World Bank, Governance Reforms and Democracy in Argentina

The World Bank's endorsement in the 1990s of institutional reforms as a constitutive dimension of economic development led to the adoption of a governance agenda. The paper analyses the role the Bank exercised in Argentina and explains its influence in the adoption of a new state model, of new state civil society relations and on particular key components of democracy. This paper argues that while the Bank has helped to set up an agenda of reform regarding governance problems, the push for particular policies and practices has also produced partial and contradictory results on the consolidation of democracy.     

Voting for Democracy: Campaign Effects in Chile's Democratic Transition

In a global context in which authoritarian regimes often hold elections, defeating dictators at the polls can play a key role in transitions to democracy. When the opposition is allowed to campaign for votes in such elections, there are strong reasons to believe that its efforts will be more persuasive than those of the authoritarian incumbent. This article examines the effect of televised campaign advertising on vote choice in the 1988 plebiscite that inaugurated Chile's transition to democracy. Using matching to analyze postelectoral survey data, it shows that the advertising of the opposition's no campaign made Chileans more likely to vote against dictator Augusto Pinochet, whereas the advertising of the government's yes campaign had no discernible effect. These findings suggest that the no campaign played an important causal role in the change of political regime.     

The Meanings of Democracy in Venezuela: Citizen Perceptions and Structural Change

Throughout Latin America, democratic political structures reflect liberal conceptualizations of democracy. Since the election of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela has emerged as an exception, with President Chávez sponsoring initiatives designed to foster participatory democracy. This article draws on the Venezuelan case in an effort to gain insight on the malleability of citizens' definitions of and attitudes toward democracy. Two key findings emerge. First, in data gathered ten years into the Chávez presidency, the vast majority of Venezuelans still define democracy in liberal terms, whereas relatively few have embraced participatory conceptualizations. Second, although Venezuelans as a whole are highly supportive of democracy as a form of government, no evidence is found that either support for Chávez or defining democracy in terms of participation corresponds with higher favorability toward democracy. Together, these findings suggest that Venezuela's political transformation has produced little or no discernible effect on mass sentiment regarding democracy.     

The hegemonic work of automated election technology in the Philippines

This article addresses the political role of information technology in the Philippines. It uses a theoretical framework inspired by Antonio Gramsci to examine the discourse surrounding automated elections in two major daily papers, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Business World Philippines. It argues that this discourse strengthens current conceptions of the development process by appealing to the interests not only of the dominant fraction of capital in the country today, but also to the middle class. Such operations are essential for the creation of an historic bloc capable of exercising hegemony.     

A painful break or agony without end? The stateness problem and its influence on democratization in Croatia and Serbia

That matters of the state must always be resolved before democratization seems to be a fairly common position in the scholarly literature. There are, however, also scholars that stress the importance of an alternative perspective: ‘no democracy, no state’. This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of this very important issue, advocating the need for a more nuanced argument about the relationship between the state and democracy. To do so, Croatia and Serbia serve as empirical examples as their different outcomes regarding the consolidation of democracy are explained as due to their (un)resolved stateness problem. The article uses process tracing to explain these outcomes and attempts to craft a minimally sufficient explanation of the outcomes by developing causal mechanisms.     

Who represented the Israeli middle class? The crystallization of the General Zionists from 1948 to 1949

The establishment of the State of Israel was a watershed moment in the history of the General Zionists movement. The ending of the British Mandate – characterized by its responsiveness to private enterprise – symbolized the denouement of a regulatory strategy era as an exclusive modus operandi for the general organizations. The transfer of power to a participatory Jewish democracy, whereby independent institutions drew on electoral support, required that bourgeois and petit-bourgeois leaders relinquish their reservations about the political-partisan game. For the first time, they sought to gain ascendancy over a political party in the hope that it would stand up for the rights and interests of the middle class. This article will analyze the formation process of the center party and its attempt to become a significant factor in Israeli society.     

Democracy,Power and Indigeneity

This article identifies a theoretical nexus between indigeneity and liberal democracy in three post‐colonial contexts. Like democracy, the politics of indigeneity asks questions and makes assumptions about where power ought to lie and how it ought to be shared in relation to political inclusion and national sovereignty. The interaction of indigeneity with democracy highlights the limitations of liberal theory as well as the opportunities it provides to meet indigenous claims and conceptions of justice. Exploring the ideological tensions and commonalities between democracy and indigeneity allows a contrast, in comparative context, of the proposition that in Fiji, for example, democracy is “a foreign flower” unsuited to the local environment with the argument that liberal representative democracy can, in fact, mediate power in favour of an inclusive national polity.     

La presse ‘constitutionnelle’ pendant la révolution napolitaine de 1820–1821

SUMMARY

The two pioneers in introducing direct democratic instruments in modern Europe were France and Switzerland from the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After the First World War different kinds of referendums and popular initiatives were also adopted by other countries. The Weimar Republic and the Republic of Estonia had the most noteworthy practice with direct democracy. This article examines the regulation and practice of popular rights in these two countries focusing on their function in the political system and on the relation of direct democracy and representative state organs. It seeks an answer to the question of how Parliaments were challenged by popular initiatives and how representative power reacted to direct democratic events.     

The World Bank and Policy Reform in Mexico and Argentina

This article examines the World Bank's role in the market policy reform experiences of Mexico and Argentina. It argues that while reform was driven by domestic elites, the bank played an important role, providing technical advice and financial support and helping to spread market reform ideas. The nature of the bank's involvement, however, differed substantially in the two countries because of their distinct political arrangements, histories, and geopolitical positions in regard to the United States. In the recent era of second-generation reforms, the World Bank's involvement in compensatory policy development has become more focused, although still more intense in Argentina than in Mexico. This involvement has important implications for the quality of democracy, insofar as the 1990s market reforms were formulated by insulated international policy networks unaccountable to the public. Recently, the bank has declared its commitment to involve civil society in its lending policies, a move that may have important implications for democratic development.     

A Convergence of Rival Ideologies: The Sociological and Organizational Structures of Anti-labour Politics in Turkey

?erif Mardin, one of Turkey's most prominent sociologists, recently stated that ‘there is a deep silence about the working class in Turkey'. This article will try to analyse the factors that cause this ‘deep silence', which, paradoxically, is observed even by the competing Kemalist and Islamic political actors. In other words, the ‘deep silence' refers to the common perspective on the working class of the otherwise different and competing groups. This can be called their solidaristic view, the purpose of which is essentially to provide solidarity among government officials, merchants and peasants that eventually formed the basis of European corporatism. Although it outlines the historical manifestation of the solidarist view, this paper focuses particularly on how Islamic actors maintain that view. This is a problem that requires the examination of various factors around a key question. How is it that competing groups are in harmony in the matter of their ideological positions on the working class?     

"亚洲式民主":功能及其限度

"亚洲式民主"是90年代以来引起广泛争议的重大国际学术问题.本文认为,"亚洲式民主"在东亚国家实现经济现代化的过程中发挥了双重功能,即既维持了政治稳定,又促进了经济发展.但另一方面,随着环境和条件的改变,"亚洲式民主"也日益暴露出局限性.文章最后指出,"亚洲式民主"可能是通向自由式民主的一种过渡形态.     

Vom Extremtyp zum Normalfall? Die schweizerische Konsensusdemokratie im Wandel: Eine Re‐Analyse von Lijpharts Studie für die Schweiz von 1997 bis 2007

Can Switzerland still be seen as an extreme case of federal consensus democracy, as illustrated by Arend Lijphart (1999)? A reanalysis of Lijphart's study of the Swiss political system from 1997 to 2007 clearly demonstrates that a consensus democracy has emerged that bears strong tendencies toward adjustment and normalization of the original exceptional Swiss case to the rest of the continental European consensus democracies. Switzerland can be considered a typical, rather than extreme, case of consensus democracy.     

媒体与战后日本民主主义——以《朝日新闻》社论为中心

民主主义社会中的媒体,应当承担统合民意、引导舆论与监督政治权利并同其抗衡的双重责任。然而,综观战后日本民主主义发展轨迹,尽管不能否认新闻媒体对民主主义的发展起了某种程度推波助澜的积极作用,但也应该看到,作为民主主义旗手的新闻媒体,事实上从未真正反映民意,而是仅仅将国民视为"观众"。这不但加剧了政治与民意之间距离的扩大,而且也引发了民主主义的危机。文章以《朝日新闻》社论为中心,对战后日本民主主义发展过程中媒体的作用与局限进行探讨。     

冷战与韩国一心会

二战后朝鲜半岛成为冷战的前沿阵地,美国为了执行冷战反共的战略,需要韩国有一个强大的政府和稳定的政局。美国还帮助韩国实现了军事现代化,极大地提高了军队的社会政治地位,栽培扶植了一批韩国新军人。这些军人以全斗焕等韩国陆军士官学校的毕业生为代表,建立秘密军事集团＂一心会＂。这支新军部集团在冷战的背景下迅速壮大,抓住朴正熙遇刺事件的时机,通过一次次政变夺取军权、政权,打击社会民主力量,最终从冷战的工具成为韩国的统治者。当冷战缓和、终结,民主力量壮大的时候,韩国威权统治也就到了终点。     

Breaking with tradition? South Africa–UK relations

Just over twenty years into its new era of democracy, South African foreign policy appears to be undergoing important changes in orientation and global positioning. Indeed, post-apartheid South African foreign policy has been steadily shifting away from a preoccupation with more traditional partnerships to developing alliances and coalitions with emerging economies and actors seeking to reform the global governance order. The paper seeks to understand the implications of this shift for South Africa's relationship with its most pivotal and enduring traditional ‘partner' – the United Kingdom. Thus, the paper proposes that this relationship can be best understood by considering it on different and at least partially contradictory levels, reflecting South Africa's own ambiguous identity as an emerging middle power.     

Checking Executive Personalism: Collegial Governments and the Level of Democracy*

The world is facing a tide of “cult‐of‐personality” governments that threaten liberal democracy (e.g., Trump, Duterte, Bolsonaro, Orbán). Collegial executives are a long‐established institutional alternative, predicated upon disarming this very shortcoming in the practice of democracy. These are regimes in which multiple people share power, limiting executive excess. Historiographic accounts regard the collegial executive as inimical to resolute decision‐making and responsible for democratic deterioration. Despite being used since antiquity, there is no empirical research on how collegial executives influence democracy. This paper tests, for the first time, whether collegial executives are substantially worse for democracy than single‐leader executives. The focus is on the only robust polyarchy to have alternated twice between single‐person and collegial‐executive governments: Uruguay. Using the Synthetic Control Method, the paper creates a fictional Uruguay to compare with the country’s real experience. The results show that multiple‐executive governments have had no impact on Uruguay’s level of democracy.     

Switzerland on the Road from a Consociational to a Centrifugal Democracy?

Can Switzerland still be classified as an example of consociational democracy, characterized by power sharing and elite cooperation, by the second decade of the 21^st century? Drawing on Lijphart's typology of consociational and centrifugal regimes, an analysis of the transformation of Swiss democracy reveals that while Switzerland continues to display institutional elements of power sharing, a polarizing and competitive trend can be observed in the governing style of the elite. Increasingly adversarial elite behaviour and a growing polarization within parliament and government as well as with regards to referendums indicate a growing shift toward centrifugal democracy.     

Democracy in Modern Islamic Thought

Despite the hostility they exhibit towards each other, almost all Arab secularist and radical Islamists agree that democracy and Islam are irreconcilable, and that belief in one inevitably precludes belief in the other. In this article I will focus on the beliefs of the Islamist Rachid Ghannouchi regarding this issue. First I will examine his notion of how democracy can be achieved in an Islamic state. I will then explore issues of conflict that have arisen between traditional and modern Islamist thinking relating to the compatibility of democracy and Islam. Finally I will focus on two variables that are claimed to be major obstacles to liberal democracy in Muslim states: secularism and modernisation.     

Bringing the Citizen Back In: Democratic Dimensions of Local Reforms in Germany and Japan

Since the 1990s, local governments in many countries have responded to the crisis of public finances, legitimacy, and a low level of performance with a combination of territorial and functional reforms, and the introduction of management and political reforms. This article focuses on the latter by analyzing new modes of citizen participation in Germany and Japan. It will employ theoretical assumptions from the local governance debate in order to explore the democratic dimensions of local government reforms. The question considered is concerned with the political context for new modes of participation and whether they can offer opportunities for an improvement of local democracy in terms of an increase in legitimacy and political capacity building for citizens. The conclusion will be reached that while we would expect more favorable preconditions in Germany with regard to a positive impact on local democracy, the opposite is the case: a relatively weak tradition of local autonomy and low resources of civil society actors in Japan explains their focus on co-production of services with local governments but at the same time offers greater opportunities for an improvement in local democracy.     

The role of social media in freeing Botswana from state control of the media

This paper argues that social media is important in any state which claims to be a democracy and that failure to have robust media involvement in the democratic process is likely to jeopardise democratic principles. Although Botswana has been crowned as a successful story of African democracy over time, it is argued here that she is a liberal democracy marred by some shortcomings – especially those that have to do with government-media relations. The paper contends that the media (both government and private) is an indisputable partner in the deliberative democratic process, which should be nurtured and celebrated. A case is made that relations between the Botswana government and the country's media houses has of late become hostile, as evidenced by the arrests and detentions of journalists. Premised on deliberative democratic theory, the article argues that a state which claims to be democratic, such as Botswana, needs to respect basic fundamental principles of democracy, such as freedom of the press.