从“自由民主”到“可控民主”:俄罗斯政治体制改革的经济学解析与启示

从"自由民主"到"可控民主"俄罗斯的民主政治改革引起了广泛关注.本文在梳理俄罗斯政治体制改革曲折历程的基础上,力图运用放宽了假定条件的"新比较经济学"分析框架,解读俄罗斯政治体制改革与经济绩效之间的因果关系.文章认为,关于俄罗斯实行"可控民主"制度原因的诸多分析中,历史传统回归论是正确的,所以"可控民主"在俄罗斯将具有持久的生命力.     

"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.     

Vote as you Think: Determinants of Consistent Decision Making in Direct Democracy

This study investigates the conditions under which Swiss citizens take consistent decisions, that is, decisions that reflect their argument‐based opinions, during direct‐democratic ballots. In line with recent work on cognitive political behavior, we expect the drivers of consistent voting to be found at the individual and contextual level. At the individual level, we argue that political knowledge positively affects consistent decisions. At the contextual level, we anticipate a positive effect for campaign intensity, complexity and negativism. We estimate hierarchical logistic models based on VOX survey data (1999‐2005) and original data that captures the nature of political campaigns. Our results support our expectations for the situational level and (partially) for the individual factors.     

Institutional Openness and the Use of Referendums and Popular Initiatives: Evidence from Swiss Cantons

Despite the growing interest in direct democratic institutions—like referendums and popular initiatives—the empirical evidence on the relationship between institutional openness and use is still sparse. We use a novel data set on the institutional openness and test its link to actual voting behaviour for ballots in the Swiss cantons for the period 1970‐1996. We find no robust relationship between the number of cantonal ballots and openness, measured by the number of signatures necessary to force a ballot and the time limit within which they have to be gathered. We observe, however, that openness is negatively related with voter participation. Having to gather more signatures apparently increases the awareness in the population at large, creates more information about the issues at hand, and thus induces more voters to turn out.     

The Making of Democratic Citizens: How Regime‐Specific Socialization Shapes Europeans’ Expectations of Democracy

When analysing support for democracy, researchers tend to assume that ‘democracy’ is a concept that travels across countries. This paper argues that democracy is not the same thing for every citizen, because collective and individual socialization experiences strongly shape the criteria citizens expect a democracy to fulfil. Based on the literature on varieties of democracy, I suppose that individual expectations of democracy are influenced by regime‐specific socialization, and depend on the democratic history, authoritarian legacies, and the prevalent democratic model. Due to socialization and democratic learning, individuals acquire democratic preferences and value those dimensions more which they experience in their own democracy. Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and the Democracy Barometer, I test how the national democratic context in 26 European democracies influences these individual democratic ideals. I find evidence for both socialization and participation effects of the democratic context on citizens’ democratic expectations.     

Seducing the people: Populism and the challenge to democracy in South Africa

Recent ructions in South Africa's ruling African National Congress have been described from time to time in the media as signalling a dangerous shift towards ‘populism’. The article examines this contention. It argues that South Africa is witnessing a significant challenge to the founding precepts of constitutional democracy. This challenge emanates from the (populist) equation of democracy with ‘the will of the people’. The article unpacks some of the implications of reducing democracy to majoritarianism. It provides also an analysis of why populist appeals of various kinds have been so appealing to South African voters 15 years into democracy. The article argues that the challenges that are currently being experienced in relation to democratisation in South Africa have to do with the inherent tension between the animating ideology of democracy, which suggests that power resides with the people, and the practical functioning of democracy, which relies on the devolution of power to the representatives chosen by a section of the people who rely on order and predictability in the polity in order to govern in a workable way. Populist appeals, it is argued, exploit this tension. But what makes it possible for this strategy to succeed is the failure on the part of political elites to engage in the process of building democracy by way of inculcating respect for democratic values.     

On the Ruins of the Democratic Transition: Human Rights as an Agenda Item in Abeyance for the Brazilian Democracy

This article discusses one of the main controversies in Brazilian society at this moment: the development of a national policy of human rights and the return of the debate on political crimes committed under the military dictatorship from 1964 onwards. The main hypothesis associates the barriers imposed on that human rights policy to the way in which democracy was retaken in the country and the model on which important segments related to the authoritarian government occupied strategic roles. Even today, this presents a real difficulty in terms of recovery and, if necessary, punishment for the crimes committed by the government during the dictatorship, which in turn makes the development of human rights policies more complicated.     

Representing Women in Chinese Village Self-Government: A New Perspective on Gender,Representation, and Democracy

ABSTRACT

Recent feminist debate about how to achieve the substantive representation of women in government has been conducted largely in relation to national parliaments in democratic states. This article brings a new perspective by examining grassroots rural government in contemporary China – an authoritarian state, which, however, began implementing village “self-government,” including elections, in 1987. The article draws on qualitative fieldwork in the Chinese provinces of Zhejiang and Yunnan. The authors went into this fieldwork with an understanding that women's substantive representation, democracy, and gender equality are mutually constituted and with an expectation that village self-government might make a much-needed contribution to the achievement of all three. However, we ran into trouble with this analytical framework. First, there were marked variations in villagers’ practices and understandings of “representation.” Second, we found that democracy was not a prerequisite for substantive representation. Third, most villagers we talked with claimed that “men and women are equal” and there was little conception of villagers’ interests diverging by gender. This article explores our analytical “trouble,” with a view to advancing scholarship on constraints to democracy in authoritarian states and suggesting fruitful directions for feminist theorists interested in the relationship between gender, representation and democracy.     

When the Walls Come Crumbling Down: The Monarchy and Thai-style Democracy

Although many people date critical commentary on the Thai monarchy to Paul Handley's explosive biography The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej, this article demonstrates the existence of a consistently critical body of work, in the English language, that emerged contemporaneously with the king's growing stature from the 1980s. It also considers the conditions that have led to wider and more vocal criticisms since the coup of 2006. The primary focus is an exploration of new contributions to this critical commentary by the authors of the edited collection Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand. It identifies tensions across the chapters, including different emphases on liberalism and conservatism, and on the symbolic functioning of the monarchy.     

“Land Grabbing” in an Autocracy and a Multi-Party Democracy: China and India Compared

ABSTRACT

Both China and India have witnessed extensive land expropriation by the state from farmers for use in industrialisation and urbanisation projects. Land conflicts have ensued from these developments. This article poses two questions: (i) Why do we see a similar escalation of land dispossession in both countries, despite their distinctively dissimilar political systems, one being a one-party authoritarian regime, the other being a multi-party democracy?; and (ii) How does the different regime type affect the politics of dispossession? Despite their diverse political institutions, government officials have been given similar incentives to chase growth by developing land, but the institutions create diverging environments for aggrieved citizens to mobilise for collective action. While it is unsurprising that the interests of the poor and weak are not protected in an autocracy, democracy provides no automatic safety valve in defending marginalised citizens either.     

Post‐conventional Political Cultures via Processes of Direct Democracy: Theoretical Considerations Based on Jürgen Habermas and Lawrence Kohlberg

In this article, it is proposed to differentiate political cultures in two dimensions. First, inspired by Habermas' distinction of the contents of discourse, a distinction is suggested between moral, ethical‐political and pragmatic elements of political culture as well as of an element of culture of balancing interests. Second, inspired by Kohlberg's stage models for the development of the individual moral consciousness and for moral culture, a distinction is similarly suggested between two pre‐conventional, two conventional and two post‐conventional collective stages of political culture. It can be shown that from a normative point of view, only deliberations made in a post‐conventional political culture can produce reasonable or at least fair results. Conceptual considerations indicate processes of direct democracy as the method for promoting post‐conventional political cultures. The more liberty that the citizens have to formulate and trigger processes of direct democracy, the more one can expect from them to generate post‐conventional political cultures.     

民主不是万应灵丹--评菲律宾和印尼的总统直选

民主制度属于政治文明.在一个国家,政治文明的发展必须与物质文明和精神文明同步,如果太过超前,就有可能出问题.民主制度的建立和完善必须循序渐进,既不能超越历史发展阶段,也不能超越物质文明和精神文明,这是世界各国,尤其是许多发展中国家政治发展的历史所证明了的一个真理.     

The Problematic Relation between Direct Democracy and Accountability in Latin America: Evidence from the Bolivian Case

During the wave of constitutional reforms, which started in the late 1980s, Institutions of Direct Democracy (IDD) have been incorporated into most Latin American constitutions, and over the past fifteen years, an increased use of these instruments by Latin American governments has been observed. This article deals with two questions related to this phenomenon: (1) what motivated the adoption and use of these institutions; and (2) what consequences can be expected with regard to democratic accountability in the region? To answer these questions, first, a classification of IDD is developed. In this, special attention is paid to the ability of the various types of IDD to introduce accountability into the representative structures of presidential systems. This classification is subsequently applied to analyse constitutional frameworks and direct democratic experience in the region. The findings suggest that the rise of IDD in Latin America was mainly induced by executive‐legislative conflict and has done little to foster accountability. Finally, therefore, a detailed account of the specific constellation that led to the adoption of IDD in Bolivia is analysed in order to illustrate under which circumstances political actors choose to adopt and employ these tools.     

The Transition to 'New' Social Democracy: The Role of Capitalism, Representation and (Hampered) Contestation

This article argues that existing accounts of the transformation from 'traditional' to 'new' social democracy has thus far only identified the contextual changes that have prompted this move. In doing so, they have failed to account for the motives of social democratic party actors in undertaking the transition to 'new' social democracy in response to those changes. The article draws upon a critical realist method, and Marxist and anti-representational theories, to conceptualise 'traditional' social democratic party relations as suffering from tensions between constituents' demands for decommodification, the attempt by party elites to contain (and thereby 'represent') those demands and the (in)compatibility of this process of containment with the need to recommodify social relations in the light of periodic crises in contemporary capitalism. It argues that these tensions explain the attempt by party elites to promote the move towards 'new' social democracy, the (eventual) acquiescence of party constituents to those attempts and the subsequent exit from social democratic constituencies which has resulted. The argument is made with reference to the British Labour Party and Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).     

A Divided Family: Race,the Commonwealth and Brexit

Abstract

The Commonwealth has long been conceptualised as ‘a family of nations’ in a reflection of the size, diversity and shared values of the organisation. As the discussion in post-Brexit Britain engages with questions of race and immigration, it is important to consider the role the Commonwealth played in the referendum campaigns. The combination of the Leave campaign’s promises to reinforce ties with ‘kith and kin’ in Commonwealth countries with the xenophobia that defined the campaign prompts the question what exactly does the Commonwealth mean in modern Britain? The EU referendum revealed two Commonwealths—one reflecting the backgrounds of Britain’s ethnic minorities, and one centred on the three majority white nations of Australia, New Zealand and Canada. This article will offer an investigation of these conflicting visions of the Commonwealth in the referendum, as well as the voting motivations of Commonwealth nationals and British citizens of Commonwealth descent.     

The Making of the Informed Voter: A Split‐Ballot Survey on the Use of Scientific Evidence in Direct‐Democratic Campaigns

Literature claims that scientific evidence makes better democracies. This paper analyses whether and which voters choose empirical evidence in the form of policy evaluation results when informing themselves about issue‐specific votes. The analysis is based on a split‐ballot survey where participants chose media items with different content to make a decision on a specific issue. Results show that voters do indeed choose evidence‐based information, especially if their involvement with the issue is high and if they are well educated and that they choose a higher amount of such information if they are also politically engaged. In a setting that fosters political engagement and provides policy‐relevant information, the findings imply that voters want to be informed when making a democratic issue choice. Involved and engaged voters might be a solution to sceptics against direct democracy out of fear of uninformed decisions and post‐factual populism.     

Asian Contributions on Democratic Dignity and Responsibility: Rizal,Sukarno and Lee on Guided Democracy

Democracy as political doctrine has its fair share of controversies over the adjudication of rights and the prioritization of the individual over the community. These debates have largely derived from its western genesis. The current stage of global development has however supplied many non-western perspectives on democracy which suggest that any consensus over an identifiable body of democratic thought is likely to witness more sub-diversity than ever before. This article argues that contemporary Asian thinkers on the philosophy of government have a valuable contribution to make to democratic discourse notwithstanding the clichés of the Asian Values debate of the 1990s. By performing a sampled reading of José Rizal, Sukarno and Lee Kuan Yew on their diverse interpretations of guided democracy in a nationalistic context, it will be shown that these three modern Southeast Asian political thinkers would offer some tentative Asian insights on the democracy of dignity and of responsibility.

实用主义与儒家思想的对话--评《死者的民主》

从表面上看,把实用主义和儒家思想并置,这不仅是一个时间上的错误,而且是一个空间上的错误.实用主义是一个极其现代的哲学思潮,它一般被公认为美国文化的基本价值体系,虽然现实中的美国社会与哲学意义上的实用主义并不能一一对应.而儒家思想几乎与中华文明一样古老,它虽然已不再享有往昔的荣光,却早已化为中华民族的喜怒哀乐.然而,思想史上的事件常常具有戏剧性,最古老的常常能与最现代的共鸣,东方的常常能与西方的沟通.实用主义与儒家思想的对话当属这样一种典型的文化史景观.     

Support for Democracy in Times of Crisis: Diffuse and Specific Regime Support in Portugal and Greece

In the context of a cross-national economic crisis, questions about democratic legitimacy are again topical. We explore the question of democratic legitimacy in Portugal and Greece by employing the conceptual differentiation between diffuse and specific regime support. Our findings indicate that while specific support has fallen in both countries, only Greece has experienced a precipitous fall in diffuse support, suggesting a link between regime performance and support for democracy. Individual-level analyses do not reveal any clear patterns concerning the impact of long-term societal factors or short-term economic considerations. Due to data quality limitations the paper has a predominately exploratory nature.     

The Disappeared and the Mesa de Diálogo in Chile 1999–2001: Searching for Those Who Never Grew Old

This paper describes steps taken in order to deal with information regarding human rights abuses in Chile during the Pinochet regime, focusing on the most recent initiative, the Mesa de Diálogo (1999–2001) whose final report was given to president Lagos in January 2001. Two national initiatives, i.e. the establishment and reports of the Comisión de Verdad y Reconciliación (1991) and the following-up of this inquiry by the Corporación Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación (1996) preceded La Mesa and are discussed in this paper. The paper concludes by suggesting that the Chilean transition to democracy will remain incomplete if the fate of the disappeared is not fully known and legally investigated.