McDonaldisation of Sovereignty: A Foucauldian Analysis of Responsibility to Protect

The importance of the principle of Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) has typically been attributed either to its character as a presumed new norm (normative ontology) or to its capacity to influence international politics by mobilising political actors to protect civilians through military interventions and other forms of intervention (causal ontology), as witnessed in the recent cases of Libya and Côte d'Ivoire. This article will argue for an additional model of explanation, according to which the main significance of RtoP might best be understood by reference to its character as a political statement of global policy networks (discursive ontology) calling for the reinterpretation of the sovereignty regime. The article will apply Michel Foucault's theory of discursive fields to demonstrate that RtoP beneficially introduces human security as an additional criterion of state sovereignty, thus contributing to the “humanitarisation of sovereignty”. However, RtoP also engenders “McDonaldisation of sovereignty” and “sovereignty-consumption” mentality in that it attempts to transform and homogenise pluralistic state sovereigns into a universal, seemingly humanitarian mould. As a drawback, this McDonaldisation process excludes some victimised groups from the remit of international concern.     

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.     

De-radicalisation interventions as technologies of the self: a Foucauldian analysis

De-radicalisation has become increasingly prevalent in the UK as a strategy for tackling the threat of religiously inspired violence/extremism. Recent events, such as the tragic murder of Lee Rigby in May 2013, British citizens fighting in Middle Eastern conflicts, and the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham, have rekindled the preoccupation of policymakers with the radicalisation of British Muslims. Indeed, the work of the Prevent strategy in UK counterterrorism post-2011 has primarily been recalibrated towards a greater focus on de-radicalisation interventions, which is perceived by policy-makers to be a more streamlined and effective way of dealing with radicalised/extremist individuals. And, yet, despite the greater attention paid to de-radicalisation, the discourse on de-radicalisation is characterised by the absence of detailed research, little or no empirical evidence for policy development, and confusion surrounding its conceptual framework. This article therefore offers an alternative conceptualisation of de-radicalisation to the one found in the Prevent strategy. Drawing on the works of Foucault, I argue that de-radicalisation is best understood as a “technology of the self”. This article will enumerate the interplay between the three major types of technologies that constitute the technologies of the self: discursive, disciplinary, and confessional technology. It is argued that conceptualising de-radicalisation as a technology of the self allows us to reframe it beyond the narrow confines of counterterrorism policy and places it within wider governmental relations.     

Understanding the social construction of the democratic deficit in CSDP: a Foucauldian approach

Drawing upon the Foucauldian approach of governmentality, this article argues that the democratic deficit of the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) is the outcome of how governmental power flows in CSDP governance and more precisely within the governance practices of the policy. To support this argument, the narrative explores the secrecy/confidentiality, informality and normalisation of the exercise of governmental power in a concrete example of CSDP governance, the recent pooling and sharing initiative. The example shows that the official makers of CSDP pursue efficiency of governance to the detriment of the democratic quality of the policy, and this is related with the productive and expansive rationality of governmental power flowing in and between the EU institutions. Despite the fact that governmentality usually links to structural explanations, allowing limited space for the role of agency in politics, the article concludes with reflections on how the political agency of the governing EU political subjects contributes to the social construction of the democratic deficit of CSDP.     

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…     

Democracy and civil war: A note on the democratic peace proposition

Democracies may not fight each other, but do they fight themselves? Despite the need to better understand internal wars, empirical investigations of the democratic peace have focused on international war between democracies. We test the effect of regime type on civil wars, a class of events that is widely overlooked in the study of conflict. We find that regime type strongly affects civil war participation.     

The Practice of Deliberative Democracy: A Study of 16 Deliberative Organizations

This article investigates 16 organizations that attempt to foster better public deliberation in local and national communities. It develops a typology of these organizations and discusses them in the context of the scholarly literature on deliberative democracy. It particularly focuses upon the contributions these organizations may make to debates within the literature between advocates of relational and rational modes of deliberation. It finds that, much like the literature, practitioners of deliberative democracy wrestle with the competing demands of inclusiveness and group cohesion. Organizations attempt to solve this dilemma by stressing group action. However, this emphasis on action raises another dilemma associated with the relation between deliberative and representative models of politics. The essay concludes by suggesting that these organizations have accepted the challenge of improving public life through discourse that has been laid down by deliberative democratic theory. As such, they represent a natural experiment in deliberative democracy that deserves the serious attention of the scholarly community.     

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。     

Critical Commentary: The Assumptions of Democracy

The United States' project of democratisation in the Arab and Muslim world relies upon three core assumptions, revealed in Andrew S Natsios's account: the moderating power of democracy, a relationship between the nature of government and the condition of fear, and the tenacity of the US government in promoting democratic values in the region. Using the account of Iraq in Ambassador Edward Chaplin's article, this commentary seeks to show how each of these assumptions is contestable, and the likely consequences for the politics of the region if they do not conform to US expectations.     

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.     

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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湄公河上的民主曙光

柬埔寨地方选举平静完成 2月的湄公河失去了雨季的喧嚣,从柬埔寨的北部南下,在柬埔寨首都金边前面转弯后,静静地流向大海.和不少国际媒体的担心正好相反,2月3日柬埔寨举行的地方选举投票,是在没有暴力和威胁的平静情况下进行的,除了柴桢省有两个乡因为选票送错地方,需要延期选举外,没有其他异常情况的报告.     

Examining the Lagged Effect of Economic Development on Political Democracy: A Panel-VAR Model

The debate about the relative merits of presidentialism and parliamentarism has a long history, but it was revived in 1990 with Juan Linz's articles about the supposed perils of presidentialism and the virtues of parliamentarism. The argument presented in this review is that we are now witnessing a ‘third wave’ of presidential/parliamentary studies since 1990. The ‘first wave’ began with Linz's articles. It was characterized by a debate in which there was one explanatory variable (the regime type) and one dependent variable (the success of democratic consolidation). The ‘second wave’ of presidential/parliamentary studies began around 1992–93. In the ‘second wave’ there is more than one explanatory variable (the regime type, usually, plus the party system and/or leadership powers) and often a different dependent variable (‘good governance’ as opposed to democratic consolidation). The ‘third wave’ is quite different. This work is informed by more general theories of political science. Here, the respective merits of presidential and parliamentary regimes are not necessarily the sole focus of the work. However, its overarching approach informs the debate in this area in a more or less direct manner. The argument in this review article is that the ‘third wave’ of studies has much to offer the ongoing debate about the relative merits of presidentialism and parliamentarism.     

非洲民主化：外因与内因

影响非洲民主化的因素可以概括为外部和内部两个方面。冷战结束为非洲民主化提供了一个契机,苏联的解体、美国和法国对非洲政策的改变是促使非洲政治改革的外部因素。但与国际环境的改变相比,非洲国家内部人民要求改革的呼声和为此而采取的实际行动则是非洲民主化发展的决定性因素。内外部因素相互作用使有些非洲国家的政治改革走向成功,但有的却没有成功。