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351. Authoritarianism Goes Global: Countering Democratic Norms

Author:
Alexander Cooley
Publication Date:
07-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
Over the past decade, the international backlash against liberal democracy has grown and gathered momentum. Authoritarians have experimented with and refined a number of new tools, practices, and institutions that are meant to shield their regimes from external criticism and to erode the norms that inform and underlie the liberal international political order. These global political changes and systemic shifts have produced new counternorms that privilege state security, civilizational diversity, and traditional values over liberal democracy. The effects of these changes are most visible in the narrower political space that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are facing, the shifting purposes that regional organizations are embracing, and the rising influence of non-Western powers as international patrons.
Topic:
Security, Authoritarianism, Democracy, Diversity, and NGOs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

352. Economics and the Near-Death Experience of Democratic Governance

Author:
June Sekera
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
Non-market public production makes up a quarter to a half or more of all economic activity in advanced democratic nation-states. Yet here in the United States the public economy’s ability to function productively on behalf of the citizenry is seriously imperiled. In this paper I trace the connection between mainstream, market-centric economics and what James Galbraith has called “the collapse of the public governing capacity.” Marketization and its confederate, privatization, have led, sometimes intentionally, to the evisceration of governmental capacity, the downsizing of democracy and the dismantling of traditions of responsible public administration that are grounded in law and the Constitution. Over the last decades, apostles of the market have intruded upon government a pseudo-market with outcomes ranging from the unfortunate to the disastrous. So-called “New Public Management” –“a child of neoclassical economics,” – has colonized and weakened every level of public administration. Hollowed out through the cathartic of a “competition prescription,” the public sector time and again seems to fail us, so systems of performance measurement transplanted from profit-driven business models are being imposed across government, ostensibly to improve results and better supply what the populace wants and needs, but instead often leaving harm in their wake. We find our most basic public services and rights in jeopardy: from clean air and water to unencumbered judicial due process. While government “reinventors” boast about shrinking government, in reality a “submerged state” mushrooms through an explosion of private profit- making contractors and behind the hidden hand of tax expenditures. Yet, as I argue in this paper, there is no viable explanatory theory of the public non-market economy or of production within it, nor any consensus about how to measure public purpose or assess results in the public domain. Instead, a market-centric economics prevails in textbooks, university teaching and public policy, while private, market-mimicking motivations and values displace public purpose in measurement schemes.
Topic:
Governance, Democracy, Public Sector, Private Sector, and Non-Market Economy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

353. Isabelle Ley. Opposition im Völkerrecht: Ein Beitrag zur Legitimation internationaler Rechtserzeugung [Opposition in International Law: A Contribution to the Legitimation of International Law-Making]

Author:
Jan Klabbers
Publication Date:
07-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Isabelle Ley, in her exemplary dissertation defended at Humboldt University, takes the emergence of regulatory international law as her starting point and aims to investigate how its democratic legitimacy could be enhanced. For her, democracy is not just a matter of particular institutions or practices but, rather, of open and possibly oppositional politics. Building on the work of Claude Lefort and, in particular, Hannah Arendt, she develops a framework for discussing democracy in international law conceptualized as the possibility for opposition. A democratic polity is one where every participant has the possibility of helping to take care of the common world, as Arendt might have put it, and presupposes open politics. This politics is, so to speak, politics for the sake of politics or politics in the Olympic spirit: what matters is not so much winning but taking part; what matters is not so much which policies will be adopted but the political process itself. Following Aristotle, taking part in public affairs is viewed as the most salient manifestation of human excellence: man being a political animal, he can do no better than take part in the political process – this is where individual happiness is achieved and, therewith, the ultimate justification of democracy.
Topic:
International Law, International Organization, Political Theory, and Democracy
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

354. Research on Public Trust in the Police in Turkey

Author:
Nur Kırmızıdağ
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV)
Abstract:
Research on Public Trust in the Police in Turkey, is based on survey data collected on a large-scale sample representative of Turkey. The report provides insights on perceptions of the public with regard to effectiveness/performance, legitimacy of the police and thereby lays bare the level of trust different segments in Turkey attribute to the police. The report utilizes sophisticated statistical methods and, for the first time in Turkey comprehensive scientific models on police trust are being applied giving the opportunity to comparatively analyze the results. Thus the following questions are examined in the report: What is the level of public trust towards police? What are the main components of police trust in Turkey? In how far do police legitimacy and police effectiveness/performance affect police trust in Turkey? What are the factors influencing public’s perception of police legitimacy and effectiveness? How does public’s perception of police legitimacy and effectiveness affect cooperation with and compliance to the police? How does this perception affect public’s toleration of police misconduct? How does public perception of police legitimacy, effectiveness and trust change with regard to different demographic factors in Turkey (political affiliation, ethnic background, religious affinity etc.)?
Topic:
Security, Law Enforcement, Democracy, Legitimacy, Statistics, and Police
Political Geography:
Turkey and Middle East

355. The 2015 Spanish General Election: Political parties’ international priorities

Author:
Elcano Royal Institute
Publication Date:
12-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Elcano Royal Institute
Abstract:
The Elcano Royal Institute, which is about to celebrate its 15th anniversary, has been working on three tasks over the course of its short but active history that are appropiate to a laboratory of ideas. In the world of think tanks, where the English language predominates, the three words that denote these tasks all begin with the letter “A”: analysis, assessment and advice. Our institute does indeed concern itself with carrying out international and strategic studies with the greatest degree of rigour possible and, as a result, throughout this time we have been providing both our society and the foreign reader interested in a Spanish perspective with serious and sophisticated knowledge on these matters. But our efforts extend beyond the provision of solid and detached analyses, because there is also a significant critical and, above all, prescriptive component, which is what sets us apart from an exclusively academic research centre. Setting out from a position that is independent but also committed to the collective interests of the country, our reports and documents venture to assess prospective opportunities and threats, indicate our shortcomings, identify good comparative practice, and note potential innovations that might enable Spain (whether its public sector, its civil society or its population in general) to insert itself into globalization and the process of European integration.
Topic:
Globalization, International Affairs, Elections, and Democracy
Political Geography:
Spain

356. Turkey’s Democratic Struggles

Author:
POMEPS
Publication Date:
06-2015
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
Turkey Brief 26 Turkey’s Democratic Struggles POMEPS Briefing 26 — June 17, 2015 On June 7, Turkish voters denied a majority to the long-ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and pushed the Kurdish Democratic People’s Party (HDP) over the electoral threshold for the first time. A number of critical trends in Turkish politics came together in the June 2015 parliamentary election: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian ambitions, Kurdish political evolution, an unpopular Syria policy and the stunning break between AKP and the Islamist Gulen movement. POMEPS Briefings 26 “Turkey’s Democratic Struggles” brings together more than a dozen essays published by the Project on Middle East Political Science and the Monkey Cage that help to make sense of the stakes and results of this crucial election.
Topic:
Democratization and Democracy
Political Geography:
Turkey

357. Dissatisfied Voters and No Alternative: The Unchallenged Position of Political Elites in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Author:
Ashley W. Hooper
Publication Date:
11-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Centre for Minority Issues
Abstract:
In February 2014, violent protests erupted in Tuzla and quickly spread to multiple other Bosnian cities, including Mostar and Sarajevo. Initially, the protests were labeled as the “Bosnian Spring,” a term used to describe a state that is undergoing revolutionary change; however, this term was used prematurely in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina and by April the protest movement had completely lost momentum. The cause for dissatisfaction among citizens was driven by nearly a decade of political stagnation. The lack of political progression can largely be attributed to the legacy of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which brought an end to the ethnically driven atrocities. However, the agreement also formed a uniquely complicated governmental structure based on ethnicity—providing a political framework in which elites are able to evade accountability. Political competition has been greatly decreased by the continued presence of wartime-ethno parties, which dominate the political discourse—perpetuating fear and mistrust among the electorate. I argue that there is a crisis of democratization halting the political progression and European integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina caused by a lack of both political accountability and competition.
Topic:
Political Theory, Elections, and Democracy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

358. An Inventory of Misuses of Democracy in Western Balkans

Author:
Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos
Publication Date:
12-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP)
Abstract:
Since the early 2000s in Western Balkans (WBs) powerful groups have misused democracy in numerous ways. Governing elites have tolerated the capture of public policy sectors by business conglomerates and have also invited in selected businessmen to capture such sectors. Elites have adapted to inherited frail institutions and have created other deficient institutions to serve their changing strategies. To a lesser extent, the same holds for policy capture by relatively privileged occupational groups of insiders, who are less powerful than elites. On their way up to enrichment and reproduction of relatively privileged status, elites and privileged occupational groups have not encountered the obstacles usually found in other European democracies, such as a relatively strong parliament, judiciary, civil society, mass media and a public bureaucracy functioning with a minimum of autonomy from the government. Policy capture would have been impossible without first achieving and consolidating the supremacy of the government over the legislature and the judiciary. This vital for contemporary democracies balance of powers has been destroyed in WBs to an extent larger than in other European democracies. It will not be rectified, as long as civil society and parliamentary opposition remain weak, while media pluralism is restricted in WB democracies.
Topic:
Democracy
Political Geography:
Balkans

359. Nigeria's 2015 Elections: Lessons and Prospects for Democratic Consolidation

Author:
Nkwachukwu Orji
Publication Date:
06-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
Despite widely held concerns about the likelihood of a destabilizing outcome, Nigeria suc- cessfully conducted its general elections on March 28 and April 11, 2015. The peaceful and positive result came to many as a surprise, considering the difficult political and secu- rity environment in which the elections were conducted. Five major obstacles had stood in the way of their going smoothly: the competing claims to the presidency by northern and southern politicians; a keenly contested campaign smeared by inflammatory messages; the grave security threat posed by the Boko Haram insurgency; allegations of politically motivated postponement of the elections; and gaps in electoral preparations. This briefing assesses Nigeria’s 2015 general elections, highlighting factors that enabled the country to avoid larger-scale violence and lessons that can be learned from its experience.
Topic:
Elections, Democracy, and Violence
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

360. Political Corruption and Partisan Engagement: Evidence from Brazil

Author:
Matthew S. Winters and Rebecca Wietz-Shapiro
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
In long-standing democracies, the partisan attachments of most citi- zens are stable and not responsive to short-term political events. Recent studies from younger democracies, however, suggest that partisanship may be more malleable in these contexts. In this paper we develop hypotheses about how political corruption might affect voter attachment to the parties of corrupt offi- cials or to the party system as a whole. Using data from an original survey exper- iment in Brazil, we show that prompts about political corruption shift patterns of partisan attachment for highly educated respondents – specifically, that cor- ruption associated with one political party reduces nonpartisanship and signifi- cantly increases identification with other political parties. In contrast, we find that information on corruption has no consistent measurable effect on partisan- ship for less educated respondents. We conclude by discussing the implications of malleable partisanship for democratic accountability.
Topic:
Corruption, Democracy, Accountability, and Participation
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, and Latin America