Workers,parties and a “New Deal:” A comparative analysis of corporatist alliances in Mexico,and the United States, 1910–1940

Mexico experienced the twentieth century’s first social revolution, a decade of struggle from which emerged a new political regime – a post-revolutionary authoritarian or single-party state one – with President Lázaro Cárdenas as leader by 1934. This post-revolutionary creation included organized labor and peasants, a strong interventionist state and a hegemonic party. Cárdenas’ U.S. counterpart, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, too, was leading dramatic ‘New Deal’ institutional and political revolution in the 1930s and 1940s that spawned a new order of expanded federal government, a renovated Democratic Party, and new movements and interest groups, notably, labor. Both nations featured the same major actors: the state, political parties, and organized labor. Both presidents calculated that preserving labor alliances was crucial for formation and legitimization of a new political order, for maintaining conditions conducive to private-sector investment and economic growth, and for political and economic crisis management. Labor’s growing role reshuffled corporatist alliances within and between international neighbors. This study places Mexico and the United States in comparative context in the early twentieth century and analyzes elite control and inclusion of organized labor in transformation of political landscapes in two different political regimes – a democratic one couched in an established constitution and a post-revolutionary authoritarian one born of a bloody upheaval.     

The Four Predicaments of American Liberalism: Challenges and Opportunities in a Presidential Election Year

The presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have indicated an apparent resurgence in American liberalism. More significantly, they have underlined both the highly problematic nature of the liberal legacy within the Democratic Party and the difficulties of mobilising liberal themes in the battle of ideas that characterises the conduct of politics in the United States. The article examines the difficulty of the issue by reference to four predicaments that persistently condition the status and deployment of liberal themes. In analysing the problems of strategy, historical narrative, political positioning and ideational engagement, the study analyses the negative connotations of contemporary liberalism, the multiple limitations of liberal reform, and liberalism's deficiencies in the politics of America's core ideas. A revived liberal prospectus will depend upon the ingenuity of liberal forces in challenging the conservative ascendancy in ideational competition, and in renegotiating a public settlement of their own with the central strands of political legitimacy.     

论民主成本

民主成本问题关系到社会主义民主政治建设能否健康发展。民主成本主要由制度成本、实行成本、机会成本、风险成本等构成;影响民主成本的因素主要包括历史文化传统及城乡差别,制度因素,社会因素,科技发展水平等;控制民主成本的对策主要包括树立民主成本意识,推进宪政建设,构建中国特色的民主模式,建立民主成本的分析、评价、监督与责任机制,发展民间组织。     

Broadening ‘business’, widening ‘peace’: a new research agenda on business and peace-building

ABSTRACT

What role does business play in peace-building and conflict reduction? This special issue tackles this complex question, exploring varied business efforts to bring peace through six rigorous qualitative cases in Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Somaliland, Brazil, Guatemala and El Salvador. Three main findings cut across this issue. First, local context is paramount to success; there is no one universal formula that a regulator, business or peace practitioner aiming to advance a business agenda for peace can employ for operational success. Second, rather than compartmentalising ‘peace’ into projects that often carry ‘win-lose’ consequences for local communities, business-peace projects must first understand who they are empowering so that they do not unwittingly make the conflict worse. Third, investment and access are deeply intertwined in fragile and conflict-affected areas, and business-peace projects that simply try to improve business access typically exacerbate inequalities favouring elite actors. We close with a discussion on how to take the business and peace-building agenda forward with scholarship and policy, stressing that business-peace projects must be assessed at the societal and not project level if their impact is to be truly beneficial for a political economy of peaceful development.     

坚持科学执政、民主执政、依法执政——兼论我国社会主义民主政治建设问题

坚持科学执政、民主执政、依法执政,是发展社会主义民主政治的必然要求和必要条件,也是推进国家治理体系和治理能力现代化的关键所在。为此,要把党的领导方式和执政方式嵌入到社会主义民主和法治的制度框架之中,把科学执政、民主执政、依法执政有机统一起来,把“为人民执政”和“靠人民执政”有机统一起来。其前提是澄清我国民主政治建设的一些重大理论和实践问题,在知行合一的前提下不失时机地推进社会主义民主政治建设。     

Women’s international Democratic Federation,the ‘Third World’ and the Global Cold War from the late-1950s to the mid-1960s

ABSTRACT

This article examines the work of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) with women from Africa, Asia and Latin America. It analyzes their role in the WIDF’s decision-making process and activities during a period marked by decolonization and the intensification of women’s rights activism outside Europe. This analysis contributes to a better understanding of the extent to which the WIDF’s official position on support for the rights of women in the Global South was translated into the practical work of organization. The article is based on materials from Moscow archives that have hitherto not been explored in research on the WIDF. It shows that, in spite of the WIDF’s formal anti-colonial stance, women from the Global South were not always given a voice or able to insert their demands into WIDF policy.     

Manifestos and elections in Ghana's Fourth Republic

Debate continues over the factors that influence electoral outcomes or voter behaviour and alignment in elections all over the world. Several factors have been noted, including the manifestos of political parties. In spite of the potential influence of the party manifesto, several comparative and empirical studies on elections in Ghana have paid little or no attention to manifestos in determining the electoral outcomes of political parties in the Fourth Republic.This paper makes a contribution to the debate by examining how manifestos have influenced the electoral chances of the two main political parties which have been in and out of government in Ghana since the inception of the Fourth Republic, namely, the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party. Analysis covers the five elections held in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008. Specifically, it discusses not only the ability of the manifestos to shape policy debate but also to some extent, influence electoral outcomes. The paper concludes with some lessons learned.     

The Mouvement du 23 Mars and the dynamics of a failed insurgency in the Democratic Republic of Congo

This article analyses the link between the decision by the Mouvement du 23 Mars (M23) to occupy the city of Goma in November 2012 and the group's demise a year later in the hands of the revamped Congolese national army supported by the Intervention Brigade of the United Nations. The article argues that the military defeat of the M23 presents peace stakeholders in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Great Lakes region with a valuable opportunity. The rebels' defeat emboldens the Congolese national army and the Intervention Brigade with regard to their ability to take on insurgent groups while raising the cost of continued rebellion for the latter and their potential backers. Although not a panacea for peace in the Great Lakes region, this turn of events should contribute towards stemming the tide of recurring rebellions in the DRC while paving the way for peaceful political engagements among Congolese socio-political stakeholders, on the one hand, and between the DRC and its eastern neighbours, mainly Rwanda and Uganda, on the other hand.     

Japan: the contested boundaries of alien suffrage at the local level

The provision of local level electoral rights in Japan for tokubetsu eijūsha (special permanent residents) and eijūsha (permanent residents) has sparked an ongoing controversy between opponents and proponents of extending the boundaries of suffrage. Periodically igniting for over a decade, the debate has involved politicians from across the political spectrum as well as local authorities, non-governmental organizations and academic scholars, yet remains locked into a cycle in which a period of optimism is followed by inaction and stagnation. In January 2008 the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan reignited the issue once more. Against this background, the goal of this paper is to highlight and trace the way in which the mainstream debate for and against electoral rights is being played out in the public arena. In so doing this paper makes two claims. First, we need to recognize the way that certain historical–social influences emanating from the processes of state-building since 1945 influence the current debates. Second, this must combine awareness of both legal/constitutional and normative aspects, as well as a sense of intra-party and inter-party political contestation.     

A tale of culture-bound regime evolution: the centennial democratic trend and its recent reversal

Using a new measure of “comprehensive democracy,” our analysis traces the global democratic trend over the last 116 years, from 1900 until 2016, looking in particular at the centennial trend’s cultural zoning. As it turns out, democracy has been proceeding and continues to differentiate the world’s nations in a strongly culture-bound manner: high levels of democracy remain a distinctive feature of nations in which emancipative values have grown strong over the generations. By the same token, backsliding and autocratization are limited to cultures with under-developed emancipative values. In line with this finding, public support for democracy neither favours democratization, nor does it prevent autocratization in disjunction from emancipative values. On the contrary, public support for democracy shows such pro-democratic effects if – and only if – it co-exists in close association with emancipative values. The reason is that – in disconnect from emancipative values – support for democracy frequently reverts its meaning, indicating the exact opposite of what intuition suggests: namely, support for autocracy. In conclusion, the prospects for democracy are bleak where emancipative values remain weak.