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This book examines the contribution of different Christian traditions to the waves of democratisation that have swept various parts of the world in recent decades, offering an historical overview of Christianity's engagement with the development of democracy, before focusing in detail on the period since the 1970s. Successive chapters deal with: the Roman Catholic conversion to democracy and the contribution of that church to democratisation; the Eastern Orthodox ‘hesitation’ about democracy; the alleged threat to American democracy posed by the politicisation of conservative Protestantism; and the likely impact on democratic development of the global expansion of Pentecostalism. The author draws out several common themes from the analysis of these case studies, the most important of which is the ‘liberal-democracy paradox’. This ensures that there will always be tensions between faiths which proclaim some notion of absolute truth and political order, and which are also rooted in the ideas of compromise, negotiation and bargaining.
14 Kevork Oskanian and Derek Averre Security and democratisation: the case of the South Caucasus1 Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the European Union has deepened and widened from an exclusively Western European economic bloc to an enlarged supranational entity encompassing nearly all of the continent’s states, save for the non-Baltic former Soviet republics and parts of the Balkans. Created at the height of the Cold War to undergird stability by adding an economic dimension to Franco-German reconciliation (Gillingham, 1991), it subsequently redefined its
despite their continuing disagreement on Hong Kong’s democratisation (see the next section). Not only Britain, but other EEC member states, Japan, and the United States also sought to tread a fine line between condemnation and continued relations with China post-Tiananmen. Fearful of losing the China market to their competitors, West Germany and France opposed full sanctions on China. 73 Japan
Building on earlier work, this text combines theoretical perspectives with empirical work, to provide a comparative analysis of the electoral systems, party systems and governmental systems in the ethnic republics and regions of Russia. It also assesses the impact of these different institutional arrangements on democratization and federalism, moving the focus of research from the national level to the vitally important processes of institution building and democratization at the local level and to the study of federalism in Russia.
12 The Cordeliers Club and the 1 Âdemocratisation of English republican ideas Introduction The Cordeliers Club, which was established in the spring of 1790, grew out of the Cordeliers District – one of the sixty electoral districts of Paris that had been created to facilitate the elections to the Estates-General.2 It was one of the most radical of the revolutionary political clubs. The official title of the Club was the Société des amis des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, and the Cordeliers presented themselves as intent on ensuring that the radical promises
This chapter brings together the principles of attention and distributive justice and argues for a welfare democracy. It explains that welfare democracy is a system of deliberative democracy within which discursive debate occupies a much greater role in the operation of welfare services and it represents an egalitarian alternative to conservatism. This chapter concludes that both associative and deliberative approaches to democracy are essential to a new politics of equality.
This chapter positions the 1970s as a transition period before stress became normalised in British society. Focusing on the 1960s and 1970s it argues that the public, popular discourse of stress increasingly revealed in newspaper reporting, shifted from perceiving workplace stress as a problem of the managerial class to applying the label of stress to almost anyone at any life stage in any circumstances. However, examination of three case studies of individual accounts of work stress in the early 1970s argues for the relatively limited impact of this public discourse on individual understanding and interpretation of symptoms of stress, among sufferers, colleagues and families alike. It argues that such accounts persisted in privileging physical symptoms and that attitudes towards the stressed continued to focus on the individual’s weakness rather than the contribution of their environmental or social context.
approached human rights – to do with our good relations with Iran, for example. There was a tension, but I don’t think there was an ontological contradiction. I think it is possible to work for a more democratic order – diffusing power, creating a more stable balance of power – while strengthening and democratising certain value systems. Doing so in a cooperative way, too. People might say it was just Brazil trying to extend its power and join the [UN] Security Council. But, in projecting soft power, I believe we were also promoting positive things: South
over the narrative. Such a shift could take the academy a step further towards democratising the knowledge production process outside the walls of the university by putting more authorship in the hands of non-academics. Still, there is an inherent tension at play here, particularly if source material is primary research or direct testimony. To this we return to the guiding question: to whom does a story belong? We see no easy answers to this, but the co-created approach we took within
This book builds a theoretical framework through which previously neglected international factors are brought into the analyses of transitions to democracy. It then explores the case of Algeria. It contributes to the literature on democratisation and provides an analysis of Algerian politics during the last two decades. More specifically, it examines how international variables influence the behaviour and activities of Algerian political actors. By bridging the comparative politics and international relations literature, the book offers a new understanding of the initiation, development and outcome of transitions to democracy. International factors, far from being marginal and secondary, are treated as central explanatory variables. Such external factors were crucial in the failed Algerian transition to democracy, when the attitudes and actions of key international actors shaped the domestic game and its final outcome. In particular, the book looks at the controversial role of the Islamic Salvation Front and how its part was perceived abroad. In addition, it argues that international factors significantly contribute to explaining the persistence of authoritarian rule in Algeria, to its integration into the global economy and its co-optation into the war on terror.