at the molecular level. Much more data are needed before more than speculative answers to the questions posed here can be formulated. Calcium crystal deposition is more common in older persons. The degenerative and destructive arthropathies associated with them will predictably become increasingly common as our population ages.