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Democratization is a major political phenomenon of the age and has been the focus of a burgeoning political science literature. This book considers democratization across a range of disciplines, from anthropology and economics, to sociology, law and area studies. The construction of democratization as a unit of study reflects the intellectual standpoint of the inquirer. The book highlights the use of normative argument to legitimize the exercise of power. From the 1950s to the 1980s, economic success enabled the authoritarian governments of South Korea and Taiwan to achieve a large measure of popular support despite the absence of democracy. The book outlines what a feminist framework might be and analyses feminist engagements with the theory and practice of democratization. It also shows how historians have contributed to the understanding of the processes of democratization. International Political Economy (IPE) has always had the potential to cut across the levels-of-analysis distinction. A legal perspective on democratization is presented by focusing on a tightly linked set of issues straddling the border between political and judicial power as they have arisen. Classic and contemporary sociological approaches to understanding democracy and democratization are highlighted, with particular attention being accorded to the post-1989 period. The book displays particularities within a common concern for institutional structures and their performance, ranging over the representation of women, electoral systems and constitutions (in Africa) and presidentialism (in Latin America). Both Europe and North America present in their different ways a kind of bridge between domestic and international dimensions of democratization.
holding a vote the result of which is in all likelihood a foregone conclusion? Figure 4 Average annual number of plebiscites in Not Free and Partly Free states 1970–2010 Again, distinctions are important. Plebiscites in Not Free states are held not merely to confer legitimacy upon an autocratic regime but also to signal the total control of the authoritarian government. As Juan Linz observed ‘plebiscites [are held to] test the effectiveness of the party and its success in getting out the vote’ (Linz 2000 : 92). In earlier epochs – before efficient mass
the baleful and benign faces of a sovereign state, exercised with due process and regard for people’s common welfare, but became intertwined in an authoritarian governmentality that comprised a ‘complex form of power, which has as its target [the] population’ (censorship, intelligence gathering, disappearance), ‘a whole series of specific governmental apparatuses’ (media surveillance, tasks forces, secret detention centres, rehabilitation programmes), and the ‘governmentalisation of the state’ (state terrorism) to guarantee the survival of Argentina’s cultural
political life has been inhibited by authoritarian governments showing scant respect for human rights. Despite and because of the travails, a positive and distinctive African human rights ‘fingerprint’ or accent has emerged.13 The cadences of the African language of human rights are considered below mainly in relation to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The African emphasis in the era of human rights has been on nationbuilding, against racial discrimination and the domination by white minority populations, against the system of Apartheid, pro
This book explores the evolving African security paradigm in light of the multitude of diverse threats facing the continent and the international community today and in the decades ahead. It challenges current thinking and traditional security constructs as woefully inadequate to meet the real security concerns and needs of African governments in a globalized world. The continent has becoming increasingly integrated into an international security architecture, whereby Africans are just as vulnerable to threats emanating from outside the continent as they are from home-grown ones. Thus, Africa and what happens there, matters more than ever. Through an in-depth examination and analysis of the continent’s most pressing traditional and non-traditional security challenges—from failing states and identity and resource conflict to terrorism, health, and the environment—it provides a solid intellectual foundation, as well as practical examples of the complexities of the modern African security environment. Not only does it assess current progress at the local, regional, and international level in meeting these challenges, it also explores new strategies and tools for more effectively engaging Africans and the global community through the human security approach.
Nationalism has reasserted itself today as the political force of our times, remaking European politics wherever one looks. Britain is no exception, and in the midst of Brexit, it has even become a vanguard of nationalism's confident return to the mainstream. Brexit, in the course of generating a historically unique standard of sociopolitical uncertainty and constitutional intrigue, tore apart the two-party compact that had defined the parameters of political contestation for much of twentieth-century Britain. This book offers a wide-ranging picture of the different theoretical accounts relevant to addressing nationalism. It briefly repudiates the increasingly common attempts to read contemporary politics through the lens of populism. The book explores the assertion of 'muscular liberalism' and civic nationalism. It examines more traditional, conservative appeals to racialised notions of blood, territory, purity and tradition as a means of reclaiming the nation. The book also examines how neoliberalism, through its recourse to discourses of meritocracy, entrepreneurial self and individual will, alongside its exaltation of a 'points-system' approach to the ills of immigration, engineers its own unique rendition of the nationalist crisis. There are a number of important themes through which the process of liberal nationalism can be documented - what Arun Kundnani captured, simply and concisely, as the entrenchment of 'values racism'. These include the 'faux-feminist' demonisation of Muslims.
Bordering intimacy is a study of how borders and dominant forms of intimacy, such as family, are central to the governance of postcolonial states such as Britain. The book explores the connected history between contemporary border regimes and the policing of family with the role of borders under European and British empires. Building upon postcolonial, decolonial and black feminist theory, the investigation centres on how colonial bordering is remade in contemporary Britain through appeals to protect, sustain and make family life. Not only was family central to the making of colonial racism but claims to family continue to remake, shore up but also hide the organisation of racialised violence in liberal states. Drawing on historical investigations, the book investigates the continuity of colonial rule in numerous areas of contemporary government – family visa regimes, the policing of sham marriages, counterterror strategies, deprivation of citizenship, policing tactics, integration policy. In doing this, the book re-theorises how we think of the connection between liberal government, race, family, borders and empire. In using Britain as a case, this opens up further insights into the international/global circulations of liberal empire and its relationship to violence.
levels of per capita income in the region, but suffered severe political problems during 2001–2. The durability of electoral democracy is also not easy to generalize. Venezuela and Colombia have been free of overt authoritarian government since the 1950s, but the first elected a former coup leader to the presidency and the second is suffering from what seems like an interminable civil war. The experience of democratic rupture has been varied too. Chile has had fewer political upheavals and more policy successes than most democratic countries in the region; but the
only use, manipulate, and divert’ (Certeau 1984 : 30). In other words, strategies set the stage for action, while tactics react to given circumstances. For example, when the authoritarian government of Hungary took over most of the artistic institutions in the country by installing directors affiliated with the ruling party, it imposed a new structural landscape. When → art workers organise OFF-Biennale, they are not able to reclaim the institutions in question, but rather to ‘use, manipulate, and divert’ resources at their disposal to build a temporary pocket of
vigorous following the adoption of universal adult franchise at independence – but otherwise the case for democracy in poor countries was mostly neglected. From the 1950s to the 1980s, economic success enabled the authoritarian governments of South Korea and Taiwan to achieve a large measure of popular support despite the absence of democracy and notwithstanding serious human rights abuses. This lesson was taken to heart by the Chinese Communist Party, which began the transition to a market economy in the 1970s, the resulting economic growth thereby enabling the party to