The years that followed the fall of the Berlin wall and various authoritarian regimes in different regions of the world, witnessed the growth of a wide literature on democratization, which was influenced more and more by the paradigm of transition and the “consolidation” of democracy. Since then, evaluations as well as perspectives through which were seen various regimes (the new democracies “with problems”) are developed mainly through the theoretical lens of consolidation paradigm, according to which full democratic (...) consolidation was the endpoint of regime transitions. But it has become clear today that in many countries, in which more than three decades have passed since the fall of authoritarian regimes, the issue of “completion” of democracy in their social and political context is still far from being a happy reality. The purpose of this paper is to criticize both in the theoretical and the empirical level, the concept of “consolidation of democracy”, seeing it as a non-valid concept for the study of democratization. This paper will argue that essentially the concept of consolidation is teleological and problematic in the sense that democracy is seen not as a process but an endpoint product. (shrink)

For almost two decades, the survival prospects and authenticity of new democracies has been assessed through the democratic consolidation paradigm which seeks to assess whether democracies are 'consolidated'. But an examination of the paradigm shows that it is vague, teleological and ethnocentric and measures new democracies against an idealised understanding of Northern liberal democracies rather than offering a plausible means of assessing longevity or democratic progress. Its inadequacy is further demonstrated by applying it to the South African (...) case. The article thus argues for a new approach which rejects the consolidation paradigm's assumption that some democracies are a 'finished product' and acknowledges both that all democracies are incomplete and that each will show uneven progress, so that older democracies will lag behind newer ones in some areas of democratic quality while surpassing them in others. (shrink)

This article identifies how democracy and transparency in Thailand have been subverted since 2001. Specifically, it appraises the sentiments and trends that have been in place since 1993 to prevent a return to authoritarian government. Additionally, it also examines structures and policies that have thwarted democratic consolidation since 2000. The central hypothesis of the article is that there has been a structural weakening of democracy in Thailand under the Thai Rak Thai government since 2001. In other words, Thailand's (...) democratic consolidation has been held in abeyance since the electoral victory of the Thaksin government. (shrink)

The Republic of Korea (Korea hereinafter) has been widely regarded as one of the most vigorous and analytically interesting third-wave democracies (Diamond and Shin, 2000: 1). During the first decade of democratic rule, Korea has successfully carried out a large number of electoral and other reforms to transform the institutions and procedures of military-authoritarian rule into those of a representative democracy. Unlike many of its counterparts in Latin America and elsewhere, Korea has fully restored civilian rule by extricating the (...) military from power. As is the case in established democracies of North America and Western Europe, free and competitive elections have been regularly held at all the different levels of the government. In the most recent presidential election, held in December 1997, Korea also established itself as a mature electoral democracy by elevating an opposition party to political power. In Korea today, there is general agreement that electoral politics has become the only possible political game in town. (shrink)

In this article, we attempt to describe how ordinary people in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan view democracy and its authoritarian alternatives and how they experience institutional practices of their democracies to determine the extent of cultural and institutional democratization. The analysis of the 2006 AsiaBarometer Survey data shows that although the citizens of East Asian democracies unequivocally reject military authoritarian rule, they are ambivalent toward civilian authoritarian rule, and are not yet fully committed to democracy. The analysis also shows (...) that they are not satisfied with the provision of civil rights and institutions of horizontal accountability, but remain highly satisfied with voting rights, which suggests that East Asian democracies are not adequately liberal, though unmistakably electoral, in the eyes of ordinary people. On the basis of this finding, we conclude that East Asian democracies fail to achieve a high-level equilibrium between the popular demand for democracy and the institutional supply of democracy. (shrink)

More than a decade has passed since the tragic events that took place in America in the dramatic day of September 9th 2001. For the first time since the end of the second World War, the United States were being attacked on their own territory, without prior notice, by a non-state military force which was globally organised, for religious and ideological reasons. The terrorist attacks planned and executed by the terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda on American military and civilian targets have reconfigured (...) the international security environment. The author remarks that the security of the European continent is inextricably linked to what happens outside its external borders. Transnational organized crime, illegal human trafficking, illegal migration, traffic of drug, weapons, ammunition and portable vectors, the proliferation of illegal trade of radioactive and other "sensible" technologies, the expansion of terrorist networks – they all represent threats to the Eastern border of Romania and concern the security of the EU Eastern neighbourhood. (shrink)

The year 1997 was critical for Thailand. A severe economic crisis hit in July calling into question years of economic growth and increasing prosperity. A few months later Thailand adopted a new Constitution that aimed at reforming the political system, and at making corruption and vote buying less prevalent. While this article shows that the economic turmoil was a prime catalyst for political change, it was not as simple as saying that public outcry over the economic crisis forced conservative parliamentarians (...) into voting to accept the proposed constitution. While public outcry did matter, what is vitally important is that elite political leaders, the heads of the major parties, ministers, and generals, were renegotiating their alliances and ties both with one another, and with various groups in society that were pushing for change. Elite resignation to political pressure and policy shifts among the top leaders is what ultimately allows for the passage of the constitution and for Prime Minister Chavalit's departure. This article takes a closer look at Thai politics and tries to answer the following questions: Did the economic crisis lead to (meaningful) political reform and why or why not? Since the codification of the 1997 constitution has Thai politics become more democratic? It is my analysis that the consolidation of democracy was in reach in 1997 but today has slipped further from Thai citizens' grasp. The explanations, or the independent variables for both the successful reforms of the political system in 1997 and the backsliding away from democratization, are largely the same. When both internal and external pressures prod democracy along, reforms take place. When pressures are pushing in different directions democratic reforms become threatened. Internal pressures include the military, civil society, and the behavior and power of political and economic elites; and external ones are the IMF, national security concerns, and globalization in general. When conditions or variables change, and when elite priorities or preferences shift, as this article will show, we can see the results in Thai politics. (shrink)

The case of post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) provides an interesting lens through which to reflect on the interconnected and often conflicting challenges of implementation of internationally brokered peace agreements, external support to democratic transition and consolidation, and contemporary notions of sovereignty and state building. This chapter suggests that in the case of BiH, certain contradictions and tradeoffs have been and may still be necessary to ensure a foundation for future stability and democratic consolidation. The situation (...) in post-Dayton BiH can be described as a frozen conflict that has remained frozen in large part due to an international presence that ensures that an imperfect peace prevails while also providing a basis for incremental reform. The peace implementation process in BiH is briefly reviewed by looking at two reform strategies: the “soft” protectorate strategy used in BiH as a whole and the “hard” protectorate option exercised in the District of Brčko. The aim is to demonstrate that while a democratic end-state remains the goal in such transitions, the means toward getting there can include a number of contradictory policy options. (shrink)

In societies divided on ethnic and religious lines, problems of democracy are magnified – particularly where groups are mobilized into parties. With the principle of majority rule, minorities should be less willing to endorse democratic institutions where their parties persistently lose elections. While such problems should also hamper transitions to democracy, several diverse Eastern European states have formed democracies even under these conditions. In this book, Sherrill Stroschein argues that sustained protest and contention by ethnic Hungarians in Romania and (...) Slovakia brought concessions on policies that they could not achieve through the ballot box, in contrast to Transcarpathia, Ukraine. In Romania and Slovakia, contention during the 1990s made each group accustomed to each other's claims and aware of the degree to which each could push its own. Ethnic contention became a de facto deliberative process that fostered a moderation of group stances, allowing democratic consolidation to slowly and organically take root. (shrink)

The transition to democracy in Brazil has created a competitive religous environment which is causing religious shifting away from Catholicism. The Evangelical community, of which Pentecostalism is a subset, has been growing over the last few decades and is providing alternative structures for social and political expression previously denied to many. Pentecostal churches are building community networks and strengthening civil society in a way that is giving many of Brazil’s marginalized access and legitimacy. The focus of this paper is to (...) examine if Pentecostalism undermines or strengthens democratic consolidation in Brazil, and what role it has to play in power sharing. (shrink)

In the past two decades, Confucian meritocrats have justified the unequal distribution of political power by appeal to the ideal of Confucian virtue politics. In this article, I demonstrate that at the heart of Confucian virtue politics lies a political leader’s affective accountability and show that non-democratic Confucian meritocracy fails to embody this moral ideal. Then, I argue that the ideal of Confucian virtue politics can be better realized in democratic system. To this end, I first describe how (...) ordinary citizens’ moral demand for a political leader’s affective accountability in a consolidated democratic society can make theoretical space for a Confucian political leader. Next, I articulate the role of a Confucian political leader in contemporary democratic society from a normative standpoint and show that at the core of Confucian democratic meritocracy lies ‘mutual moral transformation’, formed by dialectical interactions between a virtuous Confucian political leader and empowered citizens. (shrink)

In a series of articles written for the Neue Rhenische Zeitung in 1850, later published by Friedrich Engels as The Class Struggles in France, Karl Marx looked back on the failed French revolution of 1848 and attempted to explain how the democratic aspirations that inspired the February assault on the July Monarchy-and promised to fulfill the dashed hopes of 1789, 1792, and 1830-also led to its termination in the reactionary popular dictatorship of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. Popular sovereignty, which had (...) so often defined the emancipatory visions of two generations of radical activists and thinkers was now not only an obstacle to genuine emancipation, but a plebiscitary source of power for newly emergent forms of political domination. Bonapartism became, for Marx, an important way of understanding the complex internal dynamics of popular-and later "populist"-authoritarianism. It is an analysis that continues to resonate powerfully today. The national enthusiasm that propelled the revolution forward, and which overturned the hated regime of Louis Phillippe in three glorious days, had successfully established for the first time in history a parliamentary republic based in universal male suffrage. The Second Republic's provisional government was immediately thrown into a legitimation crisis, however, by the underlying sectional, parliamentary, and class conflicts lurking beneath its illusory foundation in the people's unitary will. When the popular classes of Paris returned to the barricades in June to protest the conservative government's closure of the National Workshops-and to convert the political revolution into a social revolution based in the "right to work"-they were abandoned by their fellow citizens and thousands were massacred in the streets by Cavaignac's National Guard. The "fantastic republic" built around the pretensions of national unity, Marx proclaimed, quickly "dissolved in powder and smoke." Tocqueville described the June days as a "slave's war," and in its aftermath the Party of Order quickly consolidated its power against any furthering of revolutionary aspiration. (shrink)

The article is devoted to study of totalitarian and democratic types of rhetoric. The classical dichotomy of rhetorical influence has been discovered: monologic use of rhetoric as a verbal weapon through propaganda, demagoguery, populism, creation of the image of an enemy, division of society and dialogical use of rhetoric as consolidating communication, truth-seeking, social consent and understanding. It is shown that the trigger of democratic and totalitarian regimes is the existential of freedom. The active influence of the postmodern (...) rhetoric of the information age in its performativity in the acquisition of snack culture is determined, which significantly strengthens the manipulative strategies. Totalitarian tendencies of digital rhetoric are found in information warfare technologies, in the processes of censorship, ambivalence and negativism of information, spreading fake news, igniting conflicts in mass media. Militarization of vocabulary and spread of obscene language in ordinary communication as factors of compensatory aggression of the population, the danger of excessive information transparency of people’s private lives are noted. Democratism of the digital rhetoric is manifested in such phenomena as the direct creation of e-democracy, access of citizens to e-voting, e-services, e-petitions, overcoming digital inequality, the ability to communicate with officials and public officers live on TV and radio, in social networks. Democratic principles of rhetoric, especially in Ukraine as a state of “transitional democracy” should be supported by quality education, fostering critical thinking and activity of civil society. (shrink)

Mainly in the 1960s, intellectual life in Poland formed a barrier of resistance against communism. Already before the political upheaval in the year 1989, the works of Western philosophers were read and received in select circles of Polish intellectuals. Neither was Hannah Arendt an unknown person. Despite problems with censorship, three of her books were published in 1988. After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 Hannah Arendt's works ceased being something forbidden and mysterious. In this paper, Hannah Arendt's (...) literary reception in Poland before and after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc will be analyzed and evaluated. Afterwards the question will be discussed, how much influence Hannah Arendt's ideas had on the consolidation of democracy in Poland. (edited). (shrink)

There is a long-standing and widespread consensus that semi-presidentialism is bad for democratic performance. This article examines whether there is empirical evidence to support the arguments against semi-presidentialism. Examining countries that are incompletely consolidated and yet are not autocratic, we identify the relationship between democratic performance and the three main arguments against semi-presidentialism – the strength of the presidency, cohabitation, and divided minority government. We find that there is a strong and negative association between presidential power and (...) class='Hi'>democratic performance, but that cohabitation and divided minority government do not have the negative consequences that the literature predicts. (shrink)

The Eastern Enlargement of the European Union: Challenges to Democracy?1 Recent scholarship assesses the impact of the European Union's conditionality on democracy in Central and Eastern Europe in a contradictory way. On one hand, the EU is perceived as a key agent of successful democratic consolidation and on other hand, the return of nationalist and populist politics in new member states has been explored in the context of the negative consequences of the hasty accession that undermined government accountability (...) and constrained public debate over policy alternatives. This article explains this puzzle of the ambiguous effects of the EU's politics of conditionality, which promoted institutions stabilizing the horizontal division of powers, rule of law, human and minority rights protection, but which neglected norms and rules of participatory and/or popular democracy. (shrink)

In the 21st century, as the peoples of the world grow more closely tied together, the question of real transnational government will finally have to be faced. The end of the Cold War has not brought the peace, freedom from atrocities, and decline of tyranny for which we hoped. It is also clearer now that problems like economic risks, tax havens, and environmental degradation arising with global markets are far outstripping the governance capacities of our 20th century system of distinct (...) nation-states, even when they try to work together through intergovernmental agreements and organized bureaucracies of specialists. This work defends a cosmopolitan approach to global justice by arguing for new ways to combine the strengths of democratic nations in order to prevent mass atrocities and to secure other global public goods. While protecting cultural pluralism, Davenport argues that a Democratic League would provide a legal order capable of uniting the strength and inspiring moral vision of democratic nations to improve international security, stop mass atrocities, assist developing nations in overcoming corruption and poverty, and, in time, potentially address other global challenges in finance, environmental sustainability, stable food supplies, immigration, and so on. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, international organizations, philosophy and global justice. (shrink)

This article aims to present four case studies of the different responses to governmental measures to fight the COVID-19 pandemic by supreme and constitutional courts, especially in cases of jurisdictions that have been facing democratic erosion. The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic demanded immediate public policies and other political decisions from the branches of government. Executive authorities were the main actors in effecting constitutional public health norms. The expectation was that they will abide by the rule of law in (...) fulfilling their duties; that has not been the case under governments that promoted democratic erosion. The different contexts of the threats posed to the constitutional democracies led populist and illiberal leaders to opportunistically either try to—and then be contained by courts—or effectively consolidate the expansion of powers under the conditions of the pandemic. Concentrating on four jurisdictions (the USA, Hungary, El Salvador, and Brazil), the article demonstrates that courts can effectively work as bulwarks against waves of democratic erosion, especially in situations of stress, as it was the case in the global COVID-19 pandemic. This hypothesis is also proven by episodes in which courts did not sufficiently operate to curb illiberalism because they were already captured. The analyses enable classifying the court’s responses to the COVID-19 executive measures in a threefold pattern: deferential, restrictive, and of forced capitulation. (shrink)

John Dewey is a philosopher who seems perpetually on the verge of rhetoric. He displays a continual interest in the necessity of communication for democracy, and yet he often remains vague as to what shape such communication should take. While this would seem to limit his usefulness for rhetoricians, the opposite has proven true. As scholars of rhetoric, we now find ourselves in the midst of a renaissance in studies of Dewey. Trained Capacities: John Dewey, Rhetoric, and Democratic Practice (...) seeks to both consolidate the gains made by such scholarship and further encourage rhetoricians’ interest in Dewey’s work. Namely, the various authors in this volume concern themselves with treating Dewey’s.. (shrink)

This article examines how new types of performance appraisal reconfigure everyday personal relationships at work. These systems deploy smartphone technologies to be used continuously by individuals to rate each other. Our aim is to show, in concrete terms, how these practices claim to configure a democratic space where individuals are liberated to express their views about each other’s work. On the contrary, we argue that by being placed in continuous confrontation with each other’s ratings, the genuine space for (...) class='Hi'>democratic contestation, for the establishment of a genuine community, as well as for critique and dissent is—paradoxically—narrowed down. The first section of this article explores the context in which managerialism has become consolidated at the centre of neo-liberal politics in a dialogue with some of Mouffe’s and Rancière’s arguments. We use Rancière’s concept of “policing” to understand how managerial techniques subvert genuine democratic spaces, modes of participation and expression. Using performance appraisal systems as an example, the second part of the article provides a critical investigation which shows how managerialism intervenes at the very roots of possible democratic engagement and undermines dissent in subtle ways. (shrink)

This article defends three basic premises. First, the same conditions and forces favorable to revolution may serve to impede efforts at post-revolutionary consolidation. Second, one can assess prospects for consolidation based on the capacity of prospective hegemonic parties to achieve several interrelated objectives: developing a shared worldview among disparate segments of the population, delivering social and economic goods, and establishing order. Third, while democratization is a home-grown process, it may require particular forms of limited intervention to offset anti- (...) class='Hi'>democratic forces. The goal of this article is to provide an analytical framework that informs the ongoing debates over democratic transitions while suggesting where and how external engagement may influence the transition process. (shrink)

The nature of state governance in consolidated liberal democracies has important implications for the ideal theory debate. The states of these societies are polycentric. Decision-making power within them is disaggregated across multiple sites. This rules out one major justification for ideal theory. On this influential view, the ideal furnishes a blueprint of the morally perfect society that we should strive to realise. This justification is not viable in consolidated liberal democracies because their states lack an Archimedean point from which the (...) institutional structure as a whole can be designed to accord with the true ideal – whichever it might be. However, knowledge of the ideal can still aid agents in those societies to determine the worth of more modest political objectives other than the ideal itself. (shrink)

According to Kristen Deede Johnson, Augustinian theology provides resources for overcoming debates about the consolidation or protection of difference in plural society. Johnson’s Augustine invites us to unite with others in loving and humble interactions with difference. I seek to further concretize the kind of communication that Johnson’s theology entails, putting it in conversation with Iris Marion Young’s theory of “communicative democracy.” Drawing on Willie James Jennings’s interpretive work on Pentecost in his magisterial commentary on Acts, I trace in (...) the event of Pentecost a paradigm for communication between divergent communities that respects difference and underscores possibilities for union. The community born at Pentecost is comprised of divergent constituencies, and yet is nevertheless integrated by communicative practices. The paper invites reflection on how divinely granted visions might be translated into conversations that facilitate what Jennings calls “joining.”. (shrink)

With the growing success of right-wing populism, there has been an explosion of debates on polarization and social cohesion. In part, social cohesion is seen as being disrupted by right-wing populists and those who blame migration for this alleged disruption of cohesion. The developing polarization is not only social, but also political, so that in some cases there is already talk of a new cleavage. On the one hand, there are right-wing populists, people who do not want any major changes (...) or who have problems with globalization; on the other hand, there are those who want to push through a transformation towards a ‘truly’ pluralistic society. Two issues in particular serve as bridges for this polarization: Muslim migration and the expansion of sexual and gender diversity. Positions on these two issues mark the content that facilitates the consolidation of opposing group identities. As a result, debates about values and identity dominate, leading to a polarization that reaches far into society. (shrink)

Drawing on Charles Tilly’s work on inequality, democracy and cities, we explore the local level dynamics of democratization across urban settings in India, South Africa, and Brazil. In all three cases, democratic institutions are consolidated, but there is tremendous variation in the quality of the democratic relationship between cities and their citizens. We follow Tilly’s focus on citizenship as the key element in democratization and argue that explaining variance across our three cases calls for analyzing patterns of inequality (...) through the kind of relational lens used by Tilly and recognizing that patterns of contestation are shaped by shifting political relationships between the nation and the city. We conclude that Tilly’s theoretical frame is nicely sustained by the comparative analysis of cases very different from those that stimulated his original formulations. (shrink)

The primary purpose of government is to secure public goods that cannot be achieved by free markets. The Coordination Principle tells us to consolidate sovereign power in a single institution to overcome collective action problems that otherwise prevent secure provision of the relevant public goods. There are several public goods that require such coordination at the global level, chief among them being basic human rights. The claim that human rights require global coordination is supported in three main steps. First, I (...) consider Pogge's and Habermas's analyses as alternatives to Hobbesian conceptions of justice. Second, I consider the core conventions of international law, which are in tension with the primacy of state sovereignty in the UN system. Third, I argue that the just war tradition does not limit just causes for war to self-defense; it supports saving innocent third parties from crimes against humanity as a just reason for war. While classical authors focused less on this issue, the point is especially clear in twentieth-century just war theories, such as those offered by the American Catholic bishops, Jean Elshtain, Brian Orend, and Michael Walzer. Against Walzer, I argue that we add intractable military tyranny to the list of horrors meriting intervention if other ad bellum conditions are met. But these results require us to reexamine the "just authority" of first resort to govern such interventions. The Coordination Principle implies that we should create a transnational federation with consolidated powers in place of a treaty organization requiring near-unanimity. But to be legitimate, such a global institution must also be directly answerable to the citizens of its member states. While the UN Security Council is inadequate on both counts, a federation of democracies with a directly elected executive and legislature could meet both conditions. (shrink)

Higher education institutions have a responsibility to promote the development of students' ethical and citizenship competencies, especially in contexts of major social inequality. Graduates, who constitute a very small percentage of the population in México, are the best qualified to conceive of creative alternatives to resolve its demanding social challenges. But this cannot be done if trained professionals and specialists remain indifferent to their communities and merely seek to satisfy their personal interests. Higher education institutions should have an active role (...) to play in the consolidation of democracy in México, providing society with technically and professionally well prepared individuals who are also ethical and competent citizens. This article sketches a 10-year program focusing on the development of the ethical and citizenship competencies of higher education students being implemented in a private university. Evidence from the first phase of assessment of ethical competencies is cited and discussed. (shrink)

This article examines the rise of Islamic populism in post-truth Indonesia. It particularly discusses the proliferation of Islamic populism narratives in social media that lead to hoaxes and hate speeches which appeared in series of political elections. This article argues that there has been a similar pattern of Indonesian form of populism to that of other parts of western countries, particularly the US and the UK. Like populism in the latter two countries, the issue of “indigeneity” has generated the reproduction (...) of post-truth narrates, ranging from false-news, hoaxes, and hate-speeches, blaiming the so-called “foreign” elements of the country. Islamist mobilisation is central to explain the proliferation of post-truth politics which cultivates tensions and divisions among society and reserves as a threat to democratic consolidation in contemporary Indonesia. (shrink)

: There has been an intensive scholarly debate about the developmentof Indonesia’s post-New Order democracy. Some scholars have laudedIndonesia’s surprisingly successful transition to democratic consolidation,while others have disputed such a notion, arguing that Indonesia’s democraticprocess tends to be stagnant and even regressive. However, the absence ofa progressive civil society as a result of the increasingly dominant positionof oligarchic political elites in the structure of state power and democraticinstitutions, are a number of important factors that encourage the declineof democracy. (...) This article investigates the conditions that drive the role ofmoderate Islamic organizations weredeclining rather than increasing in fighting for a democratic agenda. Referringto the research data obtained through interviews, documentation and casestudies on Nahdlatul Ulama activism - the largest moderate Islamicorganization in a predominantly Muslim country, this article arguesthat the decline of civil Islamic organizations is closely related to socio-politicalfragmentation and the strengthening of the conservative wing within moderateIslamic organizations. At the same time, the decline of the organization whichhad a glorious reputation as a champion of tolerance, pluralism, and democracyin the 1980-1990s had implications for the regression of Indonesian democracymarked by, among other things, the exclusion of religious minority groups suchas Shi’a from the public sphere. (shrink)

Legal mobilization in the courts and in political discourse has emerged as an increasingly important strategy of social movements that complements other political approaches. This is true also for women’s movements in post-socialist countries, but most research on strategic litigation has focused so far on common law countries and on supranational litigation in Europe. Using the case of Poland as an example, this article asks why references to the law are so attractive in post-socialist contexts and what can be gained (...) by this with respect to actual rights, justice and social change. It focuses thereby on strategic litigation as the most sophisticated strategy that results from other sustained movement activities connected with the law. It draws on field research, interviews with activists and analyses of primary as well as secondary sources. The article explores the reasons for using the law as the ‘master frame’ by analysing the traditions of gender and law in state socialism and during democratic consolidation. Two examples of strategic litigation, the Tysiąc case for reproductive rights and the ‘Biedronka’ cases for employment rights, are analysed and situated in the context of other legal mobilization activities. These cases set the agenda for crucial social problems and resulted in binding decisions by the courts. A broad and predominantly supportive media discourse was conducive to cultivating public opinion. These analyses support the conclusion that legal mobilization tends to directly influence law and legal practices. It has a socializing effect on the population and their legal consciousness. In aiming at both state and society, these legal strategies of the women’s movement are a modest but crucial success for democratic consolidation. (shrink)

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is a key contribution to political philosophy, media history, democratic theory and political economy – published almost 60 years ago – that left a deep imprint on the process of democratic consolidation of the Federal Republic of Germany. At the same time, the Habermasian model of the public sphere was used to test out the possibilities of democratisation beyond the nation-state. The theory of the public sphere was, however, mainly discussed (...) as a contribution to normative political theory and, as such, the applicability of its normative standards remained contested. In this article, I focus instead on a second sociological reading of Habermas’ theory of the public sphere as an exploration of the cognitive foundations of modern society. The relevance of this approach can be shown in an exemplary way by discussing the functioning of publicity, which, by creating social visibility and facilitating public opinion formation, on the one hand, provides the knowledge base of a shared social world and, on the other hand, becomes the main driver of social change through critical self-reflection. The article goes on to take a look at recent public sphere transformations in the context of digitalisation and globalisation, and argues that public sphere principles are both undermined and gain new relevance when facing the challenges of new and digital media. (shrink)

Focusing on the constitutional changes undergone since 2005 in Iraq, Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, this article explains how the constitutional limitation clauses affected the respective material constitutional transformations. The explanatory value of the limitation clauses is tested, with possible causalities (as well as non-causal relations) explored through a case study. Generalizing research arguments are offered, theorizing about the material constitutional transformation processes in authoritarian and post-authoritarian scenarios. The research arguments shed light on the limitation clauses’ potential to reveal the (...) policy intent underlying the constituent power, as well as their negative implications for a proper democratic consolidation, their effects in keeping dynamics of political immobilism, and their consequences in terms of favouring instances of authoritarian regression. (shrink)

Transitional justice scholars are increasingly concerned with measuring the impact of transitional justice initiatives. Scholars often assume that TJ mechanisms must be properly designed and ordered to achieve lasting effect, but the impact of TJ timing and sequencing has attracted relatively little theoretical or empirical attention. Focusing on Latin America, this article explores variation within the region as to when TJ occurs and the order in which mechanisms are implemented. We utilize qualitative comparative analysis to assess the impact of TJ (...) timing and sequencing on democratic development. We find little evidence for path dependency owing to the chronological order of mechanisms. We do find, however, that amnesties and trials approach a sufficient condition for democratic consolidation in Latin America; trials, however, come closest to being a necessary condition for successful democratic consolidation. (shrink)

The September 2006 military coup against the Thaksin government in Thailand has had a profound impact on Thai politics. It has arrested the process of democratic consolidation that was set in motion in the country in the 1990s. Although many of Thaksin's policies lacked the spirit of democratic governance, he was democratically elected and was ousted from power unconstitutionally. The entire tenure of Thaksin has brought to the fore two deep cleavages in Thailand. The first of these (...) is the deep divide between the rural and urban electoral constituencies. The former provided a major vote bank with little bearing on the dispersion of power and resources that was effectively dominated by the latter. Thaksin and his populist policies effectively undermined the urban electorate and strengthened the rural constituency. The second and perhaps structurally more significant tension is that which has developed between the new business elite and the old establishment elite that comprise the monarchy, military, and the bureaucracy. This old elite has been at the forefront of displacing Thaksin through its fear of loss of control over the domestic political process. The drawn out confrontation that has spawned two social movements has significantly raised the country's political temperature and there is the real potential for the situation to deteriorate into violence. Despite these changes, a number of continuities unique to the Thai political situation continue to obtain as well. (shrink)

The debate over the future of East Asian democracy centers largely on the fit between democratic values and the Confucian way of life. Some interpret Confucianism's hierarchical, communitarian, and anti-pluralistic values as a roadblock to democratic consolidation. Others interpret the Confucian traditions of dissent and accountability as comparable to liberal institutions. This article surveys this scholarly debate by dividing the literature into three theoretical camps: compatibility, incompatibility, and convergence. Additionally, the few available empirical works on the Confucian- (...) class='Hi'>democratic dynamic are discussed and the findings are applied to the three categorizations. This review article maintains that a consensus on the relationship between Confucianism and democracy remains elusive due to the divergent conceptualizations and operationalizations of the two doctrines. (shrink)

The article analyzes the concept formation of civil society, effective interaction of an individual and society as a guaranty for the development of civil society, determines factors of its effectiveness: the formation of social capital, the person on the basis of dialogue, partnership and national consolidation; attempts are made to analyze theoretical generalization of civil society in the developed countries of the West and the initial stages of the civil society in Ukraine. It is noted that the state and (...) civil society within the democratic system are interested in dialogue, partnership and efficiency of their interaction improvement. (shrink)

El autor argumenta que a pesar del éxito atribuido al programa económico durante el régimen autoritario del General Pinochet, es posible concluir que éste acentuó la desigualdad y no ha conseguido resolver el problema de pobreza. El trabajo hace un breve sumario histórico de la puesta en práctica de los programas de ajuste y las políticas de reforma económica, y concluye que el modelo neoliberal es incompatible con la consolidación democrática, e impide que la gran mayoría de la población pueda (...) disfrutar de sus logros económicos, lo que obliga a la búsqueda de una nueva estrategia de desarrollo. (shrink)

Democracy has been hailed as a global phenomenon and the most popular feature of modern political thought. Several notable efforts have been made by the global community to promote and extend democracy to cover billions of people, with their varying histories, cultures, and disparate levels of affluence. In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly resolved to support the efforts of governments to promote and consolidate new or restored democracies. The GA in this regard stated that “democracy is a universal value (...) based on the freely expressed will of people to determine their own political, economic, social and cultural systems and their full participation in all aspects of their lives. Also, while democracies share common features, there is no single model of democracy, and that democracy does not belong to any country or region, reaffirming further the necessity of due respect for sovereignty, the right to self-determination, and territorial integrity. In 2005, the United Nations Democracy Fund was created to implement projects aimed at enhancing democratic practice, promoting human rights, and encouraging participation of all groups in democratic processes. In contrast to its growing popularity, democracy has also been closely looked at with suspicion by experts- academic, political, and otherwise. Skeptics assert that “ the meaning of democracy is contested with no universal definition that is applicable.”. (shrink)

Public interest is intended to mean a consolidation of the prevailing ends of the legal and political order of a democratic state. This is a vague legal concept that generally carries the risks of confusion and manipulation. The undoubted difficulties involved in its determination often lead to it being credited (or discredited) as an ideological concept. Administrative doctrine holds that vague legal concepts do not widen administrative discretion and do not open up a route to arbitrariness. However, neither (...) the legislator nor the administration nor the judiciary have managed to avoid the risks of indeterminacy. Perhaps the best guarantee for achieving a reasonable validation of this concept is to establish a strong relationship between public interest and democracy. Public interest as distinguished from the metaphysical idea of natural law and the common good, must be above all a democratic value, in that its definition should be in the hands of democratically legitimated power and its implementation must involve the protection and realization of a greater number of private interests. From another perspective, the crisis that always grip the concept requires us to emphasize the need for public interest to be a matter for eachs citizen, that is, the pursuit of general interest involves the ability of every citizen to put a distance between it and their private interests. (shrink)

With Xi Jinping’s consolidation of political power in China, a personality cult has increasingly emerged. In this article, we analyze online documents and state news media to argue that this phenomenon is driven in part by local government officials and traditional media but most significantly by individual Chinese ‘netizens’. The current personality cult phenomenon is thus primarily society-driven and bottom-up rather than state-driven and top-down. We argue that the rise of this personality cult around Xi has its roots in (...) national anxiety in an important transitional period in China. While some worry about a possible return to the politics of the Cultural Revolution by encouraging this personality cult, others are responding to economic anxieties and to the social anxieties created by social injustice greatly due to official corruption. We conclude that the possibility of society-driven personality cults will increase over time, as a paradoxical corollary of the potential of new media to allow for the democratization and opening up of politics and culture to new voices. (shrink)

How should the ‘liberal democratic mainstream’ be fortified (or recovered) so that its members can consolidate to defeat anti-democrats? I argue for a value-pluralistic orientation to liberal democratic politics that accomodates not just the good of conflict (championed by ‘democratic agonists’), but also the good of unity. This approach, I show, accommodates various forms of contestation, but also recognizes the need to purposefully cultivate unity, and thus can be said to balance a ‘tragic ethos’ with a ‘progressive (...) patriotic ethos’: the former encourages citizens to become more vigilant in the struggle against oppression, and the latter, to share in a sense of unity and to honour liberal democracy’s vital role in preventing tyranny. Such an approach would surely not be free of tension. However, I argue that it can help liberal democrats indeed consolidate and practice ‘fugitive antagonism’ against the enemies of liberal democracy when necessary. I advance my thesis by engaging in a critical conversation with the democratic agonistic tradition, paying special attention to Chantal Mouffe, William Connolly, and Steven Johnston’s visions of democratic politics. _Contemporary Political Theory_ (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-022-00604-2. (shrink)

David Miller argues that national identity is indispensable for the successful functioning of a liberal democracy. National identity makes important contributions to liberal democratic institutions, including creating incentives for the fulfilment of civic duties, facilitating deliberative democracy, and consolidating representative democracy. Thus, a shared identity is indispensable for liberal democracy and grounds a good claim for self-determination. Because Miller’s arguments appeal to the instrumental values of a national culture, I call his argument ‘instrumental value’ arguments. In this paper, I (...) examine the instrumental value arguments and show that they fail to justify a group’s right to self-determination. (shrink)

Although the modern age is often described as the age of democratic revolutions, the subject of popular foundings has not captured the imagination of contemporary political thought. Most of the time, democratic theory and political science treat as the object of their inquiry normal politics, institutionalized power, and consolidated democracies. The aim of Andreas Kalyvas' study is to show why it is important for democratic theory to rethink the question of its beginnings. Is there a founding unique (...) to democracies? Can a democracy be democratically established? What are the implications of expanding democratic politics in light of the question of whether and how to address democracy's beginnings? Kalyvas addresses these questions and scrutinizes the possibility of democratic beginnings in terms of the category of the extraordinary, as he reconstructs it from the writings of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt and their views on the creation of new political, symbolic, and constitutional orders. (shrink)

This article argues that understanding the dangers and risks of authoritarian populism in consolidated constitutional democracies requires analysis of the forms of pluralism and status anxieties that emerge in civil and economic society, in a context of profound political, socioeconomic, and cultural change. This paper has two basic theses. The first is that when societies become deeply divided, and segmental pluralism maps onto affective party political polarization, generalized social solidarity is imperiled, as is commitment to democratic norms, social justice, (...) and liberal democratic constitutionalism. The second, is that populist political entrepreneurs excel in fomenting social antagonisms by framing shifts in the forms of social pluralism in ways that foster deep political polarization, generalized distrust and a politics of resentment against “elites,” “the establishment,” “the oligarchy,” and “outsiders.” Why populist offers resonate requires a social theoretical analysis of status/solidarity and class issues and a direct response to them. I draw on Polanyi and Habermas to develop an explanatory approach to the current crisis and the populist responses it triggers. I navigate between two inadequate approaches: that of the Hofstadter consensus school which construes status concerns and populism as retrograde, anti-modern, paranoid and meriting no direct response; and that of the neo-Marxist tradition that acknowledges the mobilizing power of “cultural factors” and status anxieties but deems them to be epiphenomena of the deeper story of economic distributive injustice. I reject this assessment and seek to take up the status/solidarity issues in ways that take them seriously, challenge populist framing and provide alternative direct responses to them. I reject the narrative frames of left populists who foment polarization and I try to present an alternative narrative framing for a future democratic politics that draws on the best in politically liberal, constitutionalist, democratic, and socialist traditions. (shrink)

This article interrogates the relationship between two apparently disjointed themes: the consensual presentation and mainstreaming of the global problem of climate change on the one hand and the debate in political theory/philosophy that centers around the emergence and consolidation of a post-political and post-democratic condition on the other. The argument advanced in this article attempts to tease out this apparently paradoxical condition. On the one hand, the climate is seemingly politicized as never before and has been propelled high (...) on the policy agenda. On the other hand, a number of increasingly influential political philosophers insist on how the post-politicization of the public sphere have been key markers of the political process over the past few decades. We proceed in four steps. First, we briefly outline the basic contours of the argument and its premises. Second, we explore the ways in which the present climate conundrum is predominantly staged through the mobilization of particular apocalyptic imaginaries. Third, we argue that this specific presentation of climate change and its associated policies is sustained by decidedly populist gestures. Finally, we discuss how this particular choreographing of climate change is one of the arenas through which a post-political frame and post-democratic political configuration have been mediated. (shrink)

The main argument of this paper is that the legal regulation of lobbying is an important factor for disciplining/curbing the undue (illicit) influence of different interest groups on the political-making process, especially in countries with post-communist and nonconsolidated democracies such as Albania. In three decades of political and economic transition from a one-party communist system to a democratic one and towards a market economy, the democratization of Albania has faced various problems, which have often led to a loss of (...) public confidence in the political class and apathy of citizens towards the political system. In many cases, this has come as a result of the perception or even the disclosure by the media and the public of corruption scandals, political clientelism, or undue influences in the decision-making processes in Albania. Surely, it can be said that political scandals of trading or exercising illicit influences on public officials can affect, as numerous cases have shown, every democratic political system in the world. However, they are more likely to occur in new democracies (post-communist) countries that face weak state structures and a legal environment that is not yet well consolidated and where a culture of informality exists alongside written rules and laws. For this purpose, that of disciplining and controlling the influences that specific interests exert on the decision-making process of governments, legislatures, or other regulatory agencies, a good part of European countries have considered undertaking legal regulatory initiatives for lobbying activity in their environments. (shrink)

Are we witnessing progress or regress in the recent increasing popularity and electoral success of populist politicians and parties in consolidated democratic nations? ... Is the innovative use of popular referendum in Great Britain to settle fundamental constitutional questions a progressive or regressive innovation? ... Similarly, is the increasing use of constituent assemblies to change constitutions across the world evidence of progress in democratic constitutionalism, or, a worryingly regressive change back toward unmediated popular majoritarianism? ... This paper reflects (...) on some of the perils and promise of framing such questions with the conceptual couplet of progress and regress. It considers four compelling critiques of the use of ‘progress’ and its cognates in sociopolitical theory, as well as arguing that such concepts are nevertheless ineliminable for our normative theories. The paper concludes by suggesting that we can avoid the most serious problems by employing only conceptions of political progress and regress that are piecemeal, pragmatic, and processual. (shrink)