Universal Suffrage Research Articles

VIRTUES AND VICES OF THE EUROMAIDAN’S LESSONS: THE SECOND STAGE OF “STATE DEFIANCE” AFTERWARDS

The article presents an innovative fusion of the approaches to specific features of “State Defiance” second stage and as of its consequence factor the EuroMaidan`s phenomenon as well as their mutual impact on the main historical events and fundamental problems in Ukraine after president Yanukovich’s ousting.
 The first sign of drastic changes in political architecture of Ukraine was expressed in the thesis that power may be also fought for peoples’ craving for social legitimate trust but not only by means of universal suffrage.
 The Maidan’s Eurorevolution is a Revolution of Human Dignity. The Maidan in Kyiv is a new generation Maidan of the second decade in the XXI-st century. Still it is after the European values. It is a reforming factor of obsolete system and is a conflict inside the society but not that traditional one of opposition vs high-ranking state authorities. A new type of ethics has just started forming a new sociality in the country. The time of ruling of transparty corruption over almost a quarter of the century marked a visible sign of “state defiance.” Due to that, incorrigibility the newly formed political elites have to avoid the extremes of society’s reunifying shortcomings and disintegration as well as ethical apathy and false community. To the definite essentials among the EuroMaidan’s attainments one may attribute the rising requirements for the new figures in politics. However, these are not to be simple doers of the deliberately assigned tasks. The figures in need have to stand primarily for the abilities that drastically change the rules in the political games and the original system of state power fraudulently imposed by former high-ranking state authorities. The EuroMaidan may also be accounted for its polyvectorial nature not only as a critical model to be followed but foremost to be consolidated at a remarkable pace for true democratic legitimacy.
 After changes in setting up priorities over “state defiance” category one registers emergence of the unexpected “Russian-speaking Ukrainian nationalism”. The essentials of such an oxymoron picks up the pace as an ideological stream and instinctive political movement with full colors of special sort of firm patriotism born in the Central and Southeast regions of Ukraine. As the critical reason for its coming up serves the perfidious annexation of Crimea by Russia and her illegal “invention” of the so-called terroristic “DPR” and “LPR”. It takes root as a special ethnic and political variety and embraces alternative to the traditional “Western nationalism”. In a certain sense, the oxymoron may be practiced in defining as “civil nationalism”.

Discursive construction of the ‘key’ moment in the Umbrella Movement

AbstractA mass civil disobedience movement brought Hong Kong’s key business and commercial districts to a standstill in September 2014 when low-key class boycotts coalesced into a wide-scale social movement propelled by thousands of people who flocked to the support of student protestors after an ‘unwarranted’ 87 rounds of tear gas were fired by the police. This paper will explore the discursive construction of thiskey precipitant(Kimmel 1990), that is a ‘key’ moment, which recontextualised an on-going universal suffrage campaign into an historical event that allowed, “deeply seated structural forces to emerge as politically potent and begin to mobilize potential discontents” (Kimmel 1990, 9-10). Drawing on the multi-perspective framework of the Discourse of Illusion (Bhatia 2015a) the paper will analyse this key ‘moment’ in Hong Kong’s local memory, which represented one unitary moment of change that transformed the intended course of events. The Discourse of Illusion in this respect will draw on three interrelated components: historicity (one’shabitusas key to the creation of discursive illusions, dealing as it does with the growth and change of perceptions over time); linguistic and semiotic action (subjective conceptualisations of the world give rise to one’s linguistic and semiotic actions, often through dominant metaphorical rhetoric); and the degree of social impact (as language and actions of individuals and groups engender many categories and stereotypes).

Variations in presidential leadership in France

The centerpiece of this analysis is about the variations in presidential leadership of the seven French presidents under the Fifth Republic. The analysis of the political conditions of the method of government aims to locate the type and the nature of the presidential leadership of each of the seven French presidents. The acquisition of presidential leadership effectively starts with the way leaders win office. They are elected by direct universal suffrage, and they have therefore a strong legitimacy. To the extent that presidential leadership is conceived as a special activity in terms of a president’s ability to identify goals, to mobilize support and to bring about substantive change, these skills enable a president to perform these different tasks and to fulfill a successful leadership role. Developing and maintaining close relationships with other political actors provide the principal resources of a president. In France, the appointment of the prime minister, ministers and advisors is important, as well as relations with the high civil service. But, above all, the relations between the president and public opinion are of major importance in terms of authority and power. Finally, the reputation of a president depends on the ability to solve the problems facing the country. It is measured by opinion polls that provide the level of satisfaction felt by public opinion with regard to the policy of the president. Applying the concept of leadership through the three factors of skills, relations and reputations helps to understand the performance of French presidents. Only General de Gaulle was able to demonstrate a high level of leadership. He had a very strong presidential style, with great qualities of communication. Some even talked about his charisma. The leadership of General de Gaulle’s successors suffered from the comparison. It seems that the most recent presidents are victims of the weakness, even perhaps the collapse, of their leadership.

Political philosophy, executive constraint and electoral rules

This paper explains the choice of electoral rule by the difference in the ease of implementing targeted transfer. By modeling the choice of electoral rule as a decision by the ruling rich-elite party before universal suffrage is enacted, this paper predicts that a loose constitutional constraint on targeted transfers is conducive to the adoption of proportional representation. To complete the theory, this work argues that the British empiricism and the Continental rationalism have their own views concerning the role and the power of a state, leading to differential levels of constraints on redistribution. Thus the theory explains why Anglo-Saxon countries tend to maintain majoritarian electoral rule. Employing the event history analysis with the two-stage-residual-inclusion approach, this work shows that countries with poorer executive constraints are more likely to adopt proportional representation. Meanwhile, we find evidence supporting that countries with British origin have been associated with tighter constraint upon the executive.

Democratic Deficits in Europe: The Overlooked Exclusiveness of Nation‐States and the Positive Role of the European Union

AbstractWith the help of the Immigrant Inclusion Index (IMIX), a quantitative tool for measuring the electoral inclusion of immigrants, we demonstrate that European democracies are much more exclusive than they should be. All normative theories of democracy share the conviction that it is imperative that democracies include long‐term immigrant residents into the demos – either by granting citizenship or by introducing alien voting rights. But even the 20 most established and stable democracies within the EU are far from fully realizing the ideal of ‘universal suffrage’. This is true independently of whether we count in‐ and excluded people in numerical terms, or whether we evaluate the relevant laws and regulations. Therefore, we diagnose a substantial democratic deficit on the level of European nation‐states. By requiring its member states to enfranchise non‐national EU citizens on the local level, the EU, for once, plays a positive role in reducing one of the most fundamental democratic deficits in times of migration.

Political Development in Hong Kong: The Failure of Democratization

Democratization in Hong Kong has come to a dead end following the rejection of an electoral reform proposal by the Legislative Council on June 18, 2015. The measure was voted down because pan-democrats had been deeply disappointed by the fact that the reform proposal by the Chinese government would have only allowed pre-screened candidates and thus denied Hong Kongers a true choice. This followed more than two months of street occupations in which protesters demanded real universal suffrage to no avail. This paper seeks to demonstrate how the “China factor” has inhibited the democratization process in four distinct phases of political development. Since World War II, one of the main reasons for the lack of democratization was opposition by the Chinese government. In the late 1980s, the prospect of political reforms in China raised hopes for political change in Hong Kong. This was, however, crushed in 1989, which empowered a democracy movement in Hong Kong. Since the transfer of power from Britain to China in 1997, despite protests for democracy, there has been very little progress toward meaningful democratization. Moreover, in recent years, there has even been a slow process from liberal to illiberal authoritarianism which is accompanied by growing conflicts and even violence as political freedoms are being curtailed.

‘Dites un mot et daignez nous tendre la main’: The Emergence of Hugo's Lost Feminist Voice from His Oratory in Exile

The silence of oblivion which plagued Hugo throughout his lifetime was never more keenly felt than during his exile. However, it was this fear of nothingness which gave potent urgency to Hugo's public discourse and to his role as a spokesperson for les misérables. During his exile Hugo's voice also reached a distinct, though much less documented group of disfavoured people, namely the female victims of revolution, and leading French and international feminists. Through his eulogies to women like Louise Julien and George Sand, and his extensive epistolary correspondences with women, Hugo became a prominent figure in the feminist struggle both in France and throughout the world in the mid- nineteenth century. His woefully neglected public discourse on women's rights from this time reveals his support for such defining demands in nineteenth-century feminism as women's rights to universal suffrage, equal citizenship, and the participation of women in the future French republic.

“It's Your Face That Is Carrying You Through!”

While Nancy Astor's 1919 victory at the polls—making her the first female member of British Parliament—figures prominently in narratives of women's political progress in Britain, the taunt thrown at her while she was campaigning at the Barbican earlier that year, “It's your face that is carrying you through!” figures nowhere in discussions of women's entry into formal political life there. Astor's rejoinder, “No, it's the heart behind it,” points to a tension in her candidacy and subsequent political career that is characteristic of modern celebrity: between the superficial and the genuine, the artificial and the authentic. This text describes how a “film star” and “a personality,” rarely seen by contemporaries as a politician in any masculine sense, successfully publicized the democratic elements of her persona in order to make privilege more palatable in the age of universal suffrage.

Between Socialism and Feminism: Charlotte Glas (1873–1944)

This article explores how Charlotte Glas, a founding member of the Austrian Social Democratic Party and a leading figure in the public sphere during the late imperial period, attempted to advance the cause of workers’ rights and women’s emancipation. Charged with lèse-majesté following a public rally in 1893, and tried before a Viennese court, Glas was forced to confront both the repressive policies of the Habsburg state and the patriarchal practices of her society and her party. Ultimately, Glas chose to subordinate the fight for women’s suffrage to the broader socialist campaign for universal male suffrage. Her dilemmas as a woman, Jew and socialist were captured in the character of Therese Golowski in Arthur Schnitzler’s Der Weg ins Freie.

The Culture of Reaction

AbstractReactionary culture helped shape Thermidor's retreat from the ideologies, social policies, and political practices of the Terror. This article explains how it did so by examining the most popular newspaper of the French Revolution's Year III (1794–95), L'orateur du peuple, and editor Stanislas Fréron's appropriation of revolutionary inventiveness to discredit revolutionary activism. Between Robespierre's defeat in July 1794 and the adoption of a new constitution in late summer 1795, Fréron used radical language to condemn first the Terror and then radical republicanism, progressing from attacks on specific legislators to an assault on social welfare, political militancy, and universal suffrage. Elaborating a right-wing ideology that was neither Catholic nor royalist, L'orateur du peuple illuminates the conservative uses of revolutionary political culture. Fréron and the reactionary polemicists among whom he worked forged a virulent reactionary populism in the Year III whose legacy endures today.

Democrazia popolare e democrazia autoritaria. Dal cartismo (1836-1848) all'Italicum (2015)

In the first half of the nineteenth century - in the UK - the Chartist movement linked the labor and class’ unrest to the achievement of universal suffrage and political democracy. By contrast, in Italy, the electoral laws engineered by the government of the center-left (2015) through the legislatve measure called Italicum distorts the purpose of the democratic tradition of the left and tends to replace the national political structure with an autocratic, authoritarian and caesaristic system.

Body politics and legitimacy: towards a feminist epistemology of the Egyptian revolution

In this essay, I discuss political legitimacy from a feminist perspective, analysing the experience of women political activists in Egypt. Building on Linda Alcoff's work on memory, testimony and decolonizing epistemology, my analysis focusses on two intertwined issues: women's political representation and the public debate about sexual harassment. Data collected by Egyptian feminist organizations reveal that, after one century of women's political participation and 60 years after universal suffrage, the gender gap remains wide. Furthermore, both feminist and human rights organizations denounce that authoritarian regimes use sexual harassment to intimidate democratic activists. Although the right to equal political participation has been a main concern for the Egyptian feminists since 1923, the achievement of universal suffrage in 1956 did not provide a viable solution to the gender gap in Egypt, and women are still fighting to find a way out from the binary co-optation/exclusion. Significantly, as I discuss in this essay, women political activists are the main targets of harassment. In addition, women in general and discourses about sexual violence and sexual morality remain highly controversial in Egypt.

Constitutional Court of Romania: Postal Voting

The Court decided that the regulation of postal voting for the Romanian citizens domiciled or resident abroad is aimed at ensuring the highest participation of the Romanian citizens in the electoral process, taking account of the need to apply in full the principle of universal suffrage. The regulation shall ensure a fair balance between universal suffrage on the one hand, and free and fair elections as well as direct, secret and free suffrage, on the other.

Making India's Democracy

Shani's article examines a key aspect of the rupture from colonial rule in the making of independent India, which was critical to its process of democratization. This undertaking was the preparation of the first elections on the basis of universal suffrage. Implementing and planning for the enrollment of almost 174 million people was a staggering bureaucratic undertaking. This article investigates the process of devising the instructions for the preparation of the preliminary draft electoral roll on the basis of adult franchise, in anticipation of the constitution. It suggests that in effect, this process became an all-India administrative exercise in guided democratic political imagination, which diffused the notion of universal franchise within the administrative machinery around the country. This exercise resulted in instituting and operationalizing the procedural aspect of the idea of equality. It also set in motion the creation of a new national polity for India. By contrasting this process with colonial discourses on franchise and preparation of electoral rolls, focusing particularly on the enrollment of women and the attitudes toward other groups at the margins of the franchise, the article explores key changes in the bureaucratic political imagination in the transition from colonial rule to independence.

Corporate governance and the expansion of the democratic franchise: beyond cross-country regressions

ABSTRACTThis article documents the stark differences in the legal regulation of corporations in the United States compared to Britain and other Western European countries in the nineteenth century. The lack of alternative ways of obtaining ‘corporate’ advantages in common-law countries made the corporate form much more politically fraught than in civil-law countries. In the United States, general incorporation laws came after the attainment of universal white manhood suffrage and were part of a broader egalitarian movement to ensure that elites did not have advantages over everyone else. As a result, they were highly prescriptive, limiting corporations’ size and duration and also mandating specific governance rules. In Great Britain, by contrast, general incorporation laws were passed in a context where only a small fraction of the population could vote. Because the interests at stake in the legislation were those of the business and financial elite, British company law (like the less politically controversial statutes enacted on the European continent) left the rules governing corporations largely to the contracting parties themselves. This paper also argues that understanding the patterns in general incorporation laws requires scholars to move beyond cross-country regressions to study the political economic processes that unfolded in these different settings.

The politics of language and identity: attitudes towards Hong Kong English pre and post the Umbrella Movement

This article reports on a 2015 follow-up to a survey on attitudes towards Hong Kong English which was released to students at a major university in Hong Kong in late September 2014 on the eve of the Umbrella Movement, a largely student-led protest to demand universal suffrage in Hong Kong. While the movement ultimately failed to gain full democracy for Hong Kong, the past year has seen increased political activism among Hong Kong’s youth, and a strengthening of a local identity. In order to investigate whether attitudes towards Hong Kong English have also shifted in the past year, the author re-released the same survey one year after the original study was conducted; this article compares the findings from these two surveys in order to investigate how and why attitudes towards Hong Kong English have shifted and how identity impacts attitudes towards Hong Kong English.

Prisoner disenfranchisement and the right to vote in elections to the European Parliament: Universal suffrage key to unlocking political citizenship?

Prisoner disenfranchisement and the right to vote in elections to the European Parliament: Universal suffrage key to unlocking political citizenship?

The National and International in Making a Feminist: the case of Alexandra Gripenberg

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes the interdependence of the national and international in Alexandra Gripenberg's (1859–1913) feminist activism in her native country Finland, as well as in her international work, particularly within the International Council of Women, and in doing so contributes to the research on transfers and networking across borders in the formation of feminist politics. The national and international were seen by Gripenberg as inseparable and both aspects were particularly intertwined in her work to encourage the establishment of national councils of the ICW in various countries. The analysis discloses how the negotiation between the national and transnational was intersected and complicated by class-related politics, exemplified by Gripenberg's ambivalence towards the introduction of universal suffrage in 1906 Finland. The article also sheds light on the difficulties in creating a shared sisterhood across borders and how nation was used as a criterion in classifying more and less advanced nations in terms of gender equality. Influenced by the prevalent manner many Western European and US feminists had of viewing themselves as superior, Gripenberg defined Protestant, Anglo-American and Scandinavian countries as models for other nations. Finally the article addresses how Gripenberg responded to occasions when her national and international loyalties conflicted and shows the importance of internationalism in coping with the distress on home ground. International feminist sisterhood offered an opportunity to enjoy life with social equals.

Universal Suffrage: Undeclared Conflict of Interest

Conflict of interest of welfare dependent voter creates wrong incentives. These incentives inherent to universal suffrage, yield consequences, as predicted by John Adams back in the 18-th century. Historically the rise of the modern welfare state might be traced to the emergence of mainstream left parties, which promoted government care “from the cradle to the grave”. This paper will address the damages to Democracy caused by conflict of interest, which led to irresponsible leadership and permanent peacetime budget deficit. Historical examples from the 1990s show possible escapes from the trap of universal suffrage.

Sortition, voting, and democratic equality

In recent years, democrats both inside and outside the academy have begun to reconsider the merits of the age-old practice of sortition, the random selection of political officials. Despite this fact, however, the comparative assessment of the merits of voting and sortition remains in its infancy. This paper will advance this project by treating the problem of assigning public responsibilities as a problem of allocative justice. To treat the problem in this manner is to treat public office as a type of good to which citizens might have various claims. Random selection is the appropriate method for distributing public office when all citizens have equal claims to that office and there is not enough to go around. Universal distribution is more appropriate when all claimants have equal claims to the office and there is enough to go around (as with universal suffrage, for example). Election (or possibly other procedures, such as appointment) makes sense when citizens do not enjoy equal claims to the office and that office is in scarce supply. This approach captures a crucial component of democratic equality. Different understandings of democratic equality lay behind sortition and election. Each might be appropriate under different circumstances, but both place rights-based constraints on the design of a democratic political system.