Democracy in China: a distant dream

Since the late 1970s, China has made enormous efforts to liberalize its markets and integrate itself into the world economy. Yet these developments have not been accompanied by any meaningful degree of liberalization of the political system. This paper attempts to account for the lack of democratization in China. In particular, it reviews the process of gradual economic liberalization initiated under Deng Xiao Ping and discusses the issue of corruption. Economic liberalization, it is shown, has provided new opportunities for the political elite to translate power into wealth, thereby making it more reluctant than ever to relax its grip on power. In a system of “autocratic capitalism,” the ruling elite both in business and government lack the incentives to introduce political liberalization. At this stage, dreams that the country’s economic liberalization will someday lead to democracy remain distant.

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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.     

An Uncertain Moment: the Dilemmas Facing European Democracy

The recent European debt crisis unexpectedly prolonged the region＇s woes following the global financial tsunami of 2008. From 2012, an uneasiness has been brewing over whether the debt crisis was not just an economic crisis but also a political one. The media has been awash with terms such as ＂democratic deficit＂, ＂legitimacy crisis＂ and ＂democratic crisis＂.1 German sociologist Jurgen Habermas lamented： ＂Sometime after 2008, I understood that the process of expansion, integration and democratization doesn＇t automatically move forward of its own accord, that it＇ s reversible, that for the first time in the history of the EU, we are actually experiencing a dismantling of democracy. I didn＇t think this was possible. We＇ ve reached a crossroads.＂2 In 2013, the theme of the Political Studies Association Annual International Conference in the UK was ＂The Party＇s Over？＂.     

美国式民主与国会游说:制度空间分析

国会游说是美国的一个普遍政治现象,它之所以在政治舞台上呼风唤雨,主要原因是美国的完政民主体制提供了一个广阔的空间.美国宪法、有限政府、分权制衡、联邦制度以及司法中立等体制设计,都为游说创造了有利的条件.我们必须充分认识美国政治体制的特殊性,把握美国国会游说的运作空间,了解国会游说对美国政治体制的意义.     

Conquest and Regime Change: An Evolutionary Model of the Spread of Democracy and Peace

Whereas the literature on the democratic peace tends to treat the phenomenon as a causal law, we follow Immanuel Kant in interpreting it as a macro-historical process that expanded from a small number of democracies to about 50% of all states. In order to account for this development, we introduce an agent-based model that combines a natural-selection logic with an adaptive mechanism of regime change. The latter is implemented as an empirically calibrated, contextual rule that prompts democratization as an S-shaped function of the democratic share of a state's immediate neighborhood. A similar transition rule governs regime change in the opposite direction. The computational results show that regime change and collective security are necessary to produce realistic trajectories of democratization at the systemic level.     

U.S.Democracy Exporting to China

In need of a friend to confront the Soviet Union,the United States turned a blind eye to Chinese political and social systems during the time of the Cold War,and the two became de facto allies,a perfect example for the traditional realist argument.The Carter Administration,critical of the Soviets' human rights situation,said little about China's quite similar political system.     

主权民主:普京对俄罗斯民主理论与实践的探索

普京执政以后,主张在加强国家权威主义的基础上发展符合俄罗斯国情的民主政治。普京的“主权民主”思想,既是维护俄国家政治、经济、军事权益的现实需要,也是为保证后普京时代俄国家政治体制得以继承与发展的一项战略举措。     

Democracy in Latin America: Problems and prospects

This essay examines, by way of a series of brief country sketches, the current state of democratization in Latin America. It argues that in the formal sense progress has been significant but that only in a handful of countries has the economic development which democracy requires taken place. Many serious impediments (corruption, party weaknesses, public alienation, and poor policy implementation among them) remain. It will be decades before a definitive judgement can be reached.     

对拉美民主的解析--读《拉丁美洲的民主:公民民主的未来》

20多年前拉美民主化进程启动时,拉美精英阶层、普通民众以及国际社会都对拉美民主化发展充满期待。然而,进入新千年以来,拉美民主化进程正面临着前所未有的危机,拉美国家已有多位总统迫于民众压力提前卸任;一些国家的选举投票率下降,民众示威抗议等活动时有发生。2004年4月,联合国开发计划署发表了由专家学者完成的关于拉美18国民主现状的报告《拉丁美洲的民主:公民民主的未来》(UNDP,DemocracyinLatinAmerica:TowardsaCitizens’Democracy,Argentina,2004)。这份理论与事实并重的报告对拉美民主问题进行了独到的解析,为深入了解拉美民…     

How to Tame Your Dragon: An Evaluation of India's Foreign Policy Toward China

In the past 60 years, India-China relations have oscillated between friendship, hostility and indifference. In recent times, both countries have started competing for global economic gains and political status. In light of these events, the objective of this article is to analyze various strategies used by China against India, and India's policy response to these strategies. The article evaluates the process of foreign policy decision making in India, and traces the historical evolution of India's foreign policy towards China. It then deconstructs China's foreign policy towards India, and provides the rationale behind its strategies. The article suggests that after initial engagement with India on the question of boundary disputes, Chinese foreign policy has undergone a dramatic shift since 2007. It specifically evaluates the twin Chinese tactics of military incursions and denial of legitimacy to the Indian territories of Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. Based on an analysis of China's previous boundary disputes resolution record with neighbors, these tactics are identified as an extension of China's new strategy for resolving such disputes. The article concludes by suggesting various policy options available to India to counter China's new strategy on the Sino-Indian border.     

Terrorism and Democracy: Perpetrators and Victims

Most observers believe that the 'democratic rules of the game' provide a peaceful means for resolving political conflicts. This may be true but not all groups or even single individuals in democratic societies need play by these rules. This analysis uses two data sets: one that classifies most countries of the world based on how they were ruled in the mid-1980s, and the other on the frequency with which their nationals either perpetrated or were victimized by terrorists attacks, to investigate the relationship between terrorism and democracy. The findings suggest that stable democracy and terrorism go together. An analysis of the data reveal that terrorist attacks occur most often in the world's most stable democracies, and that, further, both the perpetrators and victims of those attacks are citizens of the same democracies.     

Trade and Democracy: A Factor-Based Approach

We study the relationship between trade openness and democracy using a data set with capital-labor ratios, trade flows, and regime type for 142 countries between 1960 and 2007. We are among the first to test a prediction that emerges from the model of Acemoglu and Robinson (2006): Relative factor endowments determine whether trade promotes democracy or not. The statistical results from two-stage least squares estimation indicate that trade is positively associated with democracy among labor-abundant countries but that trade has a negative effect on democracy in capital-abundant countries. The results are not robust, however, and thus we conclude that the evidence in support of their argument is relatively weak.     

中亚五国政治民主初探

中亚五国的政治民主问题 ,既是一个很有争议的理论问题 ,又是一个复杂而紧迫的现实问题。有些学者提出 ,中亚五国在其立国之初还有些民主的迹象 ,但随着政治体制改革的深入 ,宪法的修订 ,总统权力的扩大 ,已经再也找不到民主的影子了。本文在肯定中亚五国存在政治民主的前提下 ,对中亚五国政治民主的现状、形式、成因进行了深入的分析 ,并对其发展趋势做了初步预测。     

The European Endowment for Democracy and Democracy Promotion in the EU Neighbourhood

The European Endowment for Democracy (EED) is a recently established instrument of democracy promotion intended to complement existing EU tools. Fashioned after the US National Endowment for Democracy, the EED’s privileged area of action is the European neighbourhood. Meant as a small rapid-response, actor-oriented ‘niche’ initiative, its main task is to select those actors, from both civil and political society able to produce a change in their country. The EED represents a step forward in the EU’s capacity to foster democracy, but does not necessarily go in the direction of more rationality and effectiveness. Not all EU member states support the EED with the same enthusiasm and it is still not clear how it fits into the EU’s overall democracy promotion architecture. Its actions may be successful in a very constrained timeframe. However, recent crises at the EU’s borders would seem to call for a strategy that takes into consideration systemic hindrances, post-regime change complexities, regional dynamics and finally rival plans of autocracy promotion.     

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.     

Promise and Performance: An Evaluation of Journals in International Relations

What kind of international relations research gets published in the field's most recognized journals? Who are its authors? This study investigates the subject matter, methodology, and origin of recent research published in top international relations journals, building on earlier work that has investigated the contents of journals. This study investigates the contents of three international relations journals— International Studies Quarterly , International Organization , and World Politics — which have been consistently ranked as the top three journals in international relations. Data are for the ten most recent completed volume years, 1995–2004. This study finds that international relations scholarship in these three journals focuses on a relatively narrow range of subjects and is produced by a rather homogeneous group of scholars.