The relation between cultural values and models of democracy: a cross-national study

The relation between democracy and culture is a long-lasting subject of interest in political science. In the contemporary approach to cultural analysis, value orientations are studied as fundamental manifestations of culture. The mainstream research has focused on finding a relation between the quality of a democratic system and the existence of essential values in a society. There is, however, an understudied question as to what the relation between cultural values and models of democracy in different countries exactly is. We know that there are different models or patterns of democracy (for example, majoritarian versus consensus and participatory versus spectator democracy) discernible in various countries. But what is the reason that a particular country, or set of countries, appreciates and accepts one type of democracy, while suspecting and discrediting other types? This article aims to find an answer to this question from the perspective of cultural differences. Using the empirical data derived from the operationalization of dimensions of democracy and dimensions of culture at the national level, we examine hypotheses regarding the relation between societal cultural values and the practice of different models of democracy in various countries.     

Negotiating normative premises in democracy promotion: Venezuela and the Inter-American Democratic Charter

ABSTRACT

This article analyses negotiations on democracy promotion by looking at the case of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. It argues that Venezuela contested the concept of representative democracy during the Charter negotiations, advancing the notion of “participatory and protagonist democracy” and that, even if it was unsuccessful in its demands, the country contributed to deepening the debate on the concept of democracy, on which there is far from worldwide consensus. The article suggests that the main drivers of the negotiation process and the final agreement were domestic political changes in Venezuela, specific features of the negotiations, and the structural position of Venezuela in the field of democracy promotion in the global and regional contexts, which were, at the time, favourable to a compromising attitude to conclusion of the Charter, even if not to the concept of democracy.     

Investors,turbulence, and transition: Democratic transition and foreign direct investment in nineteen developing countries

Do profit‐seeking foreign direct investors value a country's transition to democracy? If they do, they should vote with their pocketbooks, resulting in a post‐transition increase in foreign direct investment flows. This study attempts to uncover links between transition to democracy and foreign direct investment (FDI) in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, In doing so, it addresses existing arguments about connections between democracy and investor behavior. The regions examined have not only experienced democratic transitions, they also account for the majority of the increasing flow of FDI to the developing world. This research employs time‐series cross‐sectional (TSCS) economic and political data, using ordinary least squares with panel corrected standard errors. The central finding is that transition to democracy has a negative effect on FDI. Secondarily, political instability and higher levels of democracy also deter foreign direct investors.     

Democratic innovation beyond deliberative reflection: the plebiscitary rebound and the advent of action-oriented democracy

This article investigates democratic innovations of a plebiscitary and action-oriented type that diverge from a predominantly transformative and reflective definition of democratic innovation. Conceptually, the article offers a balanced, extended framework that serves to recognize and understand a range of democratic innovations that includes non-deliberative besides deliberative models and methods. Empirically, the article offers a closer look at three exemplary cases focusing on the rebound of aggregative democracy through the (quasi-)referendum, the advent of collaborative democratic governance through concerted action, and of do-it-ourselves democracy through pragmatic activism. Ultimately, the article calls for a practice and theory of democratic innovation aware of and sensitive to the reality of democratic hybridization.     

Popular understanding of democracy in contemporary China

By taking the official state ideology into consideration, this article seeks to contribute to the study of public opinion of democracy under non-democratic regimes by analysing both qualitative and quantitative evidence collected in China. An examination of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s discourse on democracy reveals that the CCP endorses popular sovereignty and political participation while denying political contestation. Meanwhile, the concept of democracy can have three distinctive meanings among ordinary Chinese: democracy as freedom, democracy as political participation to ensure government accountability, and democracy as good socio-economic performance. Survey data show that the majority of informed Chinese respondents treat democracy as political participation to ensure government accountability, which indicates that Chinese understanding of democracy has reached to a certain degree of consensus that is closer to universally-shared idea of democracy rather than being culturally distinctive.     

Participatory democracy and ethnic minorities: opening inclusive new spaces or reproducing inequalities?

In the past decade, Latin America has emerged as the epicentre of participatory democracy innovations. Proponents argue that participation should lead to more equitable access to public goods and a greater sense of political efficacy. There has been considerable debate in the academic literature and in the public sphere over the extent to which participation can produce these benefits. Yet, while Latin America has witnessed an explosion of participatory mechanisms and related academic attention, the literature has focused on socioeconomic dimensions. There has been little attention paid to the experiences of racialized groups, such as indigenous peoples and Latin Americans of African descent. Research suggests that in order for participatory mechanisms to produce positive outcomes, they must be inclusive and offer participants a forum for real deliberation, but how do groups that have faced barriers related to racism and discrimination engage in these initiatives? Drawing on evidence from indigenous Ecuadorian and Afro-Venezuelan citizen participants, this article argues that participatory mechanisms may reproduce the very types of inequalities that representative institutions are criticized for. Comparing cases across and within different jurisdictions reveals that certain conditions enhance the ability of ethnic minorities to benefit from involvement in participatory mechanisms.     

Making meaning of citizenship: How ‘born frees’ use media in South Africa's democratic evolution

Abstract

By examining young people's habits of using the media in relation to citizenship, this article responds to calls that the starting point for research into citizenship and democracy should be the perspectives of citizens themselves. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative research with young South Africans (the ‘born free’ generation), the study sought to gain insight into how young people use media to make sense of notions of citizenship and participatory democracy in ways that are relevant and reliable to their everyday lives. The findings suggest that young South Africans are distrustful of politicians and political institutions. Media consumption was high amongst participants, as well as media trust, but the lack of relevance of media content suggests that those wanting to engage with the youth through the media need to target content through more youth-orientated genres.     

Reforming governance under authoritarianism: motivations and pathways of local participatory reform in the People’s Republic of China

Many authoritarian regimes use participatory political reform to maintain control over the societies under their rule and survive global waves of democratization. Recent studies of transitional governance have underscored the importance and intricacy of institutional reform; however, no consensus has been reached on an explanation of the dynamism that shapes institutional reforms under non-democratic systems. Why do authoritarian apparatchiks reform their institutions of governance? How can the varied pathways of these reforms be explained? Post-Deng China provides an ideal laboratory in which to study these issues. Since the 1990s, growing tensions between the Leninist polity and a gradually opened society have compelled local governments in China to test a vast set of participatory reforms. In an examination of three major local participatory budgeting reforms in China, this article maps the main pathways – representation, consultation, and transparency – of these recent sub-national participatory reforms implemented by the incumbent regime, and explores the driving forces that sculpt a reformist model over the alternatives. By introducing an “incentive-contingent framework”, this article sketches out the “repertoire” of participatory reforms in the authoritarian governance of China and suggests an explanatory framework for the variation in the strategies and forms of such institutional innovations.     

What is democracy? A reconceptualization of the quality of democracy

Works on the quality of democracy propose standards for evaluating politics beyond those encompassed by a minimal definition of democracy. Yet, what is the quality of democracy? This article first reconstructs and assesses current conceptualizations of the quality of democracy. Thereafter, it reconceptualizes the quality of democracy by equating it with democracy pure and simple, positing that democracy is a synthesis of political freedom and political equality, and spelling out the implications of this substantive assumption. The proposal is to broaden the concept of democracy to address two additional spheres: government decision-making – political institutions are democratic inasmuch as a majority of citizens can change the status quo – and the social environment of politics – the social context cannot turn the principles of political freedom and equality into mere formalities. Alternative specifications of democratic standards are considered and reasons for discarding them are provided.     

A critique of quantitative measures of the degree of democracy in Israel

The question addressed in this study is: ‘How accurate and meaningful are quantitative measures of the degree of democracy in Israel?’ With the increasing use of such measures in studies of democracy, an answer to this question becomes increasingly important. The Freedom House and Polity IV measures of democracy in Israel contend that there is a very high level of democracy, but their characterization is contradicted sharply by the views of many scholars. In seeking to account for this contradiction, we will assess the accuracy and meaningfulness of the two quantitative measures. We find that both empirical and conceptual problems affect the utility of the measures. Empirical inaccuracies are suggested by three findings: the role in Israel's democracy of the largest minority group, the Israeli Arabs, is ignored or substantially discounted; the discrepancies between the two indices suggest that at least one of them is not capturing empirical reality accurately; and neither index seems very sensitive to democracy-related events in the country. The degree to which these empirical findings are indicators of inaccuracies is dependent upon the conceptualization of democracy. Conceptually, the indices differ from each other and from the concepts used by many others who examine Israeli democracy. Two conclusions are reached: the indices measure imperfectly what they call Israeli ‘democracy’. Furthermore, a prima facie look at the scores characterizing democracy in other countries suggests that the ‘democracy’ they measure in Israel is not the same as the ‘democracy’ they measure elsewhere. The implications are several: on the academic side, the accuracy of general knowledge developed using these measures becomes questionable. On the practical side, the indices contribute little to knowledge that may be applied to overcoming the complex problems democracy in Israel is facing or the building of democracy in other countries of the Middle East. Thus, their accuracy and meaningfulness is limited.     

The Party Paradox: a Comment Nicolas van de Walle (Cornell) February 20, 2018

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes several stylized facts and implications concerning intra-party violence developed in the other articles of this special issue on intra-party violence in African electoral systems. It then turns more specifically to the implications of intra-party violence for democratic consolidation in the region, and argues that paradoxically, though parties are centrally important to democratic politics, the degree to which they are internally inclusive and participatory may not have much importance, or may indeed undermine democracy. Though they are perhaps the key actor on the path to a consolidated democracy, they tend to work best when they themselves are not internally democratic.     

Conceptualizing and measuring subnational democracy across Indian states

India is often credited for its success as the world’s largest democracy, but variation in subnational democracy across its states has not been systematically incorporated into scholarship on subnational regimes. This paper develops a conceptualization of subnational democracy based on four constitutive dimensions – turnover, contestation, autonomy and clean elections – and introduces a comprehensive dataset to measure each of the dimensions between 1985 and 2013. The inclusion of India – an older parliamentary democracy with a centralized federal system – broadens the universe of cases for the study of subnational regimes, and reveals variation across constitutive dimensions that has not yet been theorized. The paper shows that threats to subnational democracy come from multiple directions, including the central government and non-state armed actors, that subnational variation persists even decades after a transition at the national-level, and that subnational democracy declines in some states in spite of the national democratic track record.     

Attacks on Civilians in Civil War: Targeting the Achilles Heel of Democratic Governments

Previous research has indicated that democracy decreases the risk of armed conflict, while increasing the likelihood of terrorist attacks, but we know little about the effect of democracy on violence against civilians in ongoing civil conflicts. This study seeks to fill this empirical gap in the research on democracy and political violence, by examining all rebel groups involved in an armed conflict 1989–2004. Using different measures of democracy, the results demonstrate that rebels target more civilians when facing a democratic (or semi-democratic) government. Democracies are perceived as particularly vulnerable to attacks on the population, since civilians can hold the government accountable for failures to provide security, and this provides incentives for rebels to target civilians. At the same time, the openness of democratic societies provides opportunities for carrying out violent attacks. Thus, the strength of democracy—its accountability and openness—can become an Achilles heel during an internal armed conflict.     

Sanctions and Democracy

How do economic sanctions affect democratization, and should the former be used to promote the latter? Imposing economic pain on large swaths of an already vulnerable population in order to nudge democratic change poses thorny issues. Does it work, in terms of securing democratic outcomes? Even if it did, is this way of achieving change justifiable? We explore the connections between the normative and positive sides of the argument for sanctions in light of theoretical and normative progress in two decades of post-Cold War research on democracy. We argue that some sanctions policies used under specific conditions are more justifiable, but there are other sanctions policies that are less justifiable.     

Is democracy about redistribution?

Some scholars champion broad conceptualizations of democracy where distribution of economic resources is an integral part, whereas several prominent arguments drawing on narrower conceptualizations of democracy still assume that progressive redistribution is central to democratic politics. We empirically analyse individual opinions on whether progressive taxation and redistribution are among democracy's central characteristics. While many citizens around the world associate democracy with redistribution, we find that surprisingly few consider redistribution among the most central characteristics of democracy. We further analyse what factors affect individuals’ propensity to consider redistribution among democracy's most important features. Running multi-level models, we find that having lived under a communist regime and ? although less robust – currently living under democracy make individuals less likely to hold this notion. However, individuals with more to gain from progressive redistribution (that is, little education and belonging to lower classes) are more likely to hold it. We discuss how our findings help shed light on two puzzles in comparative politics; (I) why do democracies not promote more redistributive policies than autocracies, and (II) why is there no net relationship between income inequality and democratization?     

Exploring USAID's democracy promotion in Bosnia and Afghanistan: a ‘cookie-cutter approach’?

US democracy promotion is integral to the pursuit of the grand project of the American Mission. By promoting democracy America makes its role one of international engagement as opposed to one of isolation. The first part of this paper examines the political and cultural aspects of US democracy promotion in the post-Cold War era through the bi-polar framework of the case-specific versus one-size-fits-all. To better understand USAID's democracy promotion policy, the second part takes this framework and applies it to its political reform strategy in Bosnia under the Clinton administration from 1995 to 2000 and Afghanistan under the Bush administration from 2001 to 2008. This paper confirms that America's democracy promotion simultaneously employed both the case-specific and one-size-fits-all approaches. USAID programmes and projects did at times respond to local conditions but nevertheless appear to employ a blueprint design.     

Is there difference in democracy promotion? A comparison of German and US democracy assistance in transitional Tunisia

Since the 1990s, comparative scholars and constructivists have recognized the universally liberal character of democracy promotion and yet continued the analysis of difference in this area. Mainly in studies of German and US democracy promotion, constructivists have demonstrated the recurring and difference-generating impact of ideational factors. In this article, I hence assume the likeliness of difference and address the question of how we can analyse and explain those differences through a comparison of German and US democracy assistance in transitional Tunisia. I conceive of Germany and the US as a dissimilar pair and adopt a broad perspective to uncover differences at the diplomatic level and between and within the respective approaches to democracy assistance in Tunisia. Theoretically, I argue that national role conceptions hardly impact democracy assistance in a clear manner, and that roles are renegotiated in the process. I rather focus on liberal and reform liberal conceptions of democracy, which shape perceptions of the local context, and democracy assistance agencies different organizational cultures, which impact civil society support. Finally, I account for transnational dialogue and coordination as a factor mitigating differences in democracy promotion.     

The local in the global: rethinking social movements in the new millennium

In this article we discuss the failure of social movement theories to adequately understand and theorize locally based, grassroots social movements like the landless workers movement in Brazil, ‘livability movements’ in third-world cities, and living wage movements in the USA. Movements such as these come to the attention of most social movement analysts only when the activists who participate in them come together in the streets of Seattle or international forums like the World Social Forum. To date, it is the transnational character of these protests that have excited the most attention. Building on scholarship that looks at the link between participatory democracy and social movements, this article takes a different tack. We show how some social movements have shifted their repertoire of practices from large mass events aimed at making demands on the national state to local-level capacity building. It is the local struggles, especially the ways in which they have created and used institutions in civil society through extending and deepening democracy, that may be the most significant aspect of recent social movements, both for our theories and for our societies. Yet these aspects have received less attention, we believe, because they are less well understood by dominant social movement theories, which tend to focus on high-profile protest events. We look at the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement and the Justice for Janitors Campaign in Los Angeles to illustrate the important terrain of civil society as well as the role of community organizing.     

Marketization,Class Structure,and Democracy in China: Contrasting Regional Experiences

After two and half decades of market reforms in China, the question of whether reforms have created favourable social conditions for democracy and whether the country's emerging entrepreneurial class will serve as the democratic social base have become hotly debated issues in both academic and policy circles. Based upon an analysis of two regions – Sunan and Wenzhou, the two prototypical local development patterns in China – the article argues that different patterns of economic development have produced distinct local level social and political configurations, only one of which is likely to foster the growth of democratic practices. It suggests that China's political future is largely dependent upon the emerging class structure and class relations that reform and development have produced. If the market reforms and economic development only enrich a few (like the Sunan case), then the possibility of democratic transition will likely be very bleak. Nonetheless, the possibility of a brighter alternative exists, as demonstrated by the Wenzhou case. These arguments thus link China's political transition to critical social conditions, echoing Barrington Moore's influential work on the social origins of democracy and dictatorship.     

Citizen participation and democracy in the Netherlands

Although citizen participation is regarded widely as vital to democracy, some wariness may also be observed towards it in cases where democracy is equated with representative democracy. This article investigates the dominant view of the Dutch political–administrative and academic elites on the meaning of participation with respect to the quality of democracy. The analysis shows that various forms of participation that might improve the quality of democracy have been discussed in recent years, without, however, subjecting either the existing political institutions or the traditional hierarchical approach to policymaking to any form of critical review. Citizen participation is seen mainly as an instrument to strengthen and support the way representative democracy now works. Although citizen participation is thought to encompass more than merely voting in elections, participation is not seen as an essential feature of democracy, but at best, as an instrument to improve the current functioning of representative democracy.